GUNTER: Go to the office and stop complaining

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It’s clear federal civil servants have learned nothing – nothing – from the public backlash against their strike last year.

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Public-sector union members were stunned by strong public opposition to their outrageous wages demands. I remember getting a chuckle at the expense of a PSAC (Public Service Alliance of Canada) member interviewed by the Ottawa Citizen in the strike’s early days.

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“They hate us!” she admitted with shock and surprise, based on comments strikers had been hearing from the public while they walked the picket lines.

Government workers had pictured themselves as overworked, underpaid, working-class heroes, around whom ordinary Canadians would instantly rally. They quickly found out most Canadians were unsympathetic given that civil servants already enjoyed higher pay, better pensions, shorter work hours, longer vacations and significantly greater job security.

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So you might have guessed civil servants wouldn’t react swiftly and angrily to the government announcement last week that they would be expected to show up at the office three days a week, rather than two, beginning sometime this fall. But you would be wrong.

The response of thousands of civil servants can be summed up in two words: whiny and entitled.

Chris Aylward, PSAC’s national president, threatened a “summer of discontent,” when the Treasury Board’s new policy was announced.

The government’s new policy makes sense. (Four days a week or five would make even more sense.) While some widely reported studies at the beginning of the pandemic purported to show “telework,” or working-from-home, was more productive, it turns out most of those studies were based on flawed methodologies. The preponderance of research since shows in-office workers are noticeably more productive.

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According to the Parliamentary Budget Officer, over half of federal departments and agencies are failing to meet their already low productivity goals – goals they are allowed to set for themselves.

The inherent lack of productivity in the federal civil service is one of the reasons the Liberals have expanded the civil service by 40% since coming to office, yet government services seem to get worse and worse.

Aylward and other PSAC executives warned of job action and widespread disregard of the new rules. One even theorized that the Treasury Board had no such right under the union contract to dictate to workers where they should work and when.

But worse yet was the whiny reaction of civil servants themselves on social media.

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“I’m having suicidal thoughts,” one claimed on Reddit. “My spouse and I are reconsidering having a second child,” another complained, because of the need to pay for childcare. (Um, did she mean like every other young, working family in the country?)

“I’m very nervous.” “Many of us are furious.” Scented laundry detergent used by colleagues triggers my environmental sensitivities.

I feel unsafe. I’m allergic to the office. I don’t want to commute. And (seriously) my coworker liked to take his shoes off in the next cubicle and his feet smelled.

And on and on and on.

A job is not something you do only if you can fit it in around your personal life and configure the office exactly as you please. No wonder nothing gets done in the federal civil service. Everything other than their work seems more important. And when they are out of the office, there is almost no supervision to hold them accountable.

There’s great value in a good work-life balance, but it is not a work-only-if-I-must, life balance.

Former privy council clerk Michael Wernick, pointed out that half of the public service – including workers at parks, museums, border crossings and laboratories – have always had to go to their workplaces, many even during the pandemic.

Stop complaining and go back to the office!

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