Yahoo isn’t alone in reversing course on what had been a flexible use of telecommuting by its employees. The California Administrative Office of the Courts (AOC) is no longer allowing its workers to live in Switzerland while they technically work in Sacramento.

Yahoo’s ban, announced last month, is a bit more restrictive than the courts. It is reeling in hundreds of workers who regularly work from home, and requiring them to show up at the office when the policy change takes effect in June.

The AOC, smarting from a report that documented widespread abuse of its telecommuting policy, tightened up the rules last week by limiting the practice to once a week for its 85 workers, but banned management from participating. The old policy allowed them all to telecommute up to eight days a month, but allowed supervisors discretion to expand the days.

The May 2012 report, written by a committee appointed by Chief Justice Tani Cantil-Sakauye, found that one lawyer lived in Geneva, Switzerland, for a year, two lived out-of-state and one manager managed his Sacramento staff of 11 from another county.

Although none of the long-distance telecommuters were abiding by the AOC’s rules, they all had received permission from the judiciary’s General Counsel and the AOC administrative director to work from home. The report pointed out that this kind of behavior demonstrates “a seeming arrogance or lack of sensitivity in the eyes of many budget-strapped courts that cannot afford the luxury of such arrangements.”

It wasn’t just appearances and pissed-off trial judges, who have complained about the AOC for years, that concerned the committee. It blamed telecommuting for there being “little, if any, supervision, of staff attorneys at AOC regional offices. Specifically, attorneys located in the regional offices are supervised by telephone and/or email contact only, as no managing or supervising attorneys are assigned to remote locations.”

The entire court system is reeling under massive cuts that have cost it $1 billion over the past five years. Trial courts have been forced to kill construction projects, reduce hours and services, and delay proceedings. The fight over dwindling dollars has exacerbated a struggle between the AOC, the judiciary’s central bureaucracy overseen by the chief justice and the Judicial Council, and judges in the state’s 58 trial courts.

Most of the judges wanted a total ban on telecommuting. The AOC voted 17-0 for the once-a-week restriction, instead.      

–Ken Broder

To Learn More:

End of the Line (by Bill Girdner, Courthouse News Service)

Trial Court Agency Curbs Telecommuting (by Phillip Matier and Andrew Ross, San Francisco Chronicle)

Telecommuting State Lawyers Work Far Away from Calif. (by Mike Luery, KCRA)

Back to the Stone Age? New Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer Bans Working from Home (by Jenna Goudreau, Forbes)

Courts Aim Lower after Blowing $500 Million on a Failed System (by Ken Broder, AllGov California)

Report on the Administrative Office of the Courts (Strategic Evaluation Committee) (pdf)