Public servants taking to social media over return-to-work mandate

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As federal public servants start returning to their offices more often under new rules from their employer, many are taking to social media platforms to vent and voice their discontent.

“Feeling pretty despondent about RTO,” reads one post on the Reddit forum CanadaPublicServants, which has more than 69,000 members, and advertises itself (in both official languages) as the “unofficial subreddit for employees and former employees of the Federal Public Service of Canada.”

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The poster claims to be “a disabled public servant with ADHD, severe depression, anxiety, and other underlying health concerns,” including “severe environmental sensitivities” that are exacerbated by people who wear perfume or even those who have used scented laundry detergent.

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Another post, under the title “Shoes off and personal hygiene,” complains of “people coming in smelling bad and/or taking their shoes off at their desk in office,” adding: “If we are going to be here 3 days a week people should at least have basic etiquette and hygiene standards.”

However, Franco Terrazzano, the Federal Director of the Canadian Taxpayers Federation, was blunt in his assessment of the return-to-work rules.

“Taxpayers have zero sympathy for overpaid bureaucrats whining and complaining about where they’re apparently working,” he told the National Post

“Taxpayers are the ones who should be complaining after the feds hired tens of thousands of extra bureaucrats, paid out hundreds of thousands of raises and hundreds of millions in bonuses in recent years and still can’t deliver good services.”

The federal government updated its policy on remote work this month, requiring public servants to spend three days a week in the office by mid-September. Executives will be expected to be on-site for a minimum of four days per week.

But the decision has been met with frustration from both employees and unions, some of whom have filed unfair labour practice complaints and policy grievances against their employer

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During a press conference in early May, union heads from the Public Service Alliance of Canada (PSAC), the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CAPE), the Professional Institute of the Public Service of Canada (PIPSC) and the Association of Canadian Financial Officers (ACFO) said the government should prepare for a “summer of discontent.”

“We will be using every recourse we have available to fight this mandate,” PSAC national president Chris Aylward said, arguing that the policy update was “anti-worker” and “fundamentally breaks the trust of workers and unions with the Trudeau government.”

Letter-writing campaigns organized by PSAC and CAPE have resulted in more than 70,000 letters being sent to members of Parliament and the Treasury Board president Anita Anand. As of May 23, 45,981 letters had been sent via an online PSAC campaign, and another 25,566 through the campaign sponsored by the CAPE.

On the Reddit forum, complaints run the gamut from trivial to serious. Among the postings questioning how to handle personal calls from the office and whether to have another child given the cost of child care is one from public servant saying he has “serious suicidal ideation that’s being worsened by the overall disregard for our well being with RTO and general hopelessness in regards to public sector work conditions getting better in a long and distant horizon, if ever.”

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Meanwhile, a post titled “How to oppose the RTO mandate — a living list” includes such ideas as “ask lots of questions” and “file a grievance,” but also: “Go in for 2 days. Maintain the status quo.” And: “Don’t go in at all. See if anyone notices.”

Reddit posts are notoriously anonymous, but others have spoken up publicly to the media about the changes.

“Everyone was kind of blindsided,” Katrina Nadeau, a public servant working for the Canada Revenue Agency, told the Ottawa Citizen. “There’s a real panic about how we’re going to fit people. With the two days in the office and three days out, there wasn’t always a whole lot of overlap, but now we’ve got everyone going in at least three days, there’s going to be at least one day of overlap.”

And Tanya King, a transgender and autistic public servant working for Public Services and Procurement Canada, told the Citizen she is concerned about the possibility of having to spend more time in the office, given that she has faced harassment and micro-aggressions from her coworkers.

“I’m very nervous about going back to the office,” said King, who has been working exclusively from home while waiting for the government to approve her request to work remotely, which she made following medical advice. “I’m worried that it will be a catch-all, they will want all of us to go in without considering it on a case-by-case basis. Because it’s an increase from the previous 40 per cent, the rate at which I get harassed will be increased.”

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But not every concern is proving to have merit. When the announcement came down, many in the public service decried the move, citing broken equipment, pest-ridden offices and sub-standard buildings.

When the Place du Portage buildings in Gatineau, Que., were closed briefly due to the possible presence of asbestos there, Alex Silas, PSAC’s regional executive vice-president for the National Capital Region, said the closure was “definitely a concerning thing, but unfortunately not a surprising thing.”

“I think it proves our point,” he told the Citizen. “One of the points that we’ve been making is that the buildings aren’t ready and the health and safety standards in the buildings have been deteriorating. It just goes to show that this plan was foolhardy from the beginning.”

with additional reporting by Catherine Morrison, Postmedia

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