Savings keep adding up
John Klotz, a certified financial planner in Markham, Ont., estimates that someone doing a full-time job from home in the Greater Toronto Area instead of commuting could save as much as $1,800 a month by doing away with the cost of gas or transit fares, child care, eating out and buying professional clothing.
"You're not going to the office and buying a latté anymore or that expensive sandwich; you're making your own at home," Klotz said.
"It adds up. It was serious overhead," he said. "Plus, workers can justify writing off a home office."
Push for work-life balance not new
Alison Braley-Rattai, associate professor of labour studies at Brock University in St. Catharines, Ont., said telework has been an important conversation for many Canadians prior to the pandemic with the "movement toward things like work-life balance, even environmental impacts of commuting, gridlock, things like that."
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"There has been a kind of conversation about whether or not there should be more work from home, hybrid arrangements and so forth," she told CBC Radio's
Daybreak Alberta this week.
"But the pandemic absolutely put that into the starkest relief possible — when anyone who could work from home was sent home to do so."
Canadians reorganized their lives in order to work from home and then realized they could reap the benefits — and for some, that meant a better work-life balance, Braley-Rattai said.
WATCH | Federal government draws red line on telework in negotiations with PSAC:
Remote work clause in federal agreement could set precedent
12 hours ago
Duration2:05
Striking federal employees are pushing for remote work options to be enshrined in their next collective agreement. If approved, it could set a precedent for other labour agreements in Canada.
Break from 'brutal' commute
Dan Barrett, a PSAC local president in Toronto, said on Thursday that he finds working from home a relief from the city's "brutal" commute and that it helps with productivity, but there are also wider benefits that come with enshrining these rights "so they're properly controlled."
He said it would be a "better setup for the future to serve Canadians better" and could be used as a foundation for other collective agreements.
In a statement last Monday, the Treasury Board said it was willing to do a "formal review" of the telework directive with unions to ensure its approach is "fair and supportive of our employees" while ensuring they can serve Canadians.
At the same time, however, Treasury Board President Mona Fortier said it's the right of management to continue to evaluate how to best deliver services, and telework will not be part of a collective agreement.
In addition to a work-from-home agreement, PSAC had requested a 13.5-per-cent pay raise over three years, but Aylward told CBC's
Power & Politics on Wednesday that the union has already "moved twice" on its wage demand.
LISTEN | Companies are changing remote work strategies from 'pandemic' to 'permanent':
Front Burner22:38Work-from-home goes ‘pandemic’ to ‘permanent’
Twitter says its staff can work from home as long as they want. The head of Shopify says “office centricity is over.” OpenText is shuttering half of its offices, reducing its workforce and shifting 2000 employees to remote work. COVID-19 forced hundreds of millions of employees to temporarily work from home, but companies are starting to change their remote work strategies from “pandemic” to “permanent.” Today on Front Burner, NPR reporter Bobby Allyn explains what’s driving the enthusiasm for remote work in Silicon Valley, and the employee surveillance tools he calls a “morale destroyer.” Then, author and UN Happiness Committee member Jennifer Moss tells us who working from home is and isn’t working for.
Corrections
- A previous version of this story said that PSAC is requesting a 13.5-per-cent pay raise over three years. In fact, the union's president now says it has already "moved twice" on its wage demand.
Apr 27, 2023 7:15 PM ET
With files from CBC's Nisha Patel
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