this post was submitted on 22 Aug 2023
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Work Reform
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A place to discuss positive changes that can make work more equitable, and to vent about current practices. We are NOT against work; we just want the fruits of our labor to be recognized better.
Our Philosophies:
- All workers must be paid a living wage for their labor.
- Income inequality is the main cause of lower living standards.
- Workers must join together and fight back for what is rightfully theirs.
- We must not be divided and conquered. Workers gain the most when they focus on unifying issues.
Our Goals
- Higher wages for underpaid workers.
- Better worker representation, including but not limited to unions.
- Better and fewer working hours.
- Stimulating a massive wave of worker organizing in the United States and beyond.
- Organizing and supporting political causes and campaigns that put workers first.
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The data was already there. Twenty years of it. Remote work is not remotely new. They chose to ignore it because executive fee-fees are more important than facts and data.
This is a minor wave I've seen of "oopsies" posts about work from home.
And if history is any teacher, and considering that they spent the last few months pushing the "workers actually want to come back!" fantasy narrative, I expect in a few weeks the pieces will start being about blaming workers for the return to work pushes.
"We told our workers they could stay home forever [by quitting] if they wanted but all [the ones we didn't just constructively dismiss] of them all but demanded that we let them return to the office." --Some CEO, Probably
Executives are interested in preserving their buddies and their investments in large corporate rental space.
E.g. Concord-Pacific, by itself, owns something 60-80% of all of the office space in all of downtown Vancouver. Easily into the tens, if not hundreds of billions of dollars tied up in imaginary value.
Including the massive convention center and almost all of Gastown.
I doubt that executives are that clever. I've seen this conspiracy theory circulating atm, but it relies on so many assumptions that I consider it unlikely. It assumes that executives "help" each other out by willfully spending money for office space and all it costs, that could be saved in expenses by employees working from home. Corporations are obsessed with cost cutting, why would they willfully waste money? It also assumes that corporations help each other out. Considering the fierce competitiveness corporations are exposed to and how this extends to all fields, including office space, employees, office equipment, etc., this is nothing more than a conspiracy theory. Another assumption is that the push for a return to the office comes from ALL or mostly all executives. Is there actually data supporting this claim? Who is really doing this?
What I think is the real reason, is far simpler and requires less mental acrobatics to justify: The people, who are pushing for a return to the office, (a) have a stake in the performance of the company and (b) are not working themselves when they are supposed to be working from home. They then project their own behavior upon others, and therefore push for a return to the office to, in their mind, prevent their enployees from slacking off.
All large hedge funds and investment portfolios have a real estate component. They lose money if they do it. They think on a level of "if everyone does this what will happen"
But lots of companies that are nothing to do with hedge fund management or also pushing people do return to the office.
Do what?
How does forcing their own workers back into their office raise or lower the value of their own real estate? If they use it, they won't sell it, value is irrelevant then.
“Facts don’t care about feelings”
It works the other way around too, that's the problem.