The legal right to request remote working has been described as “a lame duck” by a senior trade union official who said the current regulations were no more than “lip service” from a Government keen to capture one of the few good things to come out of the pandemic but without upsetting employers.
Fórsa’s deputy general secretary and head of Civil Service, Éamonn Donnelly, told a conference that the union’s preference was to bypass the legislation and deal with the issue in collective bargaining with employers.
Fórsa almost exclusively represents public-sector employees and is currently involved in a dispute with the Department of Social Protection over its attempt to bring about 500 of its 7,000 staff back to the office for a second day each week. The issue is to be the subject of arbitration later this month.
Donnelly said the legislation was “toothless” and while a recently published Government review suggested it was working well, he said: “I don’t buy that.”
READ MORE
Ibec, the business representative group, said that for most employers the legislation and related code of practice had provided a framework with which to balance various competing interests.
Its head of employment law services, Nichola Harkin, said that despite a couple of years having passed, the post-Covid landscape was settling.
“There’s been quite an unprecedented shift and while we are getting to the stage where things are beginning to stabilise a bit, patterns are beginning to emerge, it is still very much the early stage of this new world of work and we are looking at what way it works best,” she said.
Remote and hybrid working, she said, continues to be seen by employers as an aid to recruitment and retention as it is “very good for employee relations”. But they also have to think about mentorship, the supervision of younger workers and how that can be developed with hybrid working.
“So it’s about facilitating that while also meeting business needs, the needs of their clients, achieving an equitable balance between all of the competing interests”.
Mary Brassil, head of employment law at McCann FitzGerald, said that by the end of January 70 cases had been taken to the Workplace Relations Commission in relation to the code of practice with just one finding in favour of the employee “and that was entirely on procedural grounds”.
She said the relatively low number of cases suggested people were either not aware of the legislation or believed it lacked the power to make it worth taking a case.
“What the cases taken so far do reveal, though, is a clear pattern and that is that the legislation is process driven.”
She said the Government’s position was that it had to strike a balance between flexibility from employees and the competitiveness of companies. “And I don’t think that’s necessarily wrong, but if you look at other member states, many went with a similar right to request, but maybe with more robust frameworks whereby there is more of an onus on the employer to objectively justify its refusal.”
Donnelly, meanwhile, said the feedback from Fórsa members has been that the issue should be high on the union’s agenda in forthcoming talks on a new public-sector pay deal.
“An absolute massive priority is nailing down and securing flexible working patterns and blended working,” he said.
