Fed’s Powell rebuffs Corporate America’s RTO mandates

Three years on from the rollout of life-saving COVID vaccines and the gradual ending of pandemic-era lockdowns, the central bank governor said the economy had fundamentally changed as a result of working from home.

“We do see that it looks like it’ll be a persistent thing,” he told weekly news program 60 Minutes on Sunday. 

Immediately following the pandemic, many CEOs who were struggling to combat the effects of the Great Resignation promised remote work would remain an option. This prompted many workers to leave cities like San Francisco and New York for more affordable places far outside the boundaries of a daily commute. 

Some of these employees now face a dilemma amid a concerted push by employers to gradually roll back part, if not all, of the WFH flexibility, with CEOs like Elon Musk and David Solomon of Goldman Sachs among the most vocal opponents. 

At the start of this year, even an internet company tellingly had enough of workforce flexibility, releasing a video that made headlines for its mandate’s tone-deaf messaging. “We’re not asking or negotiating at this point, we’re informing,” Internet Brands CEO Bob Brisco said in the video, curiously set against the cheerful music track “Iko Iko”.

Programmers at SAP, an enterprise software vendor that competes with Salesforce and Oracle, meanwhile helped lead a veritable rebellion over management’s attempt to roll back pandemic era policies. 

But employers are not backing down so easily. To enforce their will, many are actively monitoring turnstile data to judge the frequency and even more importantly the length of time their workers are there, amid suspicions some only go into the office for as brief a period as possible.

A recent survey from BetterUp indicated the number of…