Posted on 05/06/2024 5:29:09 AM PDT by where's_the_Outrage?
After more than two years of fighting against return-to-office mandates, workers are fed up with their bosses’ inflexible policies and are taking their battle to court.
Zacchery Belval, a designer from Connecticut who has congenital heart disease and severe anxiety, was fired after refusing to return to the office. Despite submitting several doctor’s notices about his medical need to work from home, his employer denied his request citing in-person job duties. Now, he’s suing the company in the U.S. District Court of Connecticut.
“They just said either you come back … or you’re fired,” Belval said. “It was literally screaming matches with management every day saying, ‘Hey, this is about health,’ and management going, ‘We don’t care.’” As companies across the United States increasingly take a hard-line stance on office mandates, an increasing number of workers are elevating their complaints to court and federal labor agencies like the National Labor Relations Board and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. Workers argue that mandates can be unjust, discriminate against people with disabilities and is a retaliatory action against unionization efforts. Employers that have backtracked from flexible work argue that being in the office is necessary as it improves company culture, collaboration and productivity. The outcomes of these cases could be critical and force employers to reevaluate their policies, some lawyers say.
(Excerpt) Read more at msn.com ...
When you work from home for several years it is difficult to make the case that a return to the office is needed.
In fact, some major corporations sold massive amounts of real estate because they found office work was not needed.
That said, employers are free to change the rules at any time.
The corporations kind of did it to themselves by going along so blindly with the hysterical COVID fears of 2020 and beyond that our government pushed on us.
I personally hate working from home. As another poster mentioned earlier up thread, I prefer getting out of the house every day and meeting people. The commuting time doesn't bother me in the slightest. Now the one exception I make to that is that I work from home on Fridays (and sometimes Mondays). That is a nice way to extend your weekends a little bit. An option that did not exist for most people prior to the COVID scare.
One day a week: definitely beneficial
Two days a week: probably
Three days a week: maybe.
Four days a week: Doubtful.
Five days a week: No!
But it also depends on the nature of your job. I was doing fine with one day a week until January 2023. They asked for three, I said fine. Then they asked for five and I told them it was time for me to retire and them to think about a transition plan. They backed off and said three was fine.
After a couple of months, I told them I was serious and suggested a specific colleague to replace me. The reality was that I was getting LESS work done not MORE with the added useless commute.
I put in my papers and they got the replacement I suggested so we made a very smooth transition versus other boomers who gave them two weeks notice (or less). My replacement, being a smart young man, told them that if three days commuting was good enough for me, it was good enough for him as well. They bought it.
People also like working from home so they can have longer weekends. Your work is done the moment you turn off the computer.
“Once people saw that they could get their work done just as well from home...”
Most do not. There is a reason few people learn online as well as they learn in classes.
Those who work remote should get paid lower wages than those who have to travel to the office (Especially government leaches). Let’s see how many would accept that.
While not an overall fan of work from home, it does have its moments!
There is nothing whatsoever wrong or unreasonable as your employer expecting you to show up at your place of employment.
Why should remote people get paid less than in office personnel for the same work ??? The company is not paying you for your commute time, that directly comes out of your own pocket. Smart companies realize remote workers can actually save them money by cutting their physical footprint. The problem with too many managers is they get lonely without seeing underlings manning desks.
...has congenital heart disease and severe anxiety.
And who’s fault is all this?
Of course they found the most extreme worst case scenario to use it for litigation. It’s a typical tactic of the left, take an outlier use it to establish precedent for everyone.
And while it doesn't make sense to require Agent 007 to sit in an office in between assignments, M and Q and Miss Moneypenny pretty much do need to be in a centralized location or a well-equipped lab. And it's pretty hard for maintenance personnel to call it in.
So, the superstars who get movies made about them can work and thrive while not being in a central, common location. Or drones who do the the same thing all day long every day, and who could also be monitored for performance by tracking logs or output measurements.
But middle management requires people skills, and those don't come from Zoom calls. So unless and until large corporations go to 2 levels of employees - the CEO/Owner and the drones, there will be a need for work from office. And those who avoid that can expect to be a remote drone for a real long time.
And there's the problem.
For those of us that take WFH seriously, working from home on Fridays and Mondays does NOT "extend the weekend." We are back at work, usually more productive than if we were required to be in an office.
HPE . . . grrr . . . I am trying to get my company off of HPE for mass storage. Their support is horrible, and the products are designed to be unusable overtime without a high-priced support contract as various software/firmware updates are all but mandatory, and third party support companies cannot get them.
it works both ways for some jobs - definitely not for all of them. You are simply not going to get 3rd world employees for what I do. It requires knowledge of US banking regulations, standards in the banking industry, etc. There are other jobs like that. The 3rd world can provide cheap low skilled labor. They can't provide highly educated or experienced workers to replace Americans.
This is a bone of contention. There are just as many studies saying they can do their jobs just as well if not better from home as there are saying the opposite.
“But it also depends on the nature of your job.”
99% of my work is done on the computer which works as well at home as at work. Now at work 1/5 of the people aren’t here because they’re working at home.
High speed internet has changed things both in the workplace and with social media. It isolates us.
I see the problem right there.
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