> All this is to say, I'm skeptical that workers won't be called back into the office as soon as leadership gets the chance.

That forget the leadership on top of that leadership though!

Where I work, before covid they were working on expanding quite a bit the amount of office space but as far as I understands, all theses plans got cancelled and instead we won't have permanent desk and instead we will works remotely 2-3 days a week. That's coming from a company that had literally no remote works before Covid (except while travelling).

It represents so much money to have less office space, as long as the manager doesn't play too much with their staff efficiency during Covid, it will just make sense to save money there.