International trade unions are addressing the issue of remote work. On Wednesday 23 February, UNI Global Union, the international services sector trade union federation, published a set of guidelines aimed at local trade unions, to give them the tools for negotiating agreements on remote work that take into account issues that have been identified, such as trade union rights, collective labour rights, surveillance tools, whether arrangements are voluntary and reversible, workload and the right to disconnect. Therefore the union federation sets out 10 conditions that must be respected, with the key objective of making sure remote work does not become a means of weakening the position of employees.
Need for remote work to be organised. UNI Global Union’s 13-page document (available on the federation’s website in various languages) emphasises that remote work which becomes routine must not be the same as remote work that was required during the Covid-19 pandemic and therefore insists on the need to negotiate such arrangements. “The aim is to guarantee that these working arrangements reconcile workers’ requests for more flexibility while safeguarding labour and trade union rights and protections,” the federation writes in the introduction to the report, which highlights the lack of regulations in many countries.
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