“Return To Office” Scams Shift The Cost Of Business To Workers & The Environment – CleanTechnica

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Here at CleanTechnica, we spend a lot of time talking about energy-efficient and environmentally friendly transportation. Transportation is one of the biggest drivers of emissions and climate change, so it makes sense to tackle it in multiple ways. Electric vehicles, e-bikes, transit, and cleaner aviation all have a place here.

But, the best transportation is no transportation at all. Obviously, we don’t all want to live in pods and eat bugs, or never leave the house and experience our whole lives via telepresence, but nobody who’s being honest likes commuting to an office job. Commuting to jobs that we could just as easily do at home means pointless emissions, and eliminating this pointless travel entirely means a true zero emissions outcome (minus the pittance of electricity needed to carry data into and out of one’s home, of course).

Traditionalists and the old guard at major corporations want to convince us that the commute just to go sit in a cubicle isn’t really pointless. They say that you can be more productive at the office, and that the ability to collaborate in person with a team of people is helpful. Politicians have even jumped into the fray, claiming that remote work is bad for their economies.

But some recent reporting shows us that many of these people weren’t playing straight with the public or with their employees when they demanded a return to the office.

So it was never about “productivity” or “collaboration” pic.twitter.com/i5ka1AxHPh

— More Perfect Union (@MorePerfectUS) July 29, 2024

In at least some cases (as much as one quarter), companies wanted to reduce head counts, but knew that employment contracts had severance provisions and knew that many people would file for unemployment if laid off (which can raise the cost of getting required unemployment insurance). But if employees voluntarily resign, the company gets to keep all of that money. So, instead of going through the layoff process and staying true to their words, these companies decided that forcing remote workers into the office would be a good way to spur people to quit.

But it often didn’t end up working out like they’d hoped. Many people decided to comply instead of quitting, so the companies then were forced to find other ways to get rid of employees. They told survey takers that they went to layoffs, but it seems unlikely that dishonest dealers wouldn’t find other excuses or ways to get rid of people for cheaper (hey, they already were doing that).

Another problem emerged when some of the companies’ top talent quit. They had hoped that low performers would walk, but high performers were often the ones who felt that they could take their talents elsewhere and keep remote working. So, again, this kind of dishonesty doesn’t pay.

A Deeper Problem

Having a quarter of large employers admitting to this dishonest practice (stealth layoffs) is bad enough. It shows that most workers simply can’t trust management, which is bad for morale everywhere, and thus productivity. Plus, the human toll of this kind of dishonesty can be staggering.

But, the worse thing is that it betrays a deeper truth about corporate culture: that theft is the norm.

In recent decades, we’ve seen a growing disconnect between worker productivity and the pay that’s received. When adjusted for inflation, all of that productivity seems to be accruing toward profits instead of benefiting companies and workers equally like it used to. The rising tide is no longer lifting all boats, in other words. Worse, when management pay is considered, the graph returns to correlation, so it’s clear where the money went.

On top of all of this dishonest dealing with workers, we see companies trying to steal anything else they can from people. The “return to office” scam robs people of severance and unemployment benefits promised or expected at the time of hiring, and many other such corporate games are played to cut costs at the expense of employees. There are whole YouTube channels dedicated to fighting these unethical and frankly illegal HR scams, so it is indeed a major problem.

As people become aware that HR is not their friend and workers organize for better treatment, many companies are moving away from employing people altogether. Not only are jobs being sent overseas, but the “gig economy” often entails zero employment protections. While many companies (including CleanTechnica) treat contractors well, there are companies that use this to systematically exploit people and save money.

Shifting Costs To The Environment

While the direct human impacts of employment scams are important, it’s also important to see the wider impacts. Among these impacts are what it costs all of us through environmental impact.

This “return to office” scam basically shifts the costs of laying people off onto the environment. Some people do quit, but those who don’t then start commuting when the company had no good cause to make people commute. This costs us clean air, contributes to climate change, and otherwise hurts us just so some company can avoid paying people the severance packages they promised or have higher unemployment insurance costs.

This shifting of costs from private risk to public expense means we aren’t seeing a free market at work. We’re seeing the profits and benefits go to the companies while the costs end up being borne by the public. This, in turn, encourages reckless risk taking in companies that would otherwise take greater care to avoid harming themselves by going into layoff mode.

Worse, many companies do layoffs on a regular basis because they think it’s healthy for the company. The data doesn’t really support that assertion, but traditionalists running companies think it does, so they do it for their own benefit and not because they have real problems. But, when they find creative ways to dodge the cost of these layoffs and instead shift the expense to the environment, we’re subsidizing these companies with our health and with our children’s futures.

I’m sure some people reading will accuse me of being a socialist or a communist for opposing these business practices, but we really have to ask us who the real socialists are here. When a free market company starts saddling us all with the risks while enjoying the rewards, and then donates to campaigns to get even more government favors at everyone’s cost, we’re no longer dealing with capitalism.

Featured image by NREL (Public Domain).