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Suggested questions to put to unions re: fighting in-office policies
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I’ve learned that my former union’s Annual General Meeting is being held this Sunday, 17 November 2024, including by Zoom.
My emails to the union about fighting the federal government’s return-to-office policy have gone unanswered. Presumably it’s easy to ignore me since I’m not even a voting member anymore.
But I continue to worry. It does not seem that the approach unions are taking is helping employees. Week after week, I watch my loved ones pay the price in time and well-being (which are non-renewable resources).
It is not, in my considered opinion, an unreasonable request that unions be more daring here.
So, here are suggested questions that could be put to a union, say at an AGM. Hopefully this will make it easier for someone else to get answers and action.
1. Legal principles
The “in-office” policy was imposed unilaterally by the employer, “with no consultation with employees or their unions.” The union says research shows that working from home in fact increases productivity, and working conditions at home are often considerably better than what the employer requires employees to commute to. Therefore, this policy is not about productivity, technology, or health and safety.
- Which party, legally speaking, should be paying the costs of the employer’s unilaterally imposed requirements under these circumstances?
- Does the union agree that employees shouldn’t be donating their own “free” hours here? Does the union agree that commuting hours, under these circumstances, should be deducted from the weekly hours the employer contracted for in the collective agreement, so that it is instead the employer who bears the ongoing costs of its own pointless and harmful policy?
- How long does the union expect employees to subsidize the employer’s in-office requirement while the union argues through official channels? What is the absolute best case outcome for employees from those official channels, in terms of both time and remedy?
- Does the union agree that the employer can’t be allowed to keep imposing more unpaid hours and worse working conditions on employees? Does the union’s strength come from government processes or from collective action?
2. Statistical / financial
The employer currently requires employees to commute three days a week and has already threatened four.
- Since this policy started, how many total hours have employees spent on commuting to a job that can be done equally well or better from home?
- For an individual employee who commutes half an hour in each direction, how much lost time does that work out to per year? What is this equivalent to per employee in vacation days or weeks?
- What is the total cost of compliance to members, in both time (salary) and expenses (transportation, child care, etc.), each week that the in-office policy is complied with and cumulatively to date?
- If the union isn’t tracking this information, which relates directly to the negotiated value of the collective agreement, why not?
3. Official channels
Unions have been challenging the policy through the Federal Court and it was recently decided to seek review in Parliament as well.
- What’s happening with the court case? Has a hearing been scheduled? When is a decision expected? If the decision gets appealed, how many years can members expect to wait before a final decision is issued? What is the best case outcome for members in terms of the remedy the courts could grant?
- What’s happening with the review in Parliament? If the Committee agrees to study the issue, how long is a report in a contentious minority Parliament likely to take? What are the relevant remedial powers of the House of Commons Standing Committee on Government Operations and Estimates? What is the best case outcome for members from a Parliamentary review?
- In either case, assuming the union side is vindicated, can employees expect to be reimbursed either salary or lieu time for all the hours spent complying with the employers’ policy?
4. Health and safety
Reported health and safety issues in federal office spaces include pests like mice and other rodents, bedbugs, bees / wasps / hornets, bats and cockroaches. The employer is providing inadequate equipment for employees to do their jobs and surveilling employees in ways the union has described as both Orwellian and dystopian.
In-office policies are known to have disproportionately negative impacts on certain employees, including racialized employees, women, 2SLGBTQQIA+ people, the neurodivergent, people with weakened immune systems, people experiencing mental illness, and people with mobility impairments. Pointless commutes are also bad for the environment, which affects everyone’s health.
In addition, currently 1 in 31 Canadians has COVID (1 in 31 in Québec, 1 in 28 in Ontario). It is known, including to the federal government, that COVID has been a “mass-disabling event,” and public transportation increases risk of exposure. Reinfection is a risk factor for long COVID, which can cause brain fog and fatigue and can also affect the cardiovascular system, the nervous system, the endocrine system, the immune system, the reproductive system and the gastrointestinal system.
- Has the union done a GBA+ analysis on how its “official channels” approach is affecting marginalized employees? If not, why not?
- What has to happen before a union recommends that employees not attend a workplace because the risk to health and safety is too great?
- Is the union actively tracking reports of employees who get sick in relation to the commute to a communal office? If not, why not?
- Has the union forecast how many federal employees are likely to be infected with COVID as a result of compliance with the in-office policy? How many employees are likely to become permanently disabled by Long COVID as a result? Does the union have reason to trust that the employer will provide sufficient support for sick and disabled employees?
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Environmental law: not even satire
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An article from Fatima Syed at actual news site The Narwhal, “‘We’re incredibly responsible’: Enbridge Gas president dismisses Canada’s emissions cap,” reads like an article from satirical news site The Beaverton.
The Gas President’s complaints include that government incentives being paid out to their for-profit, ecosystem-destroying industry are insufficient (“tepid, fragmented”).
The threat is to move business to the US unless Canada does a better job at capitulation. “The goal should be clear, well-designed regulatory frameworks that offer certainty to investors,” she says, referencing the only “stakeholders” whose interests matter, I guess.
“‘More nuclear and more oil, more renewables, more carbon capture, more efficiency, more innovation and more natural gas,’ she says.” More consumption, more!
And it’s not even satire.
In environmental law in law school, I formed the opinion that the Earth can’t win.
Maybe, improbably, someone has the time and money to prove to rigorous legal and scientific standards that So and So Corp did the polluting that directly caused a quantifiable harm. There are a surprising number of legal hurdles to defending the planet, but let’s assume a case gets to the remedy stage.
Here are the types of remedies I observed:
(a) a fine that’s a minor percentage of profit (also known as: the cost of doing business),
(b) a fine that’s large enough to trigger corporate shapeshifting that ensures the polluter doesn’t have to pay, and
(c) a fine the size of which is irrelevant because the government retroactively indemnifies So and So Corp.
That is an actual thing in environmental law, the Doug Ford government’s decision to overrule the Ontario Energy Board to protect corporate profits reminded me.
After law school, working in regulations, I formed the impression that present day Canadian environmental law for corporations boils down to basically: “do what you want, as long as you keep records.”
That sounds cynical, but it’s consistent with the critique that Liberal governments’ primary concern is generating paperwork, not helping citizens. See also, the proposed federal oil and gas emissions cap to which the Gas President objects:
Senior government officials said their modeling showed the industry’s production levels would grow 16 per cent between 2019 and 2032 with their proposed emissions cap rules in place, versus 17 per cent projected growth without a cap.
Over a hundred pages in the Gazette for a one-percent difference in industry greenhouse gas emissions eight years from now.
No wonder more overtly capitalist governments don’t want to wait for environmental assessments to finish before starting construction projects, if it’s pointless paperwork and a foregone conclusion. I’d be annoyed too.
My preference would be for governments that prioritize a planet with breathable air and drinkable water over corporate profit, but that doesn’t seem to be on offer.
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History
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I’ve complained before about how history was taught to me in school. Most of the time it was extremely dull. I didn’t want to memorize the dates of battles far away in time and space that had no clear significance to my life. Surely there is a better use of everyone’s time.
I don’t recall anyone attempting to teach me about residential schools. A field trip in grade 7 or 8 to la ville de Québec was presumably intended to teach about la Bataille des plaines d’Abraham but I mainly retained that the phones au Château Frontenac were fun.
The closest I ever got to actually learning history involved a mandatory independent study resulting in a presentation and q&a. I was assigned Stalin, and my recollection is I paid more attention to the psychology than to the “history” per se. Because why are we learning about monsters if not to understand how to spot and avoid them in future?
Where I think the education system really failed me (us?) is re: what exactly it is we’re supposed to have collectively learned re: authoritarians and human rights. I think about this every November, as people put on poppies and attend elaborate ceremonies where everyone agrees “Never Again.”
I don’t understand what it is many people are remembering. How fun it is to persecute people? That genocide is a topic for debate?
Maybe we’d have gotten here anyway if more history teachers had been more explicit about how fascism sneaks up and is bad, actually.
But an apparently legitimate vote, for a second term? When a smart and well-funded woman was the alternative?
It’s hard to go through. Again.
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Time
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And you run, and you run
To catch up with the sun, but it’s sinking
And racing around
To come up behind you again
The sun is the same in a relative way
But you’re older
Shorter of breath
And one day closer to death— Pink Floyd, “Time,” lyrics via Genius.com, where I have now created an account because it’s an excellent site for music nerds and I hope one of them will answer whether Gilmour wrote that verse (as attributed) or Waters did (as annotated). … Part of my ongoing performance series, “Which is correct?”1
That verse from “Time” really affected me this morning. I’m doing a lot of waiting, in a lot of areas, and it’s not my favourite thing. It’s stressful. And I don’t feel I (we) have time to waste.
I’ve been throwing out a lot of big ideas to people and waiting to see who grabs on. I don’t know, for example, how many people I’ve suggested should go into business with me. This might sound unusual / haphazard, but it’s actually a testament to how many smart and thoughtful people I’ve met that I would happily analyze the meaning of “professional” with.2
But it’s also an observation about how many smart and thoughtful people are dissatisfied with how they’re being treated at work. And, I think, it’s a further comment on how unsafe they feel with something as basic as saying “no, that’s my free time” to their employer.3
I suppose it’s also a comment on how safe my friends feel telling me things, which is nice, especially if they tell me angering things knowing I’m going to start throwing out ideas for pushing back.
Art
There’s a new piece of art on my fridge, from living artist Amaan Jahangir, who does a series that combines technology (text message records) with devastating emotional art that really speaks to me.
The one I bought is the “Never been better!” print, which depicts a short iPhone exchange:
hey, how have you been?
I’m good
accompanied by the image of a knight who looks invincible except for two red arrows piercing through metal to the heart.
It makes me think about how often we speak in the most superficial of ways, and how we can do everything possible to isolate and fortify, but there is always a vulnerability. It makes me think about what matters.
Many of Amaan Jahangir’s other prints in this series evoked similar strong responses from me, including more optimistic pieces. Also, the Metal Gear-looking dude fighting through wake-up alarms is hilarious. (Support living artists.)
Time
“Time” seemed like an especially appropriate launching point today, in re: clocks, since it’s the autumn / easier version of the two annual time changes, imposed for no apparently valid reason even though it increases health risks and confuses pets.
I have a medical appointment this week that I’m not looking forward to. It’s also a big week for American politics / the future of fascism.
I don’t want to just sit around waiting. I’m older. Shorter of breath, one day closer to death. I can’t catch up with the sun but to be honest I always liked the moon better anyway.
- A footnote to update Minor Campaign #2: Dropout TV. I have now sent a third email, with screenshots rather than links, to the two email addresses I already had plus a guess at the address for their legal department, which did not bounce back undeliverable (!). Summarized: it has now been over a month without reply or resolution. Your advertising contradicts your legalese. Please don’t be gross. In the meantime, here is notice that, contrary to your terms of service, based on principles of legal interpretation, I will be sharing my password with a friend because I think she’ll like Dimension 20. ↩︎
- I have not, in any of these instances, had an idea for how we would make money. ↩︎
- My former union has continued to ignore my creative ideas that would have the costs of the 3-days in-office policy be borne by the employer who imposed it unilaterally and without cause instead of by employees. I encourage employees to echo these ideas to others, including to their unions, which seem to have forgotten where labour’s strength lies. (Hint: it is neither in court nor in Parliament.) ↩︎
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Dance like nobody’s getting COVID
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A few things happened over the past week.
- I had another spell of feeling dizzy and faint, which may be attributable to Long COVID. (The health care system gave me COVID about a year ago.)
- COVID-19 Resources Canada released their latest forecast. The scientific estimate is that about 1 in 34 people are currently infected (~157,097 infections/day); infections are higher than average in Québec and Ontario (pages 4 and 5).
- I took my CO2 monitor on a half-empty bus with closed windows and the readings peaked around 1350 ppm, just shy of the 1400 ppm “red” zone, well beyond the “green” zone that suggests adequate ventilation (<1000 ppm).
- Someone expressed unhappiness to me about an 80-minute unpaid commute on a crowded bus for a job that can be done from home.
Which means it’s time to get angry again about the federal government’s return-to-office mandate.
I don’t know how much plainer it can be that it’s not okay for employers to unilaterally impose the requirement that employees donate their free time and risk their health for tasks unrelated to productivity.
I also don’t know how unions think they’re helping by telling employees to continue to comply en masse while they spend years making a case through various bureaucratic channels.
This is not time that employees will ever get back, and health doesn’t always return after repeated COVID exposure either. Per this federal government return-to-office GBA+ analysis that got released via access to information (pages 12 and 26):
- recent evidence suggests that COVID-19 has been a “mass-disabling event,”
- the threat of COVID is “still present,” and
- public transportation increases risk of exposure.
These are known facts.
And my former union is… throwing a dance party tonight (Tuesday night), apparently believing the problem is that employees aren’t spending enough of their free time downtown.
I’ve registered to participate in Science Journal Club tonight, with guest speaker / whistleblower Dr. David Fisman. I’m hoping to ask if any research has been done or could be done about infectivity on rush-hour buses.
This seems like something that ought to be known, by the employees whose health and wellbeing is being sacrificed, by the unions who purport to represent them, and by the governments and employers who are eventually going to discover that mass disabling their human resources was, in fact, a bad policy.
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About the author
CKirkby
- earned degrees in language / literature and law (but is not currently a lawyer or a journalist);
- worked for over a decade on Parliament Hill;
- misses writing; and
- appreciates thoughtful comments, en anglais ou en français. (Email addresses are not published.)
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