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Get back to the office! But why?
(737 Posts)I see ‘the government’ is now saying that even people who have been successfully working from home, should go back to the office.
I don’t see the logic in this as a blanket statement. So many advantages both for employer and worker, not to mention the environmental with reduced pollution from cars in busy city centres.
Yes, I know that companies like Pret A Manger are feeling the pinch but as one commuter tweeted ‘horrifying to learn that if I don’t expose myself and everyone I care about to this virus then one of the five Pret A Mangers between the tube station and my office might become unprofitable’.
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Yes, I'm revisiting this brilliant thread today too.
Like Whitewave, it's wonderful to hear Michael ("I think the people in this country have had enough of experts") Gove telling us to listen to the experts and that this isn't another u-turn by the Government when it clearly is.
I wonder if Bojo may send him out to deliver these pieces of news knowing the potential embarrassment they could cause him - after all they say revenge is a dish best served cold. But then, that's supposing that Mr G actually feels embarrassment at the irony in the first place!
Whitewavemark2
Remember this!!
Less than a month ago.
We knew then it was the wrong policy.
Today’s message?
Work from home.
And the veiled threats of
'if your job can be done from home, it can be done from India'
Did I just hear Gove say on Today that we must listen to the experts.
Irony!!
Remember this!!
Less than a month ago.
We knew then it was the wrong policy.
Today’s message?
Work from home.
Some don't spend it all but instead of that money being redirected to another dept. it is spent indiscriminately on items that aren't needed. This is done so they are given the same amount next year.
I'm familiar with that system from when I worked in the NHS 40+ years ago. It is deeply stupid. We had a little spending bonanza at the end of the financial year because it couldn't be carried over to finance a long term capital project and, as you say, if it wasn't spent it was lost. But it wasn't necessarily wasted...
I'm not familiar with local council budget management but I would suspect that in this day and age it would be very rare for a department to have anything left at the year end. However, perhaps you worked in an LA and know more about it than I do.
Maizie the council has been badly affected by government cuts but they do waste a lot of the money they are given. To give an example - each department is given an amount of money at the beginning of the year. Some don't spend it all but instead of that money being redirected to another dept. it is spent indiscriminately on items that aren't needed. This is done so they are given the same amount next year. This is wasteful.
The CEO of Pret has said, (i newspaper today), that no one has a duty to return to offices to save the sandwich chain. He says, and I agree, businesses have to adapt to new habits.
Council staff have been cut to the bone over the last few years with one person trying to do the job of at least three.
The management is poor and if they were a business they would have gone under years ago.
Conflicting ideas there, surely, AGGA4?
Staff have been cut to the bone because councils have been kept short of money by tory governments. A decent business wouldn't have starved itself of cash...
To those who have mentioned councils not answering phones. This is nothing new and well before Covid it wasn't easy to get through. Council staff have been cut to the bone over the last few years with one person trying to do the job of at least three.
The management is poor and if they were a business they would have gone under years ago.
The problems are lack of staff not working from home.
Welshwife Just because your son and his family are having difficulties all working at home doesn't mean that's the norm. It's not surprising with 4 people needing access to computers and wi-fi etc.
Once again you are stating the obvious - that not everyone can cope with being at home and need to be with other people.
No one on here is suggesting that everyone works from home. Some people will manage successfully and others won't but most aren't being forced to do one or the other.
I have to agree with grandad re his post of 6 September relating to council employees. Our council office workers are not required to return to work until the New Year and even then only on some kind of rota basis. It’s very difficult to contact anyone in our local council and they do not reply to e mails either. County Hall has just been completely modernised at great expense and is just lying empty. So, while working from home may be logical and successful for some businesses it certainly is not working re our local council and for the community. No doubt there will be a rise in council tax as well!!!
My son-in-law has worked from home for years. His second phone line was paid for by his employer, and so was the office chair he uses. That has been upgraded recently as he was getting backache from the previous one. He is in phone, email and online contact with colleagues in many different countries. Physically meeting up with them would involve a lot of time-consuming, tiring and expensive travel His "office" is in his open-plan living/dining/kitchen room.
Until lockdown, his wife went into the office every day. She now works from home too, based in a small spare room. She meets up with colleagues very occasionally, but most contact is by phone, email or zoom. There are no plans to get her or her colleagues back into the office yet.
For them, it works very well. Their work is mainly on a computer anyway, and they are responsible adults, not naughty children bunking off school because there is no-one to see whether they are getting on with what needs done or playing computer games. There must be many many people doing exactly the same.
Yesterday I was Face timing with DS. He and his family live in USA and he is a design engineer for an automotive company. He has often worked from home some days particularly if he needed to get a project finished.
He has been working from home since March but so has his wife and two sons - one a university student and the other at High School. They have all needed computers and a very good WiFi connection. They all all needed space and also a quiet area to work in. They do not live in a small house but it was not easy finding everyone their own space to work properly.
He said he needed to have daily zoom type meetings and doing that for 6-7 hours a day was extremely tiring - more so than seeing the people in the flesh.
The high school son is having video type lessons daily now with the new term starting and needs to be at his computer from 8am till 2 pm. The uni student has gone back to the uni but is isolated with his two flat mates as all their lectures etc are on line and they are cooking all their own meals instead of going to the various canteens on campus.
DS has now been told he will be working from home till at least next June which he says is causing him to rethink the plan of where to work as he had based himself in basically a cupboard as he needed to have a quiet space. The house being American is of course open plan and not conducive to quiet working spaces. He has already said he is sorry now he did not build himself an office when he did the basement out!
He has needed to buy himself a much better chair to be comfortable and he is already regretting not buying an even more expensive one. Luckily they already had their own computers so the only expense they had in that line was a second monitor for DS as he normally uses two at work.
I tell you all this simply to show that working from home is not all roses and many people would not have suitable living accommodation to facilitate this long term. Apart from space and the correct office type furniture these people also need a very good internet connection and should be recompensed for the cost of this and maybe the fact their heating bills will be higher if the dwelling is normally empty all day.
Having staff working from home should not be a saving for the employer but an extra cost for the employees. For people living on their own it is often difficult and going to work and seeing people is often the greatest contact they have with others.
Grandad1943
growstuff
One of the unions advocating industrial action is the civil service union, the PCS. Mark Serwotka is/was a great supporter of Corbyn and Long-Bailey. How does that square up with what you're claiming Grandad?
Industrial action over what?????????
Ask Serwotka! He's the one talking about it. He might find it a bit strange you think he's right-wing. 
Oh come on! Cummings said that "hard rain is going to fall on the civil service". He's just killing a few of them off.
This government can never get it right can it?
Covid on a very worrying rise, so let’s get the civil servants back to work by the middle of September, just when it will be whizzing out of control again.
There is nothing, absolutely nothing they are competent about.
growstuff Quote [ The GMB Union has been called "institutionally sexist" after an independent report into sexual harassment within the organisation.]End Quote
The GMB Union represent the Labour Party Central Office staff and have a separate Branch within that office.
The staff within the Labour Party Central office have been closely linked to the allegations of party employees working against Jeremy Corbyn and even acting against a Labour Party win in the 2018 general election.
It is also being alleged that those same employees sent racist, sexist and highly derogatory comments in regard to fellow Labour Party employees who did not share their view of Corbyn and his team in the Labour leaders office.
All the above was contained within the leaked report on anti Corbyn activity within central office. However, Tim Roach the General Secretary of the GMB union suddenly resigned his position within a few days of the above allegations being published in the media on "health grounds".
An internal investigation is underway by the GMB executive committee into the activities of Tim Roach while he was their General Secretary and in the meantime, the union is very much "in the wilderness" in terms of industrial and political policy, without leadership and losing members at a very fast rate.
The above may be the real reason why the executive committee of the Unite Union is seemingly very cool on the GMB being merged into their organisation. They may feel that they do not want to pick up the pieces of such a right-wing bundle of trouble when Unite has the election for the replacement to Len McCluskey on the horizon.
However, watch this space as it will, without doubt, be very much linked to the future of the Labour Party
Links to the above:-
www.politicshome.com/news/article/gmb-union-launches-investigation-after-tim-roache-abruptly-quits-as-head-of-major-union
www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8325411/Police-investigate-claims-GMB-union-boss-casting-couch-culture.html
growstuff
One of the unions advocating industrial action is the civil service union, the PCS. Mark Serwotka is/was a great supporter of Corbyn and Long-Bailey. How does that square up with what you're claiming Grandad?
Industrial action over what?????????
PS. The teaching unions have over 500,000 members and there are other school staff in Unison. It's not a good idea for union people to upset them by insulting them.
PPS. Supporting union membership is not a good reason for anybody to go back to office working. If I were a union member and thought that my union wanted me to return to office work to increase its membership rather than caring about my well-being, I'd be incredibly concerned.
PPPS. Anybody supporting Starmer is not right-wing. They're more likely to be concerned about a realistic plan for a Labour government so that vulnerable and poorer people can genuinely be supported.
Galaxy
I dont agree with that wild prediction, but I think many women would like to see lots of changes with regard to the GMB.
Indeed!
The GMB Union has been called "institutionally sexist" after an independent report into sexual harassment within the organisation.
www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-54003606
One of the unions advocating industrial action is the civil service union, the PCS. Mark Serwotka is/was a great supporter of Corbyn and Long-Bailey. How does that square up with what you're claiming Grandad?
The large CS department where my daughter (about 650 staff)works,is now getting everyone back mid September
Some of the staff were able to work from home, but it's been decided that office based is better.
Union is happy about it also
It appears that the staff want to be office based for many reasons
I reckon we'll see a lot office staff back in their workplace sooner rather than later
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