And buried in the middle of the article:
“He and his colleagues believe that the company’s move was the result of workers’ decision to unionize.”
This very much was because they unionized.
Unions are all about give and take. You negotiate what you want and what you’ll give up.
I believe a primary driver of this is the enormous commercial real estate bubble that is going to destroy the economy and is looking very large right now. That and of course greed.
This argument never made sense to me. Why would greedy companies voluntarily pay for something they don’t need just to support some “greater good” of keeping the economy afloat? It means reduced profits yet the “contribution” of each individual company is just drop in the bucket.
It would make sense if the executives making the order to return to the office also have commercial real estate portfolios.
It’s complicated but mostly made up argument.
It varies company to company. An old company I worked at we got a tax break for how many employees we had in the office. (Pre-Covid)the idea was to encourage us to move employees from other officers into the downtown office.
If everyone is working remotely, you don’t get those tax benefits.
The main reason I’ve seen is habit. We have been going to an office for a long time and it’s about control. They want to watch their workers.
Now what interesting is people are suing because they’re working from home. It’s increased their cost and they want the employer to pay it.