With the increasing availability of vaccines, governments across Europe can begin to draft roadmaps to take their societies and economies out of Covid lockdown and plan for the future - whatever that future will be. What can be said is that there will no return to the world as it was in early 2020, to before we became aware that Covid was already here.
Too much has changed in the past year for any sort of return to the “old normal”.
While there is much we don’t know about how things will be when Covid is under control, one thing we do know is that daily, mass commuting to city centre office blocks is not coming back. The past year has shown that it simply is not necessary. As Mark Dixon, chief executive of flexible office space company IWG, says:
“My prediction would be that in five years, certainly 10 years’ time you would have to explain to your kids what commuting was … Commuting is just this totally stupid thing that people have been forced to do.” He notes that office towers contain thousands of people, most of whom “don’t really work together” and the ones who do “communicated with text, Teams or Zoom in the office”.
Remote work is here to stay, even if in a hybrid model combining time in the office with time working remotely. (By remote work we mean all work that is done away from the employer’s buildings, whether it is working from home, a shared office space, a hub or an internet café.)
Like all things in labour relations, there are two dimensions to the management of remote work: cost and control. Cost covers the Euro issues involved: who pays for what, from equipment, to insurance, to utilities to working space. Control refers to how and through what means remote work is monitored and managed. It covers issues such as surveillance, working time, and the right to disconnect.
More importantly, control also refers to the decision by management that remote working will be an integral part of its employment model for the future and, therefore, not a matter of choice on the part of individual employees. Remote working will be baked-in as part of the terms and conditions of employment as companies adjust to the world of digital work.
To put it simply: in the future employees will not have the right to insist that they work from an employer-owned facility all or part of the time. It is for management to decide from where work will be done. Nothing new in this. Management has always decided on the location of factories and offices. The “digital decentralisation” of work does not change this fundamental management prerogative.
This runs headlong into union opposition. In a new position paper on remote working, here, IndustriAll Europe says:
The voluntary principle is fully respected, meaning that workers should have the right to choose between teleworking or working at the office. All type of workers who can telework or where telework is applicable (including agency workers, workers on a short-term contract etc.) must have the right to telework, but also to revert back to the office (a physical working place should be available to all employees).
For IndustriAll, the workers gets to decide where they work. But if this is not the case anywhere else in the world of work, why should it be true of remote telework? Has IndustriALL or any of its affiliated unions ever insisted that a company move a plant because the workers would prefer to work elsewhere?
UNI Global takes the same view here
Remote working may not be suitable for all workers and for all types of work and not every sector or company may be suited to remote working. However, no one wishing to work remotely should be excluded from remote work unless the employer can make a justifiable case against it …
Equally, there should not be any obligation to work remotely; it should be voluntary, with the possibility for workers to revert to full time at the workplace if and when they so wish. Workers should also be able to choose to combine remote work with office-based work in a pattern that works best for them.
However, UNI seems to recognise that the reality will be more complex than it would wish. It knows that the closure of office buildings is coming and that such closures will have major consequences.
Providing more remote work opportunities should not be used as an excuse by employers to close workplaces in an attempt to save costs or undermine working conditions. In cases of major remote work restructuring, permanent worksite closure and/or the digital off-shoring of jobs, the employer should negotiate the restructuring terms with the trade union, and any existing legal mechanisms on restructuring should be triggered. In all cases, measures should be put in place to protect workers as they move through the restructuring process.
When workplaces are closed, workers should first be offered the option to transfer to another workplace location, should they choose. If there is no transfer option or if the worker chooses instead to work remotely, the employer should maintain the employment relationship and there should be no reduction in pay, leave or other terms and conditions of employment.
As UNI rightly notes if the employer decides on the “digital off-shoring of jobs” then “restructuring terms” will have to be negotiated, as happens now when restructuring and relocations take place.
But the “digital decentralisation” of work through telework within a country is somewhat different from the closure and offshoring of an operation. Closure and offshoring means that the work is lost to existing employees. “Digital decentralisation” means that the employer is saying to the employees that they still have their work but that the work will no longer be done from a central office location.
The consideration which is conspicuous by its absence In the quote above from the UNI paper is: what happens if there is “no transfer option” available but the worker refuses to work remotely? Most employers will rightly conclude that the worker is opting to be made redundant, refusing work on the terms available.
The past year has shown that remote work/telework can deliver. Work will be reorganised as a result of that insight. It will be for employers to decide what is best for their businesses. Employees, individually or collectively, cannot have a veto on that.
From BEERG Newsletter Issue #8 – March 4, 2021
