Suddenly, out of nowhere, all of these office buildings and leased properties are costing all of these companies tons of money without any benefit to the companies.
Leases on buildings are generally ten year leases, meaning that these companies are legally locked in via contract to pay money over ten years.
Now I'm not shilling, to be clear. This is the corporation's fault. Historically, there are pandemics with lockdowns and such once or twice every hundred years. Not to mention, social unrest, warfare, and any number of other things that could cause nationwide disturbances in business property. If someone had actually sat down and like, thought about ten year leases, they would have thought of some way to lessen the financial burden on landlords and companies if something were to happen. Some insurance thing probably. I'm vaugely guessing that there's a ten percent chance of a distubance in any ten year period, which should have been well within risk estimation territory.
It's just wild to me that nobody is talking about this major factor, and it's why all of these companies are saying very similar things at the same time. There probably also are factors like boomers thinking people are lazy, and middle managers being mad that their jobs are less useful and they have less control, but the main corporate reason is property cost. Especially cause corporations are more likely to fire middle managers than listen to them.
Also, it should be noted, that all of these corps are stuck in a massive prisoner's dilemma. If you own property and you sell it early, you get most of your money back. If everyone sells business property, it's all worthless. Since most large companies have various properties and leases they pay for and also lease out, and it's all locked up in a massive clusterfuck of paper and deals, there's a TON of property holding a TON of value for these companies which they're on track for losing the value of.
So I think right now, workers who are working from home have a huge negotiating advantage that corps are on their back foot about. At the very least, it needs to be the main point in the work from home discussion, instead of cherrypicked bullshit about “accountability” and “professionalism” or whatever else they're pretending is the real issue.