Karrick t1_iz7t1k3 wrote on December 7, 2022 at 2:34 AM

Reply to comment by TheAJx in NYC comptroller says Adams has ‘exacerbated’ widespread city worker vacancies by mowotlarx

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 on December 7, 2022 at 4:17 AM

>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.