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LONDON: Last week, a well-known London city council sent its staff surprising news: It’s okay to smoke at work.
To be more precise, the Hammersmith and Fulham council said it was okay for employees to smoke if they were working at home, as many have done thanks to COVID-19.
To be even more precise, the council sent the message because it wanted to remove news reports that it had banned employees from having a cigarette on their keyboards, even if they were at home.
“We would never instruct people about smoking in their own homes,” he snorted.
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WHAT THE EMPLOYEE CAN AND CANNOT DO NOW MORE COMPLICATED
Does this matter?
In a normal year, not much. However, in the new world of telecommuting, the question of what an employer can and cannot demand of their staff has suddenly become much more complicated. Today’s labor laws were drafted at a time when the typical worker I entered the same building every day. And I came home at night
That time may never come back.
A laptop and other work-from-home items are seen on a table. (File Photo: Unsplash / Christopher Gower)
A survey of more than 750 European employers released last week showed that 41 percent have plans to make it easier for staff to continue working remotely once offices reopen.
They might not give a damn if their staff is on fire at home, but they do care about a lot more, like how much work is being done.
That is already creating potential legal headaches, as I found out after calling UK employment lawyers last week.
I was hoping to hear about tracking software, which reportedly flourished in the pandemic, that can count every keystroke on a company laptop or take random screenshots of a monitor. But it turns out that some of the worst problems are less high-tech and more humane.
In one company, staff at home were asked to keep a video conference call open all day so that a manager could see what they were doing and issue any orders he could think of, as he always did in the office.
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“I think the level of intrusion into an employee’s work from home is quite excessive,” says Sinead Casey, an employment attorney for Linklaters.
Businesses commonly had some kind of monitoring before the pandemic, he told me, and they need to think carefully if they really need more staff at home.
That makes sense, although not if you work on a trading floor or in a newsroom, where minute-by-minute decisions are needed.
WHAT ARE EMPLOYERS RESPONSIBLE FOR?
Another big legal question revolves around the extent to which a company is obligated to provide an ergonomically safe desktop, a decent computer, fast broadband, and even heating, cooling, and lighting. Could they face lawsuits for leaving homeworkers adrift?
(Photo: Unsplash / Alexandru Acea)
Potentially yes, says Peter Daly of Slater and Gordon.
An employment contract may not specifically mention electricity or broadband bills, but case law implies an obligation to provide a suitable work environment for employees, which could extend to paying these costs.
He says he’s listening to “a lot of people” who have been told to work from home but on their own computer, a difficult question for those who have an old laptop that the whole family shares or no computer at home.
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Yet those stories underscore an even more significant fact of today’s work life: COVID-19 has tipped the balance of power in favor of employers in dozens of industries.
EMPLOYEES MAY BE HIGHER RISKS
The precarious employment situation hardly encourages workers to start a business, however atrocious.
And those who choose to fight face a long wait of a day in court. In the UK, social distancing rules have compounded a backlog of unheard work complaints that by August had risen to 39,000.
If you file a claim today, it may not be heard until 2022, by which time your employer could have gone bankrupt.
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This does not apply to all sectors, much less to all companies in all countries. But as virus infection rates rise and the threat of stricter lockdown rules looms, it remains a grim reality.
When it all adds up, whether you’re working at home or not, I’m afraid there are many reasons to at least think about starting smoking.
