New federal union contract is an historic advance in for workers’ rights

The potential for office work to be performed remotely has been evident since the advent of email and the web, but for decades, most employers allowed only very limited remote work. The pandemic let that genie out of the bottle and finally granted employees what many had been advocating for in vain, writes Associate Professor in Organizational Behaviour Jean-Nicholas Reyt in an opinion piece for the Montreal Gazette. The recent strike by the Public Service Alliance of Canada is a prime example of this sentiment. The deal that the public sector union negotiated with the federal government protects remote work and could be one of the most significant advances in workers’ rights in recent memory.