The convergence of new information and communications technologies (ICTs), sometimes known as telematics, is facilitating enormous upheavals in the organisation of human activities in time and space. While only a minority of jobs are directly affected by this relocation - which can be called teleworking - the breakdown of the unity of time and space which underlies traditional employment contracts has general implications for collective bargaining, and could indirectly affect a much larger proportion of the workforce in relation to issues including: health and safety; pay; training, standard rule systems and equal opportunities. This report focuses on the last of these: equal opportunities.

The report analyses the concept of equality in the context of collective bargaining and identifies several significant dimensions of inequality including:

• Vertical segregation: whereby the most senior jobs are occupied by members of privileged groups (e.g. able-bodied white men) whilst members of disadvantaged groups are found in the lowest-grade jobs
• Horizontal segregation: whereby different groups are concentrated within separate sectors, departments or occupational groups.
• Segregation by contractual form: whereby privileged groups monopolise 'core' jobs with permanent, full-time employee status, whilst disadvantaged groups are found disproportionately amongst temporary, casual and on-call workers and the pseudo self-employed
• Segregation by working hours: whereby certain groups are concentrated in the least popular shift patterns or in part-time work
• Geographical segregation: whereby high-flying jobs with greater opportunities for advancement are based in city-centre offices whilst the more routine low-skilled low-paid jobs are relocated to peripheral regions

In the remainder of the report, the risks and benefits resulting from the introduction of teleworking are examined, taking account of the implications of this segmentation for each group. Where particular dangers are identified, positive remedies are proposed, drawing on the research and experience of the national representatives of the Euro-telework project in the fifteen EU countries and Norway in relation to discrimination on the grounds of: gender; disability; ethnicity; and age.

The main recommendations can be summarised as follows:

• Ensuring that teleworkers who so wish have employee status and access to all the rights and benefits of on-site workers
• Redesigning routine jobs to ensure some variety and inter-personal contact
• Ensuring that payment methods for low-skilled staff are not based on crude quantitative measures
• Ensuring that discrimination does not take place, either directly or indirectly, in the selection, training, access to promotion or career progression of teleworkers, on the grounds of gender, disability, ethnicity or age
• Ensuring that all teleworkers have the right to return to office-based employment whenever they wish
• Ensuring that the location of work is not regarded as a significant difference in comparisons designed to ensure equal treatment between men and women
• Integrating telework policies with other policies designed to enhance equal opportunities or improve work/life balance
• Workplaces to be adapted to ensure that they are fully accessible to disabled people
• Where teleworking is freely chosen as the optimal solution, any necessary equipment or adaptations to the home to be paid for by the employer
• Job design to be assessed for its implications for particular disabilities and, where necessary, jobs to be redesigned and job descriptions made flexible to make them suitable for the widest possible range of applicants
• Disability audits and disability awareness training
• Involvement of disabled workers in development of telework policy
• Mentoring schemes to provide initial training for newly appointed disabled staff
• Full social integration of disabled workers
• Provide training and software in appropriate languages
• Encourage awareness that in an increasingly globalised economy, and with an increasingly diverse population in Europe, a diverse workforce is not simply an asset but often an essential requirement for giving good service to customers
• Provide training geared towards the needs of older workers (in terms of content and presentation - e.g. print size)
• Carry out skills audits to identify the hidden talents of older workers (the experience of parenting teenagers, for instance, provides excellent training for managing teleworkers!)
• Develop mentoring and buddy systems to minimise social isolation and encourage knowledge sharing between experienced workers and new recruits
• Encourage employers to identify the advantages of older workers - an aging European population means an aging customer base; who better to understand and serve their needs than an older workforce?
• Consider the development of phased retirement schemes, perhaps involving a period of telework-enabled part-time working between full employment and retirement

• Arrange meetings to ensure that part-time workers and shift-workers have full access to decision-making, and that they are arranged in places that are welcoming and accessible to both women and men, to people with disabilities and to people from all ethnic backgrounds
• Research on the extent of disability amongst the existing membership and problems experienced by disabled members
• Recruitment literature, websites and newsletters aimed at disabled workers - including presenting information in a variety of formats to ensure that neither sight-impaired nor hearing-impaired members are excluded from access
• Campaigns to combat discrimination on the grounds of disability - including AIDS and other disabilities which may be stigmatised in certain social contexts
• Research on the ethnic composition of the existing membership and problems experienced by members from ethnic minorities
• Active recruitment drives to bring under-represented groups into membership including, where necessary, the appointment of organisers from ethnic minorities and the production of literature in appropriate languages
• Campaigns to combat racism and xenophobia, and to educate the membership on the social and economic implications of globalisation

• Equal access to training in ITC-related skills for girls and boys, men and women, including the development of training resources and courses which are easily accessible and 'woman-friendly' in terms of their language and content
• Child-care and elder-care facilities which allow a free choice of where to work
• Safe, accessible and affordable public transport to make it possible to travel to work for those who wish to do so
• Housing design which takes account of the multiple activities of teleworkers
• Transport and other facilities fully adapted for disabled people
• Where necessary, legislation to ensure that discrimination on the grounds of disability is prohibited
• ICT equipment and software to be provided free of charge to people with disabilities
• Day centres and residential homes for the disabled to be adapted to provide high quality learning and working environments for users who wish to become teleworkers or take part in tele-training
• Training initiatives to help disabled people make up for past disadvantage, and gain access to skills and knowledge to equip them to become e-workers
• Agencies to help put disabled job-seekers in touch with potential employers
• Active anti-discrimination policies to combat racism and xenophobia
• Training courses, where necessary in appropriate languages, to provide the skills and knowledge necessary for access to e-work for all social groups
• Low-cost public internet access in areas with large ethnic minority populations
• Research and education on globalisation and its social and economic implications
• ITC training and internet-based services targeted at older people

http://www.euro-telework.org