A better idea yet, force employers to allow all employees who can, to work from home. It's bad for the environment, wasteful of resources and additional stress (illness/cancer) for commuters.
Shifts the burden from the planet and people to the company as they learn to manage employees remotely. Which is where the balance should be set at.
Employers don't need any more efficacious reasons than balancing the health of the planet/people and profits.
The world doesn't have to kiss the ring of employers, and few employees have individual bargaining power as I do. I work from home. People were murdered fighting for an 8-hour workday. Look up Pinkerton. Something that by and large is still not respected to this day, we need stronger labor laws all around.
A law has to be passed to force it, because profits will always come before people otherwise. This is the history of the labor movement. It's just reality of how things work.
Another efficacious reason is as Nick Hanauer has argued, it's in the best interests of business to compromise on these matters, before the pitchforks come out.
As I was once told "every business gets the union they deserve". If you treat people right, you won't have people saying the things I do, changing the political environment.
And the final reason, it's just the right thing to do. Not much money will be made once the planet is destroyed or talented employees die early deaths.
In the shortsighted search for profits, all of these reasons are ignored, which is why we have labor laws and desperately need more.
Not only that, his point made no sense at all. Mandating companies to allow employees who can sensibly do their duties from home wouldn't harm profits whatsoever.
They just don't want to do it because they can't socially pressure you to stay in the office 10+ hours a day. They don't feel they're getting everything out of you that they can. A good, hard, focused 8 hours is always going to beat a sloppy 10+. Most people start sabotaging in one way or another, become passive aggressive and other bad behaviors.
People seem to have issue with my "force" comment, but we don't -force- the 8-hour workday today, and it's not obeyed. Business more often than not does not follow the law without enforcement and as a precursor, regulation.
It's good for everyone involved, but profit seeking is usually short-sighted. I'm not surprised at the downvotes from business owners and the investment class, but there's enough that employees must be downvoting as well. Which for me is confirmation-bias that the US work culture is completely upside down as much because of employees as management.
NB: your first and second paragraphs somewhat contradict one another.
The fact that this is about power plays does impact profits. However those profits are extracted (by decreased employee choice and mobility) rather than created (through ingenuity).
It increases profits. Once everyone is comfortable with remote employees (obviously, not by choice), the available employee pool opens dramatically. It's increased employee choice and mobility.
That's exactly why I said "short-sighted" profit seeking. It applies in many ways.
Shifts the burden from the planet and people to the company as they learn to manage employees remotely. Which is where the balance should be set at.