The end of work?

After three years the feds have told their army of civil servants to return to the office. Two days a week. Starting in March. And this has ignited a war.

The union representing 35,000 CRA employees has responded with a strike threat. During tax season, of course, to disrupt as many Canadians as possible. Remote work’s a major issue. Apparently people want to deal with your tax return, conduct audits and handle taxpayer issues while they do laundry, walk da pooch and (especially) administer to children. The public broadcaster did a feature Friday on how the lack of affordable child care spaces in Ottawa (the epicentre of CRA operations) is a big factor, suggesting the back-to-the-cubicle edict is gross and unfair.

Do federal workers, especially in the CRA, have a duty to work in the supervised, regulated, secure, professional environment they were hired for? Do millions of citizens surrendering big hunks of their income have the right to this standard of attentive service and privacy? Or is this all about employees wanting incomes, benefits and pensions, plus work-life balance that lets them go grocery shopping or make dental appointments at 2 pm on Tuesday?

Without a doubt, Covid screwed up a lot, changed habits, gutted institutional authority, altered work and, mostly, did a number of people’s heads. The question Ottawa must grapple with is whether or not the impact of three years of WFH can be reversed. Should it even try? Does the government have a higher duty to its employees or its citizens?

Regular blog addicts will recall the paleo thinking that permeates this pathetic site. Work is work. Private time is not work. Employers have a right to full attention for the tasks employees are paid to perform. Work-life balance has way of turning into an 20-80 split. Corporate culture, memory and collaboration are real things. Zoom is fine for snowstorms and recovering from surgery. Otherwise get your butt in the chair. (Now imagine working for me…)

But the CRA-fed skirmish is underlining the fact that WFH’s destructive impact on personal career ambition may be hard to reverse. Impossible, even. The results of this are far-reaching and far from positive.

First (as we all know) the impact on residential real estate has been devastating. Covid cocooning fueled a housing lust unparalleled in modern history (and crazy values for stay-at-home stocks). Pandemic-induced urban flight destroyed the economics of non-metropolitan areas as Bunnypatch prices were bid to the moon. Household debt levels shot off the charts with $2 trillion in mortgages. HELOC borrowing exploded as people dipped into swelling equity to buy even more real estate. Affordability tanked. RBC says things are worse now than when mortgages cost 19%. And that brought us to now. A housing crisis, everyone says.

Second, as residential real estate has been forever corrupted, WFH has crippled commercial property. The impact on employers, investors and the economy is only starting to be felt. If a recession rolls in, the consequences will grow.

Pre-pandemic, when people actually went to work, the commercial vacancy rate in Toronto (for example) was 2%. Buildings were gong up. Expansion happening. Look at CIBC’s new head office complex, for example. Or Shopify’s huge move into oodles of leased space in that glitzy Well development.

My, my. Now ponder this sorry chart of current commercial vacancy rates from CBRE…

Covid. Tech industry crumbles. Crypto collapse. Workers who don’t want to go to work. Rising interest rates and occupancy costs. And now the spectre of an economic slowdown. The poor guys selling leased space call it a perfect storm. So whole floors in some of the downtown bank towers still sit empty. Last week Shopify dumped that 350,000 feet of space on the sublet market. It’s uncertain Google will ever move into the entire 20-storey building it committed to on King Street.

“We haven’t seen the worst of it,” says a CBRE spokesguy. “By the end of the year, I wouldn’t be at all surprised if it hits 20 per cent. And it could go even higher than that over the next couple of years.”

If WFH endures, if organizations like the mighty CRA lose their worker battle, downtowns of major cities could be transformed – into dormitories of condo dwellers. Eateries, grocery stores, nail salons and transit stops will be populated by people with shopping bags in arm, kiddies in tow or little white condo dogs on leads. All of them ‘working’, fingering their mobiles, perchance processing your tax return.

Good luck.

About the picture: “I just wanted to thank you and your coworker Sinan for taking the time to  discuss incorporated VS employee in your blog a few weeks back!” writes Ian. “I appreciate the post, for the time being I will be staying employee. I have attached a photo of Apollo. Although he looks small in the photo he is 80 pounds ”