8 Comments
Sep 23Liked by The Spinoff

The irony is, WFH is mostly agreed and monitored already, on a mostly voluntary basis. When booking meetings with people or teams, you need to know whether it's going to be in person or online, and whether to book a room. So what do they think is going on? No idea of reality.

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Sep 23Liked by The Spinoff

The last time we voted on a 4 year term, there was also a vote on the number of parliamentarians.

We voted strongly for 100 or less, funny how that did not happen.

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author

Ha, true that

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Sep 23Liked by The Spinoff

`"All we’ve done this year is cut costs and reduce staff"

Does this refer to hospo or to the public service (rhetorical question)

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Once again - admittedly not surprisingly given its flavour - the Government proves it has no interest in supporting workers and ensuring they are safe, healthy, and well at work. A large body of research highlights innumerable benefits for workers (including increased productivity) engaged in hybrid work models. Importantly, the flexibility and autonomy associated with hybrid/WFH/flexible work has been shown to be a key component of mentally healthy work; this is - or should be - protected by the Health and Safety at Work Act. This backwards-looking call also has significant implications for disabled and/or neurodivergent workers. Not to mention the fact that not all public servants in hybrid work are based in Wellington. Perhaps if they hadn't slashed over 6,000 roles...

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👍🏾💯 Are we going to force all call centres to be in Aotearoa & co-located with their head office? Are we going to force execs to hop on international flights instead of doing Zoom meetings with overseas counterparts? The Coalition-of-Cruelty are so out of touch with the reality of work & workers today it is really scary they are (ostensibly) running the country eh?🫢

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One of the outcomes of the policy preferences of the many Right-wing 'think-tanks' is the 'reinforcement of traditional worker-employer relationships'. Now think about WFH in that context...

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I suspect the real threat they are trying to stave off is plummeting value for commercial space in the city. So many places are downsizing offices, and conversion of commercial office space to other uses is expensive at best.

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