Labour rights issues with telework/home office

For several decades, in particular in media, increased digitalisation and use of digital tools lead to a “normadisation” of work, either on a voluntary basis in the case of home office, or due to the very nature of journalism involving travels and meetings with sources, in the case of mobile work. This may have brought certain economic and material benefits to employers and workers (e.g. increased flexibility and autonomy, more possibilities to ensure work-life balance, reduced commuting times, etc.). However, the massive increase of home office since the Covid-19 pandemic also led to negative developments, whereby employers create a misleading perception for their workers that they should be always available and connected for professional reasons outside of the agreed working hours, with the increased risk of blurring the work-life balance. This aspect of work-life balance is even more critical for women journalists, given that during and after the pandemic, women carry out most of the domestic tasks, which of course is getting worse when home from home.

These changes also lead to certain changes of workers’ labour rights, such as fair remuneration between “newsroom workers” and “home workers”, unremunerated overtime or the non-respect of working time, an increase in workload, etc. According to a broad survey made in 2020 by Eurofound[1], 27% of respondents working from home reported that they had worked in their free time to meet work demands. Although workers feel “more efficient” when working at home, up to 70% of them also tend to work overtime and pay for equipment at their own cost[2], according to a survey covering 10.000 workers published in France in September 2021 by the trade union CGT.

Therefore, workers may also suffer more from physical and mental health and safety problems: musculoskeletal disorders, techno-addiction/stress, physical isolation, emotional/physical exhaustion and burnouts. In addition, connected professions such as journalists may be subject to monitoring processes through mobile phones or other devices to obtain GPS tracking information about their actual location or daily routines. The absence of new contacts also raises questions of openness and diversity: instant messaging and information-sharing software theoretically allow people to break down barriers and get in touch with many people, but paradoxically over the past 18 months, many people have mainly communicated with their immediate colleagues through video-conferencing.

These changes are part of long-term trends that largely preceded the Covid-19 crisis: flexibility, individualisation of work, rationalisation of space, with the reduction of square metres or flex office (absence of allocated offices). There are also new ways of office management with the delegation of administrative tasks to employees, who register their own holidays or travel expenses via specific online tools or applications.

Will the Covid-19 pandemic be an “accelerator” of these transformations? It is a bit early to say. But surely it created specific challenges also for journalists and media professionals.

[1] “COVID-19 unleashed the potential for telework – How are workers coping?”, Eurofund, June 2020 [2] https://ugictcgt.fr/wp-content/uploads/sites/19/2021/09/DOSSIER-PRESSE-TE%CC%81LE%CC%81TRAVAIL-UGICT-CGT-6-sept-2021.pdf