(C) Daily Kos This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered. . . . . . . . . . . Why remote work matters [1] ['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.'] Date: 2023-12-29 It's almost the new year here in California - which for me and my 5000 public-sector coworkers, means we'll be forced to work in-office twice a week. Not for practical reasons - most of us have been working from home for nearly four years, doing great work, and all of our duties can be done from home. We're office workers in a digital age, and our teams were distributed across the state even before the pandemic. The official reason is "to promote collaboration", but the strong suspicion is that this is an attempt by the governor to prop up Sacramento real estate prices. Empty office buildings don't look good to corporate donors. It’s a shortsighted and cruel move. We've been waiting six months for our promised cost-of-living wage increases, we accepted a union contract which doesn't keep up with inflation, and a lot of us are struggling. Now we need to buy cars again, spend hours commuting, find another way to get their kids home from school... a death by a thousand cuts, if you will. (And yes, many people are leaving - but that's apparently an acceptable loss.) Our office has spent millions adding new equipment and processes to bring everyone back into the office - there will be more people on-site than there were before the pandemic. This isn't a cost-saving measure - at least not for the state budget. For employees with disabilities, like me, this is especially rough. I can't work in an office without serious health effects. I can't leave my house for more than an hour or two without serious health effects - I'm basically housebound, which is why I applied for a fully-remote job. Unfortunately, a week after I accepted this position - and started paperwork to leave my old job - this return-to-office initiative was announced. Because there were less than three months between the announcement of RTO and its implementation, HR has been incredibly backed up. I put in my request for reasonable accommodation under the ADA before I even started my new job, 2.5 months ago - and I still don't have a response. Neither do any of the coworkers I've spoken to. I've reached out to our employees' union, and they're being stalled too. Technically, fully-remote work isn't "banned" - HR is just looking for absolutely any accommodation which could possibly substitute for it, even if that accommodation is insufficient, expensive, or both, and they’re making us wait until they find one. Worse, those of us with pending applications are being told to come into the office until HR gets around to us - and with no ETA, that could take months. Maybe many months. Functionally, our request has been denied for an unknown period - but without the official denial on paper which would let us make a formal appeal. If we have covid on an in-office day, we need to either come in while sick, or use sick leave - even though our jobs could be done from home. If we're too sick to report to the office, we need to use sick leave - even though our jobs could be done from home. If we get sick or injured on the job because the office conditions weren't safe for us, we have to spend a full day of sick leave - even though our jobs could be done from home. I'm expecting my quality of life to drop dramatically next week - and so will the amount of work I actually get done. (Have you ever tried to do an office job with heat exhaustion? I don't recommend it.) I could hunt for a new job, like many of my coworkers - but there's no guarantee that any other workplace won't post a return-to-office mandate a week after I'm hired, either. The burden is on us as employees to prove we need to work from home, that no other accommodation will work, and that remote work doesn't pose an undue hardship to the employer - even in cases like this, where the job has been done remotely for years. So... I guess I'm going to fight this out. Would you guys like to hear about it? [END] --- [1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/12/29/2214439/-Why-remote-work-matters?pm_campaign=front_page&pm_source=more_community&pm_medium=web Published and (C) by Daily Kos Content appears here under this condition or license: Site content may be used for any purpose without permission unless otherwise specified. via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds: gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/dailykos/