NYC Mayor Eric Adams Challenges Work from Home

Covid-19 caused millions of Americans to work from home. It also disrupted a huge segment of industry (such as the commercial real estate industry and restaurant industry). Now that the country has been through several years of Covid, and people are trying to get back to normal, there is a big debate about work from home.

In cities such as New York and Washington DC, governments have taken a firm position and tried to influence this.

New York is prime ground for the debate. The newly elected Mayor Eric Adams made headlines when he said that people cannot flea the city and continue to work there. This threat was made primarily against businesses that saw the exorbitant cost of doing business in Manhattan as something they no longer had to pay.

How will this turn out? Well, time will tell, but the fact is that the Mayor and city officials in places like New York are afraid that white collar employees will abandon the city and take their spending dollars with them.

Let’s look at the recent news surrounding work from home and the mayors comments on it.

The Low Skill Faux Pas

The first major news came when mayor Adams commented on the difference between those who could work from home or who had a corner office and those “low skill” workers who could not. He mentioned people who worked in retail stores in Manhattan. He mentioned dish washers, people who worked at Dunkin Donuts, and other places.

You can view a response thread on the New York City reddit form where people comment on this.

Of course this drew immediate ire from people all over the news spectrum. It was immediately sized upon by all areas of the media, as well as from political members such as AOC.

As many were quick to point out, these are not necessarily low skill workers, rather “low paid” workers. Even financial reporting in places such as CNBC was critical of his choice of words.

The consensus was that the mayor was pointing out that some people cannot by nature of their job work from home. And as he mentioned that people are in it together (the city works as whole) then people should commute into the city and work to support others.

Many people have objected to this as being unfair and demanding people commute into the city to work even though they can work remotely just because not all jobs can be remote.

Recruiters have encounted a great deal of canadites who no longer want to work in person and will at best work a combo role with limited time in the office.

Moreso, many companies are eliminating the office space that they overpaid for (Manhattan real estate being one of the most expensive places in the world) in favor of having their employees work from home. It’s a win-win for them.

Government Workers and Teachers Union

Another huge problem that the mayor is facing is the government and teachers union. Government workers (a huge voting block in NYC and the reason that mayors such as Adams and DeBlasio won election) have been told they need to work in-person.

While work from home for city employees was utilized during the height of the pandemic, the sheer lack of oversight and underperformance from city workers caused this to end as soon as possible.

Unlike private sector jobs where employees need to be productive, many city jobs are civil service roles where there is much more latitude with performance reviews.

The one strong opponent to the work in person situation is coming from the NYC DOE teachers union. Like other city workers, these employs are unionized and paid incredibly well (a NYC union public school teacher averages 100k+ and benefits) and these teachers are demanding a remote work environment. Even teachers outside of NYC make enormous salaries (here’s a report where it covered that 1 in 4 make 100k+) and for a job with 3 months vacation.

This is where Eric Adams is running into trouble. Parents do not want their children to learn remotely. All of the studies have shown that remote learning is inferior for younger kids.

More importantly, parents, especially middle class and other working class parents need to work and cannot baby sit their kids during the day when their remote learning is happening.

In the teachers union Eric Adams is running into a formidable foe. They are strong, they vote in a bloc, and without their endorsement any mayor will have a tough time getting elected.

As all new Yorkers who followed the election will know, the UFT (united federation of teachers) did not endorse Eric Adams. In fact, they were quite set against him and favored his opponent Scott Stringer.

This is why its not surprising that they are butting heads.  And everyone knows that the teachers union has a voice in the news media (most coverage in print and on television is partial to their pleas).

So, the demand by teachers to be able to work from home and the mayors demand that people continue to come into work is making headlines and setting up for future disagreements.

It’s interesting to note that Adams had support from numbers unions (DC37, the Nurses Union, The Home Health aid Union) and strong support amongst the NYCHA tenants association and others on public assistance, but did not have support from the teachers union.

Challenging Banks and Private Sector

The teachers union is a public sector question. NYC public school teachers are well paid, with pensions and health plans that no private sector employee can match. This is why it’s one of the best jobs for anyone in the city (constantly ranked as among the best jobs a person can have with regards high pay and benefits).

However, Adams is also targeting private sector. He has less pull in the private sector, but he is still making demands.

Financial institutions and private sector companies saw that they did not have to pay ridiculous Manhattan real estate prices (this is not an issue for government employers) and so have been more comfortable continuing the work from home schedule.

Adams came out and made statements which many saw as naïve. When he suggested you can’t run NYC from home, many in the private sector privately disagreed.

Technology has made it so that most private sector jobs do not require in person attendance.

Whereas nurses and teachers need to be in person, and city workers are required to work in person do to needed oversight, many private sector roles can be done remotely.

The Safety Issue: Why Work From Home in NYC Took Hold

The financial reason to have work from home instituted is that it saves money. Employees do not have to commute into work, which saves them money. Employers don’t have to pay for overpriced offices, including the failure of poorly run and overpriced co-working spaces.

But perhaps even more of a reason to continue work from home (at least in the opinion of some people) is the safety issue.

Public transit in NYC has become very dangerous. White Collar firms have begun warning their staff to be diligent about being attacked and becoming the victim of crime in Midtown. Some companies have even started to tell people to dress down and not dress like office workers in order to evade criminals looking to rob people.

The situation is so out of hand that recruiters that I know who work in the NYC area and recruit for NY based firms are dealing with unprecedented issues. Employees are so afraid of being attacked walking in Midtown in the middle of the day and are refusing to go back to the city to work.

It’s gotten so severe that even English newspapers are covering the events.

With the improvement in work from home software and workplace productivity scalable online thanks to Slack, Zoom, Salesforce and all other cloud based systems, the Mayor and Real Estate investors are of course afraid of their tax base leaving for New Jersey, Florida, or other areas where the rent is cheaper, the cost of living is better, and there is not as large a threat from public menaces.