To be fair, they got sold out by their leaders, their unions, and the entire general public. Every day a new article gets published in some big Canadian newspaper about how it’s a good thing that public servants are forced back into the office.
That’s because everyone in the general public was forced into the office before the government workers. At least the majority of them. If the government unions were fighting a return to office for everyone else, then there would be solidarity going back to fight it for the government office workers. Instead everyone just feels that it’s a good thing the gov’t office workers are going back because hey, my employer made me go back, why should they have it any better?
These articles (which have now been pushed for months) detail how service delivery has “tanked” during the 4 years of working from home. They cite the time when passport applications were overwhelmed right when travel restrictions were being lifted during the pandemic and the long wait times. It’s not very honest.
Passport applications that were processed by people that were working from the office and by teams that has been cut to the minimum number of employees possible by shipping people to other departments that were actually necessary during the peak of the pandemic!
All unions keep saying it, a gain for union jobs puts pressure on non union employers.
Also it’s the population’s money and time that’s being wasted by pushing for RTO, traffic in the Ottawa-Gatineau region increased so much since September 9th that public servants with other obligations aren’t able to work their regular schedule when they go to the office.
A gain for unions might be a gain for non union if we’re talking comparable industries, like union electricians or plumbers. Those are industries where people can leave their non union employer and go union, or work to unionize their employer.
For general office work that’s not the case. Government administration positions don’t all have non union equivalents. Office workers don’t generally unionize. You can’t just quit your non union job and get a government job, those are hard to come by. So a gain for government service workers is irrelevant to the general public, or in the case of increased wages just means increased taxes. There’s a sense of jealousy of those with government positions, as well as schadenfreude when they get screwed over.
The government hired so many employees in the last few years including tons of positions where they didn’t care about distance from an office until December 2022 (and that are now exempted from RTO)… I don’t think that argument has too much weight to it, people complain without trying to leave their current job, that’s why office workers don’t see as much gains but I can guarantee you, gains at the federal level has make impacts in the private sector and outside of the GOC in the Ottawa-Gatineau region because employers need to compete (a receptionist position for a small town paying 30$/h???). Make the public service as open to WFH as possible and now it’s employers from all over Canada that will need to compete with it for office jobs and those in the private sector should realize that!
To be fair, they got sold out by their leaders, their unions, and the entire general public. Every day a new article gets published in some big Canadian newspaper about how it’s a good thing that public servants are forced back into the office.
I was happy to see the recent coverage by Radio-Canada/CBC about the TBS communications regarding the RTO options!
That’s because everyone in the general public was forced into the office before the government workers. At least the majority of them. If the government unions were fighting a return to office for everyone else, then there would be solidarity going back to fight it for the government office workers. Instead everyone just feels that it’s a good thing the gov’t office workers are going back because hey, my employer made me go back, why should they have it any better?
These articles (which have now been pushed for months) detail how service delivery has “tanked” during the 4 years of working from home. They cite the time when passport applications were overwhelmed right when travel restrictions were being lifted during the pandemic and the long wait times. It’s not very honest.
Passport applications that were processed by people that were working from the office and by teams that has been cut to the minimum number of employees possible by shipping people to other departments that were actually necessary during the peak of the pandemic!
Man I wish everyone had that full context.
All unions keep saying it, a gain for union jobs puts pressure on non union employers.
Also it’s the population’s money and time that’s being wasted by pushing for RTO, traffic in the Ottawa-Gatineau region increased so much since September 9th that public servants with other obligations aren’t able to work their regular schedule when they go to the office.
A gain for unions might be a gain for non union if we’re talking comparable industries, like union electricians or plumbers. Those are industries where people can leave their non union employer and go union, or work to unionize their employer.
For general office work that’s not the case. Government administration positions don’t all have non union equivalents. Office workers don’t generally unionize. You can’t just quit your non union job and get a government job, those are hard to come by. So a gain for government service workers is irrelevant to the general public, or in the case of increased wages just means increased taxes. There’s a sense of jealousy of those with government positions, as well as schadenfreude when they get screwed over.
The government hired so many employees in the last few years including tons of positions where they didn’t care about distance from an office until December 2022 (and that are now exempted from RTO)… I don’t think that argument has too much weight to it, people complain without trying to leave their current job, that’s why office workers don’t see as much gains but I can guarantee you, gains at the federal level has make impacts in the private sector and outside of the GOC in the Ottawa-Gatineau region because employers need to compete (a receptionist position for a small town paying 30$/h???). Make the public service as open to WFH as possible and now it’s employers from all over Canada that will need to compete with it for office jobs and those in the private sector should realize that!