Myself, like many here, generally have held positive views about the right to work from home, and how it allows us to better live our lives as we see fit.
But I've been working from home for a long time now, and I have to say that I've noticed some pretty critical issues with it, from a movement perspective.
- Sense of community among workers – A lot of discussion goes on here about unionising, organising, building communities. Working from home actively isolates workers from each other, and removes an inherent bond that I feel is built by face-to-face cooperative labor. This is the problem with capitalism as a system: it keeps people docile and self-hating because it isolates them. It keeps people from revolt by keeping them self-interested. Work-from-Home has extended this even further.
- Visibility of abuse or special treatment – One of the benefits of working in the office, is the ability to know how others are feeling, and what kind of things are going on for them. You're unlikely to not see if someone is getting special treatment, or special abuse. Everyone has been put into their own silos, and you see literally only what others want you to see. Being able to call out bad behaviour, or notice nepotism, has become drastically more difficult with the move to WFH.
- Blurring the lines of the “work life” balance myth – Now, it's just your home. For those with lovely cozy homesteads, speckled with flowers and happy faces, this might be a blessing. But for so many workers, it is a nightmare. Now they don't even have the workplace: now all is in this one building. Eat. Sleep. Work. Never leave the house. Your playroom is no longer your playroom: it's an office. Your mobile is no longer your mobile: it's your work notification device. More and more, the companies reach into your life and rip from it whatever they can for a simple wage. Your place of peace has been, worse than tainted, conquered.
- Monopoly on communication – Because all comms are digital, more than ever, management is able to serve as the primary source of information. It's all recorded, it's all visible. Now there is nothing of yours that is truly person-to-person. Even your fun, non-work related chats with colleagues are on the companies hardware. You cannot escape it.
They have succeeded in driving themselves deeper into our lives. Now the door doesn't stop them. Already everything we buy has company logos on it: now the company lives and breathes within our home and within our lives.
The difference between the company, and us, is becoming tenuously thin.