Note to employees loving their WFH set-up

Your jobs may be outsourced to remote workers in other countries

Q: What do you think will be the biggest disruption or new precedents set in employment law as a result of the pandemic?

A: The first disruptor is the new-found desire of Canadians to work from home. A recent poll by John Wrights’ Dart Research found that 84 per cent of employees, now working from home, wish to continue doing so at least some of the time, and 46 per cent for a significant portion of the time.

Once employers become comfortable with employees working from home and interacting exclusively through Zoom meetings, written communications and telephone calls, they will realize that it is irrelevant where that employee actually resides.

If the employee is not in the office anyway, what difference does it make if they are even in Canada. If it does not matter if they live in Canada, then why not hire a skilled employee in India, Bangladesh or anywhere else, at a fraction of what they are paying their Canadian equivalent.

Put crassly, why not pay $3 a day rather than $300, particularly in a world where you are competing with companies in those countries. Those advocating working from home have not addressed this problem and it has not even been part of the debate. But it’s an inexorable logical consequence. What ruinous consequences might this have for our unemployment rate and tax base?

Another aspect of working from home is that employers may tolerate it initially but, at some point, realize that, for many jobs and individuals, it’s less productive. But when they will ask employees to return to work, the forced relocation becomes a constructive dismissal.

The other major disruptor is that, although it was inconceivable in most workplaces even three months ago, employers have become acclimatized to laying employees off or reducing their wage and hours of work.

Having done this with apparent impunity, to the extent employees accepted it without stipulating the conditions I discussed in these columns, it has now become part of their contracts of employment.

Employees will find that they will be increasingly laid off or have their wages reduced as employers begin using legal tools never utilized before. Similarly, employers will begin inserting the rights into  employment contracts to lay employees off or reduce their hours or wages without it being a constructive dismissal. That, too, will be a major change to workplace legal relations.

Read more