Federal Government Faces Tough Choices in Pushing Workers Back to Office

Public Service Alliance of Canada (PSAC) President Chris Aylward speaks during a press conference on Parliament Hill in Ottawa on May 8, 2024. The Canadian Press/Sean Kilpatrick

The federal government is stuck “between a rock and a hard place” over its push to get federal public servants back into the office three days a week instead of the current two, starting Sept. 9.

That’s according to Aaron Wudrick, director of the domestic policy program at the Macdonald-Laurier Institute think tank in Ottawa.

“I think that the feds are in a real sticky spot right now,” Mr. Wudrick, a lawyer, told The Epoch Times.

“On the one hand, the last thing they need right now is another enemy,” he said, referring to the threat by several public sector unions to mount a “summer of discontent” if Ottawa forces workers to comply with the mandate.

On the other hand, if the government caves in to the unions, Canadians may be much more vocal in asking for the curtaining of public sector jobs, Mr. Wudrick said.

The issue came to a head on May 8 when the Public Service Alliance of Canada (PSAC) announced a joint campaign with three other major unions to oppose Ottawa’s plan.

PSAC’s media advisory said the union has joined forces with the Professional Institute of the Public Service of Canada (PIPSC), the Canadian Association of Professional Employees (CAPE), and the Association of Canadian Financial Officers (ACFO) in the “united fightback campaign.”

PSAC said it has filed a series of legal challenges against the government and will also encourage members to file individual grievances to force the government to withdraw its mandate.

The unions involved represent some 341,000 public servants, with around 240,00 PSAC members, 70,000 PIPSC members, 25,000 CAPE members, and 6,000 ACFO members.

“This misguided decision sets up workers to fail, pushing them into physical offices that don’t have enough workspaces, where they don’t have the right equipment to do their jobs effectively, only to spend their days on virtual calls with their coworkers who work all across the country,” PSAC’s president Chris Aylward said in the news release.

Agreement

In a May 6, 2023, news release, PSAC had announced a tentative agreement reached with the Treasury Board to create a joint committee to review and update the telework policy and to require managers to assess remote work requests individually, not by group.

“Having all remote work requests reviewed on a individual basis will prevent future ‘one size fits all’ type mandates,” PSAC said of the agreement that applies to PSAC’s Program and Administrative Services (PA) group.

NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh said his party will push the federal Liberals to comply, although he stopped short of saying it would withdraw from its supply-and-confidence agreement with the Liberals that is keeping the Liberals in power until June 2025.

“In this case, the federal government ... has said, we will work with the union, we will work with workers to establish the best way forward in terms of where workers are going to be doing their jobs,” Mr. Singh told reporters on May 10. “That agreement should be respected.”

However, the federal government maintains it has the right to change the hybrid work model.

“A hybrid work environment continues to exist,” said Treasury Board President Anita Anand. “There is for many people a four-month transition period,” she told reporters on May 8.

“A hybrid work environment is not within the collective agreements,” she added. “It is something that at the time of negotiations, the government of Canada retained prerogative over.”

Performance Measures

Mr. Wudrick said both sides seem firmly entrenched.

At the same time, he said many Canadians have a perception that federal public servants have it easier than their private-sector counterparts.

“Part of that has to do with … a generalized feeling that some civil servants are not doing very much work at home—whether that’s true or not,” he said. “Remember, we had long waits for things like passports. Public services are seen as kind of lacking right now.”

But Mr. Wudrick cautioned that there is no guarantee public servants will be more productive working in an office.

What he would like to see are better performance measures.

“I’m more concerned about civil servants doing good work, being seen to be doing good work, and the public having confidence they’re doing work,” he said. “It’s about measuring how they do it, not where they do it.”

The issue may come to a head soon. Some 9,000 PSAC members at the Canada Border Services Agency will be wrapping up strike votes on May 15, and telework for “non-uniformed members” is one of the key issues.

In a May 10 news release, PSAC said mediation is scheduled to start June 3 between its CBSA members and the federal government.

The union warns that if no agreement is reached, there could be major delays at border crossings and across the country this summer.