While the government pushes to resort to telework to halt the progression of the Covid-19 epidemic, a study by the National Agency for the Improvement of Working Conditions (Anact) published in early December reveals that companies remain “cautious” see “reluctant” to generalize it. Monday evening Prime Minister Jean Castex announced that at the start of the school year, the use of teleworking will be made “mandatory” in all companies and for all employees for whom it is possible, at the rate of three days minimum per week and, if possible, four days. Labor Minister Elisabeth Borne will hold consultations with the social partners on this subject on Tuesday, he added, specifying that the measure would take effect. “for a period of three weeks”.
A growing number of collective agreements
As a consequence of the pandemic, teleworking is the subject of a growing number of agreements: 2,720 in 2021, according to ministry figures as of November 15, after 1,980 for the year 2020. “Following the first containment linked to Covid, many companies“have indeed “negotiated their first teleworking agreement or renegotiated the existing agreement”, according to Anact researchers, who studied 40 collective agreements signed in 2020 from the D @ ccord statistical database of the Ministry of Labor (Dares).
A national inter-professional agreement (ANI) of 6 November 2020 – “For a successful implementation of teleworking“- proposed a general framework, completing and extending a previous ANI dating from 2005. “If these texts mark an increase since the start of the crisis, the upward trend has been expressed since 2018 (+ 30% annually) while telework is not a compulsory negotiation topic”, however, notes the Anact.
“Caution” and “reluctance”
Anact draws up a typology according to the teleworking approach which is reflected in the texts between “reluctant”, “cautious”, “convinced” and “experimenters”. About a third of the agreements studied offer a maximum of one day telework per week or less, and half of them offer two days a week maximum.
It leads to “to think that ‘reluctant’ or ‘cautious’ type agreements remain in the majority in 2020 “.
“Right to telework”?
The most proactive are companies with 50 to 250 employees which represent 40% of those who favor teleworking. Those with less than 50 employees or from 250 to 1,000 are then represented on an equivalent basis (25% each) and 10% have more than 1,000 employees.
Regarding the sectors of activity, in 2020, the most represented are manufacturing industry and specialized scientific activities and technical (16%), financial and insurance activities (11%), automotive (11%), information and communication (8%).
Based on the agreements concluded in very small and medium-sized enterprises, the researchers believe that“before the crisis, (it was) often the individual approach to teleworking that was implemented (…) with case-by-case management of requests“, in connection with personal situations. 2020 and its confinements mark an evolution with apprehended teleworking “like the transposition of home office activities“but not yet perceived”as a form of work organization in its own right (…) mixing face-to-face and distance“.
Asked in the study, the trade unionist Bénédicte Moutin, CFDT confederal secretary in charge of the quality of life at work, considers that according to the “maturity” of the company, “we can see agreements which were rather limiting switch towards a ‘right to telework'”, with for example a “self-planning of telework days by teleworkers themselves “.