Québec Solidaire introduces bill for the right to work from home

Quebec tabling legislation to create guidelines for working from home.

Québec Solidaire is tabling a bill Thursday to regulate a person’s right to work from home as part of a “hybrid” model.

In a press briefing, the party’s labour critic, Alexandre Leduc, pointed out that there’s an issue of “balance” when it comes to hybrid work.

“As we speak, it’s 100 per cent the decision of the boss. 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,” he said. “We think it’s not a good policy. You should have balance between the worker and the boss.”

Leduc rebuffed any suggestion that workers should instead be given the power to work from home full time.

“We are offering a hybrid method, so the workers…can ask to work from home from a hybrid perspective,” he explained.

If the request is refused, “for bad reasons,” according to Leduc, workers 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).

“The aim is not to create squabbles throughout Quebec,” he said, “but to reach a rapid decision in these situations, in the same way as for all other labour standards.”

The party also wants to ban the use of remote monitoring software by employers.

“It’s bad management practice, and would probably be considered harassment: nobody wants their boss watching them through a screen all the time,” he said.

Leduc notes that the bill would not apply to jobs that require workers to be on location full time, such as nurses or bus drivers.

Wednesday, Québec Solidaire co-spokesperson Ruba Ghazal told The Canadian Press she deplored the fact that “employers’ previous reticence about this way of working has returned.”

“This leads to conflicts where employers want people to return to their place of work more often...to exercise more control,” she said.

Work from home and hybrid models became popular during the COVID-19 pandemic, which forced workers across the world into isolation to avoid spreading the disease.

As for Québec Solidaire’s bill, those tabled in the National Assembly by opposition parties are rarely “called upon” by the government.

That is, they are rarely debated and studied in parliamentary committees before being adopted.

Though any member of parliament is allowed to table a bill, in practice, legislative initiative is the prerogative of the government, which decides, with its house leader, how to proceed.

With files from The Canadian Press.