Art obviously by HappyRoadKill, beware the rampant NSFW furry art though
It’s not about the money, it’s about control over your life.
Armchair theory: this is the fundamental difference between liberals and leftists. Liberals will assume that if you change the economic incentives, business owners will respond accordingly.
That runs smack into things like work from home or 4 day work weeks. We have evidence that workers will be as much or more productive doing things this way. Why are they opposing it, anyway? Power fits the explanation better than money. Perhaps there is a third option, but until someone comes up with a convincing one, I’ll go with power.
Money is only a path to power. In a conflict between power and money, they will choose power.
See: Utopianism vs Scientific Socialism, or Idealism vs Materialism.
The ruling class cannot simply be convinced to give up power, even if it is more productive or moral.
Ya know, I always found this to be the bizarre thing about the rich and powerful. They try to hold onto their wealth and power that it inevitably will start to seep from between their fingers like sand. If one wants to hold wealth and power the most effective way much like sand is to hold it gently and evenly.
There’s an expression in Japan (I think): “A rising tide lifts all boats.” The rich could get EVEN RICHER if they helped people out of poverty, who would then likely buy more of whatever it is the rich sell to get rich. But that’s long term thinking…
A rising tide lifts all boats
This one originates from the United States, popularized by Kennedy.
That’s also an English expression
The problem with that sense of Trickle Down Economics is that these better Capitalists that pay more cannot do so when in competition. Similarly, raising minimum wage, while massively helpful for humanity, lowers the rate of exploitation and thus lowers the rate of profits for business owners.
This is the key of why Capitalists cannot be convinced to do better, it will always hurt them.
I mean, same with remote work
I don’t understand why so many businesses are against remote work. If I was a CEO and was told that there was a way to decrease expenditures on rent and increase employee morale I would be asking “how fast can we switch?”, not pushing back against it.
From my view, as a lowly worker, this is control. 100% about control. They don’t trust you to actually do your job and they seem to believe that you’ll just slack off and not do your job if you’re not supervised.
Certainly, I have been aware of and even witnessed people who work from home simply to do as little as possible. But let me tell you this, it’s a very small minority. From companies of hundreds of workers, there’s maybe one or two that will have this issue.
There’s another, fairly minor factor related to workers: basically some people prefer in-office work. The reasons they prefer it are vastly varied, but such matters are a factor.
The only other factors have to do with the employer and they all revolve around control. First, they want to keep an eye on you to ensure you’re working. But all workers know how to “look busy” without doing very much at all. So this becomes a null sum. They also want the ability to interrupt you and ask questions if you on a whim, which can damage your efficiency significantly. For them, the trade off is fine, they can get their every curiosity and whim addressed immediately, which is valuable for them. The added oversight is a benefit to them too, at least, they think it is. Next, we have distractions, the bosses seem to think that you’ll have more uncontrollable distractions at home, spouses, pets, children, deliveries, repair workers, etc. Stuff that they will have no awareness of nor control over.
The last point I want to make on their perspective is real estate. Companies invest so much money, month over month in order to have a place that they can house their workers while they do the job. In many cases, these are investments that they cannot easily change or escape from. If the building sits mostly empty, they have a hard time justifying it. Whether it’s a lease on some office space in a business complex or if it’s a land purchase with a big expensive building constructed on it, the place where you work represents a huge investment for the company. Even leases have several year terms that are not easily or cheaply broken, and it becomes very difficult to maintain their justification for that investment when there’s nobody occupying it. That means either costly relocations to smaller spaces or simply filling the space with more workers. They don’t want to give it up because they don’t want to lose the space which may involve more costs if they need the space later.
There’s a lot of fear in the last point.
With all of this in mind, the two places I’ve worked at where remote work became or was the norm, both either had no significant office, or reduced their office space significantly when moving to remote work. The locations where I’ve been pushed back into the office, they had spaces that for one reason or another, they couldn’t easily downsize due to equipment requirements. They needed to house equipment for the job and couldn’t easily move the equipment to downsize.
The factor that compounds all of this is that, forcing you to come to the office has no financial impact to the company. The company isn’t paying for your time or transportation to get there. So it’s a non issue for them. It’s entirely left to their preference to say whether you work from the office or not. The time and money you spend getting there isn’t of any consequence to them. So whether you need to walk down the street to the office or drive for hours each way to get there doesn’t matter at all. That’s a you problem.
In the end, the perceived benefits for them, of oversight, and the justification of their office space, often outweighs any possible benefit you might get from it. The perceived risks of either laziness stemming from lack of oversight is simply too much risk in the minds of managers and execs.
So many company’s won’t do it.
There’s 20 years worth of science on the benefits of remote work. It’s really clear-cut.
It’s just stubborn, ignorant, old, rich people who think they know better and simply reject any science that doesn’t jive with their own preconceived biases.
But sometimes it’s because they are futilely trying to protect the value of their unnecessary real-estate.
Little bit of everything but a lot of it comes down to “if it ain’t broke don’t fix it” kind of thinking. Even if you see other businesses doing it, if it isn’t popular in your sector then it’s better to leave everything as is until you see negative effects from keeping it the same.
It’s that and, well, they have power over you in the workplace. At home you aren’t their only team as much. At that point it highlights how BS most of your job is and they don’t like that.
And lastly it’s also for legitimacy for investors. Many investors treat companies with no or little physical spaces as lesser.
They also don’t like letting employees have much free time, because it allows us to find other jobs, or work on something that could become a replacement income and leave.
At least anecdotally I’ve heard multiple managers taking about it.
I was listening to a podcast recently where a billionaire was talking about their upbringing and values, and when the host pivoted to remote work, this is the sentiment I got that probably reflects what most “stubborn, ignorant, old, rich” people think:
From what the billionaire was saying, office space allows opportunities for workers to perceive and speak with people in the company they don’t directly engage with through their work. To the billionaire, this meant that the walls between different departments and divisions could be broken down and crossed, with the hope that workers from other departments/divisions would naturally get to know each other and learn about the functions, rewards, and struggles of their respective roles. Perhaps this might lead to greater empathy, cohesion, and loyalty to the group of people composing the company. People on Lemmy call this “water cooler talk”.
But the breaking down and crossing of invisible departmental or divisional boundaries doesn’t just include the working class: to the billionaire, this also includes the leadership class. The idea is that office space can allow for relationships to begin, platonic ones or mentorships or otherwise, and can help suspend the idea of a separation of classes (and departments) in a corporate setting. I’d imagine that the sorts of tactics like pizza parties are also attempts at equalizing company hierarchies.
Does this actually happen in practice in real office spaces? I’d probably say it still comes down to the type of person in the office. Extroverts will push past social boundaries because they have the confidence to do so, whereas introverts uphold social boundaries because it’s easier to do so and maybe not as much social confidence is there.
Can the same be achieved in remote settings? Maybe. I’ve seen conversations on Lemmy recently point to open call channels, akin to what you might see in Discord channels, where employees can join the channel on their own and allow opportunities for spontaneous conversation and visiting with others. I’ve never been with a company that does this, but I can imagine that it only takes some IT configuration to accomplish.
I think the ideas behind RTO are noble in that the aim is to remove the inherent (and perhaps false or maybe perceived) sense of hierarchy in companies, and equalize the power field so that more people feel comfortable working. I think this is achievable in WFH settings, but I still think it very much comes down to the individuals and their specific personalities in either case.
I’ve seen conversations on Lemmy recently point to open call channels, akin to what you might see in Discord channels, where employees can join the channel on their own and allow opportunities for spontaneous conversation and visiting with others.
That is exactly how it works, assuming the company is using a tool like Slack to facilitate it. All those things that the “billionaire” are problematic in person because of stratification… nobody is going to cross those barriers unless they already have an “in”.
A tool like Slack, where people can lurk on conversations, or actively jump in, or start new ones… organized into topical channels (both public and private) allow for that kind of organic socializing without the barrier of - for example - business casual plebes and senior managers or execs in tailored suits being intimidated by one another’s appearance or work location. These tools allow for much more collaboration, socialization, and breaking-down-of-barriers than a purely physical space ever could.
From there, the trick is to build on that by providing opportunities for those remote people to meet up in person at least once per year (see: “Team Building Events”).
And if you need to meet face-to-face or “look over a shoulder” at something… that’s what tools like Zoom (or Slack Huddles, or Teams Video, etc) are for! You can do it on the spot without walking to a different area, building, or campus… instantly.
The fact that people like this are completely oblivious to how this is supposed to work is horrifying. We’re not talking about social isolation, here. It’s 100% a leadership problem… tech illiterate imbeciles that have no idea how remote work can, does, and is supposed to work.
You don’t have 50 middle managers and HR reps who are all blowing up your phone because doing that puts all of them out of a job and/or robs them of the only things that would make the kind of person who likes being a middle manager/hr rep want to do the job, getting to shoulderwatch employees and make them dance to whatever metrics they feel are in vogue that month only to reward them with an office pizza party, and even then only if they feel like they can’t worm their way out of giving them that.
If bosses are bastards middle managers and hr/reps are the pitiful toadies that are almost proud of being so devoted that even the boss finds it off putting.
Management needs in person work to appear necessary.
The more time at home, the more time to organize. It’s also why they oppose 4 day work weeks.
The honest answer is that if the office real estate market crashes, so does the US economy
Broken window fallacy
Not really. In this case we have a great example of this happening: the subprime mortgage crisis of 2008. The entire real estate economy is held up by wishes and prayers and mutually assured destruction.
I believe that was more about financial bullshit games selling debt packages to everyone and their mother that were insanely toxic and when it crumbled it took almost every bank with them.
I mean I have little faith that we actually fixed that problem, but I always saw it as a greedy banker issue not a specifically real estate issue.
If you think it’s like 2008, then the “crash” would have happened (or did happen) in 2020. Re-inflating it in 2009 or 2025 is the “broken window”.
It’s funny how they don’t go in for that sort of thing, it’s almost like their cultural beliefs about absolute sacrifice and the greatness of their personal stories being reflected by employees beings forced into being overworked is more about their own egos and sense of power/control… And business is just a part of that addiction.
Often it’s also very basic management skills that gives a very simple model for labor.
Total work done = number of workers * work per hour * hours worked.
That work per hour goes up when hours worked goes down does not fit in the mental model.
rampant NSFW furry art
Disgusting! Where is this “art” so I can avoid it!
The beatings will continue until morale improves
thats a really weird to way to spell “company funded militia”
In France they’re trying to start talking about the week in 4 days. Not a 32h in 4 days week obviously, just our full week of work in just 4 days of 10h each.
Wow. That is just such a Macron proposal…
Ahah, you know it! Make something sound nice and add a twist that will just fuck everyone up but the rich.
It wouldn’t even properly benefit the rich since you can’t properly focus for that long, reducing the holy"productivity".
Most people can’t focus really hard for 8 hours either.
Big time!
But isn’t that still objectively better for the worker? It would be nice to have a few hours less but you still get 3 days off which everyone I’ve ever spoken to about it still says it was significantly better even with 2hr more of the work days
Meh. As a computer engineer, I already feel like I’m barely productive when it comes to complex tasks for the last 1-2 hours of my 7h day. A 3 days weekend might be enough to ensure I’m fully refreshed by Monday, but I feel like I’ll be mentally drained come Thursday morning, maybe even Wednesday.
Depending on the job, 10h a day would be way too much. My experience is anecdotal but at the end of an 8h day, I’m already way too tired to focus, adding 2h to that would be pointless, as I wouldn’t be as productive.
That would also kill any time off you could have in the evening, coupled with a commute, it would be absolute hell in my opinion.
The point of a 32h week is to have people work less but better. 4 10 hours day is just squeezing every ounce of energy out of everyone, not sure another day off would be enough to recover.
Bwaa ha ha ha, that’s the American way! As someone who has worked 5/8, 4/10, and 3/12 I’ve preferred 4/10 over the others by far. A 32h workweek would be awesome but that ain’t happenin anytime soon in the US. We’re pretty screwed overall around here.
Yeah, you do that and in the next crisis they’ll go “temporarily” to 5x10 and that will become the new normal.
I am not apologetic to such companies, but the reason they’re against it is because more time outside work is more time to think. More time to think leads to more thoughts about how we’re getting screwed over. More thoughts about being screwed over leads to thoughts of quitting, or worse, unionizing. They’d rather have longer weeks with less productivity than more time to think about how shitty they’ve been with more productivity.
Also spite and malice.
A friend worked for a guy who would routinely say he’d rather burn the place to the ground than let them unionize.
Somehow that guy is still alive
Will this four day work week only apply to hourly employees? If so, that’s just a cut in hours.
Obviously the pay is adjusted to be the same
You would hope so.
Pay should stay the same.
Please do not compare the noble pig to that filth.
It doesn’t matter how much research there is in support of a 4-day work week.
I work in appliance repair. I do seven work orders a day on average. Each work order that I close makes me a flat rate between 45 and $100 depending on the kind of work that I do.
I cannot survive on 4 days a week. That’s 24 work orders that won’t even cover my car.
The vast majority of people living in this country don’t work in an office. As a matter of fact, last time I checked, I think it was under 15% of the employment force in America works in an office in front of a computer. The rest of us are out there doing something else.
A 4-day work week is absolutely unrealistic.
4 day work week in most proposed implementations includes pay adjustmentments to compensate for the lost day. Also the four day work week is focused on hourly work at 40 per week, not cases like yours. I bet if we look we can find a similar proposal for your situation.
This is exactly where the vaunted invisible hand is actually meant to come into play. Even if they don’t directly benefit, the increased fulfillment of those that do benefit will drive up demand for those jobs, which will reduce demand for these jobs. And so they will have to compensate for reduced demand by offering more to keep people there.
Same here. I don’t directly benefit in the way you do, but I work in a factory. They’d benefit from a seven day work week… The more time the more we can output, the more we can output the more orders we can take… :(
A four day work week in a factory setting just goes against the skeleton crew mindset to keep the place “running”.
