Social Europe

politics, economy and employment & labour

  • Themes
    • Strategic autonomy
    • War in Ukraine
    • European digital sphere
    • Recovery and resilience
  • Publications
    • Books
    • Dossiers
    • Occasional Papers
    • Research Essays
    • Brexit Paper Series
  • Podcast
  • Videos
  • Newsletter

Remote working—an inflection point?

Christy Hoffman and Sharan Burrow 23rd July 2020

The pandemic has seen a surge in remote working. Collective agreements are needed to ensure individual autonomy, rather than monitored isolation, is the outcome.

remote working
Christy Hoffman

In the years to come, we may look back at 2020 as an inflection point—a pivotal moment when large numbers of workers began to reorganise their lives away from a worksite, towards new models of working at or near home. The global pandemic forced a sudden, disruptive shift in work, supported by technology which quickly adapted to make continued activity possible on a larger scale than ever imagined. Many predict that we shall never go back to the workplaces of the past.

remote working
Sharan Burrow

Such teleworking has been gradually increasing for several decades, typically associated with jobs that are easily measurable and highly autonomous, often involving high levels of independent judgement. It has been most prevalent in northern Europe and, in the United States, in areas with long commute times and highly-priced office space, where both the employer and employee are incentivised to adopt the model.

But the pandemic has proved that a much wider range of work can be effectively performed away from a worksite, including work which is less skilled and autonomous. In fact, during the lockdown an estimated 40 per cent of all workers in member countries of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development were able to continue to work from home.

Permanently remote

Few employers have yet to resume work with the full complement of employees in an onsite setting and a growing number have announced they do not intend to do so. One survey of chief financial officers concluded that 74 per cent of companies intended to keep some proportion of their workforce on a permanent remote status.


Our job is keeping you informed!


Subscribe to our free newsletter and stay up to date with the latest Social Europe content. We will never send you spam and you can unsubscribe anytime.

Sign up here

Nationwide Insurance in the US will close five of its large offices, asking employees to work from home. Teleperformance, the world’s largest call-centre company, estimates that around 150,000 of its employees will not return to a worksite. As one employer put it, ‘The drop in productivity is more than compensated by the fact that I can eliminate the expense of running an office.’

Current technology was already well positioned to take advantage of the exodus from the worksite, enabling highly-evolved remote collaboration—through tools such as Zoom and Teams—as well as offering management support. The ‘fissuring’ of work has meanwhile made it possible to break some jobs into tasks which can be easily measured and handled from anywhere, thus expanding the universe of positions suitable for remote work.

For example, in insurance, many jobs have become routinised, with a complement of artificial intelligence to assist with screening claims. Call-centre work previously conducted in large centres with roving management can now be handled from home, with non-stop surveillance cameras or AI mechanisms monitoring the content, tone and outcome of every call.

Work-life balance

What does this mean for workers? Working from home can be desirable, indeed a life-saver for many, especially those facing long commutes alongside family responsibilities. It can help restore some work-life balance, so long as it is accompanied by the ‘right to disconnect’ at the end of a reasonable day.

The situation is however ripe for abuse. It is only ‘win-win’ when there are measures in place to ensure dignity, to preserve the employment relationship and to enable freedom of association.

Unions have been negotiating the conditions for remote work with employers for quite some time. In the banking and insurance industries, provisions have been in place since 1999. These collective agreements have ensured the choice of remote work is voluntary, there is a right to ‘return’ to the office and career ladders and equal treatment are protected. Unions have also led the way in advancing the right to disconnect when working from home.

As demand grows from employers to increase those working remotely, these agreements will be put to the test, and regulation will be required to foster the bargaining process. Nevertheless, there is practice on which to draw.

No representation

Unfortunately, however, the vast majority of workers who are likely to continue working from home have no workplace representation. Nor, beyond Europe, do many governments regulate this new reality of working life. In the US private sector, there are virtually no agreements covering white-collar workers. And while that is an extreme case, workers in white-collar private services are as lacking in union representation as any group in the world.


We need your support


Social Europe is an independent publisher and we believe in freely available content. For this model to be sustainable, however, we depend on the solidarity of our readers. Become a Social Europe member for less than 5 Euro per month and help us produce more articles, podcasts and videos. Thank you very much for your support!

Become a Social Europe Member

Unions must also guard against remote work becoming a pathway towards the informalisation and ‘Uberization’ of these workers. It is easy to imagine how the lines between ‘remote’ work and ‘platform’ work could blur, as work devolves into commercial contracts, such as ‘pay by project’ independent-contractor arrangements, or old-fashioned piece work easily outsourced to lower-cost destinations.

Nor should this change in the location of work represent a transfer of wealth from working people into corporate pockets. Conditions should not be worsened for employees who remain at home. In addition, workers should be compensated for the use of their home, utilities and the internet. And of course the employer should retain responsibility to provide equipment and a safe workplace. We have seen during the pandemic that some call-centre workers transferred to ‘home work’ have been required to purchase the company’s wi-fi package—based on the claim that they are saving on commuting.

While employers have always measured employee productivity, AI-enabled monitoring can be highly intrusive and should not be allowed unless it has been negotiated with a union representative. Data and privacy policies should not be unilaterally imposed.

Under current models, freedom of association is nearly impossible to realise when workers are dispersed across regions or even countries. We must revise our freedom-of-association rules and definitions and allow for meaningful opportunities for unions to communicate with workers—for example through digital meeting spaces—if this fundamental right is for millions of workers to be anything other than an echo of yesteryear.

Heaviest load

Women are most likely to choose to work from home, because they carry the heavier load of care responsibility there. There must be proactive steps to ensure they are not ‘forgotten’ or siloed and therefore severed from career opportunities and mentoring. It is unlikely that permanent remote status will be a ticket to success in most organisations.

The impact of remote work on productivity is a subject of debate and many will believe they are more productive at home, especially during periods of intense, individualised work such as writing projects. One US survey found that professionals are more productive with up to 15 hours of work at home per week. We shall soon know more about the longer-term impacts of full-time home working, which will certainly vary by sector.

Especially with full-time working from home, however, there is likely to be a negative impact on creativity, team and company culture and collaboration, which is why Facebook ended its earlier ‘working from home’ experiment some years ago. (It has since announced a new remote policy for top performers.) The isolation from colleagues associated with full-time remote work should also not be underestimated as a mental-health challenge for many. What kinds of personal contact will replace the coffee-break chat?

Nor can we overstate the dramatic impact this transformation may have on our communities, in particular our cities. White-collar workers pour into cities every day, using public transport, local lunch spots, dry cleaners and other services. What will happen if these workers stay away? While we can celebrate a positive impact on the climate, navigating this transition will require active planning.

We are, truly, at a inflection point and, although there are many positives, there are plenty of red flags. Workers’ representatives must be at the tables of power—with employers, governments and international bodies—to negotiate the conditions of this transition. That is the only way to make sure that, as the workplace of the past is left behind, workers’ interests are not.

Christy Hoffman and Sharan Burrow

Christy Hoffman is the general secretary of UNI Global Union, the global union federation for the services industries representing more than 20 million workers in 150 countries. Sharan Burrow is general secretary of the International Trade Union Confederation.

You are here: Home / Politics / Remote working—an inflection point?

Most Popular Posts

Russian soldiers' mothers,war,Ukraine The Ukraine war and Russian soldiers’ mothersJennifer Mathers and Natasha Danilova
IGU,documents,International Gas Union,lobby,lobbying,sustainable finance taxonomy,green gas,EU,COP ‘Gaslighting’ Europe on fossil fuelsFaye Holder
Schengen,Fortress Europe,Romania,Bulgaria Romania and Bulgaria stuck in EU’s second tierMagdalena Ulceluse
income inequality,inequality,Gini,1 per cent,elephant chart,elephant Global income inequality: time to revise the elephantBranko Milanovic
Orbán,Hungary,Russia,Putin,sanctions,European Union,EU,European Parliament,commission,funds,funding Time to confront Europe’s rogue state—HungaryStephen Pogány

Most Recent Posts

reality check,EU foreign policy,Russia Russia’s invasion of Ukraine—a reality check for the EUHeidi Mauer, Richard Whitman and Nicholas Wright
permanent EU investment fund,Recovery and Resilience Facility,public investment,RRF Towards a permanent EU investment fundPhilipp Heimberger and Andreas Lichtenberger
sustainability,SDGs,Finland Embedding sustainability in a government programmeJohanna Juselius
social dialogue,social partners Social dialogue must be at the heart of Europe’s futureClaes-Mikael Ståhl
Jacinda Ardern,women,leadership,New Zealand What it means when Jacinda Ardern calls timePeter Davis

Other Social Europe Publications

front cover scaled Towards a social-democratic century?
Cover e1655225066994 National recovery and resilience plans
Untitled design The transatlantic relationship
Women Corona e1631700896969 500 Women and the coronavirus crisis
sere12 1 RE No. 12: Why No Economic Democracy in Sweden?

Foundation for European Progressive Studies Advertisement

The winter issue of the Progressive Post magazine from FEPS is out!

The sequence of recent catastrophes has thrust new words into our vocabulary—'polycrisis', for example, even 'permacrisis'. These challenges have multiple origins, reinforce each other and cannot be tackled individually. But could they also be opportunities for the EU?

This issue offers compelling analyses on the European health union, multilateralism and international co-operation, the state of the union, political alternatives to the narrative imposed by the right and much more!


DOWNLOAD HERE

Hans Böckler Stiftung Advertisement

The macroeconomic effects of re-applying the EU fiscal rules

Against the background of the European Commission's reform plans for the Stability and Growth Pact (SGP), this policy brief uses the macroeconometric multi-country model NiGEM to simulate the macroeconomic implications of the most relevant reform options from 2024 onwards. Next to a return to the existing and unreformed rules, the most prominent options include an expenditure rule linked to a debt anchor.

Our results for the euro area and its four biggest economies—France, Italy, Germany and Spain—indicate that returning to the rules of the SGP would lead to severe cuts in public spending, particularly if the SGP rules were interpreted as in the past. A more flexible interpretation would only somewhat ease the fiscal-adjustment burden. An expenditure rule along the lines of the European Fiscal Board would, however, not necessarily alleviate that burden in and of itself.

Our simulations show great care must be taken to specify the expenditure rule, such that fiscal consolidation is achieved in a growth-friendly way. Raising the debt ceiling to 90 per cent of gross domestic product and applying less demanding fiscal adjustments, as proposed by the IMK, would go a long way.


DOWNLOAD HERE

ILO advertisement

Global Wage Report 2022-23: The impact of inflation and COVID-19 on wages and purchasing power

The International Labour Organization's Global Wage Report is a key reference on wages and wage inequality for the academic community and policy-makers around the world.

This eighth edition of the report, The Impact of inflation and COVID-19 on wages and purchasing power, examines the evolution of real wages, giving a unique picture of wage trends globally and by region. The report includes evidence on how wages have evolved through the COVID-19 crisis as well as how the current inflationary context is biting into real wage growth in most regions of the world. The report shows that for the first time in the 21st century real wage growth has fallen to negative values while, at the same time, the gap between real productivity growth and real wage growth continues to widen.

The report analysis the evolution of the real total wage bill from 2019 to 2022 to show how its different components—employment, nominal wages and inflation—have changed during the COVID-19 crisis and, more recently, during the cost-of-living crisis. The decomposition of the total wage bill, and its evolution, is shown for all wage employees and distinguishes between women and men. The report also looks at changes in wage inequality and the gender pay gap to reveal how COVID-19 may have contributed to increasing income inequality in different regions of the world. Together, the empirical evidence in the report becomes the backbone of a policy discussion that could play a key role in a human-centred recovery from the different ongoing crises.


DOWNLOAD HERE

ETUI advertisement

The EU recovery strategy: a blueprint for a more Social Europe or a house of cards?

This new ETUI paper explores the European Union recovery strategy, with a focus on its potentially transformative aspects vis-à-vis European integration and its implications for the social dimension of the EU’s socio-economic governance. In particular, it reflects on whether the agreed measures provide sufficient safeguards against the spectre of austerity and whether these constitute steps away from treating social and labour policies as mere ‘variables’ of economic growth.


DOWNLOAD HERE

Eurofound advertisement

Eurofound webinar: Making telework work for everyone

Since 2020 more European workers and managers have enjoyed greater flexibility and autonomy in work and are reporting their preference for hybrid working. Also driven by technological developments and structural changes in employment, organisations are now integrating telework more permanently into their workplace.

To reflect on these shifts, on 6 December Eurofound researchers Oscar Vargas and John Hurley explored the challenges and opportunities of the surge in telework, as well as the overall growth of telework and teleworkable jobs in the EU and what this means for workers, managers, companies and policymakers.


WATCH THE WEBINAR HERE

About Social Europe

Our Mission

Article Submission

Membership

Advertisements

Legal Disclosure

Privacy Policy

Copyright

Social Europe ISSN 2628-7641

Social Europe Archives

Search Social Europe

Themes Archive

Politics Archive

Economy Archive

Society Archive

Ecology Archive

Follow us

RSS Feed

Follow us on Facebook

Follow us on Twitter

Follow us on LinkedIn

Follow us on YouTube