During the pandemic, the glass high rises that struck terror into my young, impressionable heart stood empty, and for a while, people wondered whether offices were relics of the past. But over the past two years, companies have begun to call employees back into the office. Ontario public servants are expected to return to office full-time this month. Major banks, including the Royal Bank of Canada, Scotiabank, TD, and the Bank of Montreal, have asked employees to come in four days a week. These announcements followed on the tail of controversial RTO mandates at major companies in the United States, including Amazon, AT&T, and Goldman Sachs.

Unsurprisingly, employees are almost universally against RTO mandates. One 2024 study from the University of Pittsburgh found that 99 percent of companies that implemented them saw a drop in employee satisfaction. Part of the problem is that people are back to the commutes they avoided during the pandemic. In some cases, these commutes are longer than they used to be. As housing costs increased over the past few years, many people moved away from cities with the expectation that they could continue to work remotely.

Countless reports have also documented how RTO rules negatively impact women in particular. In places where day care is either unaffordable or unavailable, women typically shoulder the consequences. Many mothers choose lower-paying jobs that allow them to work from home so they can juggle child care at the same time. All this has likely contributed to another depressing fact: over the past two years, the gender pay gap has widened for the first time since the 1960s.