Guest blog: New laws are needed for fair, flexible working rights for all after the pandemic - By Frances O'Grady, General Secretary of the TUC

The government order to work from home if you can is likely to be lifted on 21 June.

Some people will be itching to get back to their usual workplace. They may miss the social interaction. They may feel they can be more productive at their usual workstation. Or they may have found the last year hard because their home environment is not adequate as a shared space with family or housemates. New and younger workers, in particular, may have missed out on vital learning and development opportunities.

But many others will want to continue working from home for at least some of the time. Perhaps their employer had been sceptical in the past, but the last year has shown that workers can be trusted to work from home and can be just as productive.  

There are good reasons to hope that the right kind of home working will be on the menu of flexible working in the future. Home working can be a positive way to help people better balance their home and work life, especially for parents, carers and older workers. It can also help disabled people who too often face barriers to entering the workplace.

Of course, the majority of workers are simply not able to do their jobs from home. And there is a risk that the benefits of positive flexibility only flow upwards to managerial and professional grades. For many other workers predictability is the priority, with set hours that allow carers to manage commitments, rather than the disruption of coping with different shift patterns day-to-day or week-to-week.

So as more workplaces reopen, employers should consider new working patterns that meet everybody’s needs. And they must properly consult on the policies to deliver them.

Every worker should have a right to positive flexible working. And that means employers in all sectors must think about the range of flexible working patterns that can be accommodated in different roles across their organisations to meet the needs of all staff.

We’re at a crossroads on the future of flexibility. And if the focus is dominated by homeworking, we could end up with a new class divide between those are able to work from home and those who can’t. Within that divide, existing inequalities may worsen as younger workers and those outside London and the South East are already less likely to work from home. Or if working from home is seen as a substitute for quality, affordable childcare provision, or better paid leave for new mums and dads.

The right path is to strengthen rights across the board to all types of flexible working. Not just working from home but other patterns, such as having predictable or fixed hours, shift swaps, job-shares, flexitime, term-time only hours, and annual time credits or compressed hours.

Unions will negotiate with employers on behalf of members to achieve this fairness as far as possible. But working people need support from government too, with a much more solid foundation of rights.

Many people were surprised and disappointed that the Queen’s Speech did not include any legislation on employment rights, despite prior commitments to enhance rights at work, and making flexible working the default. 

The government must now act urgently to strengthen all workers’ rights to flexible working. And this should include protections against forced home working in ways that only benefit employers. The lesson of the pandemic must not be that rogue employers can cut costs by closing down their offices and forcing staff to work at home, leaving workers atomised and voiceless.

The TUC is preparing to publish research and policy proposals in the coming weeks on fair flexibility for all working people, whatever type of work they do. We will use this to press the government to act with the urgency that is needed, before workplace policies are set by employers that result in the unfairness of a two-tier workforce for flexible working. We will be arguing the case for better working lives for all. And whatever happens, worker people will always be better off with a union by their side.