Federal union filing complaints about increase to office time

The Public Service Alliance of Canada (PSAC) is putting together formal complaints that by mandating federal public servants return to offices at least three days a week in September, the federal government is undermining collective agreements.

The government directed all public servants, with few exceptions, to be in the office three days a week starting Sept. 9.

That's an increase from the current rules that, broadly and varying by department, require these workers in the office either two or three days a week. These benchmarks can sometimes be averaged over a month rather than a given week.

The Treasury Board said it updated the policy to «maximize the benefits of presence in the workplace and to bring greater fairness and consistency to the application of hybrid work.»

The office of Treasury Board President Anita Anand told CBC News in an email the updated directive «still offers the flexibility of a hybrid work model by allowing most public servants to work from home for up to two days.»

Radio-Canada obtained a copy of the complaints to the Federal Public Sector Labour Relations and Employment Board.

Dated Tuesday, it's not clear whether the two complaints about the Treasury Board of Canada — one directly about the board and a slightly different one about a bargaining group's dealings with the Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA) — have been officially filed.

A coalition of unions, including PSAC, has called a news conference Wednesday morning about challenging the three-days-a-week rule.

The crux of PSAC's complaint is its stance that the deals that ended strikes last spring «requires managers to assess remote work requests individually, not by group,» as it put it in a summary of the tentative deal and again in the