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Many, people who have now been working from home will not be returning to the office when this is all over. The atomisation of the workforce that has been ongoing for forty years under neoliberalism has reached its zenith in WFH. Never have workers been so spatially separate.
If employers can save money on things like utilities, office space rent, staff kitchens, etc... And offload those costs onto employees, they'll do it. Workers being spatially separate both alienates from your fellow workers, making you more likely to view them as competition...
... Rather than comrades, and it makes it harder to form a union. In many ways, it also makes workplace surveillance easier. There will be introduced software that employees will be required to use that will track productivity down to the minute.
Atomisation of the workforce has been a trend that has been ongoing since the decline of manufacturing, and this has also created the loss of community intimacy. How many of the people on your street's names do you know? Pre-Millennials, it was common to know everyone.
My father grew up in the Vale of Glamorgan and knew the name of everyone who lived in a five mile radius. My nan and nonagenerian neighbour knew the names of everyone on their street. My nan used to buy Christmas presents for everyone on the street in her bungalow in Aberbargoed.
That is a completely alien concept to me now. Where I live now, I know the names of three people on my street and that's only because I was in school with them. This has sprang from the decline of manufacturing which towns in the 19th century built themselves around
Forcing people to commute elsewhere (usually cities) to work. Gone are the days where most of the people on a street worked in the same mine or factory. Now people commute to the centres of capital concentration for work - accelerating atomisation of the workforce and community.
I deeply worry for what will come from the new age of work from home. Some may enjoy the novelty of it now, but I fear people will come to despise where they live much as they grew to hate their bland offices.
If you're spending five days working from home and then your days off are spent at home too, the days are gonna blur together. I deeply worry both for the overtly political impacts of this new age and the interpersonal and personal impacts of it.
It'll be sold as "Wey no more having to get up an hour earlier everyday to commute! You have all creature comforts at home! Plus you'll reduce your CO2 footprint!" but what is offered as increased liberty and free time will turn those walls that offered comfort into bars.
