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Page updated:
4 February 1997
Page owner:
ETO Site Team
Telework: Trade Unions Responses
This summary is based on a contribution by Andrew Bibby, whose 1996 report for the international white-collar union federation FIET (International Federation of Commercial, Clerical, Professional and Technical Employees), Trade Unions and Telework, investigates current trade union thinking on teleworking. The report is online at http://www.eclipse.co.uk/ pens/bibby/fietrpt.html. Andrew can be reached at andrew.bibby@mcr1.poptel.org.uk.
A British union, MSF (Manufacturing Science and Finance) has provided a FAQ setting out its teleworking Code of Practice.
There is now a wide range of publications and material available from individual trade unions across Europe on the subject of teleworking. A number of unions and works councils have had direct experience in negotiating home telework agreements with employers.
In general, trade unions have adopted a pragmatic response to teleworking; they are not hostile to the idea as such but they are conscious that traditional forms of home-working (usually undertaken by women workers) have often led to exploitation in the form of very low pay and the avoidance of normal workers' rights, so they are anxious that this situation is not repeated for home-based telework. Unions also highlight the potential disadvantages as well as advantages of teleworking. Issues include possible erosion of employment conditions and status of the teleworker, isolation from colleagues, career marginalisation, questions of health and safety (arising, for example, from poor ergonomics of the home office and its furniture), cross-impact between working time and private time, and the costs involved in working at home.
Most union involvement has been in the introduction of home-based teleworking in an existing work force, where they have sought to make telework voluntary rather than compulsory, to retain equal status for teleworkers with non-teleworkers, and to obtain commitments as to compensation for additional costs.