Thomas Pringle (Donegal, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I am grateful for the opportunity to contribute to the debate on the important Bill before us today, the Labour Party's Working from Home (Covid-19) Bill 2020. I am glad that the Government has accepted the Bill, but I am concerned that its intentions for it might be slightly different from those of the Opposition.

Firstly, having the Bill will probably create a more positive working environment for everyone here. The ushers, service officers, people working in the questions office, parliamentary reporters, cleaners, political staff and others as essential workers are required to be here very often until completely unreasonable hours. Employment and working standards here should be setting the benchmark to be reached in other workplaces across the island. Listening to RTÉ’s "Today with Claire Byrne" show recently, and talking to any of the many cogs in this big wheel, would make one wonder about how compliant the Houses of the Oireachtas Service is with our own obligations under employment legislation.

The issues of the right to switch off and the access that employers have to employees have become far more prevalent in this digital era. Having our work emails synced to our mobile phones or iPads or just the one mobile phone for personal use as well as work use, for example, have all blurred the lines of when someone is or should be available for work.

The all-important work-life balance has been steadily eroded over recent years with the capitalist society pushing us all to work longer hours and be more available to employers, clients and colleagues at all times of day or night even while on annual leave.

With Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael constantly pushing up the pension age, when do we think we will get the opportunity to relax and spend time with family? I am a strong advocate of the Four Day Week Ireland campaign and look forward to seeing it gain momentum. A four-day week would represent real change for workers.

Covid-19 has changed how we work. Overnight, people were asked to stay home and to work from home, while schools and crèches closed. People were expected to juggle their caring responsibilities while working a full, productive day from home. Many were also struggling with broadband connections, access to necessary IT infrastructure and the constant "sorry, you’re on mute there" refrain on Zoom calls. People’s normal working hours became skewed and I fear that this new flexibility and accessibility of employees will be abused by employers. Instead of this being a positive opportunity to address the benefits of remote working and flexible working hours, it has generally been used to squeeze as much productivity out of people while ignoring any negative impacts on their mental health.

There is a gender aspect to this also. Research this year has shown that even in cases where both parents are working from home, it is still the woman in the relationship who is taking on most of the unpaid work and caring duties. A recent survey by Eurofound, the labour market think tank, found that Ireland had one of the highest rates of employees working from home during the pandemic. Around 40% of paid hours worked by employees were undertaken at home, while the figure in Belgium was highest at 52%. The survey also showed that people working from home who had children under 17 were most likely to experience work, life conflict, with an article in The Irish Timesreporting that this conflict was most notable for women. The article noted that 22% of respondents working exclusively from home reported difficulty concentrating on work because of family obligations, compared to 8% of those working in other locations.

Working from home has the potential to increase participation in the workforce by people with disabilities and with caring responsibilities, as well as by those living outside of cities and urban centres. I welcome this Bill. It will not fix everything but it is a small step in the right direction. It will amend the 1994 Terms of Employment (Information) Act to include a new paragraph around work-related communications outside the hours of work, amend the 1997 Organisation of Working Time Act to insert a new section 17A on the right to switch off and apply the 2005 Safety, Health and Welfare at Work Act to employees working temporarily from home. As Deputy Collins just argued, it is also important to encourage, if not oblige, workers to join a union. That would be significant in terms of looking after their interests.

I have not even mentioned other issues such as those living in overcrowded accommodation without access to workspaces and the myriad inequalities this pandemic has shone some much-needed light on. Let us take the awfulness of this year and make something positive for the future. Do we want to see people working from home or living at work?

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