Starting Monday, federal employees will be required to be in the office three days a week, instead of the current two, and executives will be in the office four days a week, and that means an extra day of dealing with a commute that some say has gotten worse.
Public service employee Chris Desjardins says, “It’s not that I don’t want to be in the office, it’s just getting there that’s the problem.”
Desjardins lives in Nepean and his office is in downtown Ottawa. He’s one of the thousands of workers who relies on public transit to get there. But now, he’s considering driving.
“It’s certainly going to be far more expensive, but we’re talking about an extra hour-and-a-half at minimum per day in commute times. So, for us it’s just kind of worth it.”
Before the LRT launched, Desjardins’s commute to the office was about 45 minutes. Now, it has nearly doubled.
“I take the 84 bus to Baseline Station, then I take that bus to Tunney’s Pasture, then I take a train to the Rideau Centre, then another bus to get to work,” says Desjardins. “So we’re dealing with three buses and about ten minutes of walking.”
The Public Service Alliance of Canada (PSAC) opposed the return to the office mandate. The union cites poor transit service as one reasons.
“It has become a running joke in Ottawa now. The LRT is always broken,” says PSAC National Executive Vice-President Alex Silas. “We have this sort of ‘double speak’ from the mayor’s office where on one hand, he’s been one of the louder voices pushing for federal public service workers to get back to the offices downtown, and then on the other side, he’s making cuts to transit.”
Local small business owners in Ottawa who rely on public servants are looking forward for when federal workers to return to the office. Jacky Nguyen, the owner of Chungchun Rice Dog, near Tunney’s Pasture Station, says, “When I opened (earlier this year), my thinking was everyone will go back to work, so that would help our business a lot, but right now with everyone working from home it’s quite slow. So, when more people come back to work, hopefully it helps us out.”
Other public service workers, like Tara Hierlihy, are looking forward for more people getting back to the office.
“I have been at work 5 days a week since September 2020,” says Hierlihy, “We miss everybody. It’s more helpful when all of our staff are in the building. We get a lot more done a lot quicker.”
The federal government says the new mandated hybrid work arrangements will help its ability to perform as an organization. Christiane Fox, Deputy Clerk of the Privy Council, told CTV News Ottawa, “I think that our expectation is that, as we build stronger teams and stronger cultures, that leads to better services to Canadians, which is our ultimate objective.”
PSAC says working remotely has become a new reality for public service workers.
“We’ve been able to experiment with (working remotely), and test it out, and see that it works. In a lot of cases, workers have been more productive working remotely, which leads to better service to Canadians,” says Silas. “What we’re looking for from the federal government is some vision and some capacity to adapt to this new way of working.”
The union says they will continue to fight the federal government’s new mandated work arrangements with court challenges, petitions, and rallies. There is another scheduled demonstration at 7:30 a.m., Sept. 9, at 365 Laurier Ave.