On Nicola Willis’ Perverse Hostility To Working From Home

Vaccine work mandates, no. Work-in-the-office mandates? Hell yes, Finance Minister Nicola Willis is all for them. Given half the chance, she believes, “some people but not all” will just skive off, otherwise. Sigh. But here’s the thing. Normally, when the media wants to query Cabinet Ministers about events in their portfolio, the stock reply is: that’s an operational matter. Yet on this occasion Willis is happy to barge in and tell departmental heads how to manage their work arrangements with their staff. Can’t people be trusted to work such things out for themselves, without her busybody meddling?

In fact, Willis and PM Christopher Luxon are dictating basic operational matters that have serious implications for staff morale, the departmental budgets for office space, increased road congestion, and work productivity... without Luxon having any idea (a) how many staff will be affected, and (b) whether working from home is better, or worse, for productivity.

As for Willis, all she has to offer are anecdotes. Apparently, she has been lobbied by the capital’s hospitality industry to do something about the mess her government has made of Wellington’s retail economy. In essence, the public service is now being ordered to change its work patterns in order to subsidise cafe and restaurant owners.

According to Willis, the Wellington retail economy is in a tailspin because too many people are working from home. Really? Hasn’t the fact that her government has recklessly cut 6,000 good jobs out of the local economy got something to do with it?

No matter that the research tells us that some people can be more productive when given the flexibility to work from home. Most of the time, the Luxon government is happy to preach the need for flexibility in the workplace – although in practice, that “flexibility”tends to be a euphemism for endowing employers with more power to set wages and conditions, and fire workers at will.

In this case, business seems unwilling (or unable) to flexibly recognise that digital technology now allows for a hybrid work model of some days at work, some days at home. Yet business is refusinfg to accept this reality and adapt to it, and the Luxon government seems more than willing to help them turn back the clock.

IMO, the regulatory demand for “presentee-ism” in the office is an abuse of state power. Too bad we don’t have a Ministry of Regulations willing to challenge this bit of red tape, and stop Big Sister from telling us how to live our lives.

Footnote One: On RNZ this morning, Luxon had no clue how many public servants would be affected by this edict. Or how this directive would impact on road congestion, let alone how the hours of sitting in traffic might reduce productivity, staff morale and household budgets via the added transport costs.

Footnote Two: Working from home can not only be less costly and more amenable to a good work/life balance. It is also healthier. The pandemic kick-started the work- from- home model, and although we like to think and act as if Covid doesn’t exist anymore, the virus hasn’t actually gone away. Last week there were 1,012 reported cases of Covid infection and 13 deaths of people “with Covid” even though the ability to attribute causality for such deaths to Covid has been narrowed.

As mentioned, we like to think the pandemic is over. In reality, public servants are being ordered back into risk situations in poorly ventilated offices, on public transport and yes, in crowded cafes. At this point, the government doesn’t seem to know or care how Covid will interact with its directive. Will pre-existing health conditions automatically enable people to work from home? Will public servants be encouraged/allowed to wear masks at work?

Free Speech, For Some

Labour’s health spokesperson Dr Ayesha Verrall is right. The non disclosure agreements (NDAs) that Te Whatu Ora have forced on about 70 of their staff (on top of their usual confidentiality orders) are like something out of North Korea. The NDA gagging orders have been proliferating at Te Whatu Ora since last November, and the advent of the new government. So far though, the self appointed watch dogs of free speech – i.e. the Free Speech Unon – have not railed against them.

That could be because the FSU seems to exist mainly to champion the “right” of people pushing racist or anti-trans agendas to use public spaces as their platform, while being insulated from criticism. Somehow, health workers being forbidden under pain of losing their jobs (or prosecuted) if they speak openly doesn’t seem to make the grade as speech that the FSU feels to be worth protecting.

Poor boy, long ways from home

Talking of being driven far from home...Here’s the late great John Fahey playing his own cascading version of a classic blues that’s more commonly associated with Mississippi John Hurt:

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