‘Workers don’t want toys or free food, they want a higher quality of life’: The

She had previously spent $20 a day commuting four days a week, and worked the fifth day from home, but when her manager called employees back full time, a move many other businesses are making now that vaccines are widely available and the worst days of the pandemic appear to have receded, she was not willing to give up all that freedom remote work had given her. 

Those early months of COVID-19 when millions of people worked from home gave them a rare opportunity to reevaluate the role of work in their lives. And in 2022 they have leverage: Unemployment is falling and wages are rising, as companies struggle to attract and retain workers. In fact, there are two job openings for every unemployed American, the highest level on record since 2001. 

But many companies want workers back. Google parent company Alphabet
GOOGL,
-1.34%

GOOG,
-1.29%,
Apple
AAPL,
+0.17%,
Facebook parent Meta
FB,
+1.18%,
and Microsoft Corp.
MSFT,
-0.23%
have requested workers go back to the office at least a few days a week. Jefferies Financial Group
JEF,
-0.98%,
JPMorgan Chase
JPM,
-0.82%
and Goldman Sachs Group
GS,
-0.45%
are among the financial institutions that have also asked workers to return.

Amid these efforts, Faust Liggayu counts herself among the Great Resistance. “I’m very outspoken about my desire to never work in an office again,” she said. “The quality of life is so much better when you can cut out that commute or spend your lunch break with your family.” She would often not arrive home until 6:30 p.m. if she left the office at 5 p.m. Those were precious hours lost with her son.

When she received news that all employees were going to be back in the offices, she told MarketWatch that she was frustrated. “They haven’t been listening to me,” she recalls thinking. “They know I don’t want to go back.” So she took a stand. “Job recruiters were reaching out to me on LinkedIn. All the jobs they reached out to me about were working from home.”

The outcome was a win-win for her: She found a new job two months ago that paid more money, while working full-time from home. “I went from making $50,000 a year to $80,000. When I get to stop at 5 p.m., I’m done. I get to spend that time with my son. Time moves quickly. It means so much at this age. It means so much to get those extra two hours a night with him.”

Amid labor shortage, employees flex their muscles

The Great Resignation — regarded by some observers as more of a Great Negotiation for better pay and working conditions — has led to the Great Resistance, a battle of wills between senior management and, well, everyone else. For those who are fortunate enough to have the option to work remotely, which other figures put at 40% of the workforce, they’re not giving up.

“There is definitely a sense of resistance amongst employees against the full-week, all-day, in-person work concept,” said Vanessa Burbano, associate professor of business at Columbia Business School in New York. “Remote working enables a degree of flexibility in the day that is practically impossible to recreate in a physical co-working space.”

Faust Liggayu said her breakup with her former employer was respectful and without animosity. She had worked at that previous job from 2017 to March 2022, and it was a small team. But the standoff between some employees and their companies has not always been so free of drama. Apple, for one, has suffered at least one high-profile resignation as a result. 

A group, “Apple Together,” signed an open letter to the tech giant, claiming over 3,000 signatures from workers, rejecting a hybrid work model and asking the company to allow them to make their own decisions. “Stop treating us like school kids who need to be told when to be where and what homework to do,” they wrote. (Apple did not respond to a request for comment.)

Thus far, workers have successfully dug their feet into…