On March 22, 2023, the New York Times published a guest essay from investment manager Steven Rattner titled, Is Working From Home Really Working? in which Rattner predictably casts doubt on the practice.
During the pandemic, millions of Americans were forced to make do with restricted work hours, job loss, limited supplies and failed government leadership. It is no surprise that in the midst of these trials, Americans found new priorities that were not perverted by the propaganda of the Puritan work ethic. Rattner writes, “Whatever you want to call it, the attitude of many Americans toward work appears to have changed during the long pandemic — and, generally speaking, not for the better.”
This assertion that a shift in the priorities of Americans is “not for the better” raises questions as to what “better” means in this context. That people are evaluating what matters to them and prioritizing their time based on their values seems significantly better unless you do not view a life as intrinsically valuable without it generating wealth for those above, and certainly those managing investments for the likes of billionaire Michael Bloomberg, as Rattner’s firm does.
Rattner continues, “The question lurking in the minds of many with home I’ve spoken (as well as my own): Has America gone soft?” This drips with the work ethic propaganda Americans have been subjected to for hundreds of years and largely reconsidered during the pandemic. In an economic system which disproportionately favors the wealthy, there is an inexcusable audacity in questioning whether the oxen are “soft” simply because they have decided to stop dying in the yoke for the benefit of others who hoard the profit of their sacrifice.
So work from home is not better, according to Rattner, but from whose perspective? This is made evident as he continues to condemn the practice by invoking the opinion of “senior executives” he has consulted on the matter. Absent is the perspective of the worker whose shrinking buying power has made single income households a luxury of the very few, whose medical expenses outpace their pay and insurance coverage, and whose American dream of prosperity has been slowly replaced with the nagging sense that they live to work to die at the altar of capitalist greed. To them, recouping the cost of transportation and parking can be a stabilizing force in a destructive system.
Rattner continues, “Of course, the notion of flexible work is a form of white-collar privilege. Americans who labor in factories or in restaurants or stores don’t have the luxury of working from home (or the quiet quitting that can accompany it).” Fair enough, but this attempt to bifurcate the work force into the privileged and the deprived is a fiction. The reason white-collar workers are retreating to work from home arrangements is to mitigate the very same pressures on those in other fields. Rather than simply force white-collar workers back to the office to suffer in solidarity, government and corporate leaders should consider a work environment in which all workers of any collar can take satisfaction in a fair exchange of their time for money. Of course, Rattner never dares to ask why Americans find the workplace to be so repulsive.
Lest Americans still resist Rattner’s call to action, he points to the Chinese work ethic and conjures the fear that Americans will lose their wealth to the foreign workers who simply sacrifice more. He writes, “But we should be aware of different choices being made in other countries, particularly China, our biggest strategic adversary. The Chinese expression ‘996’ means working 9 a.m. to 9 p.m., six days a week.”
But whose wealth is at risk? The vast majority of Americans are hobbled by the burdens of income disparity, rampant inflation, and runaway medical costs. The wealthy urge on those below to work harder and faster, but in a system where hard work holds no promise of mitigation to the troubles that ail them, American workers are smart (not soft) enough to provide exactly what they receive from their employers and government: the bare minimum.
Rattner concludes, “But put me down as skeptical about that and much of the notion that when it comes to work, less can be more.” At this last point, Rattner begins to seem reasonable. Less compensation for fewer benefits is, certainly, unlikely to yield more work.
