Many Apple employees weren’t too happy to receive an all-employee memo from Chief Executive Tim Cook last week, requiring them to return to the office to preserve “in-person collaboration,” according to The Guardian.
Workers will need to be in the office on Tuesdays, Thursdays and a third day determined by each individual team starting Sept. 5.
Since then, a petition with over 700 signatures has begun circulating among employees who demand “location flexible work” and oppose the “uniform mandate.”
The petition’s two big demands are for Apple to allow all workers to create a flexible work arrangement with immediate managers, and that these arrangements won’t “require higher level approvals, complex procedures or providing private information.”
The person who organized the petition, a hardware engineering employee, told the Australian Financial Review that Apple Together, the workers union, intends to collect signatures, verify them and send the results to top executives.
“At this juncture we will not be releasing any specific names of individuals publicly or to exec leadership to protect our colleagues, especially in light of retail union busting and recent reports of allegations of retaliation from HR,” the person said.
A former Apple employee who led the #AppleToo movement told Axios that many employees who previously lived close to their offices have moved away.
“People left. They left the Bay Area, they left Austin to go live in places where they can actually afford to buy a house (and) raise a family,” she said. “People don’t want to come up to three hours each way to get to the office when they do the same work just as well from wherever they are.”
Apple has yet to comment.
Last week, AT&T workers also set a petition into motion, demanding a permanent work-from-home option. Previously, the company had extended the flexible work option until March 2023, but some departments are already pushing for employees to come back.
“Now that we are a largely vaccinated workforce, we believe it’s safe for employees to return to the workplace. We do our best work when we’re together,” an AT&T spokesperson told The Guardian.
But neither of the two tech companies has been as forceful as Tesla. In a leaked email, sent by CEO Elon Musk in June, all workers were told that only extreme cases called for flexibility.
“Anyone who wishes to do remote work must be in the office for a minimum (and I mean *minimum*) of 40 hours per week or depart Tesla,” the email said, per Fortune.
A study shows that on average, employees working from home are 47% more productive than when in the office.
Other companies like Facebook and Twitter are allowing their staff to stay remote long term. Meanwhile, Microsoft and Google have also been open to remote work.