Coronavirus Workplace thread

[hurrdurr]

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Maybe they won't be comfortable keeping you employed?

Very insightful thanks!

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My work has said they are in no hurry to send us back but when they do it'll still be optional for the initial time. Those with higher risk scenarios (kids / elderly / living in larger households / etc) don't have to go back if they want to stay WFH

I think that is fair. As long as the job required is being completed to their satisfaction there should be no emphasis in returning to business as usual seeing as we're most certainly not out of the clear yet.

[ExtraSlow]

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Depends on if said parents are indispensable or not?

I'm not a big believer that having your ass in a particular chair has a big impact on productivity or value for most office jobs. If your company is bad at measuring your productivity, which is most, they tend to manage your attendance, which is easy.

I had this chat with my boss recently. I'm not "doing a lot of work" right now, but also, there isn't a high volume of work to do right now either. If the office was open, I wouldn't be sitting there 8 hours a day anyway.

[Tik-Tok]

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Parents are scumbags. Should just lay off anyone with spawn.

Drains on society, what with their unfair tax-breaks and all!

[Buster]

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I'm not a big believer that having your ass in a particular chair has a big impact on productivity or value for most office jobs. If your company is bad at measuring your productivity, which is most, they tend to manage your attendance, which is easy.

I had this chat with my boss recently. I'm not "doing a lot of work" right now, but also, there isn't a high volume of work to do right now either. If the office was open, I wouldn't be sitting there 8 hours a day anyway.

Sure, but that's up to the employer to decide.

[killramos]

Me being in my office has so much less to do with me being productive as being available for other people who have a harder time communicating remotely.

Right or wrong.

If my boss or my bosses boss is paying me to have my ass in a certain postal code 8 hours a day then that’s what I’m going to do.

Play your cards right and 5 years from now you can be boss and confine some poor smuck to his cubicle 8 hours a day I exchange for his salary.

[ExtraSlow]

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Sure, but that's up to the employer to decide.

Sure is, yep yep. However, I hope most will show flexibility until we are past all the stages of reopening and the government has no restrictions of any kind relating to public health concerns from the virus. But that's just my opinion.
Any employer who shows no flexibility in stage 1 is a grade A shitbag employer, and hopefully they lose thier best employees.

[ExtraSlow]

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If my boss or my bosses boss is paying me to have my ass in a certain postal code 8 hours a day then that’s what I’m going to do.

It's going to get interesting when a parent without childcare has to choose between employment and leaving thier kids unattended for 9-10 hours a day. Probably okay if the kid is 15. Less reasonable if they are 5, or 2.

[Xtrema]

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I'm curious how they can enforce people to go into the office if they are not comfortable.

My job has slowed down to a screeching halt and the only thing I can't do from home that I can do from the office is photocopy and fax, which I have yet to find a need for. If they tell me it's time to go back into the office but I'm not comfortable or equipped to do so (Son's dayhome is closed) do I have a leg to stand on? As I have been reading it's a grey area, I haven't found anything concrete

While I don't have link to this, when grilled by NDP about Cargill in question period, Freeland's response is you can always collect CERB if you feel it's unsafe to go back to work.

I may have butchered with wording and I don't have detail on what that means from employment perspective.

EDIT: yeah, it's quitting and collect CERB. The only legal reason employee won't be fired for not coming in when called is if they catch the employer not meeting safety requirements set out by AHS.

EDIT2: NVM, so if employee is pulling a formal work refusal, and employer cannot or wont' meet the demand, an inspector from Ministry of Labour will show up and his/her ruling on the matter will be binding. Once formal refusal started, worker qualifies for CERB.

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Can they make you go back when childcare is not open? Guess it'll be take your kid to work day every day! Fun!

I think our HR and upper management is working on a plan on how all these would work with enough flexibility.

End of the day, the WFH experiment has been going so well that I think it may even solve our lack of office space issue.

If you think 30% office vacancy rate was high pre-covid, it will get much worse when we finally get to go back.... if ever. Only way to get vacancy down is we go back to 100sqft offices per person.

[flipstah]

Collaborative workspaces, out. Glass offices, in.

We’re going back to the golden age office of liquor cabinet offices!

[killramos]

My office already looked like a liquor cabinet

[flipstah]

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My office already looked like a liquor cabinet

fuckin engineers

[killramos]

Well I can’t always be bothered to walk over to the beer fridge...

[lasimmon]

If only someone in my office drank tequila I could get rid of some of these bottles...

[adam c]

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If only someone in my office drank tequila I could get rid of some of these bottles...

Send them my way

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While I don't have link to this, when grilled by NDP about Cargill in question period, Freeland's response is you can always collect CERB if you feel it's unsafe to go back to work.

...snip...

You cannot qualify for CERB if you quit, says so right on the website

[Xtrema]

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You cannot qualify for CERB if you quit, says so right on the website

You are right. The exchange between NDP's McPherson and Freeland is here:

https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/wor...yees-1.5555593

During question period on Tuesday, Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland emphasized that employees across Canada can refuse work in an unsafe work environment and would still have access to the Canada emergency response benefit.

"No Canadian worker at any time should feel obliged to go to work in unsafe conditions," she said in response to a question about the situation at the Cargill plant.

This goes directly against the language and potentially get updated down the road. That's why I am guessing filing a formal work refusal may be enough. But doing that to your employer is basically same as going thru a WCB claim or may be even worse.

Also, WCB claims is expected to increase.

"Even if your employer was negligent in the safety precautions that they took, you would have recourse to apply for Workers' Compensation," he said."This would be treated like a workplace accident or workplace injury."

End of the day, HR is dancing around between getting back to work, providing working flexibility and offset as much legal liability as possible before they will let people back into a dense office. One disgruntle employee call to WCB or AHS on a simple lapse will induce unwanted attention and cost.

Most of my career I worked at places that focus on safety. One contractor stub a toe on a raise floor and called WCB and everybody in the team lost a bunch of incentives $ for the year. That's why they are taking this so seriously.

[ExtraSlow]

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If only someone in my office drank tequila I could get rid of some of these bottles...

***pops head up *** I can pick up.

[adam c]

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***pops head up *** I can pick up.

You have enough crappy liquor to keep you satisfied

[ExtraSlow]

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You have enough crappy liquor to keep you satisfied

I'm a thirsty bitch. I can never be satisfied.

[ThePenIsMightier]

So a certain EPC that's run by the least gifted descendants of British prisoners is planning on leaving their people WFH for "months" to come and then transitioning entire departments worth of them to WFH forever. Saves more money by leasing less office space and "delivers new delivery of project deliveries while maintaining top quartile HaayChessEee" which is apparently how H-S-E is pronounced...

Fair dinkum. Not like your customers are looking for anything more than polished dog shit from a company that mandates about half the work to China, anyway.
I'm sure all these savings will be passed directly on to the custo... BwaahHaahaHaa! LoL!!!

[gmc72]

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So a certain EPC that's run by the least gifted descendants of British prisoners is planning on leaving their people WFH for "months" to come and then transitioning entire departments worth of them to WFH forever. Saves more money by leasing less office space and "delivers new delivery of project deliveries while maintaining top quartile HaayChessEee" which is apparently how H-S-E is pronounced...

Fair dinkum. Not like your customers are looking for anything more than polished dog shit from a company that mandates about half the work to China, anyway.
I'm sure all these savings will be passed directly on to the custo... BwaahHaahaHaa! LoL!!!

If that's who I think you're talking about, then that's the company I work for. I can confirm that WFH is one of the options they are looking at. There was an employee survey done and more than 75% of the company said they preferred to WFH. It will be at least a month before we're back in the office.