The Murky Case for Mass Telecommuting
To cut climate emissions, Bay Area planners propose a work-from-home requirement for 60% of office employees. But critics warn of unintended consequences.
Ally Sillins works at her home in San Francisco. The Bay Area’s Metropolitan Transportation Commission proposed a remote-work goal that would require office-based employers to have 60% of their workers telecommute.
Photographer: Scott Strazzante/The San Francisco Chronicle via Getty Images
Predictions that telecommuting will transform the workplace have been around since the term was coined in 1973. But with as much as half of the U.S. workforce clocking in from home amid the pandemic, this time really could be different. Many employers have indicated that their relaxed work-from-home policies will outlast Covid-19, and several tech giants, including Facebook, Twitter and Google, have blessed workers going permanently remote.
Now an influential body of urban planners is aiming to capitalize on the trend — by mandating it. During its September 23 meeting, the Metropolitan Transportation Commission, a regional authority that finances and coordinates local mobility plans in California’s Bay Area, set a requirement that large office-based employers should have at least 60% of their employees work remotely on any given workday by 2050. The remote-work order is one of 35 strategies in Plan Bay Area 2050, the group’s 30-year roadmap to guide regional transportation funding, as required by state and federal law. The work-from-home directive aims to bring the region’s climate-changing carbon emissions down.