TheAJx t1_iz5aiyc wrote
Reply to comment by The_Lone_Apple in NYC comptroller says Adams has ‘exacerbated’ widespread city worker vacancies by mowotlarx
>Someone really needs to explain to me the mentality that people who can do their jobs fine from home must come into an office.
At the risk of being swarmed, I will give it a shot.
The mayor is responsible for the city as a collective. He has to balance competing interests and priorities. That doesn't mean he's doing a good job of it, but that is technically his job.
For the health of the city - financial, social, cultural - it is valuable to have people working in the city because that leads to dollars being directly injected into the NYC economy. Nearly one million people commuted into NYC every day. They would spend money at drug stores, local retail, local restaurants. With WFH, that money is staying in New Jersey and Westchester and Long Island.
And that might be the future, but it's going to cause financial and social issues for New York City. Less money injected into the economy = less tax collection and that's less money for schools, parks and public services like transit. These are just the facts.
At the individual level, it is totally reasonable, understandable and justifiable to want to work from home. I work from home 3 or 4 days a week myself and I don't feel like going into the office. I'm not quite sure that's sustainable at the civic level. We are eventually going to run out of resources.
Now my suggestion is that we ultimately need to allow government employees to WFH a few days a week just to keep talent and keep morale high. But it is a tough trade off, and keeping individuals happy will have ramifications for the collective. My follow up suggestion to this is for the city of NY to commit to developing 500K housing units over the next 10 years. We can limit the impact of WFH by offsetting with a growing population.
jadedaid t1_iz69cgv wrote
I think this is a pretty balanced take on the issue. With prices being what they are, I like the idea of saving money by staying home more days. So maybe if we didn't make midtown unaffordable more people might show up more often.
most11555 t1_iz6wyhc wrote
City workers are legally required to live in the city. I’m sure some commit fraud but for the most part, that money was not staying in NJ.
ThinVast t1_iz7092z wrote
DOE teachers don't need to live in NYC.
most11555 t1_iz70heo wrote
I did not know that. Makes sense that teachers would have to work in person anyway.
Crimsonwolf1445 t1_iz9b5kp wrote
No most of them arent.
most11555 t1_iz9ozvh wrote
Ok I googled it and looks like most are allowed to live in 6 NYS counties outside of NYC after being a city worker for 2 years. But not NJ. Would be curious to know what percentage of city workers live outside of NYC.
Crimsonwolf1445 t1_iz9q9m4 wrote
Depends on the individual agency
A lot dont have that 2 year requirement
most11555 t1_izaq41t wrote
Idk the internet says most do have the requirement so who do I believe lol
Crimsonwolf1445 t1_izar1wn wrote
Nypd, DOE, sanitation, FDNY court officer, corrections…. Lot of city jobs that dont include that requirement
secretactorian t1_iz5cspf wrote
>I'm not quite sure that's sustainable at the civic level. We are eventually going to run out of resources.
?????
TheAJx t1_iz5dd91 wrote
Okay, let's start from the beginning. Did you understand the part where I described how commuters into the city inject money into the local economy through spending?
secretactorian t1_iz5fais wrote
Really?? Lmao, fuck your condescension. You made a statement without anything to back it up. Which civic resources, specifically, are we going to run out of?
The MTA may be crying about lost revenue due to ridership being down, but the fact is that there are plenty of people coming in to the office at least one day a week and tourists are back en force. The city isn't dying or in danger of losing any sector or service. It's readjusting, if anything.
TheAJx t1_iz5ghi6 wrote
> Really?? Lmao, fuck your condescension. You made a statement without anything to back it up.
What exactly do you need back up for. Do you understand the concept or not?
>Which civic resources, specifically, are we going to run out of?
Economic Revenue to businesses and employees in this city; Tax Revenue.
>The MTA may be crying about lost revenue due to ridership being down, but the fact is that there are plenty of people coming in to the office at least one day a week and tourists are back en force.
No, the fact is that MTA ridership is down 30-40% and it is not sustainable to keep up operations at the same level. So the city and state will need to make a big decision on how they are gong to fix that gap.
> It's readjusting, if anything.
Okay, and the readjustment will be toward lower investment into public services. And that trade off might be worth it if most people are just sitting at home anyways.
Evening_Presence_927 t1_iz6u9wa wrote
> Economic Revenue to businesses and employees in this city; Tax Revenue.
So find new sources of that. We have the most billionaires in the world. I’d say start there.
TheAJx t1_iz85xlc wrote
What the fuck does this even mean. You need a news source to understand how consumer spending drives the economy of this city? You can't just use simple logic?
What does the existence of billionaires have to do with the general economy of the city? Do you think the number of billionaires in a city impacts spending at the local bodega, local restaurants, local drugstores? Do you think billionaires are just a magic source of money for everything the city wants to accomplish?
Karrick t1_iz7t1k3 wrote
I recognize you're playing devil's advocate here to some extent, so please don't take this as trying to jump on you. I'm just a teensy bit angry about the way the discourse has shaken out in the media.
I think it's disingenuous to suggest that the ~80,000 NYC employees who could work from home make that much of a difference. First, those employees are spread throughout multiple locations across the city - yes, there's a few major offices at Metrotech and in FiDi, but the city has office buildings all over. Just having city employees back is not going to save much of anything because the difference is so small. Second, Most of them would still have to live within the city anyway, so the city is still getting property and sales taxes from them.
"But city employees set an example to private industry" say de Blasio and Adams, to which I say bullshit. City employees are universally looked down on by private industry and public discourse. I would argue that is unjust in most cases, but I challenge anyone to find an example of a hot shit tech firm or a major bank saying "I wish our employees were more like city employees." You'll never find it. Instead you will find countless stories of how city employees are lazy and incompetent. The banks and investment firms and other private employers were always going to do their own thing and whether or not city employees were working from home was never going to make one iota of difference to their managements' decisions.
It kills me that for a brief minute workers in non-union office jobs had that moment of "Fuck you I'm not going back" and it's not turning into a massive labor movement, but here we are.
Edit: 100% on board with your housing suggestion. That's (among other things) one way to make the city more affordable and keep tax revenue up. Hell, I would go even further and suggest public housing that actually has the funding to stay maintained. Fold taxes and rent into a single income stream - you can keep the rents relatively low and the city gets more money out of it to pay for maintenance.
TheAJx t1_iz85p50 wrote
>I recognize you're playing devil's advocate here to some extent, so please don't take this as trying to jump on you. I'm just a teensy bit angry about the way the discourse has shaken out in the media.
How has the discourse shaken out in the media.
I don't think I'm trying to play devil's advocate here. I'm just pointing out that WFH has major trade offs that simply need to be considered. People on this sub absolutely refuse the consider trade offs in all the things they demand.
>"But city employees set an example to private industry" say de Blasio and Adams, to which I say bullshit. City employees are universally looked down on by private industry and public discourse.
I disagree. I think it is about building credibility. It is harder to convincingly argue that working in office is important if you are telling your own employees that they don't need to come into the office. Note, my personal stance here is to push for a hybrid model.
> It kills me that for a brief minute workers in non-union office jobs had that moment of "Fuck you I'm not going back" and it's not turning into a massive labor movement, but here we are.
Massive labor movement? . . . The primary beneficiaries of work from home were upscale, educated white collar professionals. Do you think blue collar and service sector workers view white collar professionals as compatriots in class solidarity? Because I can tell you they do not. They look at us as spoiled brats who reaped a massive advantage during covid, lecturing others from behind a computer screen while their own suffered and had to go into work in person. Construction workers, small business owners, maintenance workers, healthcare workers . . . what do these people have to gain from a work-from-home strike?
We should all have the dignity to admit that work from home is an incredibly privilege afforded to upscale white collar professionals and no one else. Whether we earned it or not, the truth of the matter is that we have that bargaining power and it just is what it is. Nobody has to apologize for it. But let's stop pretending that a bunch of six figure earners are Haymarket protestors.
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