Remote Work Continues to Be a Battleground in the Struggle Between Bosses and Workers
Just because not all jobs can be done at home does not mean that no jobs should be done at home. Working from home won’t end exploitation, but it’s nonetheless an important front on which labor can strive to secure improved working arrangements.
The remote-work debate is essentially a power struggle to determine who has the authority to define work conditions. (Getty Images)
It is an open secret that workers are immiserated in both take-home pay and in spirit. That the lives of those whose labor becomes profit should be miserable is not a result, of course, of widespread sadism. That would be barbaric. No, it’s for the sake of returns, progress, and supporting the local Subway sandwich shop. It is, in a nutshell, simply the ruthless workaday logic of capitalism. Owners and bosses wish to extract maximum efficiency from workers. To extract as much value from labor, with as little pay as possible, extra work hours must be squeezed out of people whenever possible. Workplaces must be surveilled to keep employees in line, and workers must pay for their own commute in time and money if it serves the company to have them on site.
The resulting world is one in which rampant exploitation and draconian work arrangements are very necessary indeed. And that is why owners and bosses are keen to limit or eliminate remote work. They dislike remote work for the exact same reason that they dislike the idea of democratizing the workplace.
The Lost Promise of the Remote Work Revolution
Writing in the Globe and Mail last week, Vanmala Subramaniam, the paper’s future of work correspondent, took a dive into “the remote work revolution that never took place.” Throughout the pandemic, as workers who could do so spent more time away from the office working at home, the notion of a new way of laboring became mainstream. Many workers could stay home and do their jobs — just as well, if not better than they had before — and enjoyed doing so. It offered more flexibility and eliminated awful commutes. You didn’t have to eat your lunch at your desk or in a cramped break room or in a mall food court.
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