Google's union speaks out against remote work crackdown: ‘Workers’ professionalism has been disregarded'

The company, which first asked employees to come in three days a week last April, said Wednesday that it would make office attendance a part of an employee’s performance reviews for those who work-from-home more than they should.

But Googlers are not happy about it. And now the union representing those working at Google’s parent company, Alphabet, is pushing back.

“The real issue is the fact that we do not have meaningful agency regarding our working conditions,” Chris Schmidt, a Google software engineer and recording chair of the Alphabet Workers Union said in a statement Thursday posted on Twitter. “Overnight, workers’ professionalism has been disregarded in favor of ambiguous attendance tracking practices tied to our performance evaluations.”

Yesterday at 7:45PM EST Google announced the company would begin the enforcement of their RTO policy.

Workers are being required to return to office 3x a week & our attendance will impact performance evaluations & promotions. No clarity on how this will work.

Our statement ⬇️ pic.twitter.com/r1FoRrGZNL

— Alphabet Workers Union (AWU-CWA) (@AlphabetWorkers) June 8, 2023

Some of Google’s offices still do not have enough desks and conference room space to accommodate everybody, the union claims. It also argued that the company’s teams are distributed across multiple locations, meaning there “may not be anyone to collaborate with in our physical office locations.”

“A one size fits all policy does not address these circumstances,” Schmidt wrote.

Google and Alphabet Workers Union did not immediately return Fortune’s requests for comment.  

Increased monitoring

The push back comes just hours after the Mountain View, Calif.-based company told employees in an email that it would monitor in-office attendance more closely and only allow a full-time work-from-home set-up in exceptional circumstances. The rationale behind the change is to allow people to work together and form connections in the workplace, Google said in an internal email reviewed by the Wall Street Journal.

“We want to see Googlers connecting and collaborating in person, so we’re limiting remote work to exception only,” Google spokesperson Ryan Lamont told Fortune in a statement on Wednesday. Google first adopted remote work about three years ago and switched to a hybrid mode last year.

Google is the latest company to tighten its policies on working-from-home, following similar moves by companies like Disney, Starbucks and News Corporation.

Employees at other tech companies have protested the slow reversal of remote work policies after having grown to prefer the flexibility of hybrid work. In February, Amazon CEO Andy Jassy called employees back to the office at least three days a week starting in May. He told employees at the time that “it’s easier to learn, model, practice, and strengthen our culture when we’re in the office together most of the time and surrounded by our colleagues.” But last week, Amazon employees walked out of office buildings in protest of the company’s changing remote work policies.

Other CEOs also argue that in-person work is a question of fairness. In May, Tesla CEO Elon Musk criticized remote workers of being “morally wrong” for staying home while service and factory workers have to come into work. 

“People should get off their goddamn moral high horse with the work-from-home bullshit,” Musk said during an interview. “They’re asking everyone else to not work from home while they do.”

There’s also a case to be made regarding working in office and productivity. Data has shown a steady decline in productivity over the past year, which may be partly due to remote work, but also high labor turnover thanks to mass layoffs. Employees may also lose some intangible benefits, like career success and personal connections, by avoiding the office, as argued by New York University marketing professor Scott Galloway.

Employees who like working from home are not convinced by these arguments. Workers have signed petitions and said they would consider quitting their jobs if forced to come work more.

Yet experts say some of the growing pains around remote or hybrid work may simply be a question of not implementing structures well.

“We do find that there is this bias toward assuming collaboration has to be in person, but not all collaboration does,” Caitlin Duffy, director of research at Gartner HR, told Fortune in May. “So I think a lot of those concerns tend to be based on sometimes outdated assumptions about how work gets done—and sometimes there’s just a need to create new processes or norms that are suited to a hybrid or remote environment, rather than just going back to a fully on-site one.”