The MeToo movement began in October 2017 after allegations of sexual misconduct against Harvey Weinstein were reported in the New York Times. On October 15th, actress Alyssa Milano wrote on Twitter: “If you’ve been sexually harassed or assaulted write ‘me too’ as a reply to this tweet.”
By the middle of October the following year, the movement had – in the words of the New York Times – “brought down” no less than 201 powerful men. That is to say, 201 men in prominent positions (e.g., politicians, CEOs, actors) had lost their jobs due to allegations of sexual harassment that were prompted by MeToo.
It would be fair to say that some of the men “brought down” by MeToo deserved their comeuppance, whereas others were treated very unfairly, such as Aziz Ansari. While the overall merits of the movement can be debated, one effect it had was to make men in prominent more wary about being accused of sexual harassment.
This must be a good thing, right? While false accusations of sexual harassment are clearly bad, it’s surely good that powerful men are more sensitive of the need to avoid inappropriate behaviour towards? Not necessarily.
In a recent preprint, the economist Marina Gertsberg highlights one unintended consequence of the MeToo movement: senior male academics became more reluctant to collaborate with junior female colleagues, thereby potentially harming the latter’s career prospects. (There is a good summary of the paper at Cremieux Recueil‘s Substack.)
Gertsberg obtained data on collaborations involving female academic economists who had a tenure-track position when the MeToo movement began. (In an academic context, a collaboration is just when two or more academics write a paper together.) For control purposes, she also obtained data for male academic economists in the same circumstances.
What did Gertsberg find? Compared to the pre-MeToo era (2015–2017), the women in her sample had fewer total collaborations in the post-MeToo era (2018–2020), and this fall was largely explained by few collaborations with male colleagues – especially senior male colleagues at the same university.
Interestingly, the men in her sample did not have fewer total collaborations in the post-MeToo era: although they did have fewer collaborations with female colleagues, they made up for this by having more collaborations with male colleagues. So the “MeToo effect” that Gertsberg observed may have harmed young women’s career prospects without harming young men’s.
She also found that the decline in women’s collaborations was greater at universities with ambiguous sexual harassment policies, which supports her interpretation that senior male academics became more reluctant to have one-on-one collaborations with junior female colleagues.
The study was restricted to one relatively narrow domain: academic economics. But it’s likely that similar dynamics have played out in other contexts where men and women have to cooperate. While preventing sexual harassment is obviously important, movements that go too far – such as by encouraging a presumption of guilt – can end up having harmful intended consequences.
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Good piece. But …
Let us never forget that we faced previous pandemics as large (in retrospect, and just as unpredictable in prospect), and far more dangerous to productive workers, without lockdowns, and without even a dent in the economy.
Without the technology, no WFH, no possibility of lockdowns, and hence no recession.
I totally agree, in the 1958 flu pandemic the country managed to keep going despite large numbers being off ill.
Yes but the intention this time was to use the hyped “Covid Horror” to close down the country – the closing down was the real objcetive! ( See much publicised ‘Great Reset’ project for details).
Yes. And a strong demographic element to the current financial shambles, and the lockdowns and all the other things related to it. The demographic crisis of an ageing population. Print that in the Groan…
Yes. And the writer doesn’t seem to mention the effect of lockdown on the present state of the economy. “Britain, like much of the world, is on the brink of an economic downturn, fuelled by inflation, a cost-of-living crisis and the impact of war in Ukraine”.
Some say the the people collapsing in Wuhan in 2020 was testing of Radiation, but those fake videos contradict that because there is that famous example where the guy sticks his hand out before hitting the ground, something someone who isn’t conscious can do.
Wher’ve you been Mr B?
My parents said that very few people even knew there was a pandemic in 1958.
Probably be true this time too if the CCP and their collaborators hadn’t pushed it…
I do believe they also had Woodstock Festival in the 60s or maybe the 70s during a pandemic?
There was no bloody pandemic in ’68.
What 1958 pandemic?
I think that the Asian Flu and the Hong Kong Flu were both worse than the recent coronavirus. I haven’t seen an analysis, but given that the age/percapita mortality was higher for most of the last 50 years, it would be interesting to see COVID-19 compares to deaths by respiratory illnesses adjusted for age and population over the last 50 years. I wouldn’t be at all suprised if it wasn’t that near the top.
For those of working age infected with SARSCoV2 there was very little risk of dying – quite possibly less than there would be in a year from spending a total of 30 minutes a week standing in the vicinity of a photocopier.
…or travelling down the M4…
In an Audi…
I had it in 1968 or 1969, when I was a student living on about £15 a month, in conditions which were even more Spartan than my previous boarding schools (good training for what’s coming down the line nowadays). I do not recall any panics, hysteria or discussions about HKF at the time, let alone talk of epidemics or pandemics. People got ill, then got better, and nobody I knew, even people in their sixties and seventies, who were considered very aged in those days, pegged out.
Like spells of bad weather, including some pretty brutal winters, people took these things in their stride. They might have been inconvenient, uncomfortable and sometime very unpleasant, but there wasn’t the sort of hysteria we have nowadays. Our elders spent far more time and effort getting vexed over beards and long hair, music, wild parties, anti-Vietnam War demos and punch-ups between Mods and Rockers.
It was after the Vietnam War that the US started to censor the media regarding foreign policy, not to make that mistake again.
Exactly.
My Dad has no recollection of a pandemic in his lifetime and he’s 90.
Let us not forget the current “pandemic” was christened by the WHO after only 450 deaths. And these were C1984 deaths were covid was mentioned. Given how that has been abused we can safely say there has been no pandemic, no epidemic, only a casedemic and that too grossly abused.
Let’s just settle for Scamdemic.
What is the “no WFH, but free fall” scenario, then?
Indeed – what would have stopped the economy going into free fall would have been no lockdowns at all, which clearly would have been the correct and sensible approach in the first place.
The virus was neither frightening nor ‘new’.
It was Govt propaganda that was frightening, and ‘new’ was the disproportionate response and sheer stupidity of a large sector of the population over a mild to moderate respiratory virus which caused a disease which has long been around, normally called the Common Cold.
Where has all this crap about “pandemics” suddenly come from?
Some specialists are even casting doubt on the 1918 ‘flu. I am not doubting mortality figures but the origins.
Public sector staff shouldn’t be at home getting paid for doing little that’s of any use. They should be back in the office getting paid for doing little that’s of any use.
Indeed.
Do you run a coffee shop or own shares in a train company?
Some don’t realise just how far up Sh*t Creek the economy has sailed over the past several decades. In Britain we can summarise it as little productive manufacturing, lots of unproductive office “work”, and of course gigantic average personal debt. Most accommodation and most tertiary “education” runs on debt, for example. This situation will not go on forever. Lest that sound trite, I mean it may crash next week, or it may crash in a few years’ time, but there is no possibility of it continuing for several more decades, and I doubt it can continue even for one.
Yes indeed, there will be serious trouble this decade, and you won’t know the world by 2050 or 2060.
That is the crux of the issue when it comes to digital ID and various measures in technology that can be used to control people. They’re getting ready for trouble.
The train companies – and their staff – as busy shooting themselves in the foot. After many years of using trains for nearly all journeys, I went out and bought a car this week. Had enough of the crap, overpriced service and the threats of strikes if staff don’t get bigger percentage pay increases than most of their passengers can expect this year!
That’s on top of their attitude during the lockdowns, which was in many cases obnoxious.
I’ll always be biased in favour of any article that refers to the “laptop class”, so there won’t be any egg-throwing from me. But isn’t paid work, wherever it’s conducted, supposed to be, y’know, “productive” rather than just a sharing out of misery?
There is HUGE overemployment in what I still call the “office work” sector, a term that’s applicable even when the “office” becomes diffuse. Or we can call it the white collar sector. I have been banging on about this for years.
Middle management in particular – people who don’t actually do anything except ‘manage’. Most government bodies seem to have whole tiers of this.
I note yet again there is still no piece calling for what needs to be done.
We have inflation at the moment, which is caused by excess government spending. We have a private sector that is struggling to recruit due to lack of manpower.
And we have a top heavy civil service. Check the tweets of the permanent secretaries and see how many of them correspond to the jobs they are supposed to be doing.
It’s time for a cull. Not a ‘voluntary redundancy’ and ‘natural wastage’ cull, that just leads to the good people leaving the civil service. A proper cull that gets rid of those who don’t actually do anything of relevance.
Here’s the list.
Go through that and ask yourself which ones you’d sign up to pay additional tax for.
For example is the £846,000 spent on the Commission for Countering Extremism worth the extra charge on your tax bill?
Journalists need to start highlighting what government money is actually spent upon, and who is getting it.
Apparently, we’ve already paid millions to Rwanda for a scheme which may never take off
“May”?
It’ll all be forgotten about on May 6th, apart from sending the cheque to whichever Minister’s brother-in-law just bought up some scrubland near Kigali International Airport.
Perhaps France should give is a refund of the millions we paid them for keeping the smugglers at bay!
Journalists? Are you serious?
If it saves the life of one child, surely collapsing our civilisation is worth it?
But it doesn’t save the life of one child – if fact children are far more ‘at risk’ from the ‘vaccines’!
He did say “if”. Speculation carries a hell of a clout these days.
I thought the Groan made too much from advertising these jobs?
And MMT? Does it really work?
Then there is the black hole of the NHS and Foreign Aid.
“It’s time for a cull.”
It’s on it’s way.
The notion of work itself is broken now. Most of it is just, you know, busywork. Which is why UBI will be an easy sell for them.
As the book title says, BS jobs (it’s actually blunter than that)
I support UBI.
Then we can start thinking about what people want to do that is genuinely productive.
Contrary to myth, most people don’t want to sit around or swan about the whole time.
I support UBI in principle but it has to be ringfenced against being weaponised for control. UBI that is guaranteed to all, without exception and with no possibility of being stopped under any circumstances, could be acceptable. UBI linked – even minutely – to any sort of permissions would be a dystopian nightmare.
I don’t support UBI, not because I object to it on principle but because I fear that practically it would have negative consequences. I’m sure that it would cost far more than the headline figure, be open to fraud and would probably drive price inflation.
Well which way do you expect it will go?
Maybe I’m in a grim mood today, but a recession worse than anything we’ve seen in 400 years is probably more accurate.
I’ve made a point to colleagues about working from home when the heating/leccy bills increases kick in, but they tend to make fatuous comments about getting it back from HMRC.
No idea of the real world – and I mean real in a philosophical, Marxian sense.
No reason why there shouldn’t be, too many mad things going on. Negative interest rates? Micro-managing a virus? Micro-managing the climate? Destroying our most precious resource? Large scale money printing (effectively)? Myriad disruptions to mollify identity politics campaigners? Ticks all round for these and doubtless many more insanities.
I’m a member of the laptop class at senior professional level, and a lot of this is very true. I have certainly enjoyed transcontinental conference calls while wandering in my garden, and maybe the odd go answer the front door and recieve a package. However, I haven’t been disturbed by a junior (or senior) colleague that wants to talk about sport, their kids or some other barely relevant matter.
I’ve gained two hours in my day that were preciously spent being totally unproductive driving myself to work. And that IS worth a load.
You have also saved the fuel costs – a few thousand per year, perhaps?
I cannot see how the government is going to get the lower paid back to work….
Well, however this pans out, if the lower paid do not go back to work, then less things of value will be produced and therefore everyone will be worse off including both the well paid and the lower paid.
I’m not proposing a solution, mind you, just noting that we have to produce things in order to consume them and the less people that work, the less is produced, and therefore we will have to consume less.
As far as I can see, we are moving into ‘Atlas Shrugged’ territory. Fewer and fewer people are actually producing, and more and more people are taking money for useless jobs like ‘Head of Diversity’.
We can keep producing the same amount of stuff with the few actual producers, while the parasites will be doing less and less actual attendance.
That’s revolutionary talk. You can get cancelled for less.
Lucky old you! You can keep an eye on your team of Gardeners as well!
Your time is obviously worth something to you, but what you would be consuming when spending all that time driving is stuff that others produce and extract. Which is not to say I defend the craziness of having hundreds of thousands of cars on the road, each containing a single person driving to do makework or busywork in an office somewhere that even leaving aside the unproductive nature of the work they could still do in their house.
Hold the front page – the capitalist economy is founded on alienation…
If we all ran around breaking windows, the economy would boom.
“I’ve gained two hours in my day that were preciously spent being totally unproductive driving myself to work. And that IS worth a load.”
Absolutely agree with this, at least two hours of MY time wasted getting to & from the office is a huge gain, especially the extra hour in the evening…
But I agree with the sentiment that most folk working for someone else not for themsleves, whilst WFH, do sweet FA and are milking it for all they’re worth…
I think it was your decision to take a job 2 hours away from your home. Maybe because the salary was higher than in your immediate vicinity? So? Then if you WFH continues actually you should be paid less and as your ‘region’.
In my opinion blue collar jobs will balance out in pay because of supply/demand. When everyone wants to WFH and no one wants to do anything then automatically the salaries will adjust. So please don’t be pissed when low level jobs will be paid as much as some office stuff. Skilled work already and definitely will be the highest paid in the near future.
Aye and Tanker drivers.
My job is one hour away. Were I to find a job more local, say within cycling distance like I had 10 years ago, then I’d be on 40% of my current salary. This would mean the government wouldn’t be taking anything like the £20k it took from me last year, thus leading to a shortfall in the tax take.
My current commute is 40 easy miles. It can take 40 minutes to cover the 5miles across my town at the wrong time of day.
That journalist says that he keeps going into his office – on foot.
For most London commuters, too poor to buy a house in the middle of the city, going to the office means losing 2 hours a day from their lives, and paying £5000 a year for that privilege.
It’s really time to stop these envy-driven politics fuelled by what one suspects other people must do. Statements like this communicate nothing about other people, just about the person who’s making them. We can thus conclude that Luke Johnson probably wouldn’t lift a finger unless someone threatens him with a whip. And that he happily generalizes from that. I bet he also has all weekends off. And holidays on top of that. I don’t.
It isn’t ‘right’ …but then what is ‘right’ about Johnson Britain?
We are living through cultural meltdown and an apparent attempt to totally destabilise our economy and society to please Billionaire Globalist psychopaths and assorted OTW extremist fringe minorities .
Johnson merely blows with latest breaking of Wokist Wind!
Last year I came into ‘close contact’ with a (double jabbed) colleague who had tested positive for the rona. It’s common knowledge at work that I’m unjabbed, so I was sent off to WFH for a week. My rona obsessed colleagues were doing my head in by this point, so it was a welcome novelty for a week. Unfortunately, my OH had compiled a list of jobs to do around the house, in addition to WFH. Not quite so fun.
Surely watching the OH doing a host of jobs round the house must have been an amusing pastime!?
Yes it was, because I certainly did not do them!
The blue-collar class is the Host Class and the laptop class is the Parasite Class. When the Parasite Class either outnumbers the Host Class or holds sway over it, the Host Class is doomed and can only save itself by rising up and scratching the parasites out of its fur, like any flea-ridden dog.
And yet people complain that civil servants working from home are causing delays in services. How is this possible if they are purely parasitic?
Pretty much everything you do online, every single service you interact with, 100% of it is built and administered by “the laptop class”
Peculiar how an “entrepreneur” is spouting socialist diatribe that we must all be equal, and contribute according to our abilities.
We don’t all rise as one, and don’t try and drag me down to your level of pointless toil and commuting misery just so that you can feel like less of a mug.
Well said!
Not really comparing like for like. Covid-19 was a deliberate attempt to cause mayhem resulting in waves quickly spreading across the planet which many beneficiaries are still surfing.
How long before the ‘lap top class’ are dismissed because their employers have found they can outsource the work to India and the like? At the moment these same employers are saving money because their employees are picking up the heating and accommodation bills (and the tax refunds offered for this are small), so why not go one step further? I would, if I was a big employer and it meant I would be, say, halving my wages bill.
Six years ago or so I took out a power of attorney for my brother. It was done through my solicitor and the office of the public guardian (OPG) had it all done and dusted in six weeks.
My husband and I started the process of mutual POA’s last July. This process has STILL not been completed because most of the OPG staff work from home. It is worrying that we haven’t yet got the security we require, but there must be people who are desperate to get POA’s before capacity is lost, but are not going to be able to because Keith from the OPG is too busy looking after his lockdown puppy and making banana bread.
Yep, me and some other “covidiot” mates have been banging on about this since the lockdowns began and people had to WFH, it’s the logical step for revenue / profit driven companies to outsource such work where they don’t need people in the office. Also means said company can downsize their property (real estate) costs.
At yet in the private sector, some in the laptop class regularly work into their evenings. Not everybody who works from home is lazy, many are doing considerable overtime and some have unsustainable commutes due to offices becoming consolidated. And wellness is just a way of companies virtue signalling. Admittedly this is an article about the public sector, but there are problems in the private sector too.
This happens in the public sector also. Particularly on project-based work. It’s easy to continue working after 5 pm, which I have no trouble with because I’m not spending 2 hours a day commuting.
Yes, I have friends in the public sector who work incredibly hard! From home. Not that working from home doesn’t have its problems, but I don’t think this article is entirely fair!
The gene genie is out of the bottle, welcome to Eugenic Britain
https://www.conservativewoman.co.uk/the-gene-genie-is-out-of-the-bottle-welcome-to-eugenic-britain/
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‘… a cost-of-living crisis and the impact of war in Ukraine.’
No… impact of UK Govt policy in Ukraine.
Many of the Laptoppers work in the non-productive sector who get a wage to do jobs that produce nothing of value, create no wealth (civil servants for example) and are then paid out of money plundered by the State from what the producers earn.
The solution is to fire them. Since they produce nothing of value that will not reduce economic activity, but it will leave more money in the pockets of producers.
Unfortunately you can’t, as those very same type of people have also infiltrated the very top of the organisation. As they are useless the only thing they can do is hire useless to ensure nobody truly smart and productive can rat them out. This is honest truth, certainly from my experiences in certain private sectors
The same thing now applies to governments.
It’s wrong that people who can work at home should be allowed to work from home.
We should all have to commute to work!
And some have to commute a long distance – we should all have to commute a long distance to work!
Some workers have the advantage of flexible work hours – this is wrong. All workers should work fixed hours.
And some workers have to work on roofs in winter, whilst others get the luxury of being able to work indoors. This is wrong. We should all work on roofs in winter!
“And, of course, they find they are able to spend more time with their partner or offspring.”
This is wrong. Nobody should be allowed to spend time with their family whilst at work. In fact, we should ban family members from working in the same companies.
Of course, everyone who claims to WFH is really just watching netflix in their PJs, and would have been 1000% more productive in an office with a 2-hour daily commute,
And as per the title of this article, if you are a blue-collar worker you are slogging your guts out to save the country. If you work from home, you are the reason this country is going to fail!!! It’s really that simple.
What a stupid article.
Oh dear, did it strike a nerve?
Just a bit.
I work from home and put in 8 hour days, as do the rest of my team. If people are putting in 2-3 hour days then there is something wrong with their firm’s management or incentive structure or employment policy.
The laptop class didn’t put in more than 3 or 4 hour days before the covibollocks.
They jus happened to be in a different location from home whilst they didn’t do much.
In reality I know some people in private business who donext to ferk all and get paid handsomely for it, I know others that work really hard.
I think every line of business has highly productive people and people that aren’t and it doesn’t appear to be a great deal of link between effort and reward for lots of people.
I think a lot depends on what work is being done and who the company is. My son was told to work from home in May 2020. He is a computer programmer. He and a number of his colleagues have put in many hours on various projects, so many at times that they’ve had to take time off because they don’t get paid for excessive hours. The idea that wfh people are only putting in 2 or 3 hours per day is a fallacy, certainly in his sector.
Also the idea that public sector workers don’t do anything at all is a myth, it may well be a possibility amongst the Whitehall pen-pushers but I can’t believe it of all workers.
Work-from-home was always going to be a future way of life, and although it isn’t possible for all jobs, it can certainly be done very effectively in some industries. We’ve all been used to the office-type environment and WFH is a major change. I think it is here to stay, no matter what the government might think.
It is said that WFH people can be replaced by cheaper foreigners; well, having seen the poor standards of computer programming by many foreigners who have had work outsourced to them, I’d say the end result is that the poor British end up receiving it back again and have to fix all the major problems. The engineering industry is a typical example. Just because programming is a “desk job” doesn’t mean it is easy or money for old rope.
The one issue for WFH right now is the extra cost of electricity and heating; and said son might decide to return to the office if his costs get too heavyweight. No problem, he walks there.
Why should it be right to force people into overcrowded, noisy, smelly offices, and onto intolerable commuter trains at extortionate prices, when they can do exactly the same job, using exactly the same technology, from home? Homeworking is the only good thing to come out of the last two years and it’s here to stay. This ridiculous populist bullying, and faux identification with binmen and shop workers, will achieve nothing.
Of course homeworking by back-office caseworkers, whose work is naturally solitary, isn’t actually the issue. The issue is something that was happening long before 2020 but has gathered pace; the closure of local services, such as banks and tax offices, and their replacement with online ‘services’, which exclude elderly, the disabled, the poor and the rural. Even call centres are being deliberately understaffed and run down, but that isn’t because the staff are working from home; many were before, it’s a deliberate policy to force people online. That’s what the focus of any campaign should be; not forcing people whose work can be done anywhere to travel pointlessly to a city centre building that is closed to the public anyway.
This is one of the rare occasions I disagree with a DS article.
If an employee can work more efficiently and productively from home why not allow them to do so?
I’m now retired, but WFH 2 or 3 days a week for many years, as did the rest of my colleagues. It improved productivity and reduced costs for my employer.
My wife works for the NHS exclusively from home now and is much more productive than when she was office based.
It’s easy to monitor the work output from those working remotely to ensure when and where they are working and measure their productivity. If we want to improve productivity and per capita GDP we need to consider all options and work practices.
However, it must be for the employer to decide where someone is based, not the employee.
In working from home it meant that many small businesses went to the wall. There are many jobs that do not need daily travel. I agree that should people be able to work from home it could create communities again where jobs shift to the local areas. However, it hasn’t worked that way. Instead most people working from home order in food, buy clothes etc on line and choose solitary recreation. In many ways it has divided society even more.
Doctors and much of the public sector cannot do their work efficiently has been seen by misdiagnosis. Those people who have been pleased by the work from home ethic have been mainly public sector workers and journalists. The very people who should be in the public domain. These people are also paid by the taxpayer who has become their servant. I wonder how you would feel if your delivery driver said your goods were at a location to go and collect because he found working from home was more beneficial to him.
There are many good reasons to work from home as ling as the community grows and prospers. However, that’s not the case as we are seeing already. Amazon has tripled its profits whilst local businesses have gone down. The mental health of many has caused loneliness and worse. But the biggest effect has been those in beautiful leafy areas with lovely gardens have benefitted and distanced themselves from those who live in small flats, modern housing with no quiet space, and those whose jobs are not fulfilling but pay the bills. The division and lack of community cohesion has been created by the very people whose jobs were once the heart of community.
With the greatest respect to your wife’s point of view it is hard not to paraphrase Mandy Rice Davis and suggest the ‘she would say that wouldn’t she’? Almost everyone judges themself by what they say they are going to do. Other people judge them by what they actually do. Measurements of productivity in the NHS, especially for non-clinical staff are the easiest measurements to fudge and game. And this is from my experience of working both inside the NHS and providing consultancy services to it from the outside.
Every single problem we face has been caused by our Governments and their too cosy relationship with International corporations and the misnamed NGOs.
Our problems would be solved if we didn’t have bureaucratic control whose reach has now become obscene.
The downturn in our living standards has been brought about by Governments being run by Bankers and Journalists. Neither sector have manufacturing experience or REAL science experience. No establishment figure has invented something the world needs or made something to benefit their community. The supply chain crisis has been engineered to save the Banking fraternity. The Covid crisis was created to line the pockets of faux scientists and gain control over citizens lives. The Ukrainian war was agitated and planned to bring Russia and Asia under the control of America and the Globalist push for One World Government.
Russia and their allies stood their ground and said no more bullying, no more fear mongering, no going back to serfdom and slavery. The Western leaders all have overplayed their hand. Their cruel and greedy behaviour for nearly 40 years (strangely more or less since the corrupt EU was formed and supported by America) by their agitation and destabilisation of countries they wish to control has come home to roost. America and EU/UK are now turning their venom on their own people. If they destroy their countries in their jealousy and hate for Russia, then so be it. Until we depose the people we now have ruling us, their long family histories of disdain and contempt will bring the West to its knees for many many generations to come.
What is with the snide comment about the left? Please show the evidence that those that prefer to WFH are from the political left. Stuff and nonsense. My wife works 3 days at home and 2 days in the office. It works well for both her and the company and she is a life long Tory! Just a totally unsubstantiated political dig for it’s own sake with no evidence to back it up. And I’d put money on most of the non laptop class (aka the working class) traditionally vote Labour. So it’s an argument that falls flat whichever way you look at it.
Forcing people to stay at home and work more hours in front of a laptop actually kills people. Sedentaryism is a killer. Locking people down makes them more sedentary and therefore far less healthy. The people working outside and/or with physical jobs and real life human contact probably fared better on the whole than the laptop classes stressing at home, worrying about their jobs and self educating their kids climbing up the walls.
Is this a case of making someone suffer just so you don’t suffer alone? All things being equal, what would it do for blue collar workers if the “laptop class” were forced to work from the office? If you’re going to say “productivity”, then that’s the issue, not that they’re working from home.
As far as I can tell, as many people working from home as possible is a good thing. Less rush hour traffic, less office buildings in city centres, less pollution, less stressed people.
And less salary to compensate for less commuting?
Fair enough, but that’s only a few hundred quid a year.
Although, if I think about it, I don’t think that applies. There are some people that get reimbursed for their commute, but most don’t. There is no money specifically for transportation. And if someone chooses to switch from public transport to a personal vehicle, they don’t need to have their salary adjusted. The implication is, as far as I can tell, that you are given a sum of money and you decide how you get to work.
Has your employer ever discussed with you the cost of your commute?
I have been self employed for many years so the conversation is always extremely amicable!
The salary given to individuals prior to the covid madness was based upon them working, generally, 5 days a week in a fixed workplace; a workplace where other employees also worked so that the co-operation and inter-personal interactions essential for the best performance could take place. The salary is a function of their job role and their competence in this role (The ‘Civil Service’ is excluded from this rational perspective).
The salary never had a specific allowance for travel, that was down to the individual employee to make their own decision on how much of their salary that they could and wanted to spend on commuting. It seems that the cries for ‘hybrid’ working mean providing less than normally productive working but for the same salary. On this basis three days WFH means 40% overpayment. Which adds up to considerably more than “a few hundred quid a year”.
I don’t think we should just assume that working from home drops productivity. I know lots of people that used to put some headphones in their ears and completely tune out the rest of the office. Whether such people are at home or in the office doesn’t seem to make much difference to them. Furthermore, it’s pretty easy to get in touch with people and hold meetings.
I think a much better system is to simply set targets for employees. If I were someone’s boss and I would need them to do X amount of work over one week, I really don’t care how they accomplish it. If they go on vacation for 3 days and then spend the other 2 finishing the job, what difference does it make? Sure, if that’s the case and they’re doing only what is required of them, their raise won’t be very big. And I think it’s detrimental if that employee cannot be open about this. Because I could either give them more work for more pay, so that they now work the full 5 days, or we just agree that they work 2 days a week and that’s that.
But maybe I am an idealist with the above. Bottom line is that I don’t think it’s safe to assume productivity will be necessarily worse. It is up to each employer to determine that and negotiate contracts accordingly.
I manage a team of software developers. We all work remotely. I have no issues with productivity, non-communication or any of the other complaints. However, WFH is not appropriate for many roles in our company and a fully virtual work environment isn’t something that many businesses can do.