Federal Government & Union spar over returning to office

[brihard]

The OC Transpo would complain they taking work away from them! And the military would cave in.

MLicopter shuttle from Moodie stating into Carling campus?

 

[Remius]

If only the Army had vehicles it could use, and drivers, to help its troops get to and from work

You mean the school bus contracts we have?

 

[ballz]

Why is the assumption always that public servants are over compensated and not that private sector exploits its workers with below poverty wages, employment volatility, and anything else it can get away with not paying? It’s not impossible that it is a little from column A and a little from column B.

Because people base their assumptions on their experience, and they have enough experience dealing with government and dealing with private sector businesses, and knowing people who work in the public sector and the private sector, to know that it's a LOT from Column A and a little bit from Column B.

You are also naïve to think that the government is paying public servants because it occupies some moral high ground of not wanting to pay "below poverty wages" or have "employment volatility," etc. The government would love to pay it's employees less and it would love to be able to lay them off / fire them - it's not that it's morally superior, it's just that it's incompetent and unable to right its own ship.

I would hope workers from one sector are not looking across at another and reflexively demanding reduction of the other groups benefits to achieve parity

I am not. I am looking at the value I receive for what I pay in taxes, and comparing it to the value I receive when I pay for something in the private sector, and I see a huge disparity and that disparity is largely related to overcompensation of public servants.

instead of exploring an amelioration of their own benefits… but that is human behaviour.

Most employees are cognizant of the fact that they can't bankrupt their boss or else they'll have no job. Private sector workers negotiate their compensation in the real world, where they actually have to come to grips with the value they provide to their employer, whereas public sector workers don't. They'll just hold us all hostage with a strike, and not provide services that the government has made it illegal for private sector to provide (thanks again, government).

It’s not a mobile work force. Public servants are almost entirely assigned a specific workplace. This is the employer massively sucking at administering their workforce under utterly normal conditions with the game set to “easy”.

Just to be clear, you're talking about public servants who are not providing the value of their salary?

I've seen some public sector staff more concerned about 'value for money' than private sector when it comes to productivity, so it's not an either/or thing IMHO...

No doubt. This is my honest take on it... because there's a huge lack of accountability (i.e no one gets fired or laid off), the public sector (municipal, provincial, federal, and definitely including the CAF) becomes a place where 5% of the people do 95% of the work, and then 95% of the people do the other 5%.

Being a 5%'er sucks, and I feel sorry for those who are. I felt like I was a 5%'er and it drove me mad. As a smart Warrant Officer (another 5%'er for sure) told me as we commiserated together about the sad state of things, "only those who care are suffering."

So while I know there are 5%'ers and I feel empathy for them, I also know they are a minority and the only antidote is accountability. The reason we don't have this issue as much in the private sector isn't because of better pay, it isn't because of WFH policies, it isn't because of GBA+ stuff, it's because the CEO and our HR department would also like to keep their jobs, so I get an email nearly every month telling us about who has been fired - and after spending too many years in the CAF, it tickles me pink every time.

Our firm does allow people, after their first year of employment, to WFH for up to 2 days a week. And for some, in unique circumstances, they are working remotely full-time. But our firm will also get rid of them with about zero minutes notice as soon as they aren't worth what they are being paid. Until I see the Federal government have that kind of accountability in place, sorry, but if making 100% of public servants work in-office gets me an extra .01% value out of my already inefficiently spent tax dollars, then I don't care. If the 5%'ers hate it so bad, there are plenty of places in the private sector for them.

I'm at the point where I think I'd rather just see the bureaucracy implode rather than have to pay another cent in taxes to be wasted by a workforce that is 95% useless.

 

[Edward Campbell]

It’s also an institutional fuckup when said folks don’t have the required spaces, etc to work in. Asking yourself “will I have space to work today” isn’t a glowing recommendation to go back to the office for reasons, especially if Teams meetings dominate the work day.

Also, your CAF job can’t be done remotely but let’s say it can. Would you not want the option to do so?

Back in the old, old days, when NorTel was still a company, and a very successful one at that, they were one of the remote working pioneers at their Toronto facility.

Even "junior" VPs didn't have assigned offices. Most permanent employees were encouraged to come to the office when it was appropriate and to work from home when that was better. Junior staff and some mentors worked 5 days a week in the offices and labs for training/mentoring/evaluation but most staff, when they wanted to work in the facility, came in and got their "cart" from a lockup and then found a convenient work area - sometimes near or even in the big food court, sometimes in a quit cubicle or even a private office.

Junior VPs and senior engineering managers has access to office suites, but even those who worked in the office almost every day had to pick and choose each day.

I think it's fair to say that everyone I know there loved the system ... but it was based on a mix of trust and confidence, up and down the chain, by "workers" and "leaders" alike.

 

[ArmyRick]

It’s also an institutional fuckup when said folks don’t have the required spaces, etc to work in. Asking yourself “will I have space to work today” isn’t a glowing recommendation to go back to the office for reasons, especially if Teams meetings dominate the work day.

Also, your CAF job can’t be done remotely but let’s say it can. Would you not want the option to do so?

As far as CAF jobs. First everything you described is a leadership fuck up. End story. Leadership, sort it the F out.

Next, check what I said about having frequent contact with your subordinates to ensure service member welfare, readiness, etc are good. The opposite should be applied. Do not work at home unless their is no other option. Thats for serving members.

PS types? If I were in charge, they would be at the office every work day and only storm days would they work from home (or child sick day). Saying everything can be done by phone, or video chat, etc is a f-ing cop out.

 

[Edward Campbell]

As far as CAF jobs. First everything you described is a leadership fuck up. End story. Leadership, sort it the F out.

Next, check what I said about having frequent contact with your subordinates to ensure service member welfare, readiness, etc are good. The opposite should be applied. Do not work at home unless their is no other option. Thats for serving members.

PS types? If I were in charge, they would be at the office every work day and only storm days would they work from home (or child sick day). Saying everything can be done by phone, or video chat, etc is a f-ing cop out.

This is why one of my former junior colleagues, who is now a senior PS executive, is pressing very, very hard to have PS workers back in the office 5 days a week with "work from home" an option only for some established employees - see my NorTel story, just above. She says that mentoring and training are suffering badly from even a 3 day a week "in office" routine.

 

[Brad Sallows]

One of the weaknesses of public service is that there is insufficient churn. Not enough people spend time working for different companies. Not enough people are forced to spend time working for different companies.

 

[Furniture]

As far as CAF jobs. First everything you described is a leadership fuck up. End story. Leadership, sort it the F out.

Next, check what I said about having frequent contact with your subordinates to ensure service member welfare, readiness, etc are good. The opposite should be applied. Do not work at home unless their is no other option. Thats for serving members.

PS types? If I were in charge, they would be at the office every work day and only storm days would they work from home (or child sick day). Saying everything can be done by phone, or video chat, etc is a f-ing cop out.

That's a very infantry centric view of the CAF.

When I was in Trenton I saw my people maybe once every week or two because of their work location and shift schedule. When I needed something from them, or they needed something from me we used modern tools like phones, and email to communicate. It was the same when I was a shift worker in Cold lake and Halifax back in the early 2000s.

I don't need to physically see my co-workers to be aware of their welfare. My job has nothing to do with the people that sit near me. My closest co workers are on either coast, while I'm in Ottawa. My sitting at a desk beside a random LCdr doesn't make me more productive, it makes me less productive because I'm less connected to the world because of security stuff that is not a requirement for my work.

From where I'm sitting, the strongest opponents to WFH and hybrid work are the people who never moved beyond the tactical unit level, and/or have limited breadth of CAF experience...

 

[Grunt_031]

One of the weaknesses of public service is that there is insufficient churn. Not enough people spend time working for different companies. Not enough people are forced to spend time working for different companies.

You assume that all PS started from when they graduate school. Most especially, where I work, have worked in the real world most in multiple jobs.

We have had a few leave because they can believe how difficult it is to get business done with all the restrictions and hoops to jump through. Just got told yesterday there is no money available. Stop WOs as stock runs out.

 

[Brad Sallows]

You assume that all PS started from when they graduate school. Most especially, where I work, have worked in the real world most in multiple jobs.

I don't assume anything, nor am I situating my estimate in one place of work, and I assuredly don't assume that the first stop after completing education is for most people also the last one. I wrote there is insufficient churn, not that there is no churn. It's an educated guess based on the knowledge that there are fewer jobs-for-life companies than before, and the number is trending down. Data that show a higher fraction of private sector jobs (compared to public) are filled by people who end up as lifers could disprove my guess.

 

[foresterab]

Not working for the federal government but working in the public sector and in a smaller remote office. TEAMS has been a great workplace efficiency gain as I don't have to spend half a work day to go meet my boss or a coworker or travel 4 hours for a one hour meeting. I spend a significant amount of time daily on teams calls but my clients range from across town 5 min away to up to 7 hours away travel one way and peers are mostly 1-3 hours away.

But when working remotely during COVID years there were trends I really noticed.

• some specialized subject matter experts you couldn't tell where they were working. These are the experts that toil away in the back ground and popup as needed, when needed. Most are extremely motivated and self driven anyways and most importantly are available when most staff were around.
• There was a huge loss of situational awareness. I had 5 other people and 7 this year working on the same area of lands. Just keeping track of where folks are going was often a day long exercise to plan field work because the casual hallway chatter/noise/awareness of what each other were doing was gone. Even more fun when fires are breaking out all around you and half the response force isn't aware because they're not hearing the tempo pick up locally in the office and not in a truck hearing the radios.
• There was a significant percentage of folks who loved Working from Home...but you could never track them down. When I see you've been offline for 3 hours every afternoon walking your dog and then asking for answers from folks at 7pm at night because it works for you....you've lost site of being available to answer questions and support your peers. For at least 25% there was a significant drop in urgency of work because the mindset went to "what do I have to get done today" or " what is due today" and drove towards the minimum amount of work.
• Conversely there were a large number of folks who were working more hours because they did not have the same disconnect from work and home. Not as many as the slackers but still significant.
• For those with families/sick kids/etc....it proved how effective having some folks out of office can be. A couple of peers are single parents...not alot of options if the kid can't go to school.. So they work from home and get a partial day of work in.....but those same folks often put in extra hours afterwards late at night to make up the hours.

Frankly I've been lucky where very few of my supervisors have had time to bother with micro management. Work from your office normally, work from home if needed (or pre-arranged schedule) and address your working hours for OT/time off as needed. Only rule is that if you're not in the office present you better have performance delivery and the hours of work have to be tilted in the employers favor.

 

[daftandbarmy]

Big Brother enters the workplace... or at least exercises the muscle it already had

How does the government track who's in the office? It varies by department​

HR document says individual info should only be used during formal investigation​

As federal government workers return to the office for the mandated three days a week, different departments are taking different approaches to monitoring their attendance.

The federal public service turned to remote work in March 2020 as the COVID-19 pandemic began.

In May, the federal government announced workers would return to the office three days a week, starting Monday. There is some flexibility built in to ease the transition, but employees are initially expected to spend 60 per cent of their time in the workplace.

Executives must now be in the office at least four days a week.

Radio-Canada asked a sampling of federal departments how they'll be tracking attendance. Their answers varied by department.

For example, the Department of Finance is compiling and analyzing turnstile data to determine who's scanning their passes, while Public Services and Procurement Canada compiles monthly attendance reports based on bulk laptop connection data.

Individual attendance data​

According to an internal human resources document from the Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat, obtained by Radio-Canada, individual attendance across the public service should only be recorded as part of a formal investigation.

Otherwise, the department, which oversaw the federal government's initial shift to remote work, does not support formal monitoring of individual attendance.

According to the internal document, any such observations should be left to managers, and to individual employees to self-report.

Punishment for failing to show up for the prescribed time without a valid exemption ranges from verbal reprimand to suspension without pay or even firing, it said.

Waste of resources, union says​

Public service unions argue their members have proven they can work just as efficiently from home, and without the need to commute. Their employer has disagreed.

"What's the value in having a surveillance system that emphasizes presence more than what you've accomplished?" asked Jennifer Carr, presidents of the Professional Institute of the Public Service of Canada.

Canadian Association of Professional Employees president Nathan Prier said the policies are "a step backward" and a waste of money spent monitoring employees.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ottawa/federal-government-public-service-return-office-attendance-1.7318710

 

[CountDC]

Wow all the talk about WFH. Guess I will toss in my view.

Base criteria for both CAF and PS is work on site. WFH should be at a supervisory level that is determined by the department head. Using CAF as an example the CO may decide that it is up to the OCs or even then section WO to decide if their staff can have a WFH schedule. We have people in command for a reason, part of that is to determine how their group best works.

Currently at my work it is this way and works well - it has been delegated to the sections. We currently have Sgt, WO and Capt in our section that makes the call on the JRs. For the most part it works well, only hiccup on occasion has been due to communication that we dealt with.

 

[brihard]

Just to be clear, you're talking about public servants who are not providing the value of their salary?

At the executive and senior managerial levels, where individuals have workforce management or making suitable workplaces and facilities available as part of their job, yes.

 

[Colin Parkinson]

Because people base their assumptions on their experience, and they have enough experience dealing with government and dealing with private sector businesses, and knowing people who work in the public sector and the private sector, to know that it's a LOT from Column A and a little bit from Column B.

You are also naïve to think that the government is paying public servants because it occupies some moral high ground of not wanting to pay "below poverty wages" or have "employment volatility," etc. The government would love to pay it's employees less and it would love to be able to lay them off / fire them - it's not that it's morally superior, it's just that it's incompetent and unable to right its own ship.



I am not. I am looking at the value I receive for what I pay in taxes, and comparing it to the value I receive when I pay for something in the private sector, and I see a huge disparity and that disparity is largely related to overcompensation of public servants.



Most employees are cognizant of the fact that they can't bankrupt their boss or else they'll have no job. Private sector workers negotiate their compensation in the real world, where they actually have to come to grips with the value they provide to their employer, whereas public sector workers don't. They'll just hold us all hostage with a strike, and not provide services that the government has made it illegal for private sector to provide (thanks again, government).



Just to be clear, you're talking about public servants who are not providing the value of their salary?



No doubt. This is my honest take on it... because there's a huge lack of accountability (i.e no one gets fired or laid off), the public sector (municipal, provincial, federal, and definitely including the CAF) becomes a place where 5% of the people do 95% of the work, and then 95% of the people do the other 5%.

Being a 5%'er sucks, and I feel sorry for those who are. I felt like I was a 5%'er and it drove me mad. As a smart Warrant Officer (another 5%'er for sure) told me as we commiserated together about the sad state of things, "only those who care are suffering."

So while I know there are 5%'ers and I feel empathy for them, I also know they are a minority and the only antidote is accountability. The reason we don't have this issue as much in the private sector isn't because of better pay, it isn't because of WFH policies, it isn't because of GBA+ stuff, it's because the CEO and our HR department would also like to keep their jobs, so I get an email nearly every month telling us about who has been fired - and after spending too many years in the CAF, it tickles me pink every time.

Our firm does allow people, after their first year of employment, to WFH for up to 2 days a week. And for some, in unique circumstances, they are working remotely full-time. But our firm will also get rid of them with about zero minutes notice as soon as they aren't worth what they are being paid. Until I see the Federal government have that kind of accountability in place, sorry, but if making 100% of public servants work in-office gets me an extra .01% value out of my already inefficiently spent tax dollars, then I don't care. If the 5%'ers hate it so bad, there are plenty of places in the private sector for them.

I'm at the point where I think I'd rather just see the bureaucracy implode rather than have to pay another cent in taxes to be wasted by a workforce that is 95% useless.

Many of us that were at the coalface were very conscious of the taxpayer dollar and making sure our employees were good. As I have mentioned before, we built a rock solid case to fire someone and it was our senior management that refused to support us. Get rid of bonuses for EX and hold them accountable. Our DG was called the "Blackhole" because files went to her desk for decision and disappeared.
I stayed in many a crappy little motel to save travel dollars. We worked with other agencies to pool monies so we could do our job. Yet at the same time our senior managers threw $200,000 at us for helicopter time to fly in NW BC from Oct to March, the most dangerous and useless time to try. Yet we could not get funds to deal with derelict boats before it became a political hot potato. My boss became the Acting Regional Director and managed to redirect $100,000 to us, which we used to get rid of 22 problem boats. Being a PS member was often frustrating and yes we had more than our fair share of O2 thieves. Start looking at the top layers first and see what productivity and value they add, then work your way down.

 

[The Bread Guy]

One of the weaknesses of public service is that there is insufficient churn. Not enough people spend time working for different companies. Not enough people are forced to spend time working for different companies.

Though tightrope to walk, there.

There's more than one critic out there who also bemoans the fact that senior (and sometimes not-so-senior) government staffers move from department to department without becoming at least reasonably expert at one - the whole "if they're a manager/leader, they can manage/lead any kind of team, no matter what the team is doing."

 

[QV]

Back in the old, old days, when NorTel was still a company, and a very successful one at that, they were one of the remote working pioneers at their Toronto facility.

Even "junior" VPs didn't have assigned offices. Most permanent employees were encouraged to come to the office when it was appropriate and to work from home when that was better. Junior staff and some mentors worked 5 days a week in the offices and labs for training/mentoring/evaluation but most staff, when they wanted to work in the facility, came in and got their "cart" from a lockup and then found a convenient work area - sometimes near or even in the big food court, sometimes in a quit cubicle or even a private office.

Junior VPs and senior engineering managers has access to office suites, but even those who worked in the office almost every day had to pick and choose each day.

I think it's fair to say that everyone I know there loved the system ... but it was based on a mix of trust and confidence, up and down the chain, by "workers" and "leaders" alike.

Nortel should have paid better attention to it's operating environment and it might not have been taken for a rough ride on theft of its data. Did the remote nature of a lot of it's work contribute to it's weak security infrastructure and did that contribute to it's eventual demise?

 

[Remius]

Nortel should have paid better attention to it's operating environment and it might not have been taken for a rough ride on theft of its data. Did the remote nature of a lot of it's work contribute to it's weak security infrastructure and did that contribute to it's eventual demise?

Espionage was only one part of why they were brought down.

Why Nortel Failed?

Why Nortel failed is directly connected to: Lack of innovation, Scandals, Espionages, Lack of strong leadership, Bad economic decisions,

inspireip.com

Basically their corporate culture was the real issue.

 

[McG]

Because people base their assumptions on their experience, and they have enough experience dealing with government and dealing with private sector businesses, and knowing people who work in the public sector and the private sector, to know that it's a LOT from Column A and a little bit from Column B.

I’m not persuaded. Wealth inequality has increased substantially through recent years. The plutocrats have become good at harvesting a greater portion of the profits from the efforts of the actual labourers to enrich themselves. We are now attacking as “gold plated” the sorts of pensions that used to be much more typical across all workforces.

You are also naïve to think that the government is paying public servants because it occupies some moral high ground of …

Don’t put words in my mouth. Obviously altruism is not the reason PS have retained benefits that private sector has managed to strip from its employees. PS unions successfully holding the line is more a factor.

Maybe because a private sector company can go out of business (and all the jobs it generates lost) if the company fails to earn a profit while the government can simply go deeper into debt to cover its employment expenses?

Plenty of private sector companies have received that tax payer funded lifeline, and others have found ways (in their death throes) to secure executive & shareholder payouts at the expense of employee pensions & severance. A lot of other businesses are shuttered not because they failed, but because they didn’t generate enough profit - the workers suffer but the owners and executives walk away richer.

The growing wealth inequality shows we don’t need to worry about the struggling plutocrats.

 

[Harris]

Espionage was only one part of why they were brought down.

Why Nortel Failed?

Why Nortel failed is directly connected to: Lack of innovation, Scandals, Espionages, Lack of strong leadership, Bad economic decisions,

inspireip.com

Basically their corporate culture was the real issue.

Yep. I worked there at Carling just before the final curtain. I was with the IT security group at the time. We told our bosses it was a bad idea having tons of Chinese students working there, and all of the Chinese "delegations" touring, but the Chinese were throwing $ around like they were at a stipper pole and Nortel Executives ate it up.