'The aim is not to create squabbles throughout Quebec,' says party, citing need for balance between worker, boss
Québec Solidaire has introduced new legislation aimed at regulating a person’s right to work from home under a hybrid model, according to a recent report.
The proposed legislation seeks to address what the party views as an imbalance in the current remote and hybrid work arrangements across the province, says Alexandre Leduc, the party’s labour critic.
“As we speak, it’s 100 per cent the decision of the boss,” he says in a report from The Canadian Press (CP). “The boss can decide it’s 100 per cent work from home, and the next morning, he can decide it’s 100 per cent work from the office.
“We think it’s not a good policy. You should have [a] balance between the worker and the boss.”
Women say they experience less discrimination working remotely, according to a previous report.
Hybrid method proposed for Quebec
Leduc clarified that the bill does not propose fully remote work as a right. Instead, it offers a structured framework for hybrid arrangements.
“We are offering a hybrid method, so the workers…can ask to work from home from a hybrid perspective,” he says in the CP report posted in CTV News.
If workers believe that their request to work remotely has been denied without just cause, they would have the right to file a complaint with the Commission des normes, de l’équité, de la santé et de la sécurité du travail (CNESST), says Leduc in the report.
“The aim is not to create squabbles throughout Quebec,” he says, “but to reach a rapid decision in these situations, in the same way as for all other labour standards.”
The party is also looking to ban employers from using remote monitoring software, with Leduc calling it a “bad management practice” which “would probably be considered harassment”.
“Nobody wants their boss watching them through a screen all the time,” he says in the CP report.
Employers and the environment are benefitting from employees working the hybrid model, according to previous reports.
Remote workers under strikebreakers rule
Québec Solidaire has also tabled a separate bill to expand the province’s anti-scab legislation to include remote workers, according to the Montreal Gazette.
Bill 992 makes a single amendment to the Labour Code, to add that “the concept of establishment extends to any place where the duties of an employee who is a member of the bargaining unit on strike or locked out are discharged. This place may include one where telework is carried on,” according to the report.
Under current rules, employers are prohibited from using replacement workers during strikes or lockouts, but this restriction applies only to the “establishment” — traditionally defined as the physical workplace.
However, in 2021, Quebec’s Administrative Labour Tribunal reinterpreted this notion in the case Unifor, section locale 177 v. Groupe CRH Canada inc., according to Vincent Lalonde, an associate at law firm Stikeman Elliott.
The tribunal, he said, “broadened the notion of establishment prescribed by the Code by creating a new principle of ‘deployed establishment’ extending the limitations on the use of strikebreakers to employees working from home.”
“Jurisprudence has changed,” since that decision, Leduc says in the Montreal Gazette report.
In light of the ruling, it’s time to modernize the code to adapt to the reality of remote work, he says.
In February, Quebec tabled legislation that aims to ensure that essential government services will still be provided in case of labour conflicts. Bill 89 – An Act to Give Greater Consideration to the Needs of the Population in the Event of a Strike or a Lockout – aims to prevent disruptions that could negatively impact the population, particularly vulnerable individuals.
Leduc called that legislation “illegal”.
