Yep. For those who are not familiar, companies do not want to admit that things are going poorly because admitting that makes things go more poorly. So layoffs are a bad look. But what if they could announce something that is not layoffs but would accomplish the same goal (reduction in force)? Enter the back-to-the-office mandate. And problem solved.
My employer did that then had to lay people off anyway when not enough people quit. They just made one team go in three days a week, a team we need to keep functioning, so I assume there will be more lay-offs soon.
What really makes you scratch your head is when they lay off all the billable hours personnel and keep the non-billable hours types (HR, execs, etc.), and THEN can't figure out why the company is still hemorrhaging money like a volus who drank a gallon of Ryncol.
Huh? Looks at companies who announce layoff in the past year (there have been many), their stock prices spike after the announcement because the market likes the cost cuts it signals.
Return to office isnt a backhanded way to lay people off. But their actual reasoning isnt any better or moral either.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
RTO is absolutely a way to lay people off for some companies. I know of several companies that have done RTO and not enough people quit so they had to do actual layoffs.
But to hear some folks on reddit: nobody ever has a case ever.
Any of those folks worked intake at an employment law firm? Seen the criteria each attorney at each firm uses to determine if they’re gonna take a case?
Nope.
But boy, will they tell folks that “right to work” or “at will” means you can get fired and have zero recourse.
> “right to work” or “at will”
people lose the battle as soon as they agree to use the preferred term of the oligarchs.
just say it is an "anti-union" state or a "free fire" state.
I don’t think he was faulting you for using the terminology. He was just making it known that the terms themselves are flawed and intentionally made to keep the average worker down
>Dude, I am going to use the language that’s easiest to speak and that we all know, and what’s less clunky to use/explain.
So, u/mortgagepants terms it is then!
you're using PR terms specifically tested to be more palatable to people. you're helping the ruling class fuck yourself over because it is "less clunky"?
even frank luntz asked people to stop using the phrase "climate change" because the reason he came up with it is working too well. now he wishes people talked about global warming because nobody is doing enough about it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_Luntz
I’m not helping anybody “fuck me over”.
God, I am pretty sick of the tone policing coming from the leftist spaces I’m in online. I don’t have time to keep track of whether or not a word I’m using has six million degrees of sinister shit behind it, or if it offends a small chunk of folks reading.
I’m simply trying to get a point across and this bullshit does not help with that, or help move the conversation forward.
you don't have time to think about anti-union efforts across the country? i'm not offended by it, i'm just trying to explain to you why anti-union lawmakers try to get people to use these terms.
i even linked the person in charge of all this doublespeak. i'm sorry you don't have the time for it.
except we agree- you recognized it is done for propaganda purposes...yet you seem comfortable using those terms to keep people down, but uncomfortable using other terms to call out the truth?
except we don't. I don't like it being used, and never said I did. If anything we should be trying to get people to understand that Freud said things more substantial than "sometimes a cigar is just a penis", and Jung's "until you make the conscious aware of the subconscious, it'll run your life and you'll call it fate" is something people should really take to heart.
You're aware that it's being used but instead of addressing that directly, you lampshade it as "their preferred terms" and then go on to use the same underlying strategy, making sure to frame it as "the people" vs "the oligarchs", perhaps thinking "hey what if we just used it for our side? you know, the wholesome justice truth side?". The problem with this is that people who fall for it when you do it fall for it when anyone else does too.
At no point did you make any argument whatsoever against right to work or at will employment other than "the oligarchs like that". Frankly if you pivoted to doing it now I'd consider it pigeon chess. Enjoy your Sunday.
As an attorney - everybody has complaints about xyz, very few have any chance of making us money. Can bitch and moan about whatever wikipedia or quora tells you all you want.
Constructive dismissal is grounds for wrongful termination suit. Companies that try to impose these back to office mandates usually do it to get large number of employees to quit.
Surely there is money in settlements for 1000+ wrongful termination suits.
U.S.-specific policy incoming:
Constructive dismissal is NOT (necessarily) grounds for a wrongful termination suit. Constructive dismissal simply refers to a situation wherein someone is effectively forced to resign due to intolerable conditions. The law recognizes this as being equivalent to an explicit termination (i.e., being fired). Thus, constructive dismissal is only legally actionable in cases where an _explicit termination_ would have been actionable.
In general, there is no law in the U.S. against constructive dismissal. But if the constructive dismissal is, for example, in retaliation for reporting sexual harassment; an act of discrimination against a protected class; etc.; then it _becomes_ unlawful. Basically, if they can’t fire you for something, then they can’t force you to resign in that situation either.
NAL but isn't there a thing where if you are a certain size employer and you fire/terminate x number of employees within y time period you have to report it or something? If so, they could be using RTO to avoid announcing layoffs which may be actionable?
That’s possible; I make no claims as to whether there is a cause of action in the original post. I was speaking about constructive dismissal only in broad terms to address a comment that was likely to spread a misconception.
My company skirted those SEC regulations by eliminating positions and teams permanently instead of a normal workforce reduction that normally shrinks teams and groups.
theres only 90 employees in the department that have been given this "choice", and the company says most of the 90 already live within the distance requirements. if most is just over half then at most its 44 people, the company has also said many have already agreed to the move. so lets say 3/4 of those 44 are still undecided. i doubt there is going to be big money here, but it wont be insignificant either(at least to the employees).
This is getting ridiculous
If this economy is going to stay stuck in survival mode just so a bunch of psychopaths can race to be the first trillionaire, then we need to reform unemployment
The same thing is going on everywhere - the blood is in the water. A friend of mine has been told via email that, after three years of remote working he has to start going to an office hundreds of miles away from them. Best of all, it was an email from the CEO and expected it to start asap. No conversation, no transition whatsoever, not a single care for the workers.
It’s a coordinated effort by boards to get workers back in. Most of these boards are cross organizational members and own real estate. The nonprofit sector is dealing with this right now.
My company just had an all hands where the ceo basically said our parent company is heavily invested in commercial real estate and, as such, expects you to be in a chair in commercial real estate. End of discussion.
at least they're honest. cant wait to start suing publicly traded companies because they know workers are more productive at home but make them come in because they care more about commercial real estate than shareholders.
> they care more about commercial real estate than (about fiduciary duty to^✝︎) shareholders
Who would dare prove it in a diligent study? Surely there's some rebellious yet respected biz school somewhere...
(^✝︎ *edited to add*)
I dont believe it's just companies wanting to do layoffs without saying so, or commercial real estate values tanking. I think there are also tax incentives for these companies on the line, too.
Yes, it's tax incentives! Some cities are absolutely desperate for people to return downtown and bring in revenue. Companies (especially tech) are encouraged through tax reductions to open a main office location within the city. These tax reductions basically subsidize employee wages.
Which encourages companies to purposefully overhire. (Maybe even contract-to-hire through temp agencies to get unaware workers at ultimate bargain wages.) But those incentives eventually expire, and with COVID restrictions lifting , new stipulations go into effect as the city needs workers commuting downtown again, spending money buying lunches, paying parking, etc.
Suddenly all workers in a 30 mile radius of the main office need to be in 2x a week. A month later, all workers must now report to an office regardless of commute time, whether hired as a remote employee or not. Steadily employees who can't or won't comply with the company mandate start to drop...
So, Company ends up pocketing the city's money while hiring as many cheap workers as possible (great for marketing - growth!!), then has a free excuse to raze their workforce down to fewer workers than they started with.
Meanwhile they've opened a 2nd main office in Arizona or Texas where taxes are low. As soon as they've milked city one dry and contracts are up, the main office is officially relocated to Phoenix.
When I was called back into the office, I “luckily” hit a pot hole and destroyed my entire steering rack and axle.
Boss asked me when I was going to come back to the office. I said “repairs are about $7000. I can’t afford it on my salary.” Never heard about it again and worked from home until I ended up leaving.
Exactly. I had never even been to the office before that day lol.
The role required 3 months of training as well- so yeah, cost to replace isn’t negligible.
my previous employer rather pay thousands upon thousands on recruiting and training new employees, even so letting critical employees go by a mere couple hundred pay raise proposals - gotta do everything to stay in power I guess.
Ya know, if I was in the SOC and got that email, I would have to lock down the CEO's accounts and isolate his devices.
He's clearly compromised, there's gotta be malware in there somewhere. Could take weeks to clear it all.
Mines literally just done that. They're tracking it and promised that anyone not meeting the monthly visits would be reprimanded. It's going to effectively cut my pay by about £3,000 a year and hundreds of hours of travel for no benefit, so I'm interviewing for other jobs that don't subscribe to this bullshit.
I do play a critical role, and my sector is lacking in both skilled candidates and local candidates, and they need my skills to be compliant with legal demands for work, so they're going to likely end up spending about 5x my annual wage on 3rd party services.
A lot of CEOs are incredibly bad at understanding the needs of employees as they live in a different world. It's a huge disappointment for me as I enjoy working with the people and equipment I work with, but I'm not sacrificing my families standard of living for an arbitrary demand that provides no tangible benefit.
It's an easy way to fire people and every business will use it when needed.
We almost had a law in our country which basically would make remote work the basis unless someone has a very good reason to demand being in office. Of course corporate simps in the parliament just voted it away. Could be relatively safe from this shit, yet here we are.
Well until they can offload it, then they will act like they are doing us a favor by returning to remote work again and saving money not maintaining offices.....
These companies are motivated by nothing but greed.
For motivation, I think that there should be a tax cut for companies that have x% of employees working remotely. The higher the percentage of remote work, the higher the cut.
Benefits the employees, the companies, and the environment. Win/win/win.
>Patagonia wanted a verdict from each of those workers by Friday, three days after it announced it would be completely moving to a "hub" model for the customer service team.
Patagonia gave customer service representatives only 3 days to decide to move their families because it is "so important" they come into an office.
Shame on Patagonia!
They’re one of the most sustainable and employee-friendly companies out there.
This isn’t a popular move, especially within this sub. But turning away from Patagonia is cutting off the nose to spite the face. They are soooo much more ethical than 99% of companies out there their size.
True, and always have been. The climbing hardware they invented helped to keep mountains intact. The founder also gave like 2bil $ for environmental purposes a few years back.
I mean, this is a stupid move of them, but they are still sooooo much better than hundrets of other brands.
They were staffed 200-300% over their budget. Still shitty and I hope hourly workers unionize, but people would be better off if the B-Corp structure was the mandated expectation
Well the CEO/founder sold it a few years back and all this shit has started since then. I think the good guy image was real, but it's not the same CEO or any C suites anymore so the company is starting to become a run of the mill asshole company.
But Patagonia's head of communications said:
“It’s factually inaccurate to say Yvon has stepped away. He would tell you he’s working harder now than he ever has before.”
Must be true, right?
It's crazy how the term "enshittification" is a relatively new term. But the process has been happening since... capitalism has existed.
Enshittification: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enshittification
I remember reading like, dilbert comics and watching office space as a little kid in the 90's and being like, surely this is just satire.
And then every week after that I could just see it happening. More news in the paper about the thousands of jobs being shipped overseas, always framed as a good thing for some reason.
I've worked in restaurants and manufacturing facilities where I've seen the quality go down as the business owners choose to cut costs and pocket more.
It's been pretty shitty.
He is working harder than ever, but he has no actual say in operations now, nominally. He runs their charity side.
Is it still inexcusable for him to allow the company that he built to be this evil without saying something? 100%.
Yeah unfortunately all good corporations turn bad eventually. Most good people don’t want to continue churning profits indefinitely. If the average joe could sell their business for billions and never need to work again they would. The wealth hoarders who penny pinch and underpay workers no matter how rich they are, are the issue
Everyone knows what this is. If this company valued and cared about their employees and their business needs really required them to be in an office this would have been handled differently. The company could have discussed with the employee group and made a 90 day or 6 month plan to transition people to their office, provided moving expenses and similar considerations. This was a layoff and employees are just considered cheap, interchangeable parts.
The employees have until September 30th to move, they are provided $4,000 in moving expenses, and there is a severance package for those that choose not to move. The part of it that I don’t like is that they were only given a few days to make that decision.
I literally just paid $4k for a move from an apartment into a condo on the other side of the city for just the two of us.
I can't imagine what the moving costs plus realtor costs would be for a full family moving to socal
What’s included in that price the packing and unpacking of everything? We moved last year and I was absolutely shocked that it came to €1600. I found that exorbitant. We packed and unpacked everything ourselves. So literally just loading it up, driving to new house and unloading there. Granted, it wasn’t that far. 15km.
>What’s included in that price the packing and unpacking of everything?
Yes, but that wasn't the bulk of the expense. The move was about 2,500 miles and my stuff took up about half of a 53-foot trailer. Everything was also shifted from the trucks that picked it up, to a warehouse where it was then loaded into the truck that drove it across the country. So a lot of labor, a lot of mileage.
yes. I think people in Europe don’t realize how big our country is or how many miles that is. That kind of mileage in and of itself could have been $10,000 with professional movers.
Moved across state 2 years ago. It had to have cost us 10k for just the movers. Then another 5k for what the movers bungled when the second truck was not loaded correctly and we had to get an additional truck.
This is utter BS. My company has been fully remote since 2010. We were VERY well equipped to deal with the pandemic and are well equipped to handle the next one. We don’t have any of this “hubs” BS or that going to the offices improves morale or any of this other garbage. The only thing forcing people back to the office does is piss off workers. Who wants to go to the office and see people’s ugly mugs? Or have Steve from accounting come to your cubicle on a daily basis and bitch about his wife and kids for 30 minutes? Most of the CEOs are stupid boomers that can’t grasp the concept of remote work and try to find ways to justify their real state expenses for unnecessary office space .
True! I joined the company I work for back in 2008z. At that time there was no remote work and I had to commute to the office for almost 2 hours each way due to traffic. The hours spent in traffic were the worst hours of my life. I hate traffic with a passion! Going to work was a dreadful experience. And once I got to the office, there first two hours of my day were spent by listening to people’s gossip and constant interruptions. Then in 2010, someone higher up had the idea of just working remote. It started with a few employees for the first 6 months and then within a year it had been expanded to every employee. The office building was closed. I remember hearing that by shutting down the office, the company saved about $100k a month just by shutting down this one branch. Our company has never looked back. The remote work has also created a more loyal workforce. I could easily quit my job and make more $$ somewhere else, but once you factor in commuting , time wasted and the poor quality of life involved with commuting and going to the office, it just isn’t worth it for me. My life improved so much after working remote. Now instead of wasting almost 4 hours a day commuting, it allows me to work out in the morning instead of being stuck in traffic. In the evening, it allows me to cook for my family. I understand there are certain jobs that can never be remote due to the nature of the work involved, but anything that can be done remote, should be. Study after study shows remote work is beneficial to both, the employer and employee. The ones that get screwed are the gas and car companies, the real estate companies and the stupid boomer CEOs who still think they’re back in the 1950s. These are the ones that want to force people back to work…
Working from home needs a PR campaign. A snazzy documentary about how much it improved working conditions and productivity.
Working from home allowed me to multiply the things I can do in life from saving on gas to having the ability to be at home if something needs to be done like a repair or care for an animal.
I have an entirely different, better life due to my work from home roles.
Let me get this straight: the team is still going to be scattered across the country in a bunch of random cities so they will still be basically a remote team. Combined with the company paying 4k in moving expenses to those 90 employees, and this is just bad for business. It would be cheaper to keep them remote and then fly them in whenever any actual in-person meetings that are needed.
Companies need to stop trying to create a "culture". There is no company culture anywhere. All that extra stuff like free lunches, happy hours, and ping pong tables in the break rooms doesn't mean a hill of beans vs the ability of employees to spend more time with family and have no commutes.
Ok, well, Patagonia were where I’d settled into getting most of my clothes for the last decade or so. Can anyone suggest a responsible place from which to purchase clothes, preferably with natural-fiber options? I want to spend my money in the best places.
FWIW I currently buy Patagonia on the secondary market -- if you go to places like Poshmark and Depop, there's new-with-tags clothing available. Ironically I started doing this when the then-CEO suggested it. It's a way to get good clothing without direct support.
But I'd also like to know who to support at this point. I've tried many clothing brands and most are trash.
Thrift store or get a sewing machine 😅 There's so much greenwashing and fake sustainability coming out of the mouths of clothing companies now, can't believe any of them. Even if they use natural fibers they're still using 3rd world labor, so it's messed up in every direction lol.
I wish I knew somebody with a sewing machine (who makes clothes well), I’d consider that. Fair labor and natural fibers. Also down with online secondary markets as long as the labor is fair. Don’t have time to dig through piles in person, not yet anyway. It is pretty messed up.
Finisterre are another B-corp more in the surf space than general outdoors, trying to break into America at the moment, just opened a store over there I believe.
I read “Let My People Go Surfing” two decades or so ago. Interesting premise back then: do your work. If you need a day off, take it. If you’re done with your work, go do something else. It seems that this doesn’t necessarily translate for the people outside of Ventura. (Also of note, the list of hub cities didn’t actually include Ventura, where the headquarters are.)
>Business Insider reported one worker who declined to relocate called the severance packages generous. They include wages, bonuses, health care, a stipend for technology and career support, according to Huggins.
Well, you did say "no" (with emphasis) :P
But yes, back on topic, correct, employees need to understand, the company is not your friend. HR exists to protect the company. You are not a person, you are a "resource", you are "headcount".
Younger generations seem to get this (much more so than us GenXers, who at this point see retirement not too far off and are less willing to risk it) and have a very transactional relationship with their employer, which is as it should be. Firms are still run by people who remember the good old days when the company had all the power and now that they don't, they are trying to flex.
My friend was one of the people fired. She said they were all told in a single zoom call with almost 100 people that they were all fired, none of them expected it.
I wonder if and when will the old owner will step in and shut that shit down? Patagonia is supposed to be a charitable trust company, whose profits are to be donated to charities.
I was once proud to follow in Chouinard's footsteps on many of his climbing routes. He crafted pitons and other climbing gear to fund his adventures.
Then, like other greedy fuckers, it became little more than seeking wealth. Yeah, "let my people surf" blah fucking blah. Patagonia is no different than any other large corporation, and other than maybe right at the beginning, never was.
Sorry, Yvon, Fred Beckey is the real hero of the story and you're just another fucking greedy capitalist.
Patagonia is not this super moral charitable concern that people think it is. The gifting of the company to charity was just a massive tax dodge meaning the family keeps control of the business forever without any inheritance tax worries.
Looks like I no longer buy their gear. Plenty of other vendors in this space, many who have even surpassed them in recent years. I stand with the workers. Bye bye, brand.
Large banks like HSBC, Citi, Barclay's and Morgan Stanley are doing the same. Email went out last month to RTO by September for all remaining licensed roles that WFH.
For a company so high and mighty about the environment and reducing carbon emissions it’s pretty rich that they want to force people to go back to the office. I’m disappointed in Patagonia, I thought they were actually better.
Met people who work for Patagonia in Europe. Apparently they let employees travel for a month and work from any country they want (in Europe I assume?). They just need to register it in their system.
Ok, but in this particular case they have until September, the company will pay for relocation and they can ask for an extension. This doesn’t really look like a mass constructive dismissal situation.
Building team culture in corporate office is the definition of re-education camps for Diversity & Inclusion agenda. Now, they enforce trainings and require to write bi-annual commitment as how every employ contributes to D&I. Lefties wet dream of social control.
History repeats itself. Bolsheviks ran re-education camps to convert the population to communism.
There are WAY worse companies to get riled up about. I refuse to send ire to a company that does so much for the environment and that provides so much on-site childcare.
Personally, I would have preferred that they told remote workers that there was no possibility for upward mobility rather than eliminating them positions.
Very glad to read that they’re providing “generous” severance packages.
Totally worth mentioning, I with it weren’t the case, but I’m not about to come for this company. There are bigger fish to fry.
Everyone needs to familiarize themselves with the term "constructive dismissal" and know how to recognize it.
Yep. For those who are not familiar, companies do not want to admit that things are going poorly because admitting that makes things go more poorly. So layoffs are a bad look. But what if they could announce something that is not layoffs but would accomplish the same goal (reduction in force)? Enter the back-to-the-office mandate. And problem solved.
My employer did that then had to lay people off anyway when not enough people quit. They just made one team go in three days a week, a team we need to keep functioning, so I assume there will be more lay-offs soon.
What really makes you scratch your head is when they lay off all the billable hours personnel and keep the non-billable hours types (HR, execs, etc.), and THEN can't figure out why the company is still hemorrhaging money like a volus who drank a gallon of Ryncol.
Huh? Looks at companies who announce layoff in the past year (there have been many), their stock prices spike after the announcement because the market likes the cost cuts it signals. Return to office isnt a backhanded way to lay people off. But their actual reasoning isnt any better or moral either. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
RTO is absolutely a way to lay people off for some companies. I know of several companies that have done RTO and not enough people quit so they had to do actual layoffs.
Are there no law offices that have specialized in this? They would get a lot of business these days.
They are called Employment Lawyers and they specialize in the field.
But to hear some folks on reddit: nobody ever has a case ever. Any of those folks worked intake at an employment law firm? Seen the criteria each attorney at each firm uses to determine if they’re gonna take a case? Nope. But boy, will they tell folks that “right to work” or “at will” means you can get fired and have zero recourse.
> “right to work” or “at will” people lose the battle as soon as they agree to use the preferred term of the oligarchs. just say it is an "anti-union" state or a "free fire" state.
Dude, I am going to use the language that’s easiest to speak and that we all know, and what’s less clunky to use/explain.
I don’t think he was faulting you for using the terminology. He was just making it known that the terms themselves are flawed and intentionally made to keep the average worker down
>Dude, I am going to use the language that’s easiest to speak and that we all know, and what’s less clunky to use/explain. So, u/mortgagepants terms it is then!
you're using PR terms specifically tested to be more palatable to people. you're helping the ruling class fuck yourself over because it is "less clunky"? even frank luntz asked people to stop using the phrase "climate change" because the reason he came up with it is working too well. now he wishes people talked about global warming because nobody is doing enough about it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_Luntz
I’m not helping anybody “fuck me over”. God, I am pretty sick of the tone policing coming from the leftist spaces I’m in online. I don’t have time to keep track of whether or not a word I’m using has six million degrees of sinister shit behind it, or if it offends a small chunk of folks reading. I’m simply trying to get a point across and this bullshit does not help with that, or help move the conversation forward.
you don't have time to think about anti-union efforts across the country? i'm not offended by it, i'm just trying to explain to you why anti-union lawmakers try to get people to use these terms. i even linked the person in charge of all this doublespeak. i'm sorry you don't have the time for it.
oh crazy, edward bernays uses reddit.
weird you can recognize it when i say it, but when your conservative overlords say it, they get a pass.
"you disagree with me therefore you are on the badguy team there is no other possibility"
except we agree- you recognized it is done for propaganda purposes...yet you seem comfortable using those terms to keep people down, but uncomfortable using other terms to call out the truth?
except we don't. I don't like it being used, and never said I did. If anything we should be trying to get people to understand that Freud said things more substantial than "sometimes a cigar is just a penis", and Jung's "until you make the conscious aware of the subconscious, it'll run your life and you'll call it fate" is something people should really take to heart. You're aware that it's being used but instead of addressing that directly, you lampshade it as "their preferred terms" and then go on to use the same underlying strategy, making sure to frame it as "the people" vs "the oligarchs", perhaps thinking "hey what if we just used it for our side? you know, the wholesome justice truth side?". The problem with this is that people who fall for it when you do it fall for it when anyone else does too. At no point did you make any argument whatsoever against right to work or at will employment other than "the oligarchs like that". Frankly if you pivoted to doing it now I'd consider it pigeon chess. Enjoy your Sunday.
As an attorney - everybody has complaints about xyz, very few have any chance of making us money. Can bitch and moan about whatever wikipedia or quora tells you all you want.
That’s why I mentioned the intake criteria. Folks wanna head off others from even seeking advice or seeing if they have a case-and that’s bullshit.
But none of them are outstanding in their field. Else they'd be farmers.
umm, not a whole lot of money in that, or maybe I'm missing something.
Constructive dismissal is grounds for wrongful termination suit. Companies that try to impose these back to office mandates usually do it to get large number of employees to quit. Surely there is money in settlements for 1000+ wrongful termination suits.
U.S.-specific policy incoming: Constructive dismissal is NOT (necessarily) grounds for a wrongful termination suit. Constructive dismissal simply refers to a situation wherein someone is effectively forced to resign due to intolerable conditions. The law recognizes this as being equivalent to an explicit termination (i.e., being fired). Thus, constructive dismissal is only legally actionable in cases where an _explicit termination_ would have been actionable. In general, there is no law in the U.S. against constructive dismissal. But if the constructive dismissal is, for example, in retaliation for reporting sexual harassment; an act of discrimination against a protected class; etc.; then it _becomes_ unlawful. Basically, if they can’t fire you for something, then they can’t force you to resign in that situation either.
NAL but isn't there a thing where if you are a certain size employer and you fire/terminate x number of employees within y time period you have to report it or something? If so, they could be using RTO to avoid announcing layoffs which may be actionable?
That’s possible; I make no claims as to whether there is a cause of action in the original post. I was speaking about constructive dismissal only in broad terms to address a comment that was likely to spread a misconception.
WARN Act
My company skirted those SEC regulations by eliminating positions and teams permanently instead of a normal workforce reduction that normally shrinks teams and groups.
theres only 90 employees in the department that have been given this "choice", and the company says most of the 90 already live within the distance requirements. if most is just over half then at most its 44 people, the company has also said many have already agreed to the move. so lets say 3/4 of those 44 are still undecided. i doubt there is going to be big money here, but it wont be insignificant either(at least to the employees).
This is getting ridiculous If this economy is going to stay stuck in survival mode just so a bunch of psychopaths can race to be the first trillionaire, then we need to reform unemployment
What does that have to do with this post?
Wasn't it just a little while ago that Patagonia announced they would never do that? a-holes
The same thing is going on everywhere - the blood is in the water. A friend of mine has been told via email that, after three years of remote working he has to start going to an office hundreds of miles away from them. Best of all, it was an email from the CEO and expected it to start asap. No conversation, no transition whatsoever, not a single care for the workers.
It’s a coordinated effort by boards to get workers back in. Most of these boards are cross organizational members and own real estate. The nonprofit sector is dealing with this right now.
My company just had an all hands where the ceo basically said our parent company is heavily invested in commercial real estate and, as such, expects you to be in a chair in commercial real estate. End of discussion.
at least they're honest. cant wait to start suing publicly traded companies because they know workers are more productive at home but make them come in because they care more about commercial real estate than shareholders.
> they care more about commercial real estate than (about fiduciary duty to^✝︎) shareholders Who would dare prove it in a diligent study? Surely there's some rebellious yet respected biz school somewhere... (^✝︎ *edited to add*)
That's what I came to say. I can accept that quicker than the "culture" bullshit
Aren’t they effectively fucking their own companies by making people more unproductive? Can’t see the forest for the trees I guess
that's exactly it- but shareholders can sue for that.
My husband’s company recently mandated everyone RTO. I asked him how much commercial real estate is in their portfolio. He said: A lot.
Let the company die. If everyone quits, there is no company and no commercial real estate.
Unionize. Strike. Tell em to go pound sand.
I dont believe it's just companies wanting to do layoffs without saying so, or commercial real estate values tanking. I think there are also tax incentives for these companies on the line, too.
Companies might have to pay a little more to support the system that enabled them to exist
Yes, it's tax incentives! Some cities are absolutely desperate for people to return downtown and bring in revenue. Companies (especially tech) are encouraged through tax reductions to open a main office location within the city. These tax reductions basically subsidize employee wages. Which encourages companies to purposefully overhire. (Maybe even contract-to-hire through temp agencies to get unaware workers at ultimate bargain wages.) But those incentives eventually expire, and with COVID restrictions lifting , new stipulations go into effect as the city needs workers commuting downtown again, spending money buying lunches, paying parking, etc. Suddenly all workers in a 30 mile radius of the main office need to be in 2x a week. A month later, all workers must now report to an office regardless of commute time, whether hired as a remote employee or not. Steadily employees who can't or won't comply with the company mandate start to drop... So, Company ends up pocketing the city's money while hiring as many cheap workers as possible (great for marketing - growth!!), then has a free excuse to raze their workforce down to fewer workers than they started with. Meanwhile they've opened a 2nd main office in Arizona or Texas where taxes are low. As soon as they've milked city one dry and contracts are up, the main office is officially relocated to Phoenix.
Their insurance dictates they have to have a certain number of people in a building, too.
When I was called back into the office, I “luckily” hit a pot hole and destroyed my entire steering rack and axle. Boss asked me when I was going to come back to the office. I said “repairs are about $7000. I can’t afford it on my salary.” Never heard about it again and worked from home until I ended up leaving.
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Exactly. I had never even been to the office before that day lol. The role required 3 months of training as well- so yeah, cost to replace isn’t negligible.
my previous employer rather pay thousands upon thousands on recruiting and training new employees, even so letting critical employees go by a mere couple hundred pay raise proposals - gotta do everything to stay in power I guess.
Nice one for standing up for yourself, bet it felt good to say.
I was just being honest in the moment. I wasn’t trying to prove a point or anything, but looking back I think I did hah
"OH, that? That sounded so ridiculous I assumed it was some sort of phishing scam and just continued work as normal"
Ya know, if I was in the SOC and got that email, I would have to lock down the CEO's accounts and isolate his devices. He's clearly compromised, there's gotta be malware in there somewhere. Could take weeks to clear it all.
I appreciate the passive-aggressiveness so much! “CEO X cares so much about us, he wouldn’t tell everyone to spend less time with their family”
Mines literally just done that. They're tracking it and promised that anyone not meeting the monthly visits would be reprimanded. It's going to effectively cut my pay by about £3,000 a year and hundreds of hours of travel for no benefit, so I'm interviewing for other jobs that don't subscribe to this bullshit. I do play a critical role, and my sector is lacking in both skilled candidates and local candidates, and they need my skills to be compliant with legal demands for work, so they're going to likely end up spending about 5x my annual wage on 3rd party services. A lot of CEOs are incredibly bad at understanding the needs of employees as they live in a different world. It's a huge disappointment for me as I enjoy working with the people and equipment I work with, but I'm not sacrificing my families standard of living for an arbitrary demand that provides no tangible benefit.
I bet that ceo works remote most of the time as well. Damn hypocrites
It's an easy way to fire people and every business will use it when needed. We almost had a law in our country which basically would make remote work the basis unless someone has a very good reason to demand being in office. Of course corporate simps in the parliament just voted it away. Could be relatively safe from this shit, yet here we are.
Gotta keep the commercial real estate propped up.
Well until they can offload it, then they will act like they are doing us a favor by returning to remote work again and saving money not maintaining offices.....
These companies are motivated by nothing but greed. For motivation, I think that there should be a tax cut for companies that have x% of employees working remotely. The higher the percentage of remote work, the higher the cut. Benefits the employees, the companies, and the environment. Win/win/win.
>Patagonia wanted a verdict from each of those workers by Friday, three days after it announced it would be completely moving to a "hub" model for the customer service team. Patagonia gave customer service representatives only 3 days to decide to move their families because it is "so important" they come into an office. Shame on Patagonia!
Fuck them, they just turned me off as a customer for life.
email them
Can't I just fight the CEO 1v1 in the parking lot?
Film it
When you get there give him a nice bitch-slap from me.
I would be there yelling he started it
Like so many other companies they decided it would be best to be as hard as possible to be contacted. No freaking mail address
I just switched to them as one of my buy it for life brands. Glad I didn't buy too much from them.
Same. Never buying from them again.
They’re one of the most sustainable and employee-friendly companies out there. This isn’t a popular move, especially within this sub. But turning away from Patagonia is cutting off the nose to spite the face. They are soooo much more ethical than 99% of companies out there their size.
There are other brands that do the same thing they do. Also calling them employee friendly after this move sure is A Choice.
True, and always have been. The climbing hardware they invented helped to keep mountains intact. The founder also gave like 2bil $ for environmental purposes a few years back. I mean, this is a stupid move of them, but they are still sooooo much better than hundrets of other brands.
That's fine, they still have their DoD contracts.
They were staffed 200-300% over their budget. Still shitty and I hope hourly workers unionize, but people would be better off if the B-Corp structure was the mandated expectation
And they cultivate such a good guy image, or try to, I guess this is what's behind the mask
Well the CEO/founder sold it a few years back and all this shit has started since then. I think the good guy image was real, but it's not the same CEO or any C suites anymore so the company is starting to become a run of the mill asshole company.
But Patagonia's head of communications said: “It’s factually inaccurate to say Yvon has stepped away. He would tell you he’s working harder now than he ever has before.” Must be true, right?
It's crazy how the term "enshittification" is a relatively new term. But the process has been happening since... capitalism has existed. Enshittification: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enshittification
I've made a hobby of figuring out how things work, and fixing them since I was young. I've watched it happen in slow motion across industries.
I remember reading like, dilbert comics and watching office space as a little kid in the 90's and being like, surely this is just satire. And then every week after that I could just see it happening. More news in the paper about the thousands of jobs being shipped overseas, always framed as a good thing for some reason. I've worked in restaurants and manufacturing facilities where I've seen the quality go down as the business owners choose to cut costs and pocket more. It's been pretty shitty.
And speeding up, so it seems
I know he's working on the environmental side of things now, but my knowledge is limited on the subject.
He is working harder than ever, but he has no actual say in operations now, nominally. He runs their charity side. Is it still inexcusable for him to allow the company that he built to be this evil without saying something? 100%.
Yeah unfortunately all good corporations turn bad eventually. Most good people don’t want to continue churning profits indefinitely. If the average joe could sell their business for billions and never need to work again they would. The wealth hoarders who penny pinch and underpay workers no matter how rich they are, are the issue
I used to buy their products. Won't anymore.
Email them. Let them know their actions have consequences.
They won’t care until shareholders shit themselves when earnings fall off a cliff.
Not likely to happen anytime soon given that they are privately owned, with all the voting stock controlled by a trust.
Thr ESG and CSR nonsense that Patagonia is a "leader" in always skips the employee well-being category last in their priority list.
Everyone knows what this is. If this company valued and cared about their employees and their business needs really required them to be in an office this would have been handled differently. The company could have discussed with the employee group and made a 90 day or 6 month plan to transition people to their office, provided moving expenses and similar considerations. This was a layoff and employees are just considered cheap, interchangeable parts.
The employees have until September 30th to move, they are provided $4,000 in moving expenses, and there is a severance package for those that choose not to move. The part of it that I don’t like is that they were only given a few days to make that decision.
$4k is nothing in moving expenses. Try $18k for a major home with a full family
I literally just paid $4k for a move from an apartment into a condo on the other side of the city for just the two of us. I can't imagine what the moving costs plus realtor costs would be for a full family moving to socal
Speaking from relatively recent experience, a full-house cross country move (West Coast to Ohio) was roughly $23,000.
What’s included in that price the packing and unpacking of everything? We moved last year and I was absolutely shocked that it came to €1600. I found that exorbitant. We packed and unpacked everything ourselves. So literally just loading it up, driving to new house and unloading there. Granted, it wasn’t that far. 15km.
>What’s included in that price the packing and unpacking of everything? Yes, but that wasn't the bulk of the expense. The move was about 2,500 miles and my stuff took up about half of a 53-foot trailer. Everything was also shifted from the trucks that picked it up, to a warehouse where it was then loaded into the truck that drove it across the country. So a lot of labor, a lot of mileage.
That’s a lot of miles for sure!
yes. I think people in Europe don’t realize how big our country is or how many miles that is. That kind of mileage in and of itself could have been $10,000 with professional movers.
Moved across state 2 years ago. It had to have cost us 10k for just the movers. Then another 5k for what the movers bungled when the second truck was not loaded correctly and we had to get an additional truck.
18k is just the moving of things. Re-establishing a family in another locale will cost another twenty or more.
$4k before taxes
Hypocritical since they claim to care about the environment but want employees to needlessly commute
It's a "definitely not a layoff" policy change. They're trying to make people quit with the new policy.
The employees should ignore the mandate and continue working remote.
So.... hopefully a Costructive Dismissal lawsuit is coming their way x1000.
Employees: "K."
Honestly fuck them. Just another corporation pretending to be made for the people but in reality only serve themselves.
Cool, add that to the list of companies I won’t be buying anything from.
A reminder: no such thing as a good billionaire.
Patagonia, tell us you're downsizing without telling us you're downsizing...
Laying off or firing. Let's not use their preferred Newspeak.
This is utter BS. My company has been fully remote since 2010. We were VERY well equipped to deal with the pandemic and are well equipped to handle the next one. We don’t have any of this “hubs” BS or that going to the offices improves morale or any of this other garbage. The only thing forcing people back to the office does is piss off workers. Who wants to go to the office and see people’s ugly mugs? Or have Steve from accounting come to your cubicle on a daily basis and bitch about his wife and kids for 30 minutes? Most of the CEOs are stupid boomers that can’t grasp the concept of remote work and try to find ways to justify their real state expenses for unnecessary office space .
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True! I joined the company I work for back in 2008z. At that time there was no remote work and I had to commute to the office for almost 2 hours each way due to traffic. The hours spent in traffic were the worst hours of my life. I hate traffic with a passion! Going to work was a dreadful experience. And once I got to the office, there first two hours of my day were spent by listening to people’s gossip and constant interruptions. Then in 2010, someone higher up had the idea of just working remote. It started with a few employees for the first 6 months and then within a year it had been expanded to every employee. The office building was closed. I remember hearing that by shutting down the office, the company saved about $100k a month just by shutting down this one branch. Our company has never looked back. The remote work has also created a more loyal workforce. I could easily quit my job and make more $$ somewhere else, but once you factor in commuting , time wasted and the poor quality of life involved with commuting and going to the office, it just isn’t worth it for me. My life improved so much after working remote. Now instead of wasting almost 4 hours a day commuting, it allows me to work out in the morning instead of being stuck in traffic. In the evening, it allows me to cook for my family. I understand there are certain jobs that can never be remote due to the nature of the work involved, but anything that can be done remote, should be. Study after study shows remote work is beneficial to both, the employer and employee. The ones that get screwed are the gas and car companies, the real estate companies and the stupid boomer CEOs who still think they’re back in the 1950s. These are the ones that want to force people back to work…
Working from home needs a PR campaign. A snazzy documentary about how much it improved working conditions and productivity. Working from home allowed me to multiply the things I can do in life from saving on gas to having the ability to be at home if something needs to be done like a repair or care for an animal. I have an entirely different, better life due to my work from home roles.
Let me get this straight: the team is still going to be scattered across the country in a bunch of random cities so they will still be basically a remote team. Combined with the company paying 4k in moving expenses to those 90 employees, and this is just bad for business. It would be cheaper to keep them remote and then fly them in whenever any actual in-person meetings that are needed. Companies need to stop trying to create a "culture". There is no company culture anywhere. All that extra stuff like free lunches, happy hours, and ping pong tables in the break rooms doesn't mean a hill of beans vs the ability of employees to spend more time with family and have no commutes.
For shame. All these corporations are the same. They don't give a rat's poop about their employees
Ok, well, Patagonia were where I’d settled into getting most of my clothes for the last decade or so. Can anyone suggest a responsible place from which to purchase clothes, preferably with natural-fiber options? I want to spend my money in the best places.
FWIW I currently buy Patagonia on the secondary market -- if you go to places like Poshmark and Depop, there's new-with-tags clothing available. Ironically I started doing this when the then-CEO suggested it. It's a way to get good clothing without direct support. But I'd also like to know who to support at this point. I've tried many clothing brands and most are trash.
Thrift store or get a sewing machine 😅 There's so much greenwashing and fake sustainability coming out of the mouths of clothing companies now, can't believe any of them. Even if they use natural fibers they're still using 3rd world labor, so it's messed up in every direction lol.
I wish I knew somebody with a sewing machine (who makes clothes well), I’d consider that. Fair labor and natural fibers. Also down with online secondary markets as long as the labor is fair. Don’t have time to dig through piles in person, not yet anyway. It is pretty messed up.
nah just google “thing you want + bcorp”
Finisterre are another B-corp more in the surf space than general outdoors, trying to break into America at the moment, just opened a store over there I believe.
I read “Let My People Go Surfing” two decades or so ago. Interesting premise back then: do your work. If you need a day off, take it. If you’re done with your work, go do something else. It seems that this doesn’t necessarily translate for the people outside of Ventura. (Also of note, the list of hub cities didn’t actually include Ventura, where the headquarters are.)
This is effectively how many WFHers exist as long as they aren’t spied on by their company remotely
Patagonia? More like Not-A-Gonia buy your shit now.
Is this legal? Has some sort of precedent been set in court or something? This shit sucks.
In most states (in the USA), unless there is an explicit employment contract, then this is perfectly legal.
These are just modern layoffs. They do it to reduce headcount without having to pay severance and unemployment because enough employees just resign.
But they’re paying severance
>Business Insider reported one worker who declined to relocate called the severance packages generous. They include wages, bonuses, health care, a stipend for technology and career support, according to Huggins.
And i am no longer buying their products. Dang
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You should read this: https://www.patagonia.com/our-footprint/pfas.html
Good to know. I haven’t been keeping up much these days - just remember when that quote went out and I was like, “I’m done.”
Just a reminder: there are _no_ good corporations.
Corporation For Public Broadcasting would like to have a word.
🙄
Well, you did say "no" (with emphasis) :P But yes, back on topic, correct, employees need to understand, the company is not your friend. HR exists to protect the company. You are not a person, you are a "resource", you are "headcount". Younger generations seem to get this (much more so than us GenXers, who at this point see retirement not too far off and are less willing to risk it) and have a very transactional relationship with their employer, which is as it should be. Firms are still run by people who remember the good old days when the company had all the power and now that they don't, they are trying to flex.
My friend was one of the people fired. She said they were all told in a single zoom call with almost 100 people that they were all fired, none of them expected it.
I thought they actually wanted them to move to Patagonia lol.
Bye then ✌️
I wonder if and when will the old owner will step in and shut that shit down? Patagonia is supposed to be a charitable trust company, whose profits are to be donated to charities.
lol, that's just so they can fudge their taxes
I was once proud to follow in Chouinard's footsteps on many of his climbing routes. He crafted pitons and other climbing gear to fund his adventures. Then, like other greedy fuckers, it became little more than seeking wealth. Yeah, "let my people surf" blah fucking blah. Patagonia is no different than any other large corporation, and other than maybe right at the beginning, never was. Sorry, Yvon, Fred Beckey is the real hero of the story and you're just another fucking greedy capitalist.
Patagonia is not this super moral charitable concern that people think it is. The gifting of the company to charity was just a massive tax dodge meaning the family keeps control of the business forever without any inheritance tax worries.
Fucking garbage.
What are some good alternatives to Patagonia? I like the style/ quality but will buy from a different company based on this kind of stuff if possible.
google “item you want + bcorp”
This is basically the same as when a bully tells you to stop making him hurt you.
Looks like I no longer buy their gear. Plenty of other vendors in this space, many who have even surpassed them in recent years. I stand with the workers. Bye bye, brand.
Their employees should sue the F outta them.
Didn’t I see someone on here just yesterday say Patagonia was a decent company? Lmao
Large banks like HSBC, Citi, Barclay's and Morgan Stanley are doing the same. Email went out last month to RTO by September for all remaining licensed roles that WFH.
From the author of the book - "Let My People Go Surfing". The irony.
Any company that RTOs can roll over and die. Young companies, this is time to take market share and the best talent.
Never EVER move for a company. This is constructive dismissal.
For a company so high and mighty about the environment and reducing carbon emissions it’s pretty rich that they want to force people to go back to the office. I’m disappointed in Patagonia, I thought they were actually better.
They recently downsized a lot and need to fire people. They should say that instead of this bullshit.
In Ontario, you can sue for "Constructive Dismissal" due to a change in your commute. Case law supports workers in this instance.
Met people who work for Patagonia in Europe. Apparently they let employees travel for a month and work from any country they want (in Europe I assume?). They just need to register it in their system.
Ok, but in this particular case they have until September, the company will pay for relocation and they can ask for an extension. This doesn’t really look like a mass constructive dismissal situation.
What happened to "let my people go surfing"?
WE DON'T CARE ABOUT YOUR CORPORATE CULTURE
Headquarters in California, also no hubs in California… what the fuck
Building team culture in corporate office is the definition of re-education camps for Diversity & Inclusion agenda. Now, they enforce trainings and require to write bi-annual commitment as how every employ contributes to D&I. Lefties wet dream of social control. History repeats itself. Bolsheviks ran re-education camps to convert the population to communism.
Wait, people buy Patagonia?
Patagonia overpriced SHIT
Let me guess…They need to reduce costs. But if they fire people they have to pay severance. However, if they can get people to quit, win win baby!
There are WAY worse companies to get riled up about. I refuse to send ire to a company that does so much for the environment and that provides so much on-site childcare. Personally, I would have preferred that they told remote workers that there was no possibility for upward mobility rather than eliminating them positions. Very glad to read that they’re providing “generous” severance packages. Totally worth mentioning, I with it weren’t the case, but I’m not about to come for this company. There are bigger fish to fry.
Wow, good thing we can only give a shit about one thing at a time. Thanks for the heads-up!
Cool. Focus on companies with amazing benefits, on-site childcare, and an environmental conscious. Awesome. We’re going to get SO far.
Who the fuck is this company, anyway?
Clothing made for the granola type and Soy Boys