Issues of employee time, surveillance, productivity and the right to disconnect have all become hot-button topics in the wake of COVID, says economist

The agreement on remote and flexible work between public sector workers and the federal government could set the stage for future union negotiations, according to labour experts.

“We're basically entering a brand new phase of what we talk about in collective agreements, which includes workers’ autonomy over their time,” said Armine Yalnizyan, an economist and the Atkinson Fellow on the Future of Workers.

The Public Service Alliance of Canada and Ottawa announced they had reached tentative agreements Monday morning for more than 120,000 workers, with wage gains and a letter of understanding about remote and hybrid work.

The letter outside the collective agreement promises a joint review of the government’s directive on telework, and the union said the letter will mean managers have to assess telework requests individually instead of the government applying a one-size-fits-all approach.

Yalnizyan said a case-by-case approach is appropriate for the post-pandemic era of work, even though it’s much more complicated than a one-size-fits-all policy.

Issues of employee time, surveillance, productivity and the right to disconnect have all become hot-button topics in the wake of COVID, but haven’t really been baked into formalized language, said Yalnizyan, putting PSAC and the government at the forefront of what’s bound to be an...

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