The teleworking plan for State officials announced this week by the Government, which will allow remote employment three days a week to save energy, contrasts with the reality experienced by most companies.
Working from home is on the decline and in the last quarter of this year this modality has reached its lowest level among wage earners since the 2020 confinement, data from the EPA and the Red.es observatory coincide. If the self-employed are also taken into account, a group where teleworking has always been more common, the percentage is similar to that of the last two quarters –see graph–, with a clear downward trend.
In the second quarter of 2020, with all the covid restrictions in force, 16.97% of employees telecommuted one day a week, the highest proportion ever recorded in Spain. There was no other. The country started with one of the lowest levels of remote employment in the environment, with a meager 2%. A year later, in the same quarter of 2021, the percentage fell to 11.87%, and from January to March of this year it remained at 9.87%. A certain decrease compared to the peak of the pandemic was foreseeable, considers Carlos Gutiérrez, Secretary of Studies and Union Training of the CC.OO, who participated in the negotiations of the Teleworking law. With the gradual return to normality, attendance has been recovering.
However, the drop in remote work has been more pronounced than expected by social agents, acknowledges Núria Gilgado, secretary of union policy of the UGT of Catalonia. In fact, in Catalonia the drop is even greater and only 8.8% of employed people now have this possibility. Gilgado also recalls that only 5% of collective agreements in the community contemplate teleworking. In the civil service of Catalonia, on the other hand, the possibility of two days of remote employment on a voluntary basis is stipulated.
There are paradoxical cases, such as that of the ICT sector, whose agreement in Catalonia is currently being negotiated. Employees in this activity denounce that most companies in the industry require teleworking, but do not give them the material or compensate them for the costs of electricity or internet connection, for example. "Teleworking must always be voluntary," adds the UGT representative.
In any case, this is an exception. What happened? "Some companies, especially SMEs and micro-enterprises, say they cannot afford telecommuting for their employees and opt for face-to-face work," says Gutiérrez. An entrenched culture of presenteeism, together with a labor structure with a great weight of jobs where it is not possible to work remotely, have just completed the equation.
“We encountered many difficulties; In general, the companies that approve teleworking are those that obtain an economic benefit from having their employees remote, because that way they pay less office rent,” Gilgado underlines.
In short, the expectations raised at the dawn of the pandemic, both among social agents and among citizens, have not been met. The latest study by the National Observatory of Technology and Society (ONTSI) indicates that even at the end of last year up to 29% of the population believed that teleworking would increase. Men (34%) thought about it more than women (24%). So far they have been wrong.
There is another derivative on the teleworking plan for State officials. Both Gutiérrez and Gilgado agree that the legitimate right to remote employment cannot undermine public service to citizens. Both issues must be combined. "Some procedures can only be done electronically and the necessary presence must be guaranteed to attend to everyone," they insist. That it does not happen, they continue, as with the network of bank branches, whose decrease has given rise to a revolt of older people demanding better care. The Government indicates here that civil servants must ensure a minimum presence in their jobs to cover these situations.
