The Machine Is New, the Chain Is Old: A Class Anatomy of Remote Work

The Remote and Hybrid Work Regulation: Our Rights, the Traps in the Contract, and a Programme for Unions

September 26, 2026 at 09:17 AMAuthor: Oğuz Demirkapı

The Machine Is New, the Chain Is Old: A Class Anatomy of Remote Work

The Factory on the Kitchen Table

A Trade Unionist's Letter to Young Comrades on the Hybrid Work Regulation

Dear Young Comrades,

A great many of you are reading this at a laptop — perhaps at a kitchen table, perhaps on the edge of a bed, perhaps in a café, ashamed of sitting three hours over a single glass of tea. Some of you have just started your first job and read the words "hybrid working opportunity" in the advertisement as if they were a fringe benefit. Some of you finished school on a screen in the pandemic and started work on a screen as well; you even have friends who resigned without ever having seen the office.

I am writing this letter to you on the occasion of a regulation amendment published in the Official Gazette on 25 September. The change is short, its language is technical, and in the news it was given both as "glad tidings for workers" and as a "legal cover". I shall give you neither glad tidings nor a lament. I shall try to tell you how a trade unionist looks at a workplace, at a contract, at a regulation. Because a "supplementary protocol" will soon be put in front of you, and knowing what you must ask as you sign that paper is more important than the regulation itself.

In our earlier Gig Economy Dossier essay we told how our courier comrades were turned into "tradesmen" and taken out of wage-labour. This piece is the desk-bound sibling of that story.

First the facts: what has changed?

The amendment published in the Official Gazette of 25 September 2026, No. 33381 added a new paragraph to Article 9 of the Remote Work Regulation published in the Official Gazette of 10 March 2021, No. 31419. The whole paragraph is two sentences; I take it exactly as Evrensel reported it, because in a moment we shall dwell on a single word of it:

"It may be agreed that the performance of work be fulfilled in part at the workplace and in part by the remote-work method. In that case the days and the working hours the worker will spend at the workplace and remotely are determined in the contract of employment."

According to this:

A part of the weekly or monthly work may be done at the workplace, a part remotely. This is called "mixed" or "hybrid" work.
The days and hours to be worked at the workplace and remotely are written expressly in the contract of employment or in a protocol added to the contract.
The regulation does not make hybrid work compulsory; it ties it to the parties' written agreement. According to reports the contract is also expected to set out the order of communication and meetings, occupational health and safety measures, and the principles of equipment and data security.
The regulation entered into force on the date of its publication.

The ground on which this paragraph sits is the 2021 regulation. Let us also recall the provisions of that regulation that are critical from the worker's point of view, because hybrid contracts will be built on top of them:

A written contract is required for remote work. The definition of the work, the manner of its performance, its duration, its place, the wage and the form of payment must be written down.
The provision of the necessary materials and work tools by the employer "is the rule", but "unless otherwise agreed in the contract of employment". We shall come back in a moment to this four-word escape hatch.
How expenses are to be met is left to the contract; there is no minimum compensation duty on the employer.
The employer sets the rules on the protection of data; the worker is obliged to comply.
In the compelling reasons listed in the regulation, the worker's consent is not sought for the move to remote work.

Cihan Çelik of Evrensel ran this change under the headline "a legal cover for flexible and precarious employment" and asked two labour academics, Murat Özveri, a doctor of labour economics, and Özgür Müftüoğlu. I shall take up their warnings one by one in a separate section below. The headline is right. But as a trade unionist I must add this as well: what will be inside the cover depends on whose hand is put into that cover. The whole trouble of this piece is that.

The warnings of the two labour academics who spoke to Evrensel

The value of the report is that it brings together two voices that read the regulation not as a legal detail but as a class move. Let us take what they said in order and open out what each of them means for a young worker.

"The taking of rulelessness into the rule"

Özgür Müftüoğlu reminds us that hybrid work is not new. It had already become widespread with the pandemic. But, he says, "Because it did not have a fully legal ground, it was directed at the arbitrary will of the bosses. The worker could refuse. What is happening today is the taking of that rulelessness into the rule."

This sentence tells a great deal. In capitalism the law is most often the subsequent writing-down of the power relation in the field. First the boss does something in practice; if the worker cannot resist, that de facto situation later enters the legislation and takes the name "law". Hybrid work has been applied in practice for six years; now it has gained legal legitimacy. The rule-maker did not recognise a new right; it whitewashed and sealed an existing practice.

Müftüoğlu also places this in a wider history: flexibility is a process "whose infrastructure has been prepared by neoliberal policies since the 1970s", and in Turkey the way was opened by Labour Law No. 4857, enacted in 2003. Part-time work, on-call work, temporary agency work, working-time averaging... All of them entered with that law or with the amendments that followed. The hybrid paragraph is the new link in this chain.

Kararlaştırılabilir: a one-word trick

Murat Özveri draws our attention to a single word in the paragraph: kararlaştırılabilir — "may be agreed", "can be stipulated". And he says: "These are residual legal rules in labour law — default, dispositive rules. The practical result is that whatever the boss says is what is done."

Young comrades, you must learn this distinction, because the whole class content of labour law is hidden here:

A mandatory rule is a rule the parties cannot change by agreement. "Weekly working time is at most forty-five hours" is mandatory; even if you sign "I shall work fifty hours", it is void. This is the reason labour law exists: because the worker is the weaker party, to protect the worker against their own signature.
A residual rule (a default, dispositive rule) is a rule applied only if the parties have not agreed otherwise. It says "it may be done thus" and leaves the rest to the parties.

Now think: to leave a matter between two unequal parties to a residual rule is to leave that matter to the stronger party. In Özveri's words: "Because an employee does not have the power to bargain with the boss, the contract of employment will in all likelihood be shaped as the boss wishes. So the regulation is not a safeguard for employees; it will merely give the boss a legal safeguard when the boss wants to impose hybrid work in the contract of employment."

That is, this regulation gives a safeguard not to the worker but to the boss. This finding is the key we shall use in the rest of the piece.

The questions from which the regulation flees

Özveri also lists two "vital" matters the regulation ought to have resolved and does not touch at all: "Will an accident that happens while working remotely, because of an electric shock at the computer, be counted as a work accident? Will the boss bear the cost of the work tools used, of the internet or of the electricity?" The answer: the regulation does not answer these questions. The place where a regulation is silent is the place where the stronger party will speak.

Müftüoğlu makes the cost side concrete as well: electricity and internet are loaded onto the employee; "meal and travel money may be left out of the contract"; in return the boss is freed "from the burdens that a large working space such as rent brings". This is precisely what we shall name below the "invisible wage cut".

The "opportunity" sold to women and the young

One of the most important findings in the report is that the regulation is being marketed, in the language of "flexicurity" in the Medium-Term Programme (OVP), as an opportunity for women and the young. Müftüoğlu dissolves this illusion in two sentences: women may think "I shall look after the children and do the housework as well, and I shall take the job along with me"; the young may think "I can make time for other fields and I can work as well". "But the studies done on this matter in the world as well show that a much heavier workload is loaded onto employees, and housework is loaded on top of it."

The target audience of this piece is exactly those young people. So take this warning as spoken to you: where you are told "you will manage your own time", your time is most often managed twice. Once by the employer, and once by the needs of the home.

The space of organisation

Müftüoğlu's perhaps most vital warning is about organisation: "You are not in the same workplace; you are not together with the people with whom you live the same things, the same problems. You know them only over a telephone connection, perhaps by their voices; now and then you perhaps see them. You are not living the same things." Class consciousness is born of common experience. Every regulation that fragments common experience also fragments the material ground of class consciousness.

Imposed from above

Last, the process: "Nobody knows; you get up one morning and a decree appears. From above, imposed from above..." A regulation that changes the working conditions of millions of workers was published without a single table being set with the unions, without a single mechanism in the name of social dialogue being operated. The demand TİSK has voiced for years, however, found its counterpart in the same text. Who sat at the table, and who had no news of it, already says for whom the regulation was written. Müftüoğlu's conclusion is ours as well: "Precisely for this reason, here the employees, the unions, must raise their voice."

Not a paragraph on its own, but the first link in a package

If you read this paragraph on its own it looks harmless, even a little regulatory. Is it a bad thing to say "let the days be written into the contract"? It is not. But a trade unionist never looks at a regulation on its own; they look at what else is being cooked at the same table.

At the same table in these same days there are the following:

The Medium-Term Programme 2027–2029. The Programme envisages legislative work for "remote work, hybrid work, part-time work, project-based work and the platform economy". All of them in the same sentence. Pay attention to this lining-up: hybrid work has been put in the same basket as the platform economy.
Flexible hours in the public service. On the model announced by Treasury and Finance Minister Şimşek, the public employee's day will be divided into a five-hour "core" time and a remaining "flexible" time; it is aimed to begin in the second quarter of 2027. In the words of KESK Co-Chair Ahmet Karagöz: "They are trying to package insecurity and present it as if it were a programme in the public employee's favour."
The bosses' mouth. TİSK President Özgür Burak Akkol says that flexibility is "not a preference but a necessity".

To present a thing as a "necessity" is the oldest way of taking it outside discussion. The weather is not discussed; a necessity is not discussed either. Yet flexibility is not a weather report; it is a matter for bargaining. The question of whose hour, whose home, whose electricity will flex is a bargain between the classes.

What is interesting is that this time all three of the union confederations have met on the same point. In the statements compiled in the same report, TÜRK-İŞ sees flexible work as "a cover for precarious work". According to DİSK the bosses' insistence is "to cut the worker's cost and to trim their rights". HAK-İŞ says the result in the field will be "the worker working more and being paid less". Three different ideological lines, a single diagnosis. This is a rare common ground that shows what the worker is living in the field.

Where does a trade unionist look from?

Let me give you three questions you can use on every regulation. We use these questions often in The Computing Worker's Handbook, because they open almost everything:

In whose hands? Who decides the decision to work from home, who decides the decision to return? Whose property are the computer, the software, the data?
Under whose control? Who determines the days, the hours, the availability, the measurement of performance? Who sets the rule, who is obliged to obey the rule?
To whose benefit? Into whose pocket does the time saved on the road go? Onto whose profit is the rent of the closed office floor added? From whose budget does the electricity bill at home come out?

When you put these three questions to the hybrid regulation the answer is this: the decision is between the employer and the worker one by one, that is, in practice, in the employer's hands. Control is with the employer, because they write the rules, they give the equipment, they install the software. Benefit is distributed according to bargaining power. Bargaining power is strong in the organised worker and vanishingly weak in the unorganised worker.

For this reason a trade unionist's first sentence is this: Hybrid work is neither good nor bad; it is good or bad according to under whose control it is. The regulation leaves control with the employer. Our job is to share that control, and if possible to take it.

An old story: domestic industry is returning

Let me tell you a scene from history. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries in Europe, merchants distributed raw wool to peasant homes. The family spun and wove at home; the merchant collected the finished cloth and paid by the piece. This is called the "putting-out system" or "domestic industry". The merchant had neither a workshop rent nor a heating expense nor a limit on the working day. The working day depended on how long the candle burned.

The factory largely abolished this system. But Marx, in the machines chapter of Capital, draws attention to something: beside the factory "modern domestic industry" went on living, and this was among the most unscrupulous forms of exploitation. Why? Because the workers were scattered, they did not see one another, they could not resist; there was no limit to the working day; and moreover the space, the light, the heat were on the worker's own back. In the same work Marx also says that piece-wages are the wage-form "most appropriate" to the capitalist mode of production, because they make the worker their own overseer.

Now look at this picture and bring it to today: scattered workers, production inside the home, space and energy loaded onto the worker, a working day whose limit is unclear, performance measured by the result. The only difference is data in place of wool, a laptop in place of the loom, performance software in place of the merchant's steward.

Remember our slogan: The machine is new, the chain is old. Hybrid work carries the possibility of domestic industry returning in a digital form. Whether this possibility is realised depends not on the technology but on the balance of forces between the classes.

Pluses and minuses: a set of scales with a class vision

Now let us be honest. Hybrid work has real gains from the worker's point of view. A trade unionist who ignores them loses their credibility in the worker's eyes from the first day. If you go into the field saying "working from home is bad", a worker who spends three hours a day in traffic will, quite rightly, turn their back on you.

Our stance is neither to smash the machine nor to worship the machine. We claim the gains, we expose the traps, and we struggle for the gains to remain with the worker.

What can be a real gain for the worker	What can turn into a trap from a class point of view
Travel time and travel expense fall; in the large cities hours a day can be won back	The hours won can be added to the working day with the words "you are at home anyway"
One is to some extent freed from instant surveillance in the office, from the pressure to "be seen at the desk"	Surveillance does not disappear; it is handed to software and enters the home
Those with a care load, disabled workers, those living with a chronic health problem can join the labour force more easily	Working from home is put in the place of a public care service (the crèche, the care home); the care load stays on the woman's back
It may be possible, by living outside the metropolis, to escape in part from rent pressure	The employer uses geography as well; the wage is lowered "to the price of the place you live", the work is shifted to cheap regions
In work that requires concentration, productivity and the quality of the work may rise	The counterpart of the rising productivity is written not into the wage but into profit; targets are raised
The writing of the days into the contract provides, on paper, a safeguard against unilateral change	It is not the worker who writes the contract but the employer; with the escapes of "unless otherwise agreed" the safeguard is emptied
Getting away from office fights, from a toxic work environment, can be a relief	The same distance pulls workers apart from one another; the space of organisation is scattered

The left-hand column of the table is real. The right-hand column is real as well. What will decide which weighs heavier is under whose control the gains in the left-hand column will remain.

Why do we claim the pluses?

A worker's time is the working class's scarcest resource. Since the nineteenth century the most fundamental struggle of the workers' movement has been the struggle to shorten the working day: eight hours' work, eight hours' rest, eight hours for ourselves. Today in the large cities the road swallows a significant part of this third eight hours, and not a kuruş is paid in return.

Working from home carries, in principle, the possibility of giving a part of this unpaid time back to the worker. That is not a thing to be despised. In the same way, for a disabled comrade excluded from the labour force because they cannot go to the office, or for a worker who has to care for an elderly mother or father, remote work can be a path of access to the right to work.

But take care: these gains do not remain with the worker of themselves. History has taught us this: every technology that raises productivity, if the worker is not organised, turns in capital's hands into a means of raising the intensity of work. The steam engine too was offered to the worker with the words "you will tire less". To claim the gain is to turn it into a written right: that the time won back not be added to the working day, that the flexibility provided for care be used by the worker's decision, that the right of access be the worker's demand and not the employer's favour.

Why do we expose the minuses?

The cost is being moved silently into the home

The office was capital's expense: rent, electricity, heating, internet, desk, chair, cleaning. Every day worked from home a part of these expenses passes onto the worker's household. The figure on the payslip stays the same, but the real wage in your pocket falls. We may call this an invisible wage cut.

The regulation loads the equipment onto the employer "unless otherwise agreed" and leaves the meeting of expenses to the contract. That is, the law does not set a floor. Every regulation that does not set a floor leaves the floor to bargaining power. We all know what the bargaining power of a young and unorganised worker is in their first contract of employment.

The walls of the working day are coming down

The factory gate was the physical limit of the working day. When you went out through the gate, work ended. At home that gate is not there. A message that comes at nine in the evening, a Sunday request of "could you just take a look", an online icon that stays green all the time... Each looks small; when they are gathered, an unpaid overtime regime is established.

In Turkey the right to disconnect is not recognised by law. Overtime, moreover, is the hardest thing to prove at home: there is neither a turnstile, nor a card-reader, nor a witness. The burden of proof stays in practice with the worker. The core of the chapter Marx wrote on the working day was capital's tendency to lengthen the working day without limit and the worker's struggle to limit it. That struggle has not ended; it is now going on at the kitchen table.

Bargaining is being individualised

The regulation says "mutual consent". It sounds pleasant. But consent has a condition: being able to say no. In a country where unemployment is high, higher still among the young, and where broadly defined unemployment runs far higher, as in the TÜİK: Two Figures, One Country: 8.1% and 30.6% essay, what power has a young person applying for a job to say "no" to the protocol put in front of them? I shall open the answer to this question in figures, and the gap between what the law writes and what the workplace lives, in two separate sections below.

The regulation defines working conditions not from the collective agreement but from the individual contract. To a trade unionist's eye the meaning of this is clear: a thing that ought to be a matter for collective bargaining is being reduced to a paper the worker signs alone. On the public side the situation is graver still: Law 4688 ties public employees' working conditions to the collective agreement, but flexible hours are arriving as a unilateral programme.

The collective space is being scattered

The factory and the office were a place of production for capital, but for the worker they were a place of meeting. At lunch wages were talked of, at the tea-stove injustices were shared, the union representative went from table to table. Class consciousness is born first of sharing the same conditions in the same space.

In the hybrid order office days are most often set in rotation. Two people in the same team may not come face to face for weeks. How the union representative is to reach the worker at home is defined in no regulation. A scattered worker is a worker hard to organise. This is the unseen and perhaps the deepest result of the regulation.

Surveillance is entering the home

Remote work does not reduce surveillance; it changes its form. In the overseer's place come software tools that count keystrokes, take random screenshots, and draw an "activity" score from the movement of the mouse. These tools are now working in your home, in the room where your child's voice is heard, where your flatmate passes behind you.

This is exactly what we called the digital panopticon in the Anthropic's Activist Monitoring System essay: the worker who knows they are being watched but does not know when they are being watched turns into their own warder. The 2021 regulation loads the duty in data protection largely onto the worker and sets no clear limit on the employer's power of surveillance. As in the KVKK's "80s Trend" Warning and Privacy in the Digital Age essay, the problem of the protection of personal data in this country begins first with the data in the hands of the powerful.

A double shift for women's labour

Read the relevant sentence of the OVP again: for employees with a child-care obligation, "partly or wholly remote employment" will be supported. The logic here is clear: instead of opening a crèche, to make the mother work at home. Paid work and unpaid care labour are stacked on top of each other in the same space, in the same hours. A keyboard in one hand, a feeding-bottle in the other.

This also overlaps with the regime's "family" ideology. As in the Whose Family Is Safe? essay, the discourse of "protecting the family" is in practice the name of binding the woman both to the home and to the market, and of leaving her precarious in both. Hybrid work is extremely well suited to become the counterpart of this ideology in labour law.

The bridge towards precarity

A job that can be done from home can also be done from another province, from another country. Remote work can put the worker into direct competition with cheap labour pools beyond the borders. And the lining-up in the OVP is not an accident: hybrid, part-time, project-based, platform. This is a ladder. On the first step you are a "worker" working from home; on the last step you are a "freelancer" serving from home — that is, the counterpart of the tradesman-courier in the Gig Economy Dossier essay, who pays their own insurance, has no seniority, and cannot join a union.

The figures behind consent: the climb of underemployment

Evrensel's report sets the regulation beside a series of figures. This series is very important because it shows under what conditions the thing called "mutual consent" will be given.

First the concept: time-related underemployment describes those who, though they have work, want to work full-time and are employed part-time or for insufficient hours. That is, people who have a job but whose job is not enough. This is the most concrete measure of flexibility.

Period	Time-related underemployment rate
January 2014	percent 2.6
March 2020 (the start of the pandemic)	percent 3.1
End of 2020	percent 5.3
June 2023 (Şimşek taking office)	percent 6.9
July 2026	percent 11.3

More than a fourfold rise in twelve years. And take care: when the effects of the pandemic lessened this rate did not fall; it went on rising. The crisis spread flexibility; when the crisis passed, flexibility was not drawn back, it was made permanent. Capital always uses crises in this way: the practice brought in in the extraordinary period is inherited by the ordinary period. The story of hybrid work is the same: the pandemic's "temporary" solution became a regulation paragraph in 2026.

According to the DİSK-AR "Appearance of Unemployment" report (August 2026) as conveyed by Evrensel, the July 2026 picture is as follows:

Indicator	July 2026
Narrowly defined unemployed	2.9 million
Broadly defined unemployed (including the potential labour force and underemployment)	9.4 million
Those who work fewer than 40 hours a week and want to work more	4.5 million
Those who have given up hope of finding work	5 million
Integrated rate of underemployment and unemployment, men	percent 19.1
Integrated rate of underemployment and unemployment, women	percent 24

Now read this table with Marx's concept of the industrial reserve army. Capitalism keeps the bargaining power of the employed worker under pressure by the existence of a mass of the unemployed and the half-employed. Every unemployed person waiting at the door whispers silently to the worker inside the sentence "if you do not want it, many do". In a country with a reserve army of 9.4 million people, you may judge for yourselves how mutual the "mutual consent" will be in a hybrid protocol to be signed between the worker one by one and the boss.

That the rate among women is 24 percent is no accident either. The OVP's proposing work from home especially to those with a care load, that is, in practice to women, means directing the section in which underemployment is already densest towards a still more flexible, still more fragmented work. Where "we are raising women's employment" is said, what is most often being raised is women's underemployment.

The right to say "no": what the law writes and what the workplace lives

Müftüoğlu makes a very sharp warning to Evrensel: "When the boss comes and says 'you will work three days from home, two days from the office', because there is legal legislation behind him the worker is left with no chance of saying 'No' to this. The contract of the employee who does not accept the imposition will not be made, or for existing workers this situation will be counted as a ground for dismissal for just cause and they will be dismissed without compensation."

As a trade unionist I take this warning seriously, but I want to tell young comrades by separating the letter of the law from the reality of the field. Because knowing both at once will keep you both from fearing in vain and from trusting in vain.

The letter of the law is this: To move someone who is already working from the workplace onto a hybrid order is a material change in working conditions. Under Article 22 of the Labour Law, if the worker does not accept in writing within six working days, the change does not bind them. Refusal is not of itself a ground of dismissal for just cause for the employer. If the employer dismisses all the same, they can do so only by showing a "valid reason" and by paying seniority and notice compensation.

The reality of the field is this: This protection is not as wide on paper as it is thought, and it leaves young workers especially outside.

For those newly hired, Article 22 does not operate. If the hybrid order has been written into the first contract, there is no "change"; there is a condition you have accepted from the beginning. Müftüoğlu's warning that "their contract will not be made" points exactly here: the person who says no at the point of hiring is not hired. In this country most of those newly hired are young.
Job security does not cover everyone. To be able to bring a reinstatement case one must, as a rule, be working in a workplace that employs thirty or more workers, on an open-ended contract, and with at least six months' seniority. A significant part of the young workers employed in a small agency, in a start-up, in a call-centre subcontractor fall outside this cover. For them there is no judge looking for a "valid reason".
Severance pay wants a year. For a worker who has not completed their first year, the difference between "dismissal with compensation" and "dismissal without compensation" is most often only a few weeks' notice pay.
Seeking a right wants time and money. Mediation, a lawsuit, waiting periods... The power of a young person who has been left unemployed to sustain this process is limited. The bosses know this and make their calculation accordingly.

So Müftüoğlu's warning must be read thus: the legal text does not abolish the right to say "no" entirely, but it narrows the circle of workers who will be able to use that right and leaves the most fragile — that is, those newly hired, those in small workplaces, the young and women — outside that circle. This distance between the right and the power to use the right is the class relation itself. And the only thing that closes that distance is organised strength: in a unionised workplace the worker who says "no" is not alone.

Examples from the world: laws, contracts, union gains

Young comrades, it is useful for you to know this: we are not alone in meeting this problem. Since the pandemic, remote and hybrid work have been regulated in every corner of the world. In some countries the workers' movement won concrete gains; in some the regulation remained in the bosses' favour. I tell these examples for two purposes: first, because the answer to the question "is another way possible" is yes; second, so that you can see which force stood behind every gain.

Europe: from the right to disconnect to the compensation of expenses

France, with the Labour Code amendment that entered into force in 2017, put the right to disconnect (droit à la déconnexion) into the law in workplaces with more than fifty employees. The employer is obliged to make the question of how digital communication outside working time is to be limited a matter of annual bargaining with the unions; if no agreement comes out, they are obliged to publish a workplace policy. The weak side is here as well: the law brings a duty to bargain, it does not bring a concrete prohibition. In a workplace with a strong union the right is real; where there is none it remains on paper.

Belgium in 2022 made it compulsory, in private-sector workplaces with twenty or more employees, that the rules of disconnection be determined by collective agreement or by workplace regulation.

Spain, with the Remote Work Act No. 10/2021 it enacted in 2021, has today one of Europe's most comprehensive regulations. The Act covers work of which more than 30 percent of working time in a given reference period is done remotely, and it says the following:

Remote work is voluntary and reversible; the worker's refusal cannot be a ground for dismissal or for a change of conditions.
Remote work cannot lead to the worker's bearing work-related expenses; equipment and expenses are met by the employer, the detail is determined by collective agreement.
The worker has the right to digital disconnection; the employer is obliged to hear the workers' representatives in order to prepare an internal policy that safeguards this.
The possibilities for workers' representatives to reach remote workers and to communicate with them are safeguarded.

Take care: the Spanish law was shaped at a social-dialogue table that lasted for months between the UGT and CCOO confederations and the employers' organisations. In Turkey, in Müftüoğlu's phrase, "you get up one morning and a decree appears."

Portugal, with Law 83/2021 it enacted at the end of 2021, went further still in several respects:

Except for compelling reasons, the employer's communicating with the worker during their rest time is prohibited. Here the right is not written onto the worker; the duty is written onto the employer. This is a very important distinction: instead of the worker's "right not to answer" there is the boss's "prohibition on calling". That is, the worker is no longer left to defend the right alone.
The employer is obliged to pay the additional expenses remote work creates (energy, internet). The method of calculation is concrete as well: the bills are compared with the same month of the previous year.
The employer's use of monitoring tools that affect privacy, such as image and sound recording, is prohibited. Inspection visits to the home can be made only with twenty-four hours' prior notice and the worker's consent, and only in working time.
Parents of a child up to the age of eight have the right to request remote work if the nature of the work is suitable.
If the employer proposes, the worker can refuse without giving a reason; if the worker proposes and the work is suitable, the employer is obliged to make their refusal in writing and with reasons.

Ireland in 2021 published a code of practice on the right to disconnect; with a law enacted in 2023 it also recognised workers' right to request remote work. But this is only a right to request; the employer can refuse by showing a reason.

The European Union: what is on the table?

At European level the unions and the employers' organisations had already signed a framework agreement on telework in 2002: voluntariness, equal rights, the employer's responsibility for equipment and expenses, access to collective rights. But this was an agreement that countries would apply by their own methods; it was not a binding directive.

The European Parliament in 2021 asked the Commission to prepare a directive on the right to disconnect. The Commission in 2024 opened the first consultation with the social partners. The European Trade Union Confederation (ETUC) wants a binding law; the employers' organisations defend voluntary regulation. Today the matter is being taken up together with the "Quality Jobs Act" package the Commission plans to present at the end of 2026; the package also covers the limiting of algorithmic management and excessive surveillance, psychosocial risks, and occupational health and safety rules adapted to remote work. The second-stage consultation is closing in these very days, on 28 September 2026.

That is, while we are writing this piece the same struggle is going on in Europe as well, and it has not yet been concluded. This shows us one thing: these rights are brought by "time" of itself in no place.

Australia: the right to refuse "unreasonable" communication

Australia put the right to disconnect into force in August 2024 in large enterprises, and from August 2025 in small enterprises with fewer than fifteen employees. The worker has the right not to monitor, not to read and not to answer communication coming from the employer or from a client outside working time, unless this refusal is "unreasonable". A worker who uses their right cannot be dismissed, cannot be punished. In looking at whether it is "reasonable", the reason for the communication, the nature of the work, the worker's family and care obligations, and whether payment is made for extra hours are taken into account.

A class reading: this regulation is the product of a campaign the Australian union movement, in particular the Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU), has been running for years. But the word "reasonable", just like our "may be agreed", leaves the field of interpretation open. Which force relation in the field will fill that field will decide again.

Latin America: some of the most advanced laws

Latin America produced, during the pandemic, some of the world's most advanced remote-work regulations. The reason for this as well is strong union traditions and the pressure of social movements.

Argentina, with the Telework Contract Law No. 27.555 it enacted in 2020, safeguarded the following:

The right to disconnect: the worker is not obliged to answer communication outside working time and cannot be punished for this. The regulation takes a further step: no incentive or bonus tied to waiving the right to disconnect may be given. That is, the boss cannot buy the right by saying "if you answer in the evenings as well you will get a bonus".
The right of care duties: a worker who cares for a child under thirteen, for a disabled relative or for an elderly person in need of care has the right to work at hours compatible with their care duties or to interrupt their work.
The right of return: a worker who has moved to remote work while working from the workplace can request a return to the workplace; the employer is obliged to meet this request within thirty days at the latest.
Equipment and expenses: the employer is obliged to provide the equipment and to meet the expenses; these payments are not counted as wages, they are not taxed.
Union representation: remote workers have the same right of union representation as those who work from the workplace, and if remote work is being set up from the start the union must be consulted.
Privacy: the employer's systems of supervision must respect the worker's privacy.

Chile, with Law 21.220 it enacted in 2020, recognised for remote workers the right to remain disconnected for at least twelve hours continuously in a twenty-four-hour span. To set a concrete number is a far stronger safeguard than words open to interpretation such as "reasonable".

Mexico, with the Labour Law amendment of 2021, made it compulsory, for those of whom more than 40 percent of working time is spent remotely, that the employer pay a proportionate part of electricity and telecommunication expenses, provide the equipment and respect the right to disconnect. The NOM-037 technical standard published in 2023 also detailed the occupational health and safety conditions of remote work: an ergonomic desk and chair, a written remote-work policy, annual training, and, as a striking provision, support mechanisms against domestic violence for workers working at home. Once the home is accepted as a workplace, violence in the home can be seen as an occupational health problem as well.

International norms and union principles

The ILO's Homework Convention No. 177 (1996) envisages that those who work at home receive equal treatment with those who work at the workplace; equality in the right to organise, in wages, in social security, in occupational health and safety and in maternity protection. Turkey has not ratified this convention. Having it ratified is a concrete and winnable union demand.
UNI Global Union, the federation that unites service and computing-sector unions worldwide, published in 2021 ten principles of collective bargaining for remote work: a safeguard of organisation and collective bargaining; that the employment relationship not be weakened; the limiting of surveillance tools; voluntariness; regular working hours and disconnection; the employer's health and safety responsibility; that the costs of equipment and of the working space belong to the employer; gender equality and openness to all; equality in training and career; and, before a rule is brought in, an impact assessment together with the union. UNI also keeps publicly open best trade-union practices on the right to disconnect and a database containing examples of collective agreements from the world. Unions in Turkey can use this material directly.

Comparison table

Right	Where it exists in the world	The situation in Turkey
Voluntariness and refusal without penalty	Spain, Portugal, Argentina, the EU 2002 agreement	There is written consent; protection of refusal is limited to Article 22, and is absent for those newly hired
The right of return	Spain, Argentina (thirty days)	Absent
A duty of expense compensation	Spain, Portugal, Mexico, Argentina	Absent, "it is determined in the contract"
The right to disconnect	France, Belgium, Spain, Portugal, Argentina, Chile (twelve hours), Mexico, Australia	Absent
A prohibition on the employer's communication outside working time	Portugal	Absent
A prohibition on bonuses to buy the right	Argentina	Absent
A prohibition on monitoring by image and sound	Portugal	Absent
A special right for those with a care obligation	Argentina, Portugal	Absent; in the OVP, work from home is proposed in place of care
Union representation and digital access	Spain, Argentina	Absent
A convention of equal treatment for those who work at home (ILO 177)	The ratifying countries	Not ratified

What do we learn from these examples?

First, none of them is a favour of the bosses. In Spain it was won at the social-dialogue table, in Argentina by the pressure of strong union confederations, in Australia by a union campaign that lasted for years. Where the organisation is strong the law is strong; where it is weak it is full of words of interpretation such as "reasonable" and "may be agreed".

Second, the strongest regulations are those that write the duty onto the employer. The difference between Portugal's "prohibition on calling" and France's "duty to bargain" is whether the worker is left to defend the right alone. A trade unionist always prefers to write the duty onto capital, not the right onto the individual.

Third, a concrete number is stronger than an abstract principle. Chile's "twelve hours", Argentina's "thirty days", Mexico's "40 percent" protect more than every principle left to interpretation.

Fourth, these gains are not permanent either. The incoming government's attempts after 2023 in Argentina to loosen the labour legislation show how won rights are put back on the table when organised strength weakens. A gain is a gain for as long as there is a force that will defend it.

And last, this: in this comparison the regulation in Turkey writes "absent" in almost every column. That is, while the government says "we are adapting to the new-generation working models in the world", it is taking the half of the models in the world that is in the bosses' favour and leaving outside the half that protects the worker.

What does the research say?

The hybrid-work debate is most often conducted with personal impressions: "I am more productive at home", "nobody works at home", and the like. Yet we have serious research in our hands. As you read these I want you to ask a single question: even if the finding is true, to whom does the benefit go?

Hybrid work does not lower productivity; it reduces resignations

The study by Nicholas Bloom of Stanford and colleagues, published in Nature in 2024, is one of the strongest pieces of evidence in this field. At China's large travel company Trip.com, 1,612 employees were randomly divided into two groups: one group worked from home two days a week, the other stayed in the office full-time. The results:

Resignations in the hybrid group fell by a third (from 7.2 percent to 4.8 percent).
Among women resignations fell by more than half (from 9.2 percent to 4.2 percent); a similar fall was seen among those whose round trip exceeded 1.5 hours.
In the two-year follow-up performance evaluations and promotion rates did not change.
Managers at first thought hybrid work would lower productivity; after the experiment they began to estimate a mildly positive effect.

The researchers summarised the result as "win-win-win": for the company, the employee and society.

A class reading: The finding is important and can be used in the workers' favour: if hybrid work does not lower productivity, the discourse that "the person who works from home is lazy" collapses. But look at the company's gain: a fall of a third in resignations means a large saving in hiring and training costs. Add to this the saving made on office space. The question is this: what of this saving falls to the worker? In the study the worker's gain is measured as "satisfaction" and "work–life balance"; the company's gain, however, as money. That women's resignations fell by half can be read in two directions: a real ease of access for women, but at the same time, in an order in which the care load stays at home, the squeezing of the woman between "leaving the job" and "carrying the job into the home". The scientific finding is impartial; how the finding will be used in which order is not.

Flexibility means long hours: the "autonomy paradox"

The 2021 study by Eurofound, the EU's working-conditions agency, examined those who worked from home in the pandemic period:

Those who worked from home worked longer hours than those in the office; as the time worked from home increased, so did the total weekly time.
Of those who worked from home forty-one to sixty hours a week, 20 percent felt constantly lonely, 39 percent constantly emotionally exhausted.
About a third of those who worked from home said the employer had not provided the necessary equipment.
Among those who worked from home with a small child, 35 percent of women, 23 percent of men, worked at non-standard hours, that is, in the evening and at night.
Despite this, 60 percent of employees wanted to work from home regularly; the most preferred order was the hybrid order.

Eurofound's 2026 report made the picture still clearer: the likelihood that those who work from home will exceed the weekly forty-eight-hour legal upper limit is about twice that of those who work at the workplace; inadequate rest is more widespread as well. The researchers call this the "autonomy paradox": flexibility, instead of improving work–life balance, most often comes together with longer hours.

A class reading: Workers want to work from home, but they are not living in the conditions they want. This contradiction summarises our whole thesis: the demand is legitimate, the conditions are under capital's control. The thing we call "autonomy" is becoming not the control of the work but choosing the timing of one's own self-exploitation. What Marx said of piece-wages holds here as well: surveillance from outside is being replaced by voluntary intensification from inside.

Surveillance software: "bossware"

The July 2025 report of the National Employment Law Project (NELP) in the United States finds that digital surveillance and automated decision systems — "bossware", as the report names them — affect two-thirds of workers in the United States. According to the report these tools:

Raise precarity through non-transparent algorithmic discipline and dismissal,
Create health problems with the tempo that constant monitoring imposes,
Press wages down through algorithmic wage-setting and the clipping of time,
And suppress unionisation by monitoring organising activity.

The report's proposals are instructive as well: the prohibition of constant time-tracking, biometric monitoring and wage-setting based on surveillance; the explanation of performance standards before discipline; and making how the technology will be brought into the workplace a matter of collective bargaining. The ILO too, in a working paper it published in 2025, discusses the need for workers' data rights to be redefined in the digital age.

A class reading: Taylor stood over the worker with a stopwatch; today the stopwatch is in the software and inside the home. What we called mental Taylorism in the Anthropic's Activist Monitoring System essay is exactly this: the making of mental labour as well measurable, fragmentable and controllable. Hybrid work does not close the road of this process; on the contrary, it speeds it up.

The real axis is not space but time: four-day-week experiments

Last let us look at another series of research, because it shows where the axis of the debate ought to be shifted. In the four-day working week experiment conducted in 2022 in England with 61 companies and about 2,900 employees, working time was reduced to 80 percent without the wage being lowered. According to the assessment of researchers from Cambridge and Boston College, the great majority of the companies (92 percent) decided to continue the practice; burnout among employees fell markedly, departures from the job fell. Similar experiments were done in Spain, Portugal, Iceland and other countries as well and gave similar results.

The participants in these experiments were volunteer companies, so the generalisation must be made with care. But they show one thing: the counterpart of a rise in productivity can be given to the worker as a shortening of working time without a loss of wages. Capital wants to discuss flexibility over "where you will work"; our question, however, is "how much you will work". To flex space is capital's demand; to shorten time is the working class's demand. These two demands must not be mixed up with each other.

A summary of the research

Research	Finding	A class reading
Bloom and colleagues, Nature 2024	Hybrid work reduces resignations by a third and does not lower productivity	The "laziness" discourse collapses; the saving goes to the company, the share that falls to the worker is not discussed
Eurofound 2021	Those who work from home work longer hours; a third cannot get equipment; women work more at night	The demand is legitimate, the conditions are under capital's control
Eurofound 2026	Those who work from home are twice as likely to exceed forty-eight hours	The "autonomy paradox": flexibility turns into voluntary intensification
NELP 2025	"Bossware" affects two-thirds of workers in the United States	Mental Taylorism is entering the home; organising is being monitored
The England four-day-week experiment 2022	When time is shortened without the wage falling, burnout and departure fall	The real axis is not space but time; a rise in productivity can be turned into a shortening of time

What does the regulation say, and what does it not say?

When you read a text you must look at what is not written as well as at what is written. Trade unionists call this "reading the gap", because the employer's lawyers have already read those gaps.

What the regulation says	What the regulation does not say
Hybrid work "may be agreed" (a residual rule)	Which minimum conditions cannot be pulled down by bargaining (a mandatory floor)
Office and home days are written into the contract	In whose hands the power to change the days is, and with what period of notice they will change
The employer provides the equipment, "unless otherwise agreed"	It does not say "it cannot be otherwise agreed"; the way is open for the worker to use their own computer
Expenses are determined in the contract	A minimum amount or principle of expense compensation
Working time is stated in the contract	The right to disconnect, a prohibition on communication outside working time
The employer sets the data-protection rules, the worker complies	A limit brought on the employer's surveillance software
Hybrid depends on the parties' agreement	The worker's right to return from the hybrid order to the workplace, and the conditions of this
In compelling reasons the worker's consent is not sought	When the fully remote order will end once the compelling reason is over
The individual contract is the basis	The union's role, the priority of the collective agreement, the representative's digital access

Every row in the right-hand column is an article that ought to be written in your contract.

Points to watch in the contract: a checklist before you sign

Now we have come to the most practical part. When a hybrid-work protocol is put in front of you, or when you see the word "hybrid" in the contract as you start a new job, check the headings below one by one. If an article is missing, ask. If it is unclear, ask for a written explanation. If you are not alone — that is, if you have a union, a representative, or at least workmates in the same situation — ask together.

Before you sign

Do not hurry. "You have to sign today" is not a rule of law; it is a technique of pressure. Ask for your right to take the text home, to read it, to consult.
Take a copy. You should have a copy of every signed document. If it is a digital signature, save the PDF to your own e-mail.
Show it to your union or to a labour lawyer. If you are not unionised, this is a good moment to think of becoming a member.
Do not be taken in by the sentence "everyone has signed". That everyone has signed does not change your rights; it shows that everyone has lost their rights together.
Know the material change. If you are already working from the workplace and the employer wants to move you onto a hybrid order, this is a material change in working conditions. Under Article 22 of the Labour Law a material change is notified in writing, and a change you have not accepted in writing within six working days does not bind you. If the employer terminates the contract because you have refused, the burden of proving that the termination rests on a valid reason is the employer's; your seniority and notice rights arise, and if you are within the cover of job security your path to reinstatement is open. Knowing this strengthens your hand in the bargain. But do not forget the limits I have set out above: this protection leaves those newly hired, small workplaces and those of short seniority largely outside. Before you say "no" alone, look for ways of saying "no" together with your comrades in the same situation.
Record the date of notification. Note on which day and by which path the protocol was given to you. The period of six working days runs from that day; if it was sent by e-mail, keep the e-mail.

When you start a new job

If the hybrid order is to be written into the first contract, the protection of Article 22 is not there; the bargain is made before the signature. For this reason:

Ask at the interview. "Is there expense support on home days? Do you provide the equipment? What is your rule on communication outside working time? Do the meal and travel allowances continue on home days as well?" These questions do not make you a "difficult candidate"; they make you an employee who ought to be taken seriously. The answers also tell you a great deal about the workplace.
Put oral promises into writing. The sentence "we are flexible, don't worry" has no legal value. Ask that everything said at the interview be in writing in the contract or at least in an e-mail.
Keep the advertisement. If there are phrases such as "hybrid", "two days a week in the office" in the job advertisement, take a screenshot. If the conditions change later, it will be evidence of the promise on which you were hired.
Be careful in the probation period. In the probation period termination is without compensation. In this period make your objections to the changing of conditions in writing without fail, and share them with your comrades.

Voluntariness and return

Is it written expressly that the move to the hybrid order is voluntary?
Is there a right of return? When you want to return to full-time work at the workplace, is it written in what period and on what condition you will be able to return?
Does the employer have the power to move you unilaterally onto a fully remote order? Is the definition of "compelling reason" narrow and clear, is its duration limited?
If the hybrid order is tied to a trial period, is it written who will decide at the end of this period?

Days, hours and change

Are office days and home days written clearly? If there are flexible phrases such as "according to need", "as the work requires", these give the employer in practice unlimited power.
When the days have to change, is it written at least how many days in advance notice will be given and whether your consent is required?
On home days, are working hours stated as a start and a finish? To say "eight hours a day" is not enough; which eight hours?
Are the midday break and rest periods written? Taking a break at home is harder than taking a break in the office.

Overtime and availability

Is there a rule on communication outside working time? Ask for a written "disconnect" article: let it be written expressly that there is no duty to answer e-mails, messages and calls outside working time.
How will overtime be recorded? By which system, with whose approval? Let you too have access to the outputs of the recording system.
Are duty, stand-by, "on-call" situations defined separately and paid?
For the proof of overtime keep your own record: the hours of the e-mails you have sent, meeting invitations, message screenshots. Make this a habit from today, even if it is not a contract article.

Expenses

Is it written how electricity, internet, heating, telephone expenses will be met?
If they are met, what is the amount, and how will this amount be updated? A fixed figure melts in a few months against inflation; ask for a compensation indexed to energy rises or to wage increases.
Is the expense compensation a part of the wage, or a separate payment? Showing it inside the wage can mean in practice the lowering of your wage.
Is it written whether working from home will reduce your fringe benefits in the office such as meal and travel? The calculation "you are at home, there is no need for a meal card" is a silent cut in fringe benefits.

Equipment

Is the equipment — computer, screen, keyboard, chair, headset — provided by the employer? Look at whether the escape of "unless otherwise agreed" is being used in your contract.
If you are asked to use your own computer, is a wear-and-tear allowance written, and who will pay in the event of a breakdown?
If there is breakdown, loss or damage on the employer's equipment, what is the limit of responsibility? Let it be written that wear arising from ordinary use will not be deducted from you.
Take a delivery record of the equipment, and when you return it ask for a record as well.

Surveillance and personal data

Will monitoring software be installed on the computer or the telephone? If it will, which data does it collect: screenshot, keystroke, camera, location?
Is there a duty to keep the camera on? The inside of your home is not the employer's field of view; let the limit of this be written.
For how long are the data collected kept, who can access them, can they be used in performance evaluation or in discipline?
Under KVKK, have an information notice and explicit consent been presented separately? The imposing of explicit consent as "a condition of starting work" takes the consent out of being consent.
If you are using your personal device, is it written that the employer cannot access your personal data on that device?

Occupational health and safety

Will a risk assessment be made for the home environment? Whose responsibility are ergonomics, lighting, electrical safety?
Whether an accident that happens at home — an electric shock at the computer, in Özveri's example — will be counted as a work accident is in practice open to dispute, and the burden of proof most often stays with the worker. For this reason it is important that working hours and the working area be written expressly in the contract; ask for an article that an accident that occurs in that area at that hour will be counted as a work accident.
Psychosocial risks: loneliness, burnout, the stress created by being constantly available. These too must have a place in the OHS assessment.

Performance, equality and career

By what is performance measured: by output, or by time spent online? Is it written how targets are set and what the path of objection is?
Is it written that hybrid workers will receive equal treatment with those who work from the workplace in promotion, training, bonuses and fringe benefits? The truth that "whoever is not in sight is forgotten" can turn into a silent discrimination in the career.
Is there a provision that prevents working from home from being used later as a ground of poor performance or of dismissal?

Union and collective rights

There must not be a phrase in the contract that limits your union rights. If there is, it is legally void, but even its standing there is a message.
If you are in a unionised workplace, ask whether the hybrid order has been regulated by collective agreement. An individual protocol cannot contain a right below the collective agreement.
Does the union representative have access to the workplace's internal channels of communication (e-mail lists, messaging groups)? If not, this is a collective-agreement demand.

A note for public-employee comrades

The situation in the public service wants a separate attention. In the model announced, the day is divided into "five-hour core" and "flexible". On paper this looks like flexibility. But a trade unionist at once asks these questions:

Will the time that remains outside core time be tied to the whole of the wage or to a wage according to the hour?
Will the "flexible" hours later open the door to a passage into part-time status? How will part-time status affect rights, from the retirement contribution to health cover?
Will the model turn into a means of pushing women public employees into part-time status with the discourse of "look after your child"?
Will all this be determined at the collective-agreement table, or by a unilateral regulation?

As KESK has pointed out, Law 4688 ties public employees' working conditions to the collective agreement. A unilateral flexibility regulation is an intervention directed at this right itself.

A few words especially for young comrades

I want to say this to you: your generation will be the experimental field of this regulation. Because you are the generation that knows office culture least, that recognises the union tradition least, that finds its first job in the most fragile conditions. In job advertisements the word "hybrid" is being offered as a fringe benefit; yet this is a working regime. A fringe benefit is given to you; a working regime is applied to you.

A detail caught my attention: on Evrensel's worker-and-union page, right beside the hybrid news, another report was standing. The Dev Turizm-İş Student Worker Commission had taken action in front of a café for a student worker whose wage had not been paid; on the banner it said "Student workers are not slaves!" The two reports may have come side by side on the same page by accident, but they tell the same truth: the place where precarity is lived most densely is young labour, and whether in a café or at a kitchen table the only effective answer to that precarity is to come together and raise the voice. The student workers at the café did this. The young workers at the desk must do the same.

A few proposals:

Working from home does not take the place of the wage. Do not enter a bargain of "you are working from home, accept a lower salary". Travel time was your time; giving it back to you does not justify cutting it from your wage.
Do not become invisible. While you work from home, do not cut your tie with your workmates. The team's channels of correspondence are not only the channel of the work; they can be the channel of solidarity as well. Talk about wages, compare conditions.
Keep a record. Record your working hours, your overtime, the demands made of you. One day it will be needed.
Set a limit. When working time ends, close the notifications. The limit you cannot set in the first month you will not be able to set at all at the end of the first year.
Organise. Especially if you are in the fields where hybrid work is most widespread — computing, the call centre, software, design, accountancy, content — look for the union of your branch. As we told in The Computing Worker's Handbook, the organising of the scattered worker is hard but it is not impossible; it only wants new tools and new habits.

The ideal working life: socialist ideas

Up to here we have spoken in a defensive position: which rights to protect, which traps to avoid, what to watch in the contract. But if a trade unionist contents themselves with defence alone, they always play on the field capital has drawn. Union struggle is waged as much for a working life that is "less bad" as with the horizon of a working life of another kind. Without that horizon every gain turns into a temporary ceasefire waiting to be taken back in the next crisis.

Dear young comrades, now I want to tell you what socialist thought has said of the working life. Not as a utopia, but as a compass that shows the direction of the steps we take today.

The measure of wealth: not labour-time but free time

Marx, in the 1857–58 manuscripts known as the Grundrisse, makes a surprising forecast. As mechanisation advances, he says, the source of wealth gradually ceases to be the direct labour-time expended and comes to rest on the application to production of the general knowledge science and society have accumulated — in his phrase, the "general intellect". Capitalism, even in this situation, insists on measuring wealth by labour-time. In the resolution of this contradiction the measure of real wealth is no longer labour-time but "disposable time", that is, the free time people can set aside for their own development.

Bring this idea to today. Artificial intelligence, automation, digital communication are raising social productivity as never before. In the capitalist order this rise does not return to the worker as more free time; it returns either as unemployment or, as we see in hybrid work, as a working day whose limit is melting. The general intellect we called crystallised labour in The Revolt of Crystallized Labor: A Call to the 20th Karaburun Science Congress essay is being seized by capital and sold back to us as a chain.

In the socialist perspective the question is turned round: technology is used for everyone to work less. The question "where shall I work" takes its place under the question "with how little work can we meet the needs of society".

The realm of necessity and the realm of freedom

Marx, in the third volume of Capital, carries this idea a step further. The human being's exchange with nature — that is, the work that must be done to sustain life — remains in every society a realm of necessity. In this realm freedom can only be this: that the socialised human being, the "associated producers", take this exchange with nature under their common control instead of being governed by a blind force, and do it with the least expenditure of force, in the conditions most worthy of human nature. The real realm of freedom begins beyond this realm of necessity: the realm in which the human being develops their power as an end in itself. And Marx finishes the sentence thus: the basic condition of this is the shortening of the working day.

This paragraph gives the core of our hybrid-work debate. Capital proposes to us, under the name of "flexibility", to carry the realm of necessity into the realm of freedom: by spreading the work into our home, into our evening, into our weekend. The socialist ideal is the exact opposite: to narrow the realm of necessity and to take it under common control, and thereby to widen the realm of freedom.

The right to be lazy

Marx's son-in-law Paul Lafargue, in the provocative pamphlet titled The Right to Be Lazy that he wrote in 1880, criticises even the workers' movement's consecration of the "right to work". He says that the "passion for work" capitalism inoculates into workers is in fact the ideology of capital's need to work the worker to exhaustion. He argues that with the development of the machines a working day of three hours would suffice to meet everyone's need, and that the remaining time could be set aside for rest, for art, for science, for pleasure.

Lafargue's style is exaggerated and deliberately provocative; his figures too should not be taken for today. But his question is more current today than ever: if productivity has risen this much, why are we still working this much? And why, when "flexibility" is said, is what is understood not working less but working everywhere and at every time?

Useful work and useless toil

The English socialist William Morris, in the lecture "Useful Work versus Useless Toil" that he gave in 1884, does not refuse work; on the contrary, he argues that good work can be a source of joy for the human being. But for this he counts three conditions: that the work produce something worth doing, that it be done in conditions in which the worker can take pleasure from the work, and that the work be limited to a reasonable duration. In capitalism, however, the greater part of work either produces unnecessary things or is done in conditions that will blunt the worker.

Morris's measures throw light on the hybrid debate as well. Before the question of whether a job will be done at home or in the office, the questions that ought to be asked are these: why is this work being done, for whose need? Does the worker have a say over how the work will be done? Does the work leave room for the rest of life?

The overcoming of the division of labour and polytechnic education

Marx and Engels, in The German Ideology, tell how the capitalist division of labour imprisons the human being inside a single function: the person becomes for a lifetime only a hunter, only a fisher, only a critic. In communist society, says the famous passage, an order is possible in which a person can hunt in the morning and fish in the afternoon, rear animals in the evening and criticise after dinner, but will not be imprisoned in any of these as a profession. The pastoral language of the passage may make one smile; but the idea inside it is serious: the overcoming of the gulf between mental labour and manual labour, of one-sided specialisation.

Today's hybrid order is deepening this separation. A new split is forming between the mental labourer who "can work from home" and the factory worker, the courier, the nurse, the cleaner who cannot work from home. A class vision must not turn this split into a line of privilege that divides the class. Every right the hybrid worker will win must be joined to demands that will improve the time and the conditions of the worker who cannot work from home as well, to demands that cover everyone, such as the shortening of the working day. The polytechnic education Marx defended — that is, an education that teaches together both the scientific and the practical sides of production — is the long-term answer to this split. We took this matter up in detail in the Our Education Dossier Is Out: Whose School Is It? essay.

When labour itself becomes life's prime want

Marx, in 1875 in the Critique of the Gotha Programme, describing the higher phase of communist society, says this: when individuals' slave-like dependence on the division of labour has disappeared, when the antithesis between mental and manual labour has vanished, when labour has ceased to be merely a means of life and has become life's prime want, when the productive forces have grown together with the all-round development of individuals — only then can society write on its banner: "From each according to their ability, to each according to their needs."

What this sentence says to us today is this: work is not of itself a burden; what makes it a burden is that it is done in an alienated form, under someone else's control, for someone else's profit. The socialist ideal is not to abolish work but to free it from alienation.

Workers' control and workplace democracy

Perhaps the most concrete idea of socialist thought on the working life is that those who work decide how the work will be organised. The Paris Commune of 1871 transferred the workshops abandoned by their owners to workers' cooperatives and prohibited night work for bakers. In the first months of the October Revolution of 1917 the factory committees began to supervise production directly. How these experiences were later limited by a bureaucratic centralism is the subject of a separate and critical discussion. But the principle still stands: work must be organised by the common decision of those who do it.

Apply this principle to hybrid work. Who ought to decide which work will be done from home, which days will be in common, which digital tools will be used, how the work will be measured? The regulation gives the answer "the employer and the worker one by one". The socialist answer, however, is "the workers' collective decision". Today the nearest form of this is boards of equal representation established by collective agreement and the union's say over technology. Tomorrow, as we have begun to see in software cooperatives in The Computing Worker's Handbook essay, it is the work being managed entirely by those who work.

An experiment from history: the seven-hour working day

The practices of the socialist experiences on working time too must be known, by the logic of neither saint nor villain. The Soviet Union in October 1927, in the tenth year of the revolution, announced the passage to the seven-hour working day and in the following years applied it to a large extent in industry. In the same period, in a large part of Europe, even eight hours had not fully settled. But in 1940, on the ground of preparation for war, a return was made to eight hours and to a seven-day week. This experience teaches us two things: the shortening of working time is possible, a society can set this as a conscious aim; but the permanence of this gain depends on how strong and independent the social forces that will defend it are — that is, the workers' own organisations. What is given from above can be taken back from above.

The socialisation of care

One of the most important contributions of socialist thought on women's labour is the idea of the socialisation of care labour inside the home. Alexandra Kollontai, in the 1920s, argued that public laundries, canteens and crèches would free the woman from "domestic slavery". The meaning of this idea today is clear: the care load cannot be solved at home, inside a family, on the woman's back. It is solved with public, free, qualified crèche, care-home and collective-catering services.

The OVP's proposal of "work from home for the person with a care load" is the exact opposite of this idea: instead of making care public it privatises it and stacks the woman's two shifts at home on top of each other. The socialist answer sees work from home not as the solution of care, but as an option that can be freely chosen after care has been solved publicly.

How would remote work be in a socialist order?

When we put all this together, we can summarise the difference between today's hybrid order and the socialist perspective thus:

The capitalist hybrid order	The socialist perspective
The employer decides where work will be done	Those who work decide collectively
The cost of the office is moved into the home, that is, onto the worker	The whole cost of production is met socially; housing, energy and communication are safeguarded as basic rights
Flexibility melts the limit of the working day	Technological progress is turned into the shortening of the working day
The rise in productivity is written into profit	The rise in productivity is turned into free time
Surveillance software enters the home	The measurement of the work is transparent, common and under the control of those who work
The care load is left to the woman who works from home	Care is socialised through public services
Workers are scattered, organisation becomes harder	Common spaces and digital tools are in the service of the collective decision
A new split forms between those who "can work from home" and those who cannot	The gulf between mental and manual labour is closed by education and by the organisation of work
Work occupies the rest of life	Work narrows the realm of necessity and widens the realm of freedom

A bridge from today to tomorrow

None of these ideals will be realised tomorrow morning. But every right we defend today either brings us closer to this horizon or takes us further from it. The demand for expense compensation defends the principle that the cost belongs to capital. The right to disconnect defends the limit of the working day. The prohibition of surveillance defends that the worker's home and mind are not capital's field. Union digital access defends the scattered worker's right to come together again. And the demand for the shortening of working time without a loss of wages is directly the struggle to widen the realm of freedom.

This is the relation between the union programme and the socialist horizon: the programme defines today's steps, the horizon the direction of those steps. A programme without a direction cannot defend its gains; a horizon without a programme remains a dream.

Programme material for unions

This section brings together materials that unions, confederations, professional organisations and workplace committees can use directly. All of them, like the other texts of the Knowledge Commons, are licensed CC BY-SA: take them, change them, use them under your own name, so long as they remain a commons.

I present the material in five pieces: principles, demands for legal regulation, collective-agreement articles, a workplace situation-finding survey, and a draft leaflet. At the end there is also a calendar for the campaign and a proposal of alliances.

Programme principles

A union programme begins with the principle before the detail. Details can change in the bargain; principles do not change. The six principles I propose are these:

The flexibility of space is the worker's decision. Where work will be done is determined by the worker's demand and by collective agreement; it cannot be determined by the employer's unilateral decision.
The cost is capital's. No expense of production, when it is moved into the home environment, passes onto the worker.
The limit of the working day is mandatory. Remote work does not flex the limits of the working day; the right to remain disconnected is not a matter for bargaining, it is a legal floor.
The home is not the employer's field of surveillance. The control of the work cannot turn into the surveillance of the worker's private life.
A scattered worker is not an unorganised worker. The union's right to reach the worker, the worker's to reach the union, and the workers' to reach one another is safeguarded in the digital environment as well.
Care is a public responsibility. Work from home cannot take the place of the crèche, the care home, the public care service.

Minimum demands for legal regulation

The demands below are a skeleton for the changes to be made in Article 14 of the Labour Law and in the Remote Work Regulation. The basic logic is to turn the subjects left today to a residual rule, that is, to "may be agreed", into a mandatory floor. An individual or collective agreement may add rights above this floor; it may not go below it.

Voluntariness and a guarantee of refusal: Remote and hybrid work depends on the worker's written consent. The worker's refusal of the proposal cannot give rise to any adverse consequence in hiring or at the workplace; it cannot be counted as a valid or just cause for termination.
The right of return: A worker who works remotely or in a hybrid order has the right, within at most thirty days from their written demand, to return to work at the workplace.
The limit of compelling reason: The compelling reasons in which a move to remote work can be made without the worker's consent are listed as a closed list; when the reason has ceased, the return to the old order takes place of itself.
Expense compensation: The employer meets the energy, communication and heating expenses that remote work gives rise to. The minimum amount is determined twice a year by a board in which the Ministry of Labour and Social Security and the workers' and employers' confederations take part; this payment is not counted as wages and is exempt from tax and from insurance premiums. Rights such as meal and travel allowances cannot be reduced on the ground of remote work.
Equipment: All the equipment the work requires, including an ergonomic desk and chair, is provided by the employer. The phrase "unless otherwise agreed" is removed.
Disconnect: The worker has no duty to answer digital communication outside working time and in rest time. As in the Portuguese example, a prohibition on communication outside working time, except in compelling reasons, is brought upon the employer. A bonus or incentive tied to waiving this right cannot be given. For those who work remotely the right to remain continuously disconnected for at least twelve hours in a twenty-four-hour period is safeguarded by law.
A record of working time: Remote-work hours are recorded by an objective system to which the worker too has access. If no record has been kept, in a claim of overtime the burden of proof passes to the employer.
The limit of surveillance: Image and sound recording, keystroke tracking, the taking of random screenshots, location tracking and biometric monitoring are prohibited. Every tool that will be used for the control of the work is notified in advance to the union or to the workers' representative and is made a matter of collective agreement. The data collected may be used in discipline or in performance evaluation only according to criteria explained to the worker in advance.
Work accident: An accident that occurs in the working time and in the working area determined in the contract is counted as a work accident; the burden of proving the contrary is the employer's.
Equal treatment: Those who work remotely and in a hybrid order are equal with those who work from the workplace in wages, bonuses, promotion, training and all social rights.
Union access: The union representative's right to reach workers through the workplace's digital channels of communication is safeguarded by law; those who work remotely are counted as working at the workplace in the calculation of workplace majority and in union activity.
The right of care: As in the Argentine example, a worker with a care duty is granted the right to demand working hours compatible with care tasks; but this right does not take the place of public crèche and care services. The scope of the crèche obligation is widened.
An international safeguard: The ILO's Home Work Convention No. 177 is ratified.
Public employees: Every regulation on flexible or remote work in the public service is determined, under Law No. 4688, at the collective-agreement table; it cannot be applied by a unilateral regulation.

Model articles for a collective agreement

In a unionised workplace, to leave hybrid work to individual protocols would be the greatest mistake. The texts below are model articles that can be carried, directly or adapted, into a collective agreement. The conditions of every industry and every workplace are different; these texts are a starting point.

The scope of remote and hybrid work. Remote and hybrid work at the workplace is applied only on the worker's written demand or written consent. No adverse action can be taken against a worker who does not accept the employer's proposal. In hybrid work the days and hours that will be worked at the workplace and remotely are determined in writing; these cannot be changed without the worker's written consent. Decisions on the application of remote work across the workplace, or on a change in its scope, are discussed in the remote-work board established between the union and the employer.

Return. A worker who works remotely or in a hybrid order returns, upon their written demand, to full-time work at the workplace within at most thirty days. The worker's working space at the workplace is kept ready in this period.

Expense payment. For every day worked remotely the worker is paid a daily expense payment, separate from their wage. The amount of this payment is determined on the date the agreement comes into force and is increased of itself every six months, in the ratio of the rise in electricity and natural-gas tariffs in the period. Meal and travel allowances are paid in the same amount on days worked remotely as well.

Equipment. The computer, screen, keyboard, mouse, headset, ergonomic desk and chair, and the communication line that the work requires are provided by the employer; their maintenance and repair are done by the employer. The worker cannot be forced to use their personal device for work. The worker cannot be held responsible for wear and breakdown arising from ordinary use.

Disconnect. The worker is not obliged to answer work e-mails, messages and calls outside the determined working time, on the weekly rest day, on public holidays and on annual leave. The employer and managers do not communicate with the worker in these periods, except in compelling reasons. Not answering cannot be taken into account in discipline, in performance evaluation or in the calculation of bonuses. The employer makes technical arrangements that postpone sending outside working time on work communication tools.

Working time and overtime. Remote-work hours are recorded by a system to which the worker and the union have access. Every period of work that exceeds the determined working time is counted as overtime and is paid at the overtime rate in this agreement. The recording system does not collect data relating to the worker's private life.

Surveillance. Keystroke tracking, the taking of screenshots, camera or microphone recording, location tracking and similar surveillance software are not used on the worker's computer or telephone. A duty to keep the camera on cannot be imposed except in meetings. Every new digital tool relating to the control of the work is notified to the union at least thirty days before it is used and is discussed in the remote-work board.

Occupational health and safety. The employer makes a risk assessment for the remote-work environment with the worker's participation and provides the ergonomic conditions. Accidents that occur within the determined working time and in the working area are accepted as work accidents. The psychosocial risks created by loneliness, burnout and being constantly available stand regularly on the agenda of the workplace OHS board.

Equality and career. Workers who work remotely and in a hybrid order are equal with those who work from the workplace in wages, bonuses, promotion, training and social rights. Performance evaluation rests not on time spent online but on work outputs explained in advance.

A common day. It is ensured that workers who work in the same unit are present at the workplace on the same day at least two days a month.

Union access. The union has an announcement space through which it can reach workers in the workplace's digital channels of communication. The workplace representative may hold an online or face-to-face meeting of at least one hour a month, within working time, with workers who work remotely. Union communication cannot be monitored or recorded by the employer.

The remote-work board. A remote-work board of equal numbers of union and employer representatives is established. The board evaluates the practice every six months; expense payments, surveillance tools, overtime records and workers' complaints stand on the board's agenda.

A workplace situation-finding survey

A demand is strengthened by data. The questions below are the skeleton of a short survey that a union or a workplace committee can conduct among those who work in a hybrid order and remotely. The survey should be anonymous and the results should be shared with the workers.

How many days a week do you work remotely, how many from the workplace? Is this order in writing?
Was the move to the hybrid order your demand, or the employer's decision?
On home days, how many hours do you actually work? Do you exceed the time in the contract?
Do you receive work messages after working time or at the weekend? How often? Have you met a consequence when you have not answered?
Is your overtime recorded and paid?
By how much a month have your electricity, internet and heating bills risen since you began to work from home? Does the employer meet a part of this?
Did the employer provide equipment such as the computer, the screen, the chair?
Are your meal and travel allowances cut on home days?
Do you know that there is monitoring software on your computer or telephone? Are you asked to keep the camera on?
While working at home, do you also take on the care of a child, an elderly person or a sick person?
Do you feel cut off from your workmates? Can you talk with them about wages and working conditions?
Is there a way of reaching the union? Would you want there to be?

The results of this survey become the strongest ground both at the collective-agreement table and in statements to be made to the public. To turn personal experience into collective data is the first step in turning an individual complaint into a collective demand.

A draft leaflet

The text below is a draft that a union, a confederation or a labour platform can use as a short statement.

Our Home Is Not Your Factory! We Want Our Rights in Hybrid Work

With the regulation amendment published in the Official Gazette on 25 September 2026, hybrid work entered the legislation as an order that "may be agreed". The regulation, although it will change the working conditions of millions of workers, was prepared without consulting the unions, in a top-down manner.

The regulation leaves the conditions of hybrid work to the individual bargain between the worker and the employer. In a country where unemployment and underemployment are this high, this means leaving the conditions to the boss. The regulation does not say who will meet electricity, internet and heating expenses. It does not recognise the right not to answer messages outside working time. It does not set a limit on the surveillance software installed in our home. It does not safeguard that an accident lived at home will be counted as a work accident. It does not grant a right of return to the workplace.

From Spain to Portugal, from Argentina to Chile, from Mexico to Australia, workers in a great many countries have won these rights. We want them too:

Let remote and hybrid work be voluntary, let the worker who refuses not be punished, let a right of return be recognised.

Let all the expenses of working from home be met by the employer; let our meal and travel rights not be cut.

Let the right to disconnect be safeguarded by law; let communication outside working time be prohibited.

Let our home not be a field of surveillance; let camera, sound and keystroke tracking be prohibited.

Let an accident lived at home in working time be counted as a work accident.

Let all these conditions be determined by collective agreement; let the unions' right of digital access be recognised.

Let flexible work in the public service not be imposed unilaterally; let it be determined at the collective-agreement table.

Let work from home not take the place of the crèche and of public care.

And let the counterpart of the rise in productivity be given to us as a shortening of working time without a cut in wages.

Flexibility is the bosses' demand; time is our demand. Our home is not your factory!

A campaign calendar and alliances

A demand gains strength when it is made public at the right moments. A few concrete occasions for the months ahead:

7 October, World Day for Decent Work: This day, which the international union movement marks every year, is a suitable moment for announcing hybrid-work demands for the first time in a common statement.
The EU Quality Jobs Act process: The package the Commission plans to present at the end of 2026, and the European unions' struggle for the right to disconnect, offer an effective ground of comparison against a government that uses the discourse of "alignment with Europe".
The public collective-agreement process: The flexible-hours regulation in the public service is wanted to be put into life before the public collective-agreement talks of 2027. The public-employee confederations need to carry this matter onto the table's agenda already now.
Private-sector collective-agreement periods: The collective-agreement periods in industries in which hybrid work is most widespread — computing, finance, call centres, insurance, press and publishing — are the places at which the model articles will be put on the table.
8 March and 1 May: The dimension of women's labour and the care load can be brought forward on 8 March; the demand of time and of the working day on 1 May. 1 May already arose from the struggle for the eight-hour working day.

Natural partners for an alliance are these:

Professional chambers, especially those of engineers, architects, computer engineers and physicians: the ergonomics and occupational-health dimension.
Women's organisations: the care load, the double shift, the demand for crèches.
Digital-rights and privacy organisations: surveillance software and personal data.
Student and young-worker organisations: the absence of a right of refusal at first hiring, the probation period, the situation of intern and student workers.
Labour academics and research centres, such as DİSK-AR: data, survey design, the preparation of a draft law.

None of these materials changes anything on its own. What changes things is the organised power that uses them.

Concrete tasks

A diagnosis is not a programme. A few concrete tasks ought to remain in your hands at the end of this piece:

Read your own contract. Take the checklist above and apply it to your own contract or to the protocol put in front of you. Note the missing articles.
Compare with your workmates. Are different protocols being signed in the same workplace? Whose expense is met, whose is not? This comparison is the first step of a collective demand.
Calculate the invisible cut. For a month, record by how much your electricity, internet and heating bills have risen on the days you work from home. This figure is the ground of your demand for expense compensation.
Make contact with your union. If you are unionised, ask that hybrid work enter the collective-agreement agenda. If you are not, find the union in your industry.
Use the programme material. Take the principles, the legal demands, the model articles, the survey and the draft leaflet above to your union, your workplace committee, your professional chamber. Change them, develop them, publish them in your own name.
Turn the residual rule into a mandatory floor. The basic demand ought to be this: voluntariness, the right of return, expense compensation, equipment, disconnect and the safeguard of a work accident at home should be written into the law not as "may be agreed" but as a mandatory floor that cannot be pulled down by bargaining. An individual contract should be able to add rights only above this floor.
Make the demands public. The right to disconnect and compulsory expense compensation ought to enter the common agenda of unions, professional chambers and labour organisations as demands for legal regulation. Use this piece in every setting in which these demands are voiced.
Put the experience of women comrades at the centre. Where work from home is joined to the care load, defend the demands together with the demand for crèches and public care services. Work from home cannot take the place of the crèche.

Dear Young Comrades,

Capital tries in every period to do the same thing: to use the worker's time, space and body more productively for profit. The methods change. Yesterday it was piece-wages at the bench; today it is performance software at the kitchen table. But the essence of the question does not change: who will draw the limit of the working day?

This regulation does not draw that limit. It leaves the gap to the bargain between the employer and the worker one by one. History has shown again and again that the worker who sits down to bargain alone always loses. The same history has also shown this: the eight-hour working day, the weekend rest and annual leave were won in the street, on strike, at the collective-agreement table, before the laws were written.

And do not forget: the horizon of this struggle is not only "to be exploited less while working from home". The horizon is, in Marx's phrase, to narrow the realm of necessity and to widen the realm of freedom; a working life in which technology brings us not more work but more free time, in which those who do the work decide how it will be organised, in which care is the common responsibility of society. Every contract article of today is a small step thrown towards that horizon.

Your kitchen table can turn into a factory. But the same table can also be a table at which you compare your wages with your workmates for the first time, write your first demand text, organise your first meeting. Which it will be, we shall determine, not the technology.

The machine is new, the chain is old. But the way of breaking the chain is old as well: to be together.

Comradely.

Knowledge belongs to everyone.

Related pieces

Gig Economy Dossier — the courier stop on the road from wage-labour to "self-employment"
The Computing Worker's Handbook — organising in the industry in which hybrid work is most widespread
TÜİK: Two Figures, One Country: 8.1% and 30.6% — the unemployment table behind "consent"
Anthropic's Activist Monitoring System — the class function of digital surveillance
KVKK's "80s Trend" Warning and Privacy in the Digital Age — the question of whose hands personal data are in
Whose Family Is Safe? — the effect of "family" ideology on women's labour
The Revolt of Crystallized Labor: A Call to the 20th Karaburun Science Congress — the expropriation of the general intellect and mental Taylorism
Our Education Dossier Is Out: Whose School Is It? — polytechnic education and the split between mental and manual labour

Sources

Cihan Çelik, Evrensel (26 September 2026): The Remote Work Regulation has entered into force — a legal cover for flexible and precarious employment — the full text of the paragraph, the assessments of Özgür Müftüoğlu and Murat Özveri, the underemployment series
DİSK-AR, The Appearance of Unemployment Report (August 2026), as reported by Evrensel
Prozon: An amendment has been made in the Remote Work Regulation, the hybrid-work model has gained official status
Cumhuriyet: Published in the Official Gazette, an amendment in the remote-work regulation
Tıbbiye Bülteni: The hybrid-work regulation for workers has entered into force
Aydınlık: Flexible work has been legalised: freedom for the worker, or precarity?
BirGün: The packaging of precarity, "flexible work in the public service"
Fokus+: Flexible-work and employment steps in the OVP
Medium-Term Programme 2027–2029 (Presidency of Strategy and Budget)
Kılınç Hukuk: A summary of the Remote Work Regulation (10 March 2021)
ÇSGB: The text of the Remote Work Regulation
Labour Law No. 4857, Article 14 (remote work) and Article 22 (material change in working conditions); Law No. 4688 on Public Employees' Unions and Collective Agreement
Karl Marx, Capital, Volume One: the chapters "The Working Day", "Machinery and Large-Scale Industry" (modern domestic industry) and "Piece-Wages"
Spain, Remote Work Law 10/2021 (BOE)
Portugal, Law 83/2021 (Diário da República) and the University of Porto Workers' Commission's question-and-answer compilation
Argentina, Telework Contract Law No. 27.555 (InfoLEG) and InfoGremiales on the regulation
Mexico, EY bulletin on NOM-037-STPS-2023
Fair Work Ombudsman: the right to disconnect in small businesses in Australia (26 August 2025)
European Parliament: the legislative process on the right to disconnect; European Commission: first-stage consultation (2024); ETUC: a call for legislation on telework; DLA Piper: the EU Quality Jobs Act
UNI Global Union: collective-bargaining principles for remote work (2021); UNI: best union practices on the right to disconnect; UNI remote-work database
Bloom, Han and Liang, "Hybrid working from home improves retention without damaging performance", Nature (2024)
Eurofound: Workers want to telework but long working hours, isolation and inadequate equipment must be tackled (2021); Remote Work Europe on the Eurofound 2026 report
NELP: When 'Bossware' Manages Workers (July 2025); ILO: Navigating workers' data rights in the digital age (2025)
4 Day Week Global: results of the UK pilot programme
The French Labour Code provision on disconnect (2017); the Belgian disconnect law (2022); Ireland's disconnect code of practice (2021) and Work–Life Balance Act (2023); Chile's Law 21.220 (2020); the European Framework Agreement on Telework (2002); ILO Home Work Convention No. 177 (1996)
Socialist thought: Karl Marx, Grundrisse (1857–58), Capital Volume Three, Critique of the Gotha Programme (1875); Marx and Engels, The German Ideology; Paul Lafargue, The Right to Be Lazy (1880); William Morris, "Useful Work versus Useless Toil" (1884); Alexandra Kollontai's writings on women's labour and the socialisation of care

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The Machine Is New, the Chain Is Old: A Class Anatomy of Remote Work

The Remote and Hybrid Work Regulation: Our Rights, the Traps in the Contract, and a Programme for Unions

The Factory on the Kitchen Table

A Trade Unionist's Letter to Young Comrades on the Hybrid Work Regulation

First the facts: what has changed?

The warnings of the two labour academics who spoke to Evrensel

"The taking of rulelessness into the rule"

Kararlaştırılabilir: a one-word trick

The questions from which the regulation flees

The "opportunity" sold to women and the young

The space of organisation

Imposed from above

Not a paragraph on its own, but the first link in a package

Where does a trade unionist look from?

An old story: domestic industry is returning

Pluses and minuses: a set of scales with a class vision

Why do we claim the pluses?

Why do we expose the minuses?

The cost is being moved silently into the home

The walls of the working day are coming down

Bargaining is being individualised

The collective space is being scattered

Surveillance is entering the home

A double shift for women's labour

The bridge towards precarity

The figures behind consent: the climb of underemployment

The right to say "no": what the law writes and what the workplace lives

Examples from the world: laws, contracts, union gains

Europe: from the right to disconnect to the compensation of expenses

The European Union: what is on the table?

Australia: the right to refuse "unreasonable" communication

Latin America: some of the most advanced laws

International norms and union principles

Comparison table

What do we learn from these examples?

What does the research say?

Hybrid work does not lower productivity; it reduces resignations

Flexibility means long hours: the "autonomy paradox"

Surveillance software: "bossware"

The real axis is not space but time: four-day-week experiments

A summary of the research

What does the regulation say, and what does it not say?

Points to watch in the contract: a checklist before you sign

Before you sign

When you start a new job

Voluntariness and return

Days, hours and change

Overtime and availability

Expenses

Equipment

Surveillance and personal data

Occupational health and safety

Performance, equality and career

Union and collective rights

A note for public-employee comrades

A few words especially for young comrades

The ideal working life: socialist ideas

The measure of wealth: not labour-time but free time

The realm of necessity and the realm of freedom

The right to be lazy

Useful work and useless toil

The overcoming of the division of labour and polytechnic education

When labour itself becomes life's prime want

Workers' control and workplace democracy

An experiment from history: the seven-hour working day

The socialisation of care

How would remote work be in a socialist order?

A bridge from today to tomorrow

Programme material for unions

Programme principles

Minimum demands for legal regulation

Model articles for a collective agreement

A workplace situation-finding survey

A draft leaflet

A campaign calendar and alliances

Concrete tasks

Related pieces

Sources

Related Posts

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