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Return to office is not some kind of unusual punishment | Opinion

Randall Denley: Most people work five days a week wherever their employer tells them to go. Public service unions overplayed their hand in complaining.

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From the standpoint of a person not employed in the federal public service, the raging fight over workers being compelled to spend four days a week in the office seems a bit surreal.

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The dispute is disconcerting, if unsurprising. The whole affair has all the attraction of a family feud. One has to assume that neither side really cares what the public thinks, because they are both doing so little to gain their support.

Federal public service unions act like working in the office four days a week is the greatest burden ever placed on humankind. Perhaps they are unaware that five days in the office is already in place for provincial public servants and City of Ottawa employees. Surely four days is better than five. Some would call it a good deal.

The question is why are federal workers only expected to go to the office four days a week, not five? This is 2026. Working from home was largely a pandemic-era thing and the pandemic ended in 2023.

The government’s return-to-office pace has been glacial. In 2023, workers were told to return to the office two or three days a week. Three days became the new standard in September, 2024. The four-day regime doesn’t kick in until this July.

And yet, the Public Service Alliance of Canada (PSAC) asserts that the four-day order is “a slap in the face of the workers this government depends on to deliver its agenda.”

Some unions see a strike or a lawsuit as rational responses to the four-day order.

Fussing about working in the office four days a week isn’t likely to win any sympathy from those who already do that and more. Most people work five days a week where their employer tells them to work. This is not some kind of unusual punishment.

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The public is highly aware that federal employees have pretty favourable working conditions, pay and pensions. Even the provisions for those whose positions are being cut in workforce reduction are more generous than the usual private sector, “here’s your severance, there’s the door” approach.

That’s not to say that the unions don’t have a point about the merits of working from home. From a worker perspective, it’s a convenience and if people are able to complete all the assigned work at home, they are just as productive. Not to say that completing the assigned work constitutes productivity, per se.

For its part, the federal government has done a terrible job of explaining why it wants public service workers in the office more frequently. It can’t be a concern about productivity. The government killed that argument when it declined its own expert panel’s recommendation that productivity be measured.

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Public sector unions are right to consider the federal government’s return to the office approach as illogical and rigid. Unfortunately, the unions’ approach isn’t much different.

The federal government knows that in an adversarial unionized environment, the simplest thing to do is to treat everyone equally, ordering them back to the office four days a week whether it makes sense or not.

One can imagine a world where work-from-home decisions were made group by group, department by department, based on the need to be in the office. Unfortunately, unions are hardwired to oppose that kind of smart decision making because it doesn’t treat all members the same. Were intelligent discretion to be applied by the government, it would be met with grievances and cries of favouritism from the unions.

So the choice is between two poor alternatives. Either workers must be in the office four days a week because it’s fair to all or they must be able to choose to work from home, because it’s fair to all.

The federal public service labour unions need to remember the bigger picture. Canada is in a tough spot economically. Prime Minister Mark Carney has big plans to do something about that. Public servants need to make that their priority, not what they view as their entitlement to work from home.

Randall Denley is an Ottawa journalist and author. Contact him at randalldenley1@gmail.com

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