Federal Government & Union spar over returning to office

[OldSolduer]

Then there's this guy

View attachment 87891

That last line should read “shove it up your roody poo candy ass”

 

[Remius]

Question did she find a better job, equal job, lesser job or unemployed?
If she found another job were the pay and benefits comparable?

At level in another agency. Like I said it was a toxic workplace that led her to leaving.

 

[Furniture]

Honestly for decent pay, if your asked to get into the office 3 days a week, STFU and do it.

Says the guy not in a position to have to do it, and with no understanding of what the workspaces are like. Imagine being told to report to base, but every time you came to work you reported to a different unit's building, and then called your WO to confirm you were indeed on base. You'd be complaining loud and long as well...

If there was a coherent plan, with assigned desk spaces and the need for in office collaboration people wouldn't be complaining nearly as much.

But it's easier to just believe that all PS workers are lazy and entitled...

 

[Brad Sallows]

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.

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

Put a bunch of kids in a room and give one of them a cookie. The other kids will also want a cookie when they see the first one handed out. Some of those kids might think to ask for their own cookie. But it is a sure thing there will be one loud and jealous individual who declares the situation unfair and instead of asking for a cookie (what they really want) they will present the argument that the first child should be stripped of their cookie.

In order to set the value of a job, you need a yardstick. The private sector uses market prices. What does the public sector use?

 

[The Bread Guy]

Says the guy not in a position to have to do it, and with no understanding of what the workspaces are like. Imagine being told to report to base, but every time you came to work you reported to a different unit's building, and then called your WO to confirm you were indeed on base. You'd be complaining loud and long as well...

If there was a coherent plan, with assigned desk spaces and the need for in office collaboration people wouldn't be complaining nearly as much.

But it's easier to just believe that all PS workers are lazy and entitled...

Or, in some workplaces, you have to book your workspace on a first-come-first-served basis, right?

I'm a fan of WFH IF the work can get done as well (or better) than it can in the office, and I'm with people saying some work needs to be in person, for sure. But when GoC cut spaces or created a ton of smaller spaces that are available almost like a lottery, well ....

 

[QV]

This whole fiasco is an embarrassment. But is anyone surprised the federal PS can't get this right?

 

[Navy_Pete]

Honestly for decent pay, if your asked to get into the office 3 days a week, STFU and do it.

In context, the GoC decided during the pandemic and WFH to cut the number of workspaces significantly, so our actual footprint dropped to about half for the groups that have some kind of hybrid work with 2-3 days in the office (with some doing 5 and others doing zero and working fully remote). That saved something like $20k a head, but is completely counter to the new return to office requirements for actual seats available.

Now with the 40-50% of the workstations to personnel we are now back to CAF 5 days a week (but don't ask for an assigned cubicle or locker you peasant swine) and PS 60% of the time, so you can do the math on how well that works. To top it off, they will only apparently count it as 'working in the office' if you physically plug into and log in on a hardline connection, but a lot of the hoteling workstations don't actually have drops so you are logging onto the wifi. Waiting clarification, but they may also not consider something like attending a course, working on TD, in person site visits etc as 'in person work', so it's pretty nuts. I'm spending this week in an in person symposium that isn't in the office, so will see if we have to explain ourselves for some reason.

For other context the public transit system in Ottawa is broken, so the commute which may have previously been 45 minutes and 1 bus is now 1.5-2+ hours and needs multiple buses and a train that may or may not be running (was down this am), and places like Carling don't have adequate parking. I'm not spending 4.5 hours a day commuting on public transit for an 7.5 hour a day job, so just bite the bullet and drive in (which takes about an hour and a bit total). For a government committed to GHG reduction, carbon taxes etc this is driving a huge amount of congestion and emissions in the capital, for no real gain.

The GoC had years of complete remote working in these groups to identify shortcomings and non-performance, but during that time actually kept saying how productive everyone was etc, and won't actually give any of the data that they collected that they say are justifying this for 'efficiency' to managers or supervisors to do anything about it. Their lists seem to include people that have retired, changed departments, on deployment/tasking, etc so their stats are likely complete bullshit, but they won't let us see anything or say who they think isn't logging on etc for the remote work to figure out what they are talking about or correct anything.

This whole thing is an absolutely leadership failure from Cabinet on down to the DM/senior EX level, not the public servants.

I get that people won't have sympathy, but on the flip side you probably need to stop complaining about things like DND procurement times and CAF readiness, when the GoC is cutting off it's own nose and pissing off the working level folks that buy parts, run projects etc that were still plugging through and getting it done, despite all the extra roadblocks and requirements the GoC keeps adding on to increase the workload. See a lot of retirement announcements, and know of a lot of people waiting to see if there will be a buyout, and that's in positions where we already havea huge shortfall on the support and procurement side.

Enjoy your empty bins and traffic jams I guess, that sure showed those lazy ass public servants!

 

[dapaterson]

In order to set the value of a job, you need a yardstick. The private sector uses market prices. What does the public sector use?

The private sector lobbies the government to bring in foreign workers paid below what the market demands, to suppress wages

 

[daftandbarmy]

Now with the 40-50% of the workstations to personnel we are now back to CAF 5 days a week (but don't ask for an assigned cubicle or locker you peasant swine) and PS 60% of the time, so you can do the math on how well that works. To top it off, they will only apparently count it as 'working in the office' if you physically plug into and log in on a hardline connection, but a lot of the hoteling workstations don't actually have drops so you are logging onto the wifi. Waiting clarification, but they may also not consider something like attending a course, working on TD, in person site visits etc as 'in person work', so it's pretty nuts. I'm spending this week in an in person symposium that isn't in the office, so will see if we have to explain ourselves for some reason.

Enjoy your empty bins and traffic jams I guess, that sure showed those lazy ass public servants!

And just try and book a meeting room.

Alot of teams will try and do that so they can work together, but in alot of open plan workplaces they got rid of the meeting rooms to make space for cubicles and lounge areas.

 

[Navy_Pete]

And just try and book a meeting room.

Alot of teams will try and do that so they can work together, but in alot of open plan workplaces they got rid of the meeting rooms to make space for cubicles and lounge areas.

In some buildings you are supposed to book through the IT portal and put in a ticket; they want 48 business hour notice (which I get, as it gives them time to get to it if IT things are hitting the fan). But also means you can't spontaneously have a meeting, or respond to last minute requests.\

If you are doing a meeting and needs some VTC for it, frequently the few rooms with VTC in them don't actually work. For really big meetings a few locations are out of commision due to renovations (to adapt to hoteling) so depending where you are limited to about 15 people max, so sometimes overflows to Teams.

It's at the point where senior managers basically have thrown up their hands and are just asking people to report when it fails so they ammunition to show why this plan from the Cabinet is incompatible with their previous plan to save millions by cutting the footprint (while spending millions needlessly on renovating buildings to workplace 2.0 and 3.0, which frankly is shit for concentration).

Want us to work in the office 3-5 days a week? Cool, make sure we have workspaces. Want us to collaborate? Cool, make it easy to get into rooms with whiteboards, working VTC, etc, and travel money so we can actually occasionally work in person with the teams spread across the country (especially when we are officially matrixed to support big projects).

Don't shrink the footprint to 40% to save money, put in insane booking processes, cut travel to bare minimum etc and then expect it to work with the bits above.

It's needlessly frustrating, especially when they are saying this is driven by data showing peopel aren't ever logging on etc, but then refuse to share the data so supervisors can actually do anything about it. If there is a genuine performance issue, nothing will actually change, as we don't read minds.

If productivity was really that important, they would tell supervisors if their person isn't logging in. I'm sure in most cases, there is a pretty good reason (like the person retired in 2021, which is why they haven't completed the mandatory environmental training in 2024 Susan from HR).

 

[Brad Sallows]

Which companies are these that are having so much trouble with arranging "hotel" cubes, equipped meeting rooms, and online real estate administration for a mobile work force? I was easily doing all these things 10 years ago.

 

[brihard]

Which companies are these that are having so much trouble with arranging "hotel" cubes, equipped meeting rooms, and online real estate administration for a mobile work force? I was easily doing all these things 10 years ago.

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”.

I’m surprised there hasn’t been a campaign of malicious compliance where those being told to show up to different workplaces are fully invoking the “temporary workplace within headquarters area” provisions of the NJC travel directive- kilometric rate, meals, etc.

 

[Navy_Pete]

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”.

Don't forget all the consultants that are designing the workplace 3.0 cubicles and needlessly renovating perfectly functional workstations to 'collab areas', weird ass 'pods', and other strange things.

Meanwhile if you ask for two screens so you can do your job more efficiently it's like you are asking for their firstborn (some people went from 2 screens to 1 with the 'cubicle standardization').

This initiative to 'save money and boost productitivity' seems to cost an awful lot and making it harder to actually get things done.

 

[dangerboy]

We also went from real laptops to crappy Dell tablets. I think they realized that the tablets were a mistake and are back to issuing laptops.

 

[SupersonicMax]

We also went from real laptops to crappy Dell tablets. I think they realized that the tablets were a mistake and are back to issuing laptops.

I have a laptop and a tablet. The tablet is very useful for travel as it is small and fits in small carry on luggage and leaves plenty of space for a uniform with some change clothes.

 

[dapaterson]

I have a laptop and a tablet. The tablet is very useful for travel as it is small and fits in small carry on luggage and leaves plenty of space for a uniform with some change clothes.

Most get either / or. And there are still some luddites with maple leaves on their shoulders who want paper binders, despite having tablets approved for EMSEC areas.

 

[SupersonicMax]

Most get either / or. And there are still some luddites with maple leaves on their shoulders who want paper binders, despite having tablets approved for EMSEC areas.

There are areas where electronic devices, even those DND-provided in airplane mode, cannot go. Paper is still very much relevant in today’s age.

 

[dapaterson]

There are areas where electronic devices, even those DND-provided in airplane mode, cannot go. Paper is still very much relevant in today’s age.

Having left my phone and smart watch in a lock box in a meeting area where 3*s still are permitted devices, I have some awareness of what is and is not permitted. And awareness of where, beyond those spaces, the devices may not go.

 

[daftandbarmy]

In order to set the value of a job, you need a yardstick. The private sector uses market prices. What does the public sector use?

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...

 

[Brad Sallows]

Truly mobile or not (eg. WFH and one office), a booking tool isn't bleeding edge tech, and obviously some people - the ones I worked with - know how to use facilities without being inconsiderate. "Don't overbook/forget to cancel" and "Don't move equipment around" aren't toxic management issues.