Around a quarter of the workforce in Canada was working exclusively from home two years ago. But now, with more and more employers returning to in-person work, what does this mean for Canadians who embraced remote work?
When COVID-19 struck Canada in early 2020, it came with a huge shift in how we work, with many offices closing their doors and office workers vacating cubicles in favour of remote work to cut down their risk of transmission.
It was a mass exodus to remote work that had never been seen before. According to Statistics Canada, only seven per cent of workers in Canada said they “usually” worked from home in 2016. This jumped to 24.3 per cent by May 2021, and remained there until early 2022.
But since then, workers have slowly been trickling back into the office. By May 2022, the share of workers working exclusively from home had gone down to 22.4 per cent, then 20.1 per cent in May 2023.
As of November 2023, StatCan data shows that just 12.6 per cent of the workforce aged 15 to 69 years old still exclusively work from home.
Part of this change has been due to an increase in hybrid work arrangements, in which workers work some hours at home and some outside the home. The amount of workers in hybrid arrangements has more than tripled in the last two years, going from 3.6 per cent of workers to 11.7 per cent by November.
Navigating the how, when and why of whether to return to in-person work is a complicated prospect because of the way these remote arrangements started, said Jon Pinkus, a labour and employment lawyer with Samfiru Tumarkin LLP.
“Whenever we’re talking about the rights of employees, it’s a question really of contract, right? Sometimes we’re talking about a written contract. Sometimes we’re talking about implied rights of contract. And this has been, in many cases, uncharted waters, right? Because we’ve never had a situation where everyone, all of a sudden, became remote,” he told CTVNews.ca in a phone interview.
Generally, the way it’s always worked is that if someone is hired as a remote worker and has been working remotely for a number of years, “that’s become a term of your employment,” he said. This holds true even during the pandemic — if you were hired in a remote position, you can’t be forced to suddenly attend an office as a requirement of your employment.
But what about those whose jobs became remote only because of the pandemic?
All of the case law surrounding remote work is from before the pandemic, making it hard to say for certain what the legal precedent is.
“An employee who is being asked now to go back to the office after having worked remotely for several years should absolutely be consulting with a lawyer,” Pinkus said.
With 2024 just around the corner, any employer who went remote during the pandemic and wants to bring employees back to the office against their wishes has kind of missed the window to do this easily, he added.
“The time to set parameters was in 2020 and 2021, where it could be conveyed to those employees that look, we may be continuing this into 2023, but this is ultimately a temporary arrangement, and we expect we’re going to bring you back in as soon as circumstances allow,” he said.
Employers who laid out these expectations earlier can refer back to them in the event of employees complaining about a return to the office.
“If you have an employee who was hired in person, let’s say in 2015, and then during the pandemic, was put in a remote arrangement, and then in mid-2022 was told to come back to the office, it’d be very difficult for that employee to say, ‘Well, it’s now a term of my employment that I get to work remotely,’” Pinkus said.
But if employers didn’t set official expectations early on around a return to work and just allowed employees to continue working remotely since early 2020 up until now, they will likely have more difficulty pushing a sudden requirement to return to the office, he said.
The World Health Organization removed its state of emergency declaration for COVID-19 in the spring of 2023, Pinkus pointed out, and if employees who went remote in 2020 were still working remotely past that point, “it starts to look like an indefinite arrangement.”
“And once an employee has an indefinite arrangement, whether that be they’re working in a certain location, or they’re working from home, they’re entitled to have that continued,” Pinkus said. “And if the employer says, ‘Well, now we don’t want you to work from home remotely anymore,’ that could be seen as a fundamental change that the employee could decline.”
Employers can still fire whoever they want, he added, but an employee who was fired in this situation could argue the firing was without cause and that they are entitled to compensation.
“I think the only solution available with respect to employees who are not agreeable to going back into the office is to give them advance notice,” he said. “And potentially significant advance notice of that change.”
That advance notice should be the same amount of time, generally speaking, as that person’s severance entitlements, Pinkus explained.
“Basically, the employer would have to look at it as, we’re terminating this person, giving them working notice and these will be the new terms,” he said. “So you could say, ‘We are going to require you to work from the office from now on, but we acknowledge that you are someone who has a 12-month severance entitlement, so it’s not going to be effective until this time next year.’”
This would give the employee time to either search for a new job where they could continue working remotely, or make the changes needed to support their return to in-person work.
WHAT IF I MOVED DURING THE PANDEMIC?
In the early years of the pandemic, a trend that came along with remote work was workers moving farther away from the office, with some even moving to other provinces while continuing to work remotely for the same company.
If someone has moved away during the pandemic but an employer is trying to make employees return to in-person work, a key piece of information would be whether the employer knew about the move, Pinkus said.
“If the employee just moved without telling anyone, then the employer is not going to be held responsible for that,” he said.
“But if the employer says, ‘Oh, OK, you’re moving to P.E.I., that’s fine, you’re remote’ and they update their system, they don’t make any plans or requirements for them to come back at a certain date and they don’t set any parameters around that, then I think the employer bears the responsibility and is now going to have to deal with that employee as a remote employee going forward. And if they terminate that employee, they could do it, but they’re going to owe a severance package.”
DISABILITY RIGHTS IN A RETURN TO WORK SCENARIO
One of the benefits of the shift to more remote work was that it opened up more opportunities for people with disabilities.
In 2022, the percentage of people with disabilities who were employed rose to 21.3 per cent, the highest it’s been since 2008 and more than two percentage points up from 2021, BNN Bloomberg reported earlier this year. The same year, labour force participation rate went up three times as much for people with disabilities compared to those without disabilities.
Some experts have expressed concerns that the shift away from remote work will strip away some of the opportunities that opened up for people with disabilities.
The good news is that if an employee was hired as a remote employee and has disabilities that prevent them from in-person work, employers would have a difficult time justifying cutting them now because they can’t go to the office.
Pinkus added that employees who do not have physical disabilities but who cannot attend an office due to being immunocompromised or otherwise at a high risk from COVID-19 should still be able to point to this as a reason to stay remote if they have proper documentation.
“If COVID has introduced permanent risks to their health that can only really be properly mitigated by remote work, I think those employees would have a leg to stand on to say, ‘I need this, here’s my doctor’s note confirming that I need this and the doctor says this is what’s required,’” Pinkus said.
“I think it’s gonna be very difficult for an employer to refuse that because they’re going to have to show that it poses what we call ‘undue hardship’ for that employee to work from home.”
MOST OFFICE RETURNS GOING SMOOTHLY, EMPLOYERS FINDING COMPROMISES
Although the dynamics are slowly returning to more in-person work, Pinkus said he hasn’t personally seen many cases of employees disputing a return to work, nor employers navigating how to force employees back.
In cases where the workforce prefers remote work, employers have largely found compromises or simply allowed certain employees to stay remote.
“What I have seen for the most part is that employers have implemented hybrid arrangements or have continued the remote arrangements,” he said.
“Most employers and employees have reached somewhat of an equilibrium on this issue. Although (conflict has) kind of cropped up here and there, it’s not been common.”
According to StatCan, many workers still working remotely were parents with young children. In November 2023, one in three parents with at least one child under the age of five were working exclusively from home or had hybrid arrangements.
Every work situation is different, Pinkus said, and all of these discussions surrounding whether an employee can be required to return to the office, or whether employers can expect this of employees, relies on the communication that has passed between all parties — what contracts say, what expectations were expressed and how employees performed while remote.
“While everything we’ve talked about is kind of a good rule of thumb and a good guideline, ultimately, anyone who’s thinking of refusing to return back to work shouldn’t do so before they speak with a lawyer to understand what their rights are,” Pinkus said.
CHARLESTON, W.Va. (AP) — A linebacker at Division II West Virginia State was fatally shot during what the university said Thursday is being investigated by police as a home invasion.
The body of Jyilek Zyiare Harrington, 21, of Charlotte, North Carolina, was found inside an apartment Wednesday night in Charleston, police Lt. Tony Hazelett said in a statement.
Hazelett said several gunshots were fired during a disturbance in a hallway and inside the apartment. The statement said Harrington had multiple gunshot wounds and was pronounced dead at the scene. Police said they had no information on a possible suspect.
West Virginia State said counselors were available to students and faculty on campus.
“Our thoughts and prayers are with Jyilek’s family as they mourn the loss of this incredible young man,” West Virginia State President Ericke S. Cage said in a letter to students and faculty.
Harrington, a senior, had eight total tackles, including a sack, in a 27-24 win at Barton College last week.
“Jyilek truly embodied what it means to be a student-athlete and was a leader not only on campus but in the community,” West Virginia State Vice President of Intercollegiate Athletics Nate Burton said. “Jyilek was a young man that, during Christmas, would create a GoFundMe to help less fortunate families.”
Burton said donations to a fund established by the athletic department in Harrington’s memory will be distributed to an organization in Charlotte to continue his charity work.
West Virginia State’s home opener against Carson-Newman, originally scheduled for Thursday night, has been rescheduled to Friday, and a private vigil involving both teams was set for Thursday night. Harrington previously attended Carson-Newman, where he made seven tackles in six games last season. He began his college career at Division II Erskine College.
“Carson-Newman joins West Virginia State in mourning the untimely passing of former student-athlete Jyilek Harrington,” Carson-Newman Vice President of Athletics Matt Pope said in a statement. “The Harrington family and the Yellow Jackets’ campus community is in our prayers. News like this is sad to hear anytime, but today it feels worse with two teams who knew him coming together to play.”
DETROIT (AP) — Joe Schmidt, the Hall of Fame linebacker who helped the Detroit Lions win NFL championships in 1953 and 1957 and later coached the team, has died. He was 92.
The Lions said family informed the team Schmidt died Wednesday. A cause of death was not provided.
One of pro football’s first great middle linebackers, Schmidt played his entire NFL career with the Lions from 1953-65. An eight-time All-Pro, he was enshrined into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1973 and the college football version in 2000.
“Joe likes to say that at one point in his career, he was 6-3, but he had tackled so many fullbacks that it drove his neck into his shoulders and now he is 6-foot,” said the late Lions owner William Clay Ford, Schmidt’s presenter at his Hall of Fame induction in 1973. “At any rate, he was listed at 6-feet and as I say was marginal for that position. There are, however, qualities that certainly scouts or anybody who is drafting a ballplayer cannot measure.”
Born in Pittsburgh, Schmidt played college football in his hometown at Pitt, beginning his stint there as a fullback and guard before coach Len Casanova switched him to linebacker.
“Pitt provided me with the opportunity to do what I’ve wanted to do, and further myself through my athletic abilities,” Schmidt said. “Everything I have stemmed from that opportunity.”
Schmidt dealt with injuries throughout his college career and was drafted by the Lions in the seventh round in 1953. As defenses evolved in that era, Schmidt’s speed, savvy and tackling ability made him a valuable part of some of the franchise’s greatest teams.
Schmidt was elected to the Pro Bowl 10 straight years from 1955-64, and after his arrival, the Lions won the last two of their three NFL titles in the 1950s.
In a 1957 playoff game at San Francisco, the Lions trailed 27-7 in the third quarter before rallying to win 31-27. That was the NFL’s largest comeback in postseason history until Buffalo rallied from a 32-point deficit to beat Houston in 1993.
“We just decided to go after them, blitz them almost every down,” Schmidt recalled. “We had nothing to lose. When you’re up against it, you let both barrels fly.”
Schmidt became an assistant coach after wrapping up his career as a player. He was Detroit’s head coach from 1967-72, going 43-35-7.
Schmidt was part of the NFL’s All-Time Team revealed in 2019 to celebrate the league’s centennial season. Of course, he’d gone into the Hall of Fame 46 years earlier.
Not bad for an undersized seventh-round draft pick.
“It was a dream of mine to play football,” Schmidt told the Detroit Free Press in 2017. “I had so many people tell me that I was too small. That I couldn’t play. I had so many negative people say negative things about me … that it makes you feel good inside. I said, ‘OK, I’ll prove it to you.’”
VICTORIA – British Columbia’s Environment Assessment Office has fined Coastal GasLink Pipeline Ltd. $590,000 for “deficiencies” in the construction of its pipeline crossing the province.
The office says in a statement that 10 administrative penalties have been levied against the company for non-compliance with requirements of its environmental assessment certificate.
It says the fines come after problems with erosion and sediment control measures were identified by enforcement officers along the pipeline route across northern B.C. in April and May 2023.
The office says that the latest financial penalties reflect its escalation of enforcement due to repeated non-compliance of its requirements.
Four previous penalties have been issued for failing to control erosion and sediment valued at almost $800,000, while a fifth fine of $6,000 was handed out for providing false or misleading information.
The office says it prioritized its inspections along the 670-kilometre route by air and ground as a result of the continued concerns, leading to 59 warnings and 13 stop-work orders along the pipeline that has now been completed.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 12, 2024.
