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Montreal is tightening its telework policy, requiring some 6,000 municipal workers to be in the office at least three days a week starting Sept. 14.
Managers were already subject to a three-day threshold, which will remain unchanged. But the rest only need to go to the office two times a week.
The directive was announced to municipal employees by email Wednesday. The city says the change is intended to foster greater team cohesion and collaboration.
It also notes that trends in the labour market are moving in that direction, in both public and private organizations.
“Three days a week is a good balance,” Mayor Soraya Martinez Ferrada said Thursday. “This balance of returning to the office will also foster collaboration and ideas.”
The new policy has angered the workers union, the Syndicat des fonctionnaires municipaux de Montréal, which had wanted telework to be on the agenda in negotiations that began a week ago as part of renewing the collective agreement.
“We are asking that it be negotiated, to sit down at the table and have mechanisms to reach an agreement with the employer. It would also require the employer to provide arguments to justify its decision,” said union president Éliane Scofield Lamarche.
“If the employer has evidence that increasing days in the office has an impact on productivity, we would be very curious to obtain it.”
Martinez Ferrada told Radio-Canada that, while negotiations are underway, “presence in offices is a prerogative the city has retained. It has always been that way.”
The union also accuses the city of imposing new rules at the request of the Chamber of Commerce of Metropolitan Montreal, which wants more employees in the office to revitalize downtown.
20% office space downtown is vacant
In a report published in January, the chamber said nearly 20 per cent of downtown office space is vacant, resulting in estimated losses of about $14.1 million per week for retail, restaurants and culture.
The chamber denies interfering in the city’s labour relations, but its president, Isabelle Dessureault, defended the administration’s position.
“The role of a chamber of commerce in its community is to ensure a region remains prosperous, innovates and is creative,” Dessureault said Thursday. “And for that, studies around the world show that people need to be together more to move forward.”
She called the return to the office a global trend, and noted the chamber is not against the hybrid model.
“But it has already been several years since the pandemic ended,” she said.
Ontario, Ottawa return to office
Since the beginning of 2026, Ontario public servants have been directed to work five days a week in the office, while Quebec public servants are required to be in the office three days a week.
Starting in July, the federal public service will require four days in person, and starting in May, managers will be required to be in the office five days a week.
The Public Service Alliance of Canada has filed an unfair labour practice complaint with the Federal Public Sector Labour Relations and Employment Board.
Like the Montreal white-collar union, the alliance accuses the federal government of bypassing ongoing negotiations on working conditions, including telework.
In the private sector, several major Canadian employers required a full- or part-time return to the office last year, including Rogers, Amazon, RBC, BMO, Scotiabank and TD Bank.