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MARTIN BUREAU / AFP

After several months of forced teleworking during the health crisis, many companies are recalling their employees to their premises, causing some misunderstanding, and trying to negotiate agreements to find the right dose of remote work.

If only a quarter of employees were working on site at the end of March, they were already 50% at the end of May.

At the end of July, teleworking, in full swing with confinement, only concerned one in ten employees, according to the latest data from the Ministry of Labor.

"For the start of the school year, we received as instructions (to do) one day of telework per week", "a very contradictory injunction" while barrier gestures must be respected and physical meetings avoided.

It is even "a little demotivating", testifies Damien (first name changed).

For this 40-year-old who supervises a small team in the IT field within an EDF subsidiary, September therefore sounded the return to the ante-Covid regime, after 100% teleworking during confinement and a very gradual return thereafter, at the head office located in La Défense.

" Cold shower "

This announcement had the effect of a "cold shower" and "people moan a little", confides this Parisian who spends an average of 1 hour 30 minutes daily in public transport.

"Some teams must have lost their footing" during confinement and "to avoid making special cases, the company makes general rules", he says, noting that, "on the side of top management, there are has a desire to reframing and not to go too fast on the subject ”.

Because while many have appreciated teleworking in terms of saving time in transport and balancing life, others, including team leaders, have reservations.

According to an OpinionWay survey carried out at the end of May for a business consulting firm, 85% of teleworkers want to keep the possibility of teleworking but a majority also wants more rules to regulate it.

Orange is ahead

The social partners must decide on Friday whether they will launch the negotiation of a national inter-professional agreement (ANI), desired by the unions.

In many companies, such as the car manufacturer PSA or the airport manager ADP, management and unions have already started, or will launch, negotiations to agree on the rules for teleworking.

With a first agreement on telework signed in 2009, Orange has a certain “hindsight” on the subject, explains Martine Bordonné, director of Teleworking and Nomadism of the group.

In France, before the Covid, 36,000 employees (around 39% of the eligible workforce) regularly or occasionally benefited, on a voluntary basis and via an amendment to the employment contract, from a maximum of three days of teleworking per week.

Since September 1, this system has been maintained, but "a measure of 'extended teleworking' allows employees who had not experienced it and those who only teleworked half a day or one day per week, to do so up to 'two days a week,' according to Martine Bordonné.

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  • Negotiation

  • Job

  • Labor law

  • Covid 19

  • Society

  • Confinement

  • Coronavirus

  • Union

  • Teleworking