RTO doesn’t improve company value, but does make employees miserable: Study::Data is consistent with bosses using RTO to reassert control and scapegoat workers.
Misery and perpetual exhaustion drives desperation and suppresses political action and participation and capitalism relies on that
If most companies didn’t get so horny for “open floor” plans and/or cubicles maybe nearly everyone wouldn’t hate their fancy expensive real estate holdings so much.
The worst is “high-efficiency seating” which is just a long table where you sit elbow to elbow with your colleagues and try to work. Even cubicles are too fancy for these companies.
If I was still working for The Man there’s no way I’d RTO. Nothing enkindles my rage faster than the idiots saying “COVID is over” when it’s more infectious than ever. Well, nothing except the ones who say COVID won’t kill you (I’ve got over a million reasons to show how that’s bullshit). There isn’t an office in the world that isn’t a de facto COVID infection party. ESPECIALLY the ones where you sit elbow to elbow. Frak that, I’m not going to die to make a living.
https://www.who.int/data/stories/the-true-death-toll-of-covid-19-estimating-global-excess-mortality
More than 3 million in 2020 alone. I wouldn’t be at all surprised if it were closer to 14-15 million worldwide at this point.
Covid is over in the same way the flu was over in 1923, its still there, it’ll still kill people every winter but its endemic and there’s no getting rid of it and no point upending all society with all the other problems that causes in order to try and bring it down a few percent.
If you’ve ever worked at one of these big companies with fancy buildings, it’s interesting that in the end, they’re the same depressing row after row of cubicles, or “shared working spaces”
The architecture might look neat outside and upfront, but otherwise it’s just sad and boring inside the actual working area.
Big thing about RTO is that these places just suck to be at. Quality of workspaces have been going down for years as they try to cram more and more people into less space.
We finally get a reckoning that a lot of people can just work from home and the economy won’t blow up, but instead, rich folks want people back in the torture zones.
From an access to information request, I was able to obtain the documents related to the decision to undo the 4-year long WFH decision. It ultimately came down to corporate real estate values. Many pensions within my country are heavily invested in corporate real estate.
If downtowns were to lose traffic to businesses and people stopped being in office, the values would decrease over 40% and these pension funds would be on the verge of collapsing, with high political and economic consequences.
Our entire world is built on lies. So fuck it, enjoy your life and do what you want.
You requested that from a company or government? I don’t doubt it’s true I’m just surprised that they would be able to coordinate something like that or that massive businesses would do something in the best interest of pensions?
I think occums razor here is just that companies want to pay people off without the expense. That’s the thing that has more of an immediate impact on the companies and their bottom lines.
From an access to information request, I was able to obtain the documents related to the decision to undo the 4-year long WFH decision.
What does this even mean? Information request to who? Are you sure you didn’t just read it in one of the hundreds of reddit or lemmy comments about this?
Depending on which country you live and applicable labor laws, those type of information are available to employees. In France for example, we got CE and CSE who have monthly and special topic meetings with HR and WFH and one of the topics discussed there among a lot others. There’s a third party meeting secretary who notes everything and two weeks later we are sent the full exact write down of the discussions, who was there, who was absent and excused and who said what. It’s usually 30-50 pages long, really instructive and a must read if you want to know what is going on in the company. From negotiations regarding raises, open jobs, services where there are management issues and what’s done to tackle them, wfh, even the state and price of the canteen, input on company results, strategic 5y plan, etc.
I’m leaving my management job in the city next month to move north 6 hours away and live in a small town with a mortgage that will be half as much for an acre instead of a townhouse with no grass. I wrote a proposal to do a order entry job for less money but work from home but my boss wants everyone in order entry to work in the office. So they chose to lose 9 years of company and product knowledge because they don’t want me to work from home in case people who have been there less time might want to work from home too.
