By Jane McDowell

Toronto Metropolitan University (TMU) students say they will be negatively affected by Premier Doug Ford’s recent mandate—a full-time, five-days-a-week, in-office return for all Ontario Public Service (OPS) workers.

Before Jan. 5, OPS operated on a hybrid, flexible work model, allowing workers to
split their time between corporate offices and online locations, with a significant portion using a three-days-a-week in-office policy, a model well-loved by OPS workers.

However, now all OPS workers—around 60,000—will be required to work
in the office five days a week.

With many university students working or wanting to work for OPS, concern grows for how this mandate will deter and affect students’ ability to work for government and public service jobs, and whether they’ll be able to at all.

Visalini Ragurajan, a fourth-year accounting and finance student at TMU who has worked for the federal government and has considered working for OPS in the future.

She said the in-person mandate poses challenges to students.

“Hybrid work saves [student] employees a lot of time and money because as a
student, I know that commuting from the east side to the city can take so much time. It nearly takes me two hours back and forth,” she said.

Another student who is doing her co-op placement as a job evaluation specialist at Job Evaluation Initiative Branch (JEIB) under OPS who wishes to be anonymous due to protecting her job agrees.

The student said that most employees in their department work from home after submitting accommodation requests.

“Even coming in[to] the office, it’s just mostly sitting behind a screen and […] none of the meetings are in-person, they’re all online. So, it kind of defeats the purpose of coming in office versus staying at home,” they said.

The Ontario Public Service Employees Union’s (OPSEU) Central Employee Relations Committee chair, Amanda Usher, reached out to students across the province about their struggles with this mandate change.

“The return-to-office mandate is actually hitting the students and young workers the hardest. These are students earning student wages as per our collective agreement, which is often minimum wage or just above, who don’t own cars and rely on transit,” said Usher. “And now they’re being told to commute into Toronto five days a week and for some of them, that commute can cost like a huge chunk of their paycheque.”

Not only are there now new struggles with university students’ ability to manage OPS jobs, but now students’ ability to keep their jobs is at risk.

“The more that the government still has to spend money on office space, the less likely that they’re gonna get hired for a full-time position—and often younger workers are the first to be laid off, especially if they are new, if the government decides to start cutting,” said Gerard Di Trolio, a labour studies professor at McMaster University.

As an upper year student, Ragurajan is concerned about this.

“I think a lot of people graduating are a hundred per cent looking for full time opportunities in this job market […] if there [are] still limitations, it is going to be challenging for graduates who are just going to find work spaces,” she said.

People have expressed distaste online about this mandate change, not only with the little consideration for workers but the lack of transparency and conversation the Ontario government had with organizations like OPSEU, who were given less than 45 minutes’ notice and were not consulted on this change.

This has caused students to question whether they want to work for the OPS and other government organizations.

“A lot of [students], we’re hearing, are also balancing classes, exams, placements at the same time. So adding those two or three hours of commuting a day means less time to study and more burnout,” said Usher.

“These students are the future of public service, right? If their first experience in the government is financial stress and rigid rules instead of flexibility and support, we’re going to lose them,” said Usher.

University president Mohamed Lachemi said in an interview with The Eyeopener
that TMU is a complex institution and “we will not have a one-size-fits-all approach” to remote or on-site working.