ventulus [none/use name]
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How are you ever going to organize a strike with co-workers that you've never met in person and with whom you have no outside of work interaction (e.g. break time, happy hour)?
One of the positive things that work in its current sate has going for it is it's a social experience. Without that camaraderie, work will become even duller and more alienating.
Anyways, workers won't have to strike for work from home because it's in the interest of bosses to have and all-remote workforce. In addition to significantly reduced risk of organizing, there are huge cost savings to be had by 1) not having to pay rent and 2) companies which currently employ in high cost of living cities can hire outside those cities and save loads on payroll.
What happens now to public transportation? Office workers are already fleeing cities (and the high/rents property values), and these are people that generally pay higher taxes. Cities will have fewer riders and less funding, and you will see an accelerated decay of public transit. This will correspond to more time spent in cars which is gonna be great for the environment.
I'm sure there are many more knock on effects that I haven't thought of.
Work from home is the future (we were already heading that way, covid just accelerated the trend), and it's not a pretty one. It's frustrating that everyone I talk to seems oblivious to this.
I'm admittedly more pessimistic here than you. A big part of organizing is trust and familiarity, and I think it's way harder to trust someone that you've never met in person.
Micromanagement software will be the next tech craze. I think you will start to see startups pop up all over the place that are focused on this. That being said, there are other methods of coercion. I have a software dev friend that participated in an """optional""" work session a few Saturdays ago. Basically everyone was in a Zoom call together, but just working/coding and not really in a true meeting or anything. Virtual panopticon.