When Rowan Rosenthal heard about Grindr's return-to-office mandate during a virtual town hall meeting in August, anxiety, confusion and anger set in. The principal product designer lived within a 25-minute bike ride from the company's Brooklyn office but instead was required to report to one in Los Angeles, where Rosenthal's department was assigned. This doesn't make sense and there's no way this will happen, Rosenthal thought. But it did happen. And two weeks later, Rosenthal realized that desp

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.”

  • Neuromancer@lemm.ee
    332·
    1 year ago

    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.

  • Crackhappy@lemmy.worldEnglish
    172·
    1 year ago

    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.

    • severien@lemmy.world
      81·
      1 year ago

      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.

      • NotGeorge@lemmy.zip
        4·
        1 year ago

        It would make sense if the executives making the order to return to the office also have commercial real estate portfolios.

      • Neuromancer@lemm.ee
        51·
        1 year ago

        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.