A union for banking professionals asked Australia's labor tribunal to help stop an office mandate from the Commonwealth Bank of Australia.
It does not surprise me companies are making people go back to the office. Not just in Australia but around the world. There are a lot of people abusing the situation. It sucks but I saw this was going to happen when work from home first started getting rolled out back at the beginning of Covid.
The companies are going to use what ever means and reasoning they need to. But at the end of the day all that matters dollars. If they would have seen more productivity with people working from home and if the company made more money, the people would be allowed to continue to work from home
This is about estate properties. Banks and investors have huge stakes in office estates and are reluctant to acknowledge that work from home will be a reality.
It should be common. Its no secret who owns these buildings. Its glaringly obvious especially when you compare the insane benefits of WFH for the employee. Any sane employer wouldn't cancel it, until you consider their 650 million in enterprise real estate.
For a fun little proof of concept, go look at the authors of most of these business mag op-eds talking about how WFH "just isn't working". A disproportionate number of them are somehow heavily entwined in corporate real estate investments.
It is absolutely blatant frantic thrashing from people who had an easy ticket to cheap money and lost a lot of that value.