Government Ignored Evidence In Forcing Workers Back To Office

For months federal public sector unions have been battling with their employer over the latter’s compulsory return-to-office mandate. Despite coordinated resistance from workers and their unions, the federal government has pushed forward with seeming disregard. We now have new insight into what drove the government’s decision to force workers back to the office, and it’s as damning as it is absurd.

On September 25, the Public Service Alliance of Canada (PSAC), the largest union of federal public servants, revealed that they had gained access to a trove of government documents concerning telework and the government’s return-to-office mandate. These documents, obtained through an Access to Information request, show that the government ignored evidence compiled by Treasury Board staff showing a range of positive benefits attributable to remote work.

As PSAC put it, the federal government’s “decision to impose a rigid three-day in-office mandate was not based on data or research on productivity, despite clear evidence that hybrid work boosts performance. The documents reveal the government ignored their own evidence and steamrolled ahead with a plan.”

The union also shared its documents with Class Struggle.

In 2022, PSAC struck in part to secure a right to remote work. By including telework in its collective agreement, the union hoped to cement remote options as a bargainable right. Doing so would have allowed federal public unions to negotiate telework’s parameters further in subsequent rounds of negotiation.

Unfortunately, the union fell short and instead managed only to compel the employer to agree to hear individual flexible work requests. While not a fully-fledged right to remote work, it was nevertheless a foot in the door.

However, not long after the agreement’s ink had dried, the Treasury Board — the employer of federal public servants — imposed first a two-day and then a three-day in-office mandate. In response, PSAC launched a $1-million remote work campaign to coordinate member resistance to the government’s plan. Polling at the time demonstrated workers’ clear preference for remote work and a willingness to take action to protect this option. Simultaneously, federal unions filed grievances and took the issue to court, with a federal court ultimately agreeing to hear their case after the government tried to quash the unions’ legal challenge.

This latest document dump from PSAC demonstrates that considerations other than employee well-being, public service delivery and worker productivity were driving government decision-making. Instead, the government appeared to cave to public and political pressure, despite a recognition that doing so would foment anger and resistance from unionized workers and could undermine efficient public service delivery in the process.

As PSAC president Sharon DeSousa aptly quipped in the Ottawa Citizen, “Imagine making a business decision based on a hunch. In fact, imagine making a business decision knowing it would piss everyone off, make people less productive and cost you more money.” As she continued, the documents obtained by the union “paint a damning picture of a government more interested in political posturing than evidence-based decision-making.” Rather than listen to workers’ concerns and heed the evidence, “the government chose to ignore the facts.”

The government documents reveal that staff within the Treasury Board engaged in an extensive review of existing literature concerning remote work and productivity. As one summary of this work acknowledges, “most of the research concludes that remote work increases productivity.” In other words, not only did the government know that the vast majority of its workforce supports retaining remote work, it admitted that the evidence demonstrates net gains in productivity.

Another presentation prepared by the Office of the Chief Human Resources Officer highlights that “fewer interruptions leads to a higher focus on tasks at hand, improving efficiency and overall performance,” while also noting the work-life balance benefits enjoined by those working remotely.

It wasn’t only the government’s research demonstrating the productivity enhancements obtained from remote work. Statistics Canada also found net improvements in productivity among public sector employees working remotely, as well as general improvements to work-life balance, such as more rest and time for family care work among all workers with telework options. StatCan showed a 4.5 per cent increase in productivity between 2019 and 2023 within the federal government.

This was apparently not enough to convince the government. In fact, despite being fully aware of the substantive productivity gains among federal public servants, the Treasury Board pointed to Canada’s overall lagging productivity as justification for imposing its in-office mandate. Public sector workers were effectively blamed for the private sector’s unwillingness to make productivity-enhancing investments.

Throughout, the government’s documents also emphasize how remote work allows for the hiring and inclusion of a more diverse public sector workforce. Off-site work options offer candidates outside of the national capital region a chance to join the public service, which can be particularly important for recruiting Indigenous workers. The irrational push for in-office work risks undercutting these equity goals and closing off opportunities for workers outside of the Ottawa region.

Internal documents as well show that the government was following comparator industry trends rather than leading, particularly those coming from private sector corporations taking a hard line in support of in-person mandates. When PSAC struck in 2022 to protect remote work options, among other things, the union sought to make the federal public service an exemplary employer when it comes to telework. But rather than leading, documents show the Treasury Board following the example of private sector employers pushing workers back to the office.

For example, one internal draft document prepared for discussion within the Treasury Board states: “Global and jurisdictional trends demonstrate that while flexible work remains widely accepted, for those offering hybrid work arrangements, on-site requirements are trending at 3-days per week and very few are providing fully remote work.” Again, the government’s decision-making seemed to be based not on research about its own workforce, which showed the benefits of remote work, but instead on the political objective of forcibly compelling in-person work.

The government was apparently more concerned with “public scrutiny” about its supposedly lax work-from-home policies. In effect, the employer chose to punish workers for political gain rather than follow the evidence, protect workers’ well-being and continue to deliver efficient services to people across Canada.

Tellingly, these documents show how the government worked to craft its messaging about returning federal public servants to the office.

One internal memorandum prepared for the Treasury Board president, for instance, indicates that public messaging will focus on “the need for increased fairness and consistency in how we do hybrid work across the public service.” At the same time, the document acknowledges that “we are expecting to face a strong reaction from bargaining agents [unions].” “We will emphasize that we will continue to work with them on the review of the Telework Directive, which is distinct from the requirements of the Direction [the in-office mandate], which are the prerogative of the employer,” it continues.

What is especially noteworthy here is how government planners reconciled the commitment it made to unions in 2022 to maintain a process for reviewing flexible work arrangements with its later directive to force workers back to the office. Essentially, it argued that the process of reviewing individual requests for hybrid work would continue at the same time as the new blanket return-to-office policy came into force. This was precisely the risk when PSAC settled for the individualized review process in 2022. Management retained the right to make collective determinations about remote and in-person work, or at least that’s how the government sees it.

With all this evidence now out in the open, its impact remains to be seen. Government decision-makers were clearly not convinced by good arguments when they alone had access to this information. Now that it’s public knowledge, there is at least the option of calling them out and holding them to account. PSAC has done us all a tremendous service by gaining access to these documents and sharing their findings with the public. It’s now on them and other federal public sector unions to continue to organize and fight to repeal the in-office mandate.

As the union put it, “PSAC is calling on the federal government to scrap the mandate, rethink its approach, and follow the evidence, which shows that hybrid work leads to higher productivity, better work-life balance, and healthier workplace cultures.”

As DeSousa summarized, “We need policies that are rooted in evidence, not political expediency. We must continue to innovate and modernize the way we work. For the sake of every public service worker and the people we serve, let’s restore reason and evidence to government policies.”

What we should ultimately all be fighting for is a federal public service that meets our needs while ensuring that the workers in it are treated with respect and not subjected to arbitrary management decision-making. As the documents obtained by PSAC show, the government’s decision to force workers back to the office could undermine both of those objectives.

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