The government of Australia’s most populous state on Monday ordered all public employees to work from their offices by default beginning on Tuesday and urged stricter limits on remote work after media reports provoked a fraught debate about work-from-home habits established during the COVID-19 pandemic.
New South Wales Premier Chris Minns said in a notice to agencies that jobs could be made flexible by means other than remote working, such as part-time positions and role sharing, and that “building and replenishing public institutions” required “being physically present.”
His remarks were welcomed by business and real-estate groups in the state’s largest city, Sydney, who have decried falling office occupancy rates since 2020, but denounced by unions, who pledged to challenge the initiative if it was invoked unnecessarily.
Photo: AFP
The instruction made the state’s government, Australia’s largest employer with more than 400,000 staff, the latest among a growing number of firms and institutions worldwide to attempt a reversal of remote working arrangements introduced as COVID-19 spread.
However, it defied an embrace of remote work by the governments of some other Australian states, said some analysts, who suggested lobbying by a major newspaper prompted the change.
“It seems that the Rupert Murdoch-owned Daily Telegraph in Sydney has been trying to get the New South Wales government to mandate essentially that workers go back to the office,” said Chris Wright, an associate professor in the discipline of work at the University of Sydney.
The newspaper cited prospective economic boons for struggling businesses.
The newspaper on Tuesday wrote that the premier’s decision “ending the work from home era” followed its urging, although Minns did not name it as a factor.
The union representing public servants said there was scant evidence for the change and warned the state government could struggle to fill positions.
“Throughout the New South Wales public sector, they’re trying to retain people,” said Stewart Little, general secretary of the Public Service Association. “In some critical agencies, like child protection, we’re looking at 20 percent vacancy rates, you’re talking about hundreds of jobs.”
Government offices have shrunk since 2020 and agencies would be unable to physically accommodate every employee on site, Little said.
Minns said that the state would lease more space, the Daily Telegraph reported.
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