Creative Commons
Flexible commuting is the future of office labor—unless it isn’t. Right now, many white collar workers are free to decide their own breaks, set their own hours, and work from places of their choosing. But it remains uncertain if employers will still be okay with this after the pandemic.
As it stands now, vast tracts of office space await an influx of workers who could just as easily meet on Zoom.
Zoom has been around since 2011. Skype was founded in 2003. But before the pandemic, most companies were leery of allowing remote work. And now some employers are already pushing workers back into offices.
In early May, New York Mayor Bill de Blasio had 80,000 public workers return for the sake of revitalizing the hard-hit Manhattan office economy, whether or not their work actually necessitated being in person. State workers in Connecticut, New Hampshire, Michigan, and Missouri join a growing list of public sector workforces headed back to the office.
The private sector could be next. In April JPMorgan announced it will require employees to return. Other investment banks are making similar moves. New York mayoral candidate Andrew Yang proposed tax breaks for employers who require workers to show up in person. His giveaways would be a bonanza for real estate companies—which could unload properties at subsidized prices—while functionally ending the prospect of working remotely in the city.
The real estate industry spends massively in the United States; in 2020, groups like the National Association of Realtors spent a total of $131 million on campaign contributions and lobbying. They have an economic interest in using this financial power to restore the pre-pandemic status quo of long commutes, high-end construction, and gentrifying cities.
Of course, some workers will prefer to work outside of their homes. Remote work can be alienating and multiply domestic tasks. The guiding principle should be that employers maximize workers’ options. Distance-bridging technologies are valuable means of production that could make life easier for workers, provided they have a say in how organizations use them.
It’s possible that these technologies have launched irreversible trends that will improve workers’ lives. And all of it without the messy political struggles behind other advances such as the forty-hour workweek. But even though businesses seem to have grown comfortable with remote work during the pandemic (it’s cheaper, for one reason), that doesn’t mean employers can be trusted to distribute the benefits fairly. Employers already reserve remote work options as a perk to attract high-end workers. What about the rest of us?
Obviously, not all jobs are amenable to telecommuting, although research shows that many are. As a political science professor, for example, I can write and even teach from home. This would work less well with academic subjects like chemistry or dance, and hardly at all for custodians, fire fighters, nurses, kindergarten teachers, or subway drivers.
If working from home was an accepted norm like the forty-hour workweek, these workers could gain overtime pay for commuting. Such a policy would finally acknowledge that where we live is mostly beyond our control and that long commutes in our distended cities reinforce inequality. Living near downtown is expensive, imposing what is essentially a poverty tax on those forced into long commutes if they live in the cheaper suburbs.
Social alienation is also a serious concern. Still, one worker’s random encounter after a long workday to swap ideas or take an impromptu trip to the pub is another’s unpaid overtime. Some workers may prefer the company in their own neighborhoods, homes, political organizations, or on some days, none at all. Office synergy can just as easily drain life from those spheres.
Drawing on what public opinion data is available, The Atlantic’s Amanda Mull argues that workers would likely choose a happy medium between in-person interaction and work-from-home flexibility. What’s important, in her words, is that “employees can gain back some of what’s sorely missing in American work culture: self-determination.”
Why let clogged expressways keep people from jobs that can be reached by laptop?
The impact of working remotely on cities is another concern. Would ditching our offices finally kill downtowns? News magazines declared downtowns dead decades ago—and it still hasn’t happened. To the contrary, they enjoyed a sustained revival in recent decades. Downtown Chicago’s population went up five-fold between 1980 and 2018.
The focus on economic downturn ignores vacancies deliberately caused by landlords, a form of market manipulation akin to De Beers’s once-legendary practice of hoarding diamonds. It’s easy to forget that Manhattan was riddled with shuttered spaces for years before the pandemic. Storefronts amidst some of the world’s most valuable real estate sat boarded up as landlords demanded exorbitant rents.
For decades, construction was skewed toward upmarket and absentee buyers seeking investment homes. This created dead space in dense built-up areas. One research project located enough warehoused spaces in just a few New York City neighborhoods to house the whole of the city’s homeless population.
Right now landlords are keeping housing off the market in order to prevent tenants from locking in favorable leases during the pandemic. If politicians want to bring back urban shoppers and diners, they can require that landlords lease to renters who want to live in cities.
As it stands now, vast tracts of office space await an influx of workers who could just as easily meet on Zoom. At a minimum this offers an opportunity to convert commercial properties to affordable housing in this age of mass eviction. This idea is gaining support; New York’s recent state budget includes some funding for converting unused hotel space into housing.
This should happen on a larger scale. While cities look to flip a glut of office properties for wealthy developers, housing is an underserved need that cannot be phoned in.
Using tax power, cities could pressure developers to let go of unneeded office space, in addition to old blights like empty investment condos. They could repurpose these places for the people who actually live there or would like to, rebuilding public housing and incentivizing community land trusts.
This is a rare chance to think of built environments that don’t revolve primarily around corporate employers. Imagine schools, cultural centers, libraries, clinics, and community spaces inhabiting what used to be strip malls and monolithic skyscrapers.
Apartment buildings could be redesigned on the presumption that many people will telecommute. Public and private stations could alleviate alienation while offering time alone. Open spaces in these buildings could offer workers healthy food and the chance for socializing during the workday. This approach, put to use at places like Google, could be made more widely accessible.
These ideas are speculative, but everyone should recognize the opportunity to reclaim dead corporate spaces. Otherwise, cities will revert to the stale gentrification-led model in which workers are priced out of walkable urban cores. Why let clogged expressways keep people from jobs that can be reached by laptop?
If not, capitalism’s underclass will stay stuck in isolated transit deserts in peripheral neighborhoods, locked away from core job markets.