Back to the office? NSW desk jockeys claim not enough desks
Public service unions are claiming that if they are all forced to go back to work 9-to-5, there simply won’t be enough space to accommodate them, writes James O’Doherty.
Opinion
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For most people, turning up to the office at 9am would just be a regular work day.
But for members of the Public Service Association who presented to Transport for NSW’s Elizabeth Street offices on Thursday, it was a bizarre form of industrial action in defence of working from home.
The so-called “start work” rally (compared to the unions’ usual “stop work” meetings), was designed to highlight the one massive problem in Premier Chris Minns’ attempts to get bureaucrats back to the office.
There simply is not enough space.
The Premier has escaped the electoral backlash that saw Peter Dutton dump his troubled work-from-home ban, but the NSW Government’s return-to-office strategy has been plagued with setbacks and obfuscation.
It was back in August last year that Premier’s Department boss Simon Draper issued a “mandatory” directive for bureaucrats to work “principally” in an approved office.
At the time, Minns declared he was “confident” the binding policy would work to “get people back in” to government work sites, to fix a “drop in mentorship” and build a “sense of joint mission”.
The return-to-work order went down like a cup of cold sick among desk-bound public servants who had structured their lives around flexible working plans.
It turned out they had little to worry about.
It is now nine months on, and some major departments are still yet to do anything to put Draper’s directive into action.
Bureaucratic delays, if you would believe it, have been tying up plans to increase government efficiency in miles of red tape.
At the Education Department, for example, public servants only got a new official “flexible work” policy from Monday.
The policy enshrines a commitment to flexible working for “all employees at all levels”.
While noting the “default arrangement” is for staff to work “principally in an approved workplace,” all staff have the right to ask to work from home at least some of the time.
The difference, government sources say, is that the new policy requires public servants to get approval from their managers to work from the couch, the beach, or the cafe.
Previously, they said, bureaucrats would disappear into a WFH vortex for days on end with little oversight.
This is the same over at Treasury, where employees working-from-home arrangements are updated twice a year.
But at Transport for NSW, one of the most bloated departments in the public service, little has changed. Bosses are still consulting with staff, and the union, before releasing a final plan.
The union argues that if all Transport’s desk-bound staff turned up to the office, they would be turned away.
“We have members that report to us that they travel across Sydney to go to work and end up arriving at a crowded office and working at the cafe downstairs off a laptop,” acting PSA Secretary Troy Wright says.
Hot-desking and other cost-saving measures are to blame, the union argues.
“Most departments, including Transport for NSW, downgraded their office accommodation even before COVID,” Wright says.
“To demand 100% attendance simply cannot work.”
PSA members, Wright says, “understand there’s an obligation” to be in the office - but believe there is also “an obligation for the departments to allow them to do so”.
According to TfNSW insiders, the department has flogged off office space in Redfern and Eveleigh, only to replace it with a floor at the government’s Martin Place headquarters that fits “half the people” and is “booked full time”.
In a statement, a TfNSW spokesman insisted the department has “enough space to accommodate all our people to ensure they can primarily work from an approved workplace”.
Despite the good intent of bringing people into the office, it seems to defeat the purpose of collaboration if they are forced back onto Zoom from a cafe two floors away from their colleagues.
Department bosses cannot even say this took them by surprise; back in August, the premier conceded government offices simply did not have enough desk space for people to come back.
At the time, Minns described that as a “good problem to have,” suggesting that it would be solved within “six months”.
That was, perhaps, wishful thinking.
Despite the setbacks, Minns insists he is pushing ahead with getting bureaucrats back to work, creating a headache for the Prime Minister along the way.
“We’re not changing our policy in relation to working from home, it was the right decision to make,” Minns said in the days after the Opposition launched its own (ultimately doomed) WFH ban.
“It’s hugely important for the future of the public service in the state.”
But if the Premier really wants to get staff back to the office, he should ensure they have an office to go to.
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