Public servants ordered back to the office, working from home ‘not an entitlement’

She has issued new guidance to the Public Service Commissioner setting an expectation that “working from home arrangements are not an entitlement and should be by agreement between the employee and the employer”.

So like it is now?

“Our starting position is that actually your working-from-home agreement needs to be consistent with your ability to perform your role, your team’s ability to perform, and your agency’s ability to perform. The simple fact is in some circumstances, you won’t be able to work from home at all,” she said.

So, like it is now?

She said at the Public Service Commission, 66% of staff had working-from-home arrangements, with a third working from home one day a week and another third working from home two days a week, for example.

So most staff are in the office the majoriy of the time?

Wellington Chamber of Commerce chief executive Simon Arcus said, “the public service makes up a huge proportion of Wellington’s workforce, and their absence has been notable in recent years”.

Maybe the lack of people is influenced by the government making thousands of employees redundant? Which is highlighed:

National Secretary for the Public Service Association, Duane Leo said, “if the Government really cared about the Wellington economy, then it shouldn’t have cut thousands of hardworking, dedicated public service workers from its payroll”.

My thoughts on this would be that it's ok for there to be less hospitality businesses in the CBD. If there isn't the foot traffic because it has spread to more localised areas then that seems like a win. And if people are cutting back on spending their money on non-essentials, isn't that exactly what the government says they want the poors to be doing?

on RNZ it was mentioned that many of them will have remote work written into their contracts. Good luck National.

I saw something the other day in response to I think Amazon demanding workers work from office. If its so impossible to be productive working from home, then as soon as you walk out of the building at the end of the day, stop looking at your work phone, never reply to emails, don't answer the phone.*

*That's as it should be anyway, don't do free labour for your boss!

First up, how much of the downturn in CBD spend is because of govt. layoffs? And how much is countered by an upturn in the wider region as people go to cafés in Kapiti & Upper Hutt instead of Wellington?

Secondly, for about 10 years govt agencies have been aiming for smaller offices and more people working from home. They can't just turn it around like that, lots of places won't have enough desks

The point about revitalising city centre hospitality is a complete red herring.

6500 public servants were sacked earlier this year. Most of them were in Wellington, a city of 200k souls. Even you add in the Hutt Valley and Kapiti Coast, that's maybe 400k people. So a working population of maybe 200k. Not all the sacked public servants were in Wellington, but that still means around 3% of those who were working are now not. That automatically translates to a 3% cut in spending.

Given that many more public servants are now concerned about joining the dole queue and have cut discretionary spending to the bone, you can see that a 10% fall in spending is a direct consequence of the government's job cuts. That won't be spread evenly, so we can expect to see fewer shops, cafes and bars in town - and that means even more unemployment which in turn means less spending.

That's what's killing the Wellington hospitality trade.

In the old days of 5 days a week in office, people would only grab a coffee or snack/lunch once or twice a week.

In the new world, with people coming into the office twice/thrice a week, they now grab coffee/lunch every office day as a treat, with the extra costs being offset by less spent on transport.

Also, this is just another step in the wrong direction climate wise. Aren't we meant to be reducing transport and our carbon footprint? Maybe first focus on improving public transport before making statements such as these that will inevitably lead to more vehicle traffic and congestion onto our roads.

This is just Nactional Fist's latest culture war bullshit; a distraction from the absolute shambles they've made of the economy since dropping an austerity bomb on a recession.

Drain the swamp. When are we getting a wall to keep non Pakeha out? We are not far from this with these populists.