Yes, yes, Joe Biden is a great leader of the free world. But he struck this clinker in last night’s State of the Union Address:
It’s time for Americans to get back to work and fill our great downtowns again. People working from home can feel safe to begin to return to the office.
We’re doing that here in the federal government. The vast majority of federal workers will once again work in person [President Joe Biden, State of the Union Address, 2022.03.01].
Boooo! Boooooo!
The President here sounds like New York Mayor Eric Adams, who seems to think no work happens at home:
New York City Mayor Eric Adams renewed his call for New Yorkers to return to the office on Wednesday, positing that remote work is economically unsustainable and ultimately harmful to low-income New Yorkers.
“In order for our economic — financial ecosystem, I should say — to function, we have to have human interaction,” Adams said at an economic development event at the Brooklyn Navy Yard. “It can’t be done from home. And if we do that, then we’re going to greatly impact low wage workers.”
…”So it’s imperative that our economic leaders sit down and say what our business centers and districts are going to look like,” Adams said. “Do we change the zoning? Do we allow these new workforce housing that’s coming together outside, because there’s new ways people are doing business? So we need to look at all of those things.
But one thing that can’t happen: You can’t stay home in your pajamas all day,” Adams continued. “That’s not who we are as a city. You need to be out, cross-pollinating ideas, interacting with humans. It is crucial. We are social creatures, and we must socialize to get the energy we need as a city” [Jake Lahut, “NYC Mayor Eric Adams Decries Remote Work: ‘You Can’t Stay Home in Your Pajamas All Day’,” Business Insider, 2022.02.23].
Boooo! Boooooo!
If you’re telling me that I have to go work in an office downtown just so that all the cafés can have customers, you’re ignoring the fact that (a) I pack my lunch, (b) I don’t exist to serve the interest of any business except maybe the one that writes me a paycheck, and (c) for the last 15 years, I’ve much of my most important work—writing this blog, researching policy and law—from home, or on the road, or from any place where I can get signal.
Workers do not have to structure their working conditions to provide additional business opportunities for anyone other than themselves and their employers. If employers are getting the same productivity from workers who can bang away at computers and conduct teleconferences from the comfort of their homes, they should feel no compunction about letting those workers continue to work from home. Businesses who are depending on high concentrations of brown-bag-less commuters far from their home kitchens may just have to accept the healthy creative destruction of capitalism and come up with new business models.
President Biden, Mayor Adams, and others who remain stuck in the 20th-century office mindset need to recognize that what work from home may take away from a downtown coffeehouse (and hey: workers are still going to step out for coffee; they’re still going to bring their laptops to Josiah’s to meet with coworkers, bang out some reports, and socialize and spread their wealth), they add to the work they can do at home for their family. For too long we’ve dismissed the economic value of housekeeping and family time; shouldn’t we recognize now the household productivity gains that accrue from workers spending more time in their homes, transforming previously wasted commuting time into more time washing, mowing, repairing, renovating, parenting, and walking that very good dog?
The pandemic showed us just how much work we can do at home. The end of the pandemic (are we there yet?) should not mean the end of remote work. Rather than trying to go back to the way things were, we should learn the best lessons of the pandemic and help more workers enjoy the freedom of doing their work where they want.
There—that’s my first two hours of work today. Now I need to get out of my pajamas, get some breakfast from my cozy kitchen, and get to the rest of my day’s work here at home.
Everything that can be done in a skyscraper can be done at home with good communication tools. I’ve done both. Home is better because one doesn’t have to waste time in traffic, or figure out how to get home quickly if there’s an emergency at home (the main thing I hated about working in skyscrapers).
Not all people are as social as the NYC Mayor would like them to be.
Meanwhile, the work from anywhere model resulted in record high corporate profits . . .
The buffoonery of Biden and Adams statements show us why we NEED the millennials to step up and govern.
We cannot take much more having octogenarians, or their attitudes, and present cultural incompetence running our nation and its great cities.
I guess this takes the place of the coffee room. I’ll go make my own coffee, jeez.
Yup. Biden should talk to workers more. He’s wrong on that.
Liz worked for Rural Mutual Insurance, the Farm Bureau’s insurance business in Wisconsin. Farm Bureau in most states is a conservative-leaning organization and you wouldn’t expect to find them leading the charge for something as progressive as working from home. They started off-loading the headquarter office in Madison about ten years ago, long before the pandemic made home offices a way to keep business operations going. Of course they want new employees to be trained in the office, but once trained, most become candidates for remote work, if that’s what they want. They did require remote employees to have a home office that was able to be closed off from kids, pets, etc. It would make sense that a farm organization would take to remote work since it fits right in with rural life anyway. Liz worked as an executive assistant so she had to be in the office. There is some work that requires working closely in teams, and I understand is more difficult on Zoom or other meeting sites.
The biggest resistance to remote work comes from lower and middle level supervisors. No workers in the office, and their jobs go away. A friend who was a technical writer had resistance to his wanting to continue remote work rather than go back to the office. He found he was much more productive at home. A few months back in the office and he decided to join the Great Resignation movement last September.
Working remotely also saves you from kissing the bosses arse in the office setting so you can get more work done. Booo indeed to going back to the skyscrapers. Use those buildings for affordable housing.
So the main reason for all the mask denier insanity has been to reopen bars and restaurants. It’s always about the booze, drugs, salt, fat, sweets—and prowling. Profit from addiction business model. How hype American.
It’s nice to be old:)
(Pause…fuc*ing USAF low level, after-burner flight over West Blvd, RCSD. I thought it was just the Trump nincompoops w/“military madness”. 7:30 am)
I would disagree to the extent that only when it is possible (not required) for EVERYONE to be back to work safely will it be truly safe for anyone to be back to work safely. Right now it feels like our essential workers (who are made to feel like disposable workers) are the canaries in the coal mines. It is morally squishy at best to say that not only does your economic status provide your level of prosperity, it also provides your level of pandemic safety. Better jobs can stay at home; those who serve those must show up to work to provide the day care, coffee, lunches . . .
“essential worker” was like Dunder Mifflan’s assistant-to-the-regional manager: it was a title that intended to make people feel better, but only served to endanger some more than others.
Right now with gas prices high maybe working from home at least part of the time would help employees save a little money. We know work from home is possible. A lot of companies were forced to do it because of the pandemic
O, Some jobs (most manufacturing and meatpacking jobs, for example) do require you to be on site in order to accomplish tasks necessary for the job. But, you’re right. There is inequality baked in. That’s why we need a strong OSHA to set standards and enforce them to protect workers on the job.
Yeah, it’s pretty hard to rebuild a highway from home, until and unless all that heavy equipment gets outfitted with remote control. Still, if something breaks on the machine – gotta be there to fix it.
I suspect seasoned generations are uneasy with even further decline in the general appearance of people emerging back into public settings. I get it. It was bad enough before. People going to the market in Joe Boxer pajama pants and slippers with my, I mean their hair a fright. There’s a certain propriety being lost. I was taught it was disrespectful to go out in public in house shoes, goobers still in the eyes and a disheveled, rats nest greasy mop.
I think our leader doesn’t want us looking like sloppy ragamuffins since we are a reflection of him. I sort of translated President Biden’s return to work push as saying, “Your house smells like a boar’s nest. Get cleaned up and get back to the ol salt mines. Hup, hup! Chim, chim!”
That blogging only took two hours to write, Mr. H? You are a productive machine, indeed.
Mostly the people “working” from home are slackards. You would think the progressives of the world wouldn’t be hermits like grudznick.