Joyce Fegan: Don’t make us choose between caring and career

Let's not continue to force people to choose between their caring and their careers. Let's not continue with the outdated charade that every single worker has an unpaid stay-at-home supernanny who manages all of the caring responsibilities, house work, drop-offs, collections, cooking and cleaning, library book returns, visits to nursing homes — and who never ever gets even a little bit tired, not to mention sick.

There are three schools to the left of my house, and one Montessori opposite.

Every morning from about 8am, school-going children whizz past on their bikes, with parents in tow pushing younger siblings up the hill in buggies and double buggies, or with babies strapped to their chest. Cars pile up, parking on bends or across people’s driveways.

And that’s just the drop-off. There are varying collection times too.

This carefully constructed life of logistics is one known to many citizens the length and breadth of this country.

However, how central was this slog to the minds of those who sat around the Cabinet table in Dáil Éireann this week as they discussed new laws for remote working?

A week ago, Micheál Martin took to the plinth, Leo Varadkar not far behind, to tell the nation we were through the worst of the pandemic and the restrictions were a thing of the past. Back to business as usual.

Except it’s not.

Lockdowns showed us how crucial childcare and schooling are to the functioning of the country and its economy. Remember juggling video meetings with homeschooling and nap times? And they were the lucky parents, if you could call them that.

What about the workers who stacked our grocery shelves or inserted IV drips during lockdowns? How did they manage to teach the 12-times tables?

Then, when the budget was announced last October — after much talk of appreciation of childcare and learnings from the pandemic — did the Government begin the rollout of a public model of childcare? Not at all. All lip service. Let the slog roll on.

This side of the pandemic — and after all the talk of learnings around remote working, hybrid working, commuting, and quality of life — it seems our Government has missed out on implementing another lesson lockdowns supposedly taught us.

There are many people whose jobs will never be remote — retail workers, nurses, surgeons, and creche staff. There are also those who desperately want to get out from under the makeshift desk in their child’s Disney-themed bedroom.

However, there are also hundreds of thousands of people who, when the dust has settled, will appreciate being able to work from home on a day they have a dental check-up or the car’s NCT; or the day their 11-year-old catches the vomiting bug that’s going around, and on the following day when their nine-year-old has caught it too; and on the day they’ve to collect their mother from a hospital appointment.

This is the reality of life: we are workers and we are carers too. We have jobs, and lives.

Let’s not continue to force people to choose between their caring and their careers. Let’s not continue with the outdated charade that every worker has an unpaid stay-at-home supernanny who manages all of the caring responsibilities, housework, drop-offs, collections, cooking and cleaning, library book returns, visits to nursing homes — and who never ever gets even a little bit tired, not to mention sick.

We now have an opportunity, this side of the pandemic, to create robust — not lightweight — legislation to support the remote-working trend that has bedded in for a large number of workers over the last two years.

In a country where we’ve absolutely and utterly dropped the ball when it comes to public childcare, let’s at least make legislation that supports the worker and carer or parent who needs to have the option to work from home.

The draft legislation currently gives employers at least 13 grounds to refuse remote-working requests.

One is if there is an inordinate distance between the proposed remote location and the on-site location.

Define “inordinate”. Is it 10km away or is it 100km away?

We live in a country where we are acutely aware of the importance of legal wording, where the interpretation of legislation and constitutional amendments has actually meant the difference between life and death.

You’ll have to do better than “inordinate”.

We live in a country where people such as Olympic gold medalists can’t get a mortgage, so we move out of the city to find cheaper accommodation. We are all trying our best to function in a system with built-in structural flaws. Let’s not punish people for that.

We also live in a country where “expect queues on the Dunkettle Interchange” or “collision at Junction 9 on the M50” are part of our daily background noise. So forgive a worker who does not want to spend two hours a day stuck on a strip of tarmac.

Again, taxes pay for public transport and roads, and it’s a Government’s responsibility to ensure they function.

Also, if an employer refuses remote working based on “inordinate distance”, can you explain how companies such as Stripe, Google, and Bank of America can function with one employee in Ireland, with the rest of their staff dotted around the globe?

Under the draft legislation for remote working, there is a chance to appeal your employer’s decision to refuse you the right. If you appeal and you’re still not happy, you can go to the Workplace Relations Commission, but only for “technical” reasons. 

It begs the question: Are we only in the business of supporting business in this country? Do we care about people who care, be that parents or adult children of ageing parents?

This new legislation is one of the first forward-moving steps since the restrictions dropped last week, and it seems to weigh heavily in the favour of the employer.

Let’s not forget about culture and social norms here too, something legislation is specifically designed to leapfrog and force the hand of change on.

When it comes to other workplace practices, such as paternity benefit, the data shows us that almost half of partners and fathers are not taking it. In December 2020, Roderic O’Gorman, the equality, disability, integration and youth minister, told the Irish Examiner that it was disappointing to see that paid benefits were not being taken up.

“I think we have more to do to change that mindset about the division of responsibility when it comes to caring for children,” he told deputy political editor Elaine Loughlin.

If a new parent needs to have their arm twisted to take two weeks off when a baby arrives, imagine every single worker willing to go head to head with their employer over working from home, even one day a week?

Sometimes you can’t leave something as important as quality of life or caring responsibilities between an employer and an employee, you have to legislate for that.

A tiny bit done. Far, far more to do.