from Hacker News

JPMorgan Workers Ponder Union in Wake of Return-to-Office Mandate

by yesthis on 1/13/25, 7:55 PM with 206 comments

  • by 999900000999 on 1/13/25, 8:33 PM

    I dislike RTO for one simple reason .

    I'm not at work to make friends, I'm not at work to chit chat. I'm not at work so we can talk about who won the last football game .

    I go to work in exchange for currency, which is required to acquire goods and services. All this other crap, all these holiday parties, all of this let's dance in diversity videos, no that's not what I'm here for .

    Most of the time coming to the office actually adds a bunch of unnecessary crap that is completely unneeded. If you can't get your job done remotely, what's the stop you from also slacking off in the office. I have to go back to the office for a while last year times were hard and I didn't have another option .

    We're just talking to each other, shooting the s**, and it was cool to meet some Junior Devs who were just starting their career. But none of that made me a more productive worker.

    If I had to think, I imagine the entire point of RTO mandates is to keep cities sustainable.

    If every single office job went remote, what's the point of a city like New York. Who's going to willingly pay $6,000 for an apartment, ride the trains for over an hour a day, if you can just sit at home in a much cheaper city .

    However, to quote a famous philosopher, it's a big club and you ain't in it. The powers that be one as many people in office chairs as possible, so they're real estate holdings appreciate in value.

    Billy Bob's bagels also benefits from this, although I'd imagine he's not able to have the same amount of pool as the real estate titans

  • by TrackerFF on 1/13/25, 8:17 PM

    I think RTO mandates will be the straw that broke the camel's back, for a lot of Americans. Workers in sectors that previously wouldn't even think about unionizing, are now having serious discussions.

    Going back to commutes, wasting time, for no obvious reason - yeah, that did wake up people.

    EDIT: I'm talking about rigid 5 days a week RTO policy. As other have pointed out, having a flexible WFH policy is often "good enough" for most people. Not all want 100% WFH, but taking away the flexibility of WFH a couple of days a week, if you want, feels like a shitty deal.

  • by currymj on 1/13/25, 8:51 PM

    I generally think for many jobs, in-person is actually better.

    SWE in a place with good process, remote is probably fine. Generally similar for jobs with clear deliverables on that kind of time scale. if it's more research oriented, there is a huge benefit to being in-person in front of a whiteboard. For a job with shifting requirements day to day (like some legal or banking work), it is easier to coordinate everyone in the same office.

    unclear if this overcomes cost to employees of the commute, housing, etc., but the value is there.

    however there is also "worst of all possible worlds" RTO, where you have to commute to the office because the office is the place you are required to sit for your 4+ hours of Zoom calls per day with other colleagues in other offices. I expect a lot of companies are going to do this, which is totally stupid.

  • by EncomLab on 1/13/25, 8:25 PM

    The key to me is the flexibility - I have the option of WFH 2 days per week, but most weeks I'm in the office 5 days (sometimes a half day on Saturday) because I am fortunate to have a "real office" with a door, a nice view, a stocked break area - and no home distractions. If I was still in a cube farm with a barely stocked vending machine (where I spent the vast majority of my career) I'd be using every WFH moment I could get.

    The key discussion should not be WFH vs. RTO - it should be why do people hate the office they are expected to return to?

  • by robotnikman on 1/13/25, 9:32 PM

    I feel like Work from Home would be a great solution to the housing crisis, as it would allow people to easily live in affordable areas. A tax break or something for businesses which implement WfH would be a good starting point for this.

  • by jcims on 1/13/25, 8:56 PM

    One note to consider here is that JPMC has, over the past 4-5 years, invested over a billion dollars in renovating and rebuilding several major offices (270 Park and Polaris being major efforts).

    It's not entirely unlikely this is related to that as well.

  • by ChrisArchitect on 1/13/25, 8:31 PM

    Related:

    JPMorgan reportedly ending remote work for more than 300k employees

    https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42669143

    JPMorgan Chase Disables Employee Comments After Return-to-Office Backlash

    https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42677491

  • by HamsterDan on 1/13/25, 8:35 PM

    Workers need to tread carefully here. If you there's no need to be in the office, what's to stop corporate from replacing you with an Indian that costs 1/3rd as much?

    Push back too hard on RTO and you may not have a job at all in five years.

  • by 0xcafefood on 1/13/25, 8:25 PM

    Labor unions seem like the wrong model for organizing "knowledge workers." A professional association like the American Medical Association might be a better way to structure things.

    One difference is how they gain leverage. Labor unions seem to rely on the fact that they are the ones _right there_ who can work in a factory, clean a facility, etc. But capital sort of did an end run around some of that by literally packing factories up and shipping them overseas. That seems pretty easy to do to knowledge workers as well. At least to some degree and at some level.

    This is far outside anything I've read extensively about, and it'd be interesting to read more.

  • by lucidone on 1/14/25, 2:39 AM

    I wouldn't mind RTO so much if the cities where most tech jobs are were affordable. I'd rather be a millwright in my middle-of-nowhere mining town with a 10 minute commute in a 250k house versus a software developer with an hour long commute and a million dollar mortgage in big-metropolis. For now, I am making hay while the sun is shining and getting the best of both worlds while squirreling away as much cash as possible.

  • by exabrial on 1/13/25, 8:19 PM

    I generally like working in the office. I get more completed, I enjoy my coworkers, communication is easier, and I'm visible to management.

    If it came down to RTO, or a 4 day work week, It would be an unbelievably simple choice: 4 day week.

  • by 0xcafefood on 1/13/25, 8:20 PM

  • by whatever1 on 1/13/25, 8:58 PM

    RTO is a cheap way for the companies to filter out the rebels that they hired during Covid.

  • by bilsbie on 1/13/25, 9:01 PM

    I wish these places would consider remote offices in places with lower cost of living. Or in suburbs outside of major cities.

    THe worst part is the commute. Just such a waste of human life.

  • by blased on 1/13/25, 9:57 PM

    I worked at JPM, practically the entire US office was Indians. It was a mess.

    It's the largest bank in the world, "too big to fail" and apparently "too big to employ the people who are on the hook for their bailout".

  • by beanjuiceII on 1/13/25, 9:13 PM

    good, my company will keep remote work and easily scoop up good people because we're not ones to make excuses about 'better office collaboration' or whatever the current joke is to help the real estate out

  • by nine_zeros on 1/13/25, 8:22 PM

    My unioned wife lives a life I can only dream of. The respect, the dignity of her job makes me feel like I made the wrong choice by getting into tech.

    Unionization is the answer. For a long time, tech workers were gaslighted into thinking that unions will not let them get paid high salaries.

    Guess what, without unions, tech workers don't even have job stability. Forget high salaries.

    Vote for unions.

  • by kkfx on 1/13/25, 9:46 PM

    That's the good answer https://www.theguardian.com/business/2024/nov/19/starling-ba...

    AND not alone, it's time to prepare a mass resign for all companies pushing RTO stating clear that they are against human evolution, so harmful for humanity AND their heads must resign to end the strike.

  • by dmitrygr on 1/13/25, 8:03 PM

    I genuinely wish them luck and I hope it works.

  • by from-nibly on 1/13/25, 10:46 PM

    This likely won't work. They are probably using this as a way to thin the herd anyway.

  • by srvo on 1/13/25, 9:03 PM

    Honestly, the fact that J.P. Morgan employees are even pondering this credibly enough for it to get picked up by Barron's is a watershed moment for the labor rights movement in the U.S.

  • by iugtmkbdfil834 on 1/13/25, 8:27 PM

    Oh fuck yes, let it happen. The entire finance industry will take note if it were to pass.

    Naturally, this means that JPM will take extraordinary efforts ( OWS level ) to ensure it does not come to pass.

  • by SSJPython on 1/13/25, 8:15 PM

    On the one hand, capitalists and business owners want people to have more children in order to keep the economy functioning. On the other hand, they want to make work as inconvenient as possible and want work to encompass the life of the employee.

    It's becoming increasingly clear that there is a trade-off and an inverse relationship between career growth and family formation.

  • by Over2Chars on 1/14/25, 1:32 AM

    Higher wages? Nope.

    Collective bargaining? Nope.

    A way to push back on being required to go to the office which has been a requirement since forever (before 2022): bring on the workers' power Revolution, comrade!

  • by Finnucane on 1/13/25, 8:18 PM

    "We're spending a bucket of money on a new office tower, and you're damn well going to it."

  • by stinkbutt on 1/13/25, 8:20 PM

    extroverts are not going to win this war