Job-Swapping as a Way to Cut Commutes

An advocate for cutting commutes wants the B.C. government to require employers to consider allowing workers to swap jobs for ones closer to their homes.

Publisher and management consultant Bruce Batchelor says the idea could get five per cent of traffic off the province’s roads and would allow people to be healthier, but it needs the government’s support to make it reality.

“It’s really important we make this mandatory,” Batchelor said. “If it’s not mandatory under the health and safety regulations, you get all the players playing silly bugger.”

He gave the example of teachers. While hundreds are commuting daily from Vancouver to work in schools in Surrey, there are also hundreds coming the other way into Vancouver. It would make more sense for every teacher to work in schools closer to their homes, he said.

Which schools teachers work in depends largely on where they were first hired and their seniority. There’s little reason any particular teacher needs to be in the school where they are, he said. “They’re all teachers. A history teacher is a history teacher,” he said. “They’re very exchangeable.”

In fact teachers have in the past supported a similar idea. In 2007 the BC Teachers’ Federation passed a resolution supporting “green lateral transfers,” but no school boards ever acted on it and the idea went by the wayside.

Besides schools, any organization that has multiple widely distributed job sites would benefit from shortening commutes for employees.

Banks, grocery stores, chain restaurants and health care settings are all examples where swapping workers between different locations would likely be possible, he said.

“Everywhere I go, nobody has been able to find anything wrong with the idea,” Batchelor said. Anyone who has ever wondered where all that traffic is going gets it, he said. “The five-year-old standing beside the freeway understands this.”

To make it happen, however, human resources departments need to have the responsibility and the authority to consider matching employees with job sites closer to their homes.

To get there, Batchelor said, the government will have to take the lead.

The province could do it as an Occupational Health and Safety regulation, similar to how it last year stopped employers from requiring servers to wear high heels on the job, he said. “Is the issue of high heels more important than 20, 30 or 40,000 commutes being shortened?”

Batchelor has been promoting the idea for four years, and recently has been approaching government officials seeking support from people in charge of environment, transportation, labour, jobs and education. “This is something that transcends ministries.”

It’s not an idea that political parties or the government have so far embraced. A spokesperson for the transportation ministry referred questions to the ministry of labour, which said, “The Ministry of Labour would have to look into the idea further before commenting from a legislation or policy perspective.”

Green Party MLA Adam Olsen said he’s heard from Batchelor about his proposal and has discussed it with Labour Minister Harry Bains.

“It makes a ton of sense,” said Olsen, who represents Saanich North and the Islands. “There was agreement that if we could cut people’s commute times down by having people working closer to home, then we’ll also decrease greenhouse gas emissions, stress, congestion.”

It would, however, be difficult to implement, he said. “There are a lot of complexities in this that need to be addressed... The complexity in our society doesn’t make it as easy as saying that’s what we want to do.”

Government has a leadership role to play, Olsen added. “What we’re dealing with here is a system that isn’t perfect, and it has evolved over time. It’s not very often that we stop and ask, ‘did this evolve into the best possible situation, or did it just evolve into a situation?’”

Batchelor said shortening commutes would boost productivity and morale while cutting greenhouse gas emissions and the time people are sedentary, adding it would be good for everyone except for people selling gas.

With Alberta premier Rachel Notley threatening to “turn off the taps” on fuel exports to B.C., it’s an idea whose time may have come.