European public servants, like Canadian ones, want remote work rights

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BRUSSELS — Since 2022, when the federal government started forcing many of Canada’s public servants back into the office, the unions that represent those workers have engaged in an uphill struggle for telework rights.

They’ve held rallies, made telework a sticking point in contract negotiations, and even took the federal government to court.

The situation mirrors what’s happening in Europe, where a major union representing civil servants, the European Public Service Union (EPSU), has been fighting a multi-year battle to get telework legislation approved.

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And the reasons that European government workers want the flexibility to work from home echo those of public servants in Canada.

“It might change over time when doing more telework and the issues of social isolation, the lack of informal contact, but there is a demand for cutting commuting time, for work-life balance,” said Nadja Salson, a policy officer with EPSU.

There are no common European Union rules on telework, meaning that its 27 countries have very different approaches to it.

Several countries, including Sweden, Ireland, Belgium and Germany, have left it up to individual employers across units or departments to make up their own rules around remote work, deciding when and to what extent it should be an option for employees.

Other countries, such as Luxembourg, have more solid guidelines, which mandate government workers to spend two days a week in the office. The Czech Republic allows them to work from home a maximum of three days per month. And in Austria, employees can work from home for up to two days per week with the approval of their employer.

In hopes of creating some uniformity, the EPSU struck an agreement with 19 EU governments in 2022 on telework and the right to disconnect.

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As part of that agreement, similar to those the Public Service Alliance of Canada (PSAC) made with the Treasury Board last year, workers can request telework arrangements and if they’re refused, their employer must provide written reasons.

However, the agreement has not been implemented yet.

Salson said the agreement is in the hands of the European Commission, the EU’s executive wing, which will decide whether or not to make it legally binding. If the European Commission approves the agreement, it will then need a majority vote from the Council of the European Union, which is one of the EU’s legislative bodies. If passed, it will apply to nine million civil servants across the EU’s 27 member states.

But Salson said the commission has been “dragging its feet” and “making up various reasons for not acting.”

Salson said that the commission has also used negotiations for a separate agreement on telework, which involves both the private and public sectors, as a means of delaying its implementation. Those negotiations ultimately failed last November.

The European Commission refused to provide an on-the-record comment about the agreement’s progress. 

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The COVID-19 pandemic forced workers worldwide to spend their workdays at home, leading many to think they’d never return to a physical office ever again.

The proportion of the EU’s working population engaging in telework rose from 14 per cent in 2019 to a peak of around 24 per cent in 2021, according to a September 2024 Eurofound report.

While some countries, such as Belgium, already had a high rate of telework before the pandemic (25 per cent in 2019), others, such as Bulgaria and Romania, had very low pre-COVID-19 rates of telework (1 per cent or less in some regions). And though the number of people teleworking decreased slightly between 2021 and 2022 in every EU country, the report said “significant differences remain” across member states.

After 2021, teleworking remained widespread in some countries while several others saw a decline. In the Netherlands, many public servants were working from home for years before the pandemic and get paid 2.35 euros per day for doing so. Dutch public servants can also get reimbursed for up to 750 euros to furnish a home office every five years as part of their collective agreement.

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In Canada, the debate around remote work rights for federal government workers has been a hot topic since last year’s public service strike.

After 12 days on the picket line, PSAC put an end to the strike by accepting what were called letters of agreement on the sticking point of remote work. The union wanted to include telework in the collective bargaining agreement, but settled for the letters, which said telework requests would be considered on a case-by-case basis, preventing a “one-size fits all” hybrid work model.

But despite these letters of agreement, the federal government has maintained that the amount of days an employee is required in the office is a management decision. Starting on Sept. 9, the federal government has increased many workers’ in-office requirement to at least three days a week. And executives must be in the office for at least four days a week.

Many federal employees and unions have met the changes with outrage. PSAC has filed a challenge of the new remote-work rules in court.

In Europe, while unions have raised general concerns about the imbalance of telework accessibility between jobs, there have not been as many public complaints about the issue like in Canada, where public servants have been making noise for months about their objection to the government’s return-to-office orders.

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But observers say that may change as more workers get their requests to work from home rejected.

Peter Kempen, of the Union Syndicale Fédérale, an international public service union, said the issue of workers being prevented from teleworking without a valid justification may become “increasingly important in the future,” noting that he’s not aware of any process to deal with arbitrary rejections.

Kempen said that while he anticipates more requests from the employees’ side, and that he has heard some dissatisfaction from workers on unassigned desk space and limited telework options from EU agencies, there has been no coordinated or large-scale action about the issue.

Public perception

Like in Canada, working from home is generally popular in Europe. A 2022 survey of people living in EU member states found that the majority of workers (more than 60 per cent) would prefer to work from home “at least several times per month.”

The survey found that workers’ return to offices allowed them to disconnect from work more easily at the end of the day. At the same time, however, it found that more employees reported being too tired to do household tasks after work and had less time to spend with their families.

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In Canada, a recent poll conducted on behalf of PSAC found that 81 per cent of respondents think remote work is good for employees. However, this support doesn’t seem to extend to the public service, as a survey by Nanos Research earlier this summer found that three out of four Canadians supported or somewhat supported the government’s three-day return-to-office policy.

Ultimately, Salson said what civil servants across the EU seem to want is balance. She said her team plans to continue putting pressure on the European Commission to implement its agreement, adding that if it goes through it could push more governments to negotiate solid telework rules at the national level.

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