City-wide parking ban due to unprecedented winter storms, being forced back to office — use leave or risk towing? (St John’s, NL)

We’re in the middle of what is basically a historic winter in St. John’s right now. As of today, February’s snowfall total is the highest monthly snowfall on record — for any winter month since records began.

In the last week alone we had two major storms, days apart, that dumped about a meter of snow (1.5m in higher elevations). Roads are still basically cow paths in a lot of places, barely wide enough for one vehicle. Sidewalks are buried. The city is still digging out. Despite a large snowclearing fleet, they’ve had to contract out to private operators as well, I cannot overstate the amount of snow that’s come down.

Because of snow clearing, there’s currently a city wide ban on all on-street parking. Not just tickets, vehicles can be towed so plows can get through. And the industrial area where my partner works has no public transit service.

Here’s the issue. My partner works at a government building that utilizes on-street parking for majority of their staff.

For several days employees were told to work from home while the city dug out. Yesterday afternoon, management sent a Teams message saying the road is now passable for two-way traffic and staff are expected back in the office today.

However, the city wide parking ban is still in effect.

When management was reminded of that, the response was basically: “We are not responsible for parking.” My spouse was told that if she can’t come in, she should use leave. She is not being permitted to work from home like earlier in the week, even though there is work to be done and she is fully able to do it remotely.

So the choice is: risk being towed during a city-wide emergency parking ban, or burn leave. Working from home (and being productive) isn’t being allowed.

This just feels… extreme.

For context: she’s an indeterminate federal employee, consistently high performer, trains others, excellent PMAs, has complied with all in-office requirements, never complains about WFH policies, zero performance issues. Management doesn’t seem to care.

Now, just to provide a little more background as to why I feel this situation is especially aggravating, I’m also a federal public servant, but in a different department, but in the same city. My building stayed closed longer than most, specifically “to let the city clean up.” Schools were closed even longer. Today we’re getting another 10cm and our department again allowed WFH. My management acts like rational compassionate human beings and seem to follow common sense. The contrast between leadership approaches couldn’t be sharper.

This isn’t a broader WFH debate. This is a weather related situation that has only happened twice in the last decade. This feels like a single building’s management making an inflexible call during what is genuinely an unprecedented snowfall event for the city

Neither of us have ever needed to involve a union before. Is this something worth raising? How does that even work in practice? We don’t want to be seen as petty, but this situation feels unreasonable.

Curious how others would handle it. If I’m being ridiculous in my frustration I will swallow my pride and just shut up.

Tomorrow is her designated wfh day , so suddenly it’s fine to work from home, but not today. The whole situation is ridiculous.