Basically, if we want these rights of remote work, we're going to have to unionize and fight for them.
The elites already have this right.
The lines are being drawn. Fight or acquiesce.
A non-union workforce has no such bargaining chip.
companies that allow WFH are more flexible then RTO companies. Top talent seems to like WFH more than RTO. In a few years we will see which companies improved: RTO or WFH?
this is a hilarious thought. have you just joined the workforce?
I have no doubt that many employees are individually just as productive or more so when WFH. But collectively, does something suffer? Are teams less productive, less creative? Less opportunities for spontaneous collaboration, etc? What reasons are companies using for justification when they make these RTO decisions?
In any case, hybrid work (eg: 3 days in the office per week) seems to be becoming the norm here in the UK. That seems like a good compromise to me.
You'll have to ask them, but you can't possibly think that companies always (or even most of the time) do the best thing for the company, right? There's so much evidence to the contrary in just daily business life, not even including the big news events, that any sane person would know that companies often do things that are contrary to their own existence, because "existence" is not a driving factor in capitalism, it's profit.
So the exact same as a non-union workforce.
> If most people want WFH, companies that refuse to allow it will have to pay more to attract or retain talent.
I love how people just assume companies are this perfect machine that both know what's going on and understand the choices made, especially in a thread where Blizzard clearly isn't able to deal with their choices and almost certainly didn't intend to lose such talent.
The claim was that unions would be an improvement.
> I love how people just assume companies are this perfect machine that both know what's going on and understand the choices made, especially in a thread where Blizzard clearly isn't able to deal with their choices and almost certainly didn't intend to lose such talent.
Markets don't cause everyone to be perfect. They just cause poor decisions to have consequences. Now they're experiencing the consequences, and anyone seeing it may want to make different decisions than they did.
You do understand that something can have a similar base, but one is better in other areas, right? Surely you get that and you just forgot.
But the same logic generalizes. If you're in the minority then the union doesn't care about your concerns and if you're in the majority then the company does regardless of the union because it costs them too much to not.
Why choose to work for people who's morals you don't agree with and force them to change their minds instead of aligning yourself with those that you consider virtuous and running a company the right way? I cannot understand wanting to perpetuate bad companies and bad managers and owners.
It's like joining a defense company and try to force them to sell crutches vs going to work at a medical company designing crutches.
Most people don't have infinite choice about their employers. This is the second time I've had to explain this on Hackernews in a week, but employers enjoy a structural advantage in the labor market which basically necessitates unions if workers are to represent a comparable market power.
Just because a person doesn't have good employment choices doesn't mean they shouldn't have collective bargaining rights.
The government should enforce some basic rules and provide a safety net for workers to be able to quit their jobs and find another one within a reasonable amount of time. That actually works, not propping up failed businesses with morally bankrupt leadership or just pure lack of sense through a union. I believe your cure is worse than the disease.
I think we have way too different ways to look at the world when you see things like this.
I support a livable minimum wage that doesn't require multiple full time jobs or state support if you're employed to have a simple but dignified life. We should agree on that and can leave the rest for a different dance.
but this isn't the case, it's management making BS decisions no one really likes. the market is in favor of capital & management in the current market climate so collective action is the only way to push back imo
Okay but with remote work, what's the unregulated common resource being depleted or ruined?
The power of workers to dictate their working conditions. Currently, this common resource is being overused by elites who are able to command remote work for themselves but not for regular level workers.
This is a tragedy, and it is a tragedy about a common good that briefly existed as a common good, but it's not technically a "tragedy of the commons" in the original sense.
I understand people conflating the terms in this example.
The factories/companies in the industrialized society copied this format and culture exactly as it was in late 18th and early 19th centuries. In this format, the benefits of the commons (in this case the capability of remote work that technology enables) is removed from the serfs artificially by forcing them to return to work just like how the unwilling serfdom was forced to go work in the factories by shutting the commons off to them by passing enclosure acts.
Some companies will enforce RTO. Some will not. The market will decide how valuable that is, and remote-capable companies should benefit for it.
Some companies are remote by default! You can get a different job!
How many stories have we seen now where employers have reneged on their fully remote forever policies?
Ironically, quit if you don’t like it only works at scale if there is collective action. And collective action is hard if you’re doing it on your own, separately from everyone else.
The market is Moloch : https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/07/30/meditations-on-moloch/
If you could get your first born's weight in $precious_thing , you'd have a line of people doing just that. Sell a piece of your humanity and autonomy? Cool!
Hell, "the market" people would reinstitute slavery if they could.... Oh, wait, they did. https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/economics/indentured-servit...
"The market" is whatever the fuck you can get away with to get even more money for you. Most are ethical-ish, but if you look too hard, you might see the 10 year olds in the butcher plant, or the 8 year olds assembling your Apple shit.
I think that summarizes what I think of anyone who leans on "the market".
Its also worth pointing out that 'the market' memes that people lean on have other requirements; the most crucial is buyers and sellers having equal power, which the labor market immediately discards, by dint of the relative urgency and immediate outcomes of failing to make a deal on the market.
A person selling labor has to balance their price against the urgency to secure food, shelter, and access to medical care.
A company buying labor can frequently afford to wait months or even years and it may not even make sense for them to hire some one at market rate - the more you pay someone the more others expect to be paid and the more they expect to see their own salary grow.
It's something to reflect on when people think companies are behaving stupidly for having interview processes that leave unfilled positions for months - the buyers on the market have fewer and different pressures than the sellers, maybe what they are doing isn't stupid just inhuman.
It absolutely does.
And having actually read Adam Smith's "An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations", most types here usually stop at chapter 2.
There's so many caveats that Smith wrote about with Capitalism, and they're mostly just ignored, or swept like an externality under the rug for someone else to clean up. But again, that's the point of not reading/ignoring past chapter 2.
It's also why I read all of it, to understand why I disapprove of it, and other systems that may be better. But, no system yet can handle that digital and intellectual things cost a lot once, but free for ever after creation.
Say you have company X that makes SaaS. They mandate RTO for all workers. If there are really as many people wanting remote work as you say, then a remote work competitor Y will spring up and talent will start bleeding from X to Y. That happens a lot not just with remote work but all sorts of disruptions that company X types don't like to adapt to.
Speaking with your feet assumes you have the luxury to do so and the other side is willing to listen.
And that lower pay is still double what you can make in other countries.
Is this the hill we want to die on? Don’t we have a lot to lose?
> If most of my colleagues and the owners of the company I work for decide they prefer to work in an office
If most of your colleagues prefer the office, I assume your union wouldn't push for mandatory WFH.
As for the owners—well, reducing the effect of their preferences on the experience of workers is the point of a union.
Interestingly, the people you name specifically don't want you to do that. For example, Lulu Cheng Meservey: https://kotaku.com/call-duty-mwii-activision-union-busting-l...
It seems like at least one of these statements has to be false. My guess is that remote work is not actually good for all companies, which is leading some of them to call for RTO. Other companies will keep it, but perhaps not as many as employees would like. The same could be said for many aspects of work, like free lunches/dinners/massages, which are also disappearing as the supply/demand equilibrium is shifting as you describe.
On paper a union kinda makes sense until you see your union dues going to support batshit candidates for office. Here in the US virtually all unions support left leaning policies and the democrat party. Time and again the democrat party claims one thing and does another. Like the backstabbing the Biden administration did to Railroad workers. They did not settle that in workers best interests. They solved it to prevent economic disruption.
I would rather negotiate my own salary needs than leave it to a union.
Technology workers make tremendous amounts of money once you hit middle to senior level career stages. Even more so if you have a specialty. No way would folks given up that level of autonomy.
It is simple enough that the remote work issue is settled through the job market. If a company advertises for only onsite work, they have that choice. Likewise me as a worker can exclusively look for remote work. Despite this economy, the technology worker still dictates the terms. For now. I am sure it will go in cycles like everything else.