Checklist for negotiating home based teleworking arrangements with employers

MSF has produced a checklist for negotiating home based teleworking arrangements with employers, although much is applicable also to people working from a teleservice centre for a single company. The main points are:

1. Home based working should always be voluntary.
2. Home based workers should be employees (enjoying full employment rights) and not self employed sub-contractors.
3. Ideally, home based teleworking should operate from a separate room in the home properly examined by qualified health and safety experts to ensure a safe working environment.
4. There should be regular opportunities for teleworkers in the same organisation to meet each other, as well as non-teleworking colleagues and managers, so that people do not feel isolated or excluded.
5. Teleworkers should have access to electronic mail and telephone links with each other - using the scope of the technology to expand contact between people and avoid further isolation.
6. Each teleworker should be assigned a particular manager whose responsibility it should be to keep in regular contact and who would also meet the teleworker on a regular basis.
7. Teleworkers should enjoy the same rates of pay and other employment benefits as non- teleworking employees in an organisation.
8. Teleworkers should be included in the career development programme of the organisation in which they work.
9. All equipment used should be supplied and maintained by the employer.
10. Financial arrangements should be agreed to cover the extra costs of teleworking, such as heating, lighting etc., and it may also be appropriate for a rental to be agreed for the use the employer makes of the employees home.
11. Employers should be responsible for the health and safety of teleworkers and have specialist health and safety advisers to give advice and to regularly visit and monitor health and safety.
12. Teleworkers should be represented, through their own employee representatives, on health and safety committees of the organisations that employ them.
13. Teleworkers should enjoy the same rights as other workers, to join trade unions and should have access to representatives, including the right to elect their own. In this regard, trade unions will need to think about the services they may need to offer teleworkers, including access to electronic mail, notice boards etc.
14. Employees who transfer from conventional based working to home based teleworking, should be entitled to a trial period and should have the right to return to the previous arrangements. All teleworkers should be entitled to an annual review of the arrangements and have the right to revert to the previous employment arrangements if they wish.

Source: Bill Walsh, National Officer, MSF, September 1993 - 'The Best of Both Worlds', MSF

Complete copies of this paper are available from MSF.