That’s it!? That’s the entire article? The list of authors is longer than the text! Did they write one sentence each and call it done?
this post was submitted on 25 Dec 2023
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Click each authors tag line to expand. But even then it's fairly useless as it does not account for customer facing jobs. It kinda sucks but it's kinda hard to wfh at a front counter interacting with people directly.
Contact centers are customer-“facing” despite not being physically present. Ask anyone who’s worked in a call center; it’s the same PTSD as those who’ve worked retail in a store.
Some contact centers have forced their staff back into the office post-Covid, but the contact center is an entry-level job and there aren’t a lot of reasons not to allow that job to remain remote.
My wife used to work in a call center for a major corporation (started in mid-late 2020). During recruiting, they claimed that WFH was a possibility within certain parameters.
... After she started, it turned out that the most important parameter was "based on seniority". Between that and their low turnover rate among longer-term employees, I don't think she ever would have been allowed WFH.
She's a lot happier in a different job now.
Ask yourself who benefits from attacking remote work and you’ll have your answer. Weak throw away articles like this are published to diminish the public image of remote work, setting workers against workers
I had to wait a little for the while article to load.
This is more of the same narrative trying to pit worker against worker. Remote work needs to be based on the task being performed for the job. If you're going to force me into an office to sit and have zoom meetings all day or type emails, then I can do that from home. Anyone arguing otherwise is full of shit.
You can't really teach children from home, so I'm never going to work from home as a maintenance person. That's fine. Maybe just don't have kids at school for 8 hours a day 5 days a week. I think 4 days for 4 hours is a good schedule for kids while we work 4 days, 6 hours a day.
Research on job postings found that remote work is far more common for higher paid roles, for roles that require more experience, for full-time work, and for roles that require more education.
Those with leverage can use it to get better benefits. Shocking.
Also, knowledge workers have a higher average salary than laborers. No guesses for which one is better suited to working from home.
Yep.
Can't exactly dig a ditch from home.
And I say this as someone who's: dug ditches (septic actually, even worse), pumped gas, serviced cars, built homes, plumbed homes, installed AC, delivered home construction materials, remodeled houses, been a line cook, waiter, deployed hardware, setup access control, alarm monitoring, surveillance systems, restaurant manager, and several other jobs.
None which could be done from home, except part of the security stuff.
So us "gray collars" still have plenty of hands-on work. Always will.
Just another bit of manufactured outrage.
Are we going to clutch our pearls over work-from-home inequality while we ignore the even greater inequality of pay differences?
Jobs are different. Pay is different. Those who can work from home should have an option to; this will help them, and the environment, and those who do have to travel to work. If I have a job that requires me to travel, such as physical maintenance, working in retail, etc, I welcome a smooth commute because half the people are working from home.
Titling this shit the “growing inequality” makes it sound like it’s an unfair distribution. By that logic, every goddamn job that doesn’t provide the exact same benefits and workplaces also grow this same iNeQuAlItY.
Give me a fucking break. Shall we just let everyone work from home to make it equal or vice versa allow nobody to work from home because everybody can’t?
Fucking ridiculous, you want to work from home? Educate/train/market yourself and you can obtain it.we have SCTUAL inequalities to deal with like gender pay gaps for example. Fuck off with this bullshit. Just a goddamn distraction to attack those not working in office.
Ask yourself who benefits by attacking remote work.
Oddly enough, no one benefits! Except the egos of the middle managers and people who are so stuck in the dark ages they don’t think people get work done unless they’re being watched.
So, fools.
My company is attempting to try this bullshit and I'm curious what the HR will say to me when I tell them that's discriminatory.
Edit: btw I'm not customer facing or a laborer unlike the handful of unimaginative comments assume the article's talking about. This is an issue in all fields that can be remote. Sadly, an issue enough now that there's at least one article about it. Wfh shouldn't be something only egos get. If your job can be done from home, it should be.
I get what you're saying - from the article and your comment I couldn't name the group of people that it discrimates against though.
Perhaps that's a different legal blah blah but where I'm from you can only discrimate against a protected group of people (race, religion, disability, gender are the ones I am aware of).
Discrimination would be a tough sell - and a "you're creating a divide" would likely be met with a "well discuss that with your supervisor, this is a decision based on individual and team circumstances" - which leads then to the issues described in the OP.
I would be delighted if someone could bring more efficient HR confronting arguments!
I couldn’t name the group of people that it discrimates (sic) against though.
My best guess is people with disabilities, but I couldn't really speculate on specifics.
ADHD, anything alleviated by advanced ergonomics that aren't provided in the office, compromised immune systems... some might be a stretch though
I would be delighted if someone could bring more efficient HR confronting arguments!
How about the well-rested bonus you can bring to the workplace because you don't have to commute. It's one of the rare cases where it's actually a good idea to argue with employee efficiency as giving them even 10% of the overall gains benefits them and they might even think you're a brainless worker drone really doing it for the company.
I work for an ISP, and we're mostly remote. From our entry level customer service, to our EVPs
Encode in the law then: any task that could be carried out during a pandemic from home, must be proposed with that option to the worker at no disadvantage to them.
And people complaining about this growing inequality: go out and fucking vote for parties that support more workers rights such as these (32h workweek for example). Or if your country has a regressive vote counting system (first past the post for example), join a union.
Ahh yes the divide and conquer argument. People can't work remotely because the other chumps have to come in! Get outta here corporate!