We had a skip-level with a director today who told us our 3 day in office is going to become a 5 day. When asked why, he couldn’t articulate a single good reason. It was a “management decision” made by a bunch of tone-deaf fucks who never go to the office or get paid so much money that the cost is trivial. It’s time to start unionizing everywhere. Fuck these class traitors.
Time to brush up that resume, WFH or hybrid is the new norm.
Fully remote is the only way. In my experience hybrid workplaces are just as toxic. It could turn into full time office out of the blue like mentioned here or generally the ones showing up to the office get a bit of a preferential treatment if the boss also regularly shows up at the office.
Not only that, but any hybrid job ties your location within some reasonable distance from physical offices. Sure, I don’t need to commute daily, but I also can’t like 100 miles away from any office.
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Not all jobs can be remote, while some can. Not all remote jobs can be 100% remote. That’s great if you can, but someone has to go swap out failed disks or see things hands-on because of whatever reason. And there are isolated networks too.
I’m curious why even bring that up? No one is suggesting jobs that physically require your presences in a geographic location to be Fully Remote. When people are saying things like “all jobs should be fully remote” they’re referring to all jobs that can be fully remote should be fully remote.
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I wish there was a union for office workers who were forced back into the office
I’d join in a heartbeat
Same, now if only one existed…
We need to start founding them on our own, it isn’t just going to happen. These fucking CEOs and investors need to be put in their place. They’re deliberately flexing on us, deliberately increasing our stress levels and impacting our lives and health. These fucking leeches would be nothing without us doing the real work for them.
I agree, but have no knowledge on how to create a union but I’m sure someone much smarter than me has experience out there in the lemmyverse so made the below post asking for help:
People should unionise anyway. Even if ots a good place to work
RGE
When I was going to the office, parking downtown was $21 a day.
So $105 a week just to park to go to work.
Now, I COULD have taken a bus/train for $5.60 a day… But that would mean adding an extra hour to my commute in the morning and an extra hour and a half at night.
$21 - $5.60 = Saving $15.40 a day, but losing 2.5 hours.
My time is worth more than $6.16 an hour.
WFH I save ALL $21, plus gas money, plus not eating out for lunch or dinner.
After doing that for 3 years, I had $30,000 in the bank and bought a house.
There are other benefits aside from money that you enjoy when riding a train/bus compared to driving.
Buses/trains have drivers themselves, so you don’t have to engage with traffic to and from work - and during rush hour when the most people are on the road during the day.
Then, when you ride a bus/train, you lower the impacts and demands on the natural world, like reducing GHG potential per capital, reducing the vehicle waste from oil leaks, tire dust, smog, etc. per capita, and reducing the fuel demand per capita needed to get you where you need to go.
Downside with public transit is that people don’t like to be around other people in that kind of setting (for reasons like increased social contact for illness transmission, people might smell bad, might be loud, might pose a threat to others, etc.).
This being said, remote work is a wonderful alternative to even public transit. Agree with you there for jobs that don’t need to commute. Some jobs still do, and public transit would be my next best choice. Still, some jobs need to travel more than a fixed route, so hybrids or EVs would be better than ICE cars for that. Etc etc
The cost of it doesn’t bother me as much as the time involved. If I’m showing up and leaving at the assigned hour I’m burning 30 or 40 minutes in the car each way. Adding another 15 to 30 minutes to get ready to go in versus my just getting dressed and walking into my home office.
Driving’s always subliminally stressful. The whole time you’re driving your subconsciously watching the cars around you and looking for problems. Your heart rate goes up and whenever you get to your location It takes a little while to get back in your groove. There’s a nonzero transition period there. The last thing I want to do after driving home for 40 minutes and heavy traffic is to barrel right into chores but there I am.
my just getting dressed
You got dressed when you worked from home?
never work naked. even partially. eventually something will happen where an emergency meeting happens or you need to get up real quick. nope not worth it. i don’t get fancy, but not pajamas 100%
I always kept my shirt on (I would be cold otherwise anyway), but I guess the way my home office is set up, you couldn’t see that I was just in my boxers even if I had to get up. I didn’t really think about it.
Does anyone have knowledge and or experience with forming a union in the US? After doing some mild research I failed to find a union that represents telework / work from home employees, specifically those who are facing return to office mandates from their corporate overlords
Love WFH for taking care of animals, stress free guilt free breaks, all my home comforts, but I do feel extra sedative when working for hours and do get a bit lonely wishing I could make more coworker friends, but they’re on the other side of the continent
Yeah, that’s what’s crazy about some of the back-to-the-office pushes: come sit in this cubicle and speak to people online who are sitting in similar cubicles in an other city or country…
Me too. I miss my chill office culture where everyone showed up, but the norm was roll in anytime before 1030 or 11am and leave early if you need to. And expected to work from home a day or maybe 2 a week if needed. As long as you showed up for the important meetings in person and attended had a known presence in the office while you were there, it was all good. And being in the office felt good because it was a good collaborative environment. Now I can opt in to go to the office, and have all the sedative isolation of home without the comforts.
The most challenging aspect of returning to the office is the commute. This isn’t surprising because commutes of only 30 minutes are linked to higher stress and anger, while 45 minutes or more is linked to poorer overall well-being, daily mood, and health.
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That explains a lot actually, damn. Is that cumulative, or just one way?
Of course Fortune can’t close an article about how stupid RTO is without turning around and advising the (probably employee rather than employer) reader of all the good things they can do back in the office.
So what can you do if your employer mandates your return-to-office? First, focus on maximizing the benefits of this life change…
Are people forgetting that the salaries were high in high cost of living areas to account for this cost. In the new normal, should employees expect pay cuts, or should employees that opt in to in office expect higher pay or stipends?
Also, curious about tax advantaged commuter benefits. Sure sticker cost is a months groceries, but if you are commuting and able to pay that pre tax for Metro or rail passes, it’s only 66 percent of the sticker cost.
Also I think the pet and childcare costs are interesting. For child care, is that assuming like 1 or 2 extra hours of childcare per day?
Seems like everyone in this thread is okay with pay cuts as it is less than the benefit.
This article is saying the average is ~$500 a month. Imagine pre pandemic work norms. If your employer offered you $500 less a month, but the trade off was you got to work fully remote, would you take it?
Yep. I took a larger one because I changed industries and location too.
Many large companies that support wfh, set pay scales based on where you live, not where they are. If you live in a low cost of living area you get paid less. Live in a high cost of living area get paid more.
Before you start jabbering about how companies don’t do that… They do. Just because you don’t work for one, or don’t know about your own companies policies you should look it up. Most companies are pretty discreet about it and people don’t talk about taking pay cuts to move to low cost of living area but it is common.
Yep. The way I’ve heard of it actually happening to folks where I work is when they moved during the pandemic their pay didn’t immediately change. But when they got their promotion, they got a 0% percent increase because that was when they recalculated the cost of living adjustment. So maybe they got a 12% raise, but moved to a place with a 15% lower cost of living. So they weren’t going to piss off the employee by rewarding with a pay cut, but use that as the time to reset compensation leveling.
So you’re saying people should take a paycut because they are more productive?
It’s more having your cake and eating it too. When pandemic hit and you got to keep your salary and work remote, maybe move to a cheaper area, no one complained that they kept all the benefit of the in office pay. But now that you got to keep the same pay, and are asked to come back into the office, you aren’t suddenly making less money. You’re just paying for the cost that was always expected as an employee that was hopefully accounted for in giving you a reasonable salary.
And some of these costs that add up to “a month of groceries” can be mitigated by having flexible in office policy. It’s not that transport takes a month of groceries. The cost is transport + childcare + pet care. For some childless and petless workers the cost of in office transport isnt that bad, and might be tax free if you have programs for it. And child care and pet care can be reduced with flexible in office requirements. Some companies used to let people bring their dogs to the office, for example.
