I try not to think about lockdown as it, in short, triggers me. I lived in London at the time and I suspect that not many Gript readers would disagree with me when I say it remains to this day one of the stupidest and costliest decisions any European government has made for decades.
There were many insanities, the old guy “Captain Tom” walking in his garden to raise money for the NHS which actually ended up going partly to his daughter’s fancy new spa (long story); fools banging pots outside their house for ‘Our NHS”; morons walking their dog outside while masked. But what lockdown really popularised during was bone laziness aka working from home.
There you all were, falling out of bed at noon, walking around in jim-jams and pretending ‘to work from home’ while wearing slippers. As a result since then, in the UK at least, the numbers claiming disability benefits because of mental health (aka being sad on the inside) have gone through the roof.
On this side of the water, the eejits in the Irish government decided to jump on the work from home bandwagon and imply that all employees will have a “right to remote working.” The Work Life Balance and Miscellaneous Provisions Act 2023 was passed and it caused many people to believe they could work from home on their say so. They could just back up their laptop, walk past the water cooler and their astonished boss, head home, sit down at the home office or kitchen table and work there until the end of their days. I don’t think so.
All the 2003 Act does is look at the process of an application for remote working and it requires the employer to consider it in a fair and reasonable manner. It does not give a right to WFH. As such “in the small number of cases decided to date under the Work Life Balance and Miscellaneous Provisions Act 2023, which came into force last March, no worker has succeeded in securing compensation.”
This has led to sniffy headlines in the the Irish Times such as: Remote working in Ireland: People ‘are being pushed back to the office against their will.’
The truth is, working from home has fallen out of favour. Trump has ordered federal employees to get back to the office for five days, where they belong. This gave us the great lead in from the Irish Times: Allies say move is intended to help Trump replace long-serving workers with loyalists faithful to agenda. Is that what allies say? Cry me a river.
Across the other water, the boss of Asda has also denounced working from home. “Work-from-home culture is contributing to the economy’s decline and creating a generation who are “not doing proper work”, the former boss of Asda has said. Lord Rose of Monewden claimed that the move away from office culture had made people less productive, linking it to the “general decline” of the UK economy.” As reported in The Times. So it’s RIP WFH.
Before I go on I should lay my cards on the line. Yes, I admit, as a freelance journalist I work from home. And despite my sarcastic tone above I do have sympathy on a human level with employees who must balance childcare, the commute, and work commitments. And it is also true that many a workplace can be unproductive, with the endless pointless meetings, e-mails, a noisy office, and chats about the latest Netflix series.
However, ultimately despite what the sniffy Irish Times says, it should be the employer who decides where his employees work, not Simon Harris or a judge or the folks at the Irish Times. Do you know why? Because it is the employer who is paying the employee and the employer is best placed to decide what is the most effective working scheme for the company. In sum, and as I often say to my children when they attempt to pull rank, he who pays the piper calls the tune.
Therefore, people are not being ‘pushed back’ to the office ‘against their will.’ They are being told that in return for the money they must work in the office like before everyone lost their minds in lockdown. You will not get away with a couple of hours work in your jim-jams and then spend the rest of your day watching Normal People. Being in your place of work, when you are working, in return for a salary was the default position. That used to be what the normal people did, before the lunatics took over the asylum.
That is why the Americans often call the salary, the money, the cash, your pay packet compensation. I prefer that term because the money compensates you for all the other things you could be doing instead of working: caring for your children, reading one of Sally Rooney’s wonderful books, cooking the dinner, mopping the floor, learning Beethoven’s 5th on your violin, playing a video game or whatever it might be. They are compensating you for the time and energy you are giving them, the employer, that you could be giving to someone or something else.
This is indeed reflected in one of my favourite scenes in Mad Men. Peggy has become a copywriter and she is good at it. Peggy comes up with a clever idea for something or other and her boss Don uses it and claims it. Peggy says, as sensitive female employees sometimes say, ‘you never even say thanks.’ And he replies, quite accurately: that’s what the money is for. Amen.
A few other things, while I have you. The underlying causes of employee stress includes housing costs and the cost in time and resources of the commute. Now, tell me is it the fault of employers, either large or small, that the housing costs in Ireland are so outrageously high? No. It is not. That’s the fault of the government. High housing costs mean two things – you either have to move further out from your work place increasing the time and stress of commuting or you have to suck it up and stay put and pay the high rent or huge mortgage.
Now on the commute. Is it the employers fault that Ireland still does not have an underground train system that would allow people to live further out, having cheaper housing costs but a faster commute over long distances? No it is not. People like to give out about the stuffy, smelly tube but I tell you what when you travel on the Piccadilly line or the Elizabeth line you appreciate the miracle of engineering genius that it is. London might have its problems – public transport, especially the tube is not one of them. The tube allows people to move further out taking advantage of cheaper housing costs yet having a relatively shorter commute.
So there we are. It is time to bury the last of the craziest ideas that emerged during lockdown; namely that employees are the boss and they get to dictate to their employers where they work. That’s not how it works. Sometimes you have to do things you don’t really want to do and commuting to an office is one of them. That after all, is what the money’s for. When you are working you are fucking busy, not the other way round.