"Amazon CEO Andy Jassy has a message to employees who don’t want to return to the office: “It’s not going to work out for you.” That’s according to a report from Insider, which says Jassy made that statement during a meeting earlier this month.
While Amazon ordered its employees to return to the office for three days per week starting in May, many Amazon employees weren’t happy about the decision. Thousands of workers signed a petition against the mandate and staged a walkout in response."
Google, Meta, Amazon, and Apple have all been vehemently anti-remote work and adamant in rolling back remote work policies - though fortunately accepting a 3 days in office per week hybrid remote work policy.
A couple points:
I don't think there's much workers can do other than refusing to work for companies that aren't fully remote, but given the imbalance between employer/employee power (due to lack of universal basic income) and the terrible job market, workers just do not have much leverage because there are enough desperate people who will.
One thing workers who are passionate about worker freedom should do is consider not purchasing services from companies that are anti-remote work on ethical grounds, similar to avoiding purchasing cheap fast fashion products made in sweatshops. This would mean avoiding using AWS, Google Cloud, and buying Apple products.
If there's any bright side to this though, it's that at least the new equilibrium for these companies is a hybrid model of 3 days in office per week, which is still a hell of a lot better than 5 days per week. Regardless it is definitely hard to return to an office after experiencing the freedom of remote work. I definitely hope that fully remote companies will be rewarded, and going forward I think the trend will still inevitably continue towards remote work in an increasingly digital world.