As the Gov­ern­ment moves to fi­nalise a work-from-home pol­i­cy for pub­lic ser­vants, there is con­fir­ma­tion that leg­is­la­tion is not the route it will take.

Min­is­ter of Labour Stephen Mc Clashie made the rev­e­la­tion at dur­ing C-Suite Con­ver­sa­tions: The Fu­ture of Work at the Hy­att Re­gency, Port-of-Spain, yes­ter­day.

For al­most two years, em­ploy­ees have been work­ing from home due to COVID-19. How­ev­er, now that the pan­dem­ic is wan­ing, many have re­turned to their of­fices.

Ac­cord­ing to Mc Clashie, many com­pa­nies have done well dur­ing that time, since work­ers were more pro­duc­tive.

“As busi­ness­es, you lose mil­lions of dol­lars in non-pro­duc­tive time, wast­ed in traf­fic jams and by the time the em­ploy­ee reach to work, they are no good for them­selves and have to take two hours to catch them­selves. But we hold on to all ideas that you must be in the of­fice,” Mc Clashie said.

The Min­is­ter not­ed that not every work­er has to be in the of­fice. It is why he said the Gov­ern­ment has been look­ing to roll out a work-from-home pol­i­cy for pub­lic sec­tor work­ers.

Al­ready, sev­er­al con­sul­ta­tions have been held, in­clud­ing through a Joint Se­lect Com­mit­tee to ex­am­ine the im­pact of re­mote work.

“I read some­where re­cent­ly, one of the Eu­ro­pean coun­tries I be­lieve, spoke about mak­ing work from home part of their labour law and I know we will speak it but in Trinidad, we will prob­a­bly not go there for a while,” he stat­ed.

The Gov­ern­ment is aim­ing to com­plete the process by Sep­tem­ber, fol­low­ing which the pol­i­cy will be made pub­lic. A sur­vey was done in 2020 to as­sist with draft­ing the pol­i­cy. Eighty-two per cent of 1,068 pub­lic work­ers said they were more than able to work from home. A team was ap­point­ed to dri­ve the ini­tia­tive. It in­cludes of­fi­cials from the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter, Per­son­nel De­part­ment and Min­istry of Plan­ning, Pub­lic Ad­min­is­tra­tion, Labour, En­er­gy and Dig­i­tal Trans­for­ma­tion.

Mean­while, Mc Clashie said he has been con­cerned about the treat­ment of work­ers dur­ing the pan­dem­ic.

“As Min­is­ter of Labour, I am deeply con­cerned about the many re­ports that are made to the Min­istry of Labour, par­tic­u­lar­ly over the past two years, where these rights have been flout­ed and COVID-19 pan­dem­ic was used as an ex­cuse to cir­cum­vent na­tion­al laws,” ac­cord­ing to him.

“These in­clude work­ers’ pay be­ing cut with­out con­sul­ta­tion with them, or their rep­re­sen­ta­tive or­gan­i­sa­tion. Fail­ure by em­ploy­ers to make NIS pay­ments, breach­es of the Min­i­mum Wage Act, and sec­re­tar­i­al or­ders as well as the ma­ter­ni­ty Pro­tec­tion Act,” he added.