Amazon WFH Policy

Then it is open to be challenged. They have to show a bit more than "we considered it".

It depends a lot on the individual country. Ireland has a much higher WFH percentage than a lot of other countries. Part of that reason is that it has been endorsed by the government as being a good thing for country in general. Remember the stories from years ago with people having to commute to Dublin 5 days per week. Spending more than a mortgage on childcare 5 days per week. The positives far outweigh the negatives.

Sure some American companies will try and force change and that will work in certain jurisdictions, but ultimately they will be a less attractive employer in the marketplace but it's their decision. Amazon seems to be regarded as having a terrible work culture anyway.

Hybrid WFH in Ireland is here to stay.

They really don't as recent case demonstrated. It's a toothless showboating bit of legislation..

not really, taking a case to the WRC would be a monumental waste of everyones time.

I don't think it's the govt. I've worked remotely long before COVID. I'd argue its more the concentration of tech companies and such. Also a lot of multi national companies. Where you're working with teams internationally. Also Ireland doesn't have that corporate culture mindset that you see in Japan or America.

Because it is an undeniable positive improvement both for employee well-being and happiness and for work efficiency and productivity.

It doesn't matter that people got it all of a sudden only recently, do you think a CEO would get very far in a shareholder meeting if they said "Yes, we did have a bumper year of profit in 2023, but we should aim to return to the normality of previous 5 years when we in the red"?

Removing WFH is for only two reasons - either quiet firing (as others have said in the thread) or because management hate having happy employees they can't control every minute of the work day (and outside of it):

Funny enough, I've never seen a proper metric that shows WFH increases profits.

depending on the location in the US there are tax breaks for companies the more they use their offices

I have worked for US companies most of my working life, almost 30 years, and I can tell you the only reason they are the best places to work in Ireland is that we have all the protection of labour laws on our side. If US complanies treated their Irish staff the same as those located in the US the polls would be reversed. I am not disagreeing with you, but the context of how we are protected is important. We do have the best of both worlds with a lot of these companies, we get all the perks of the US without the constant fear of getting called to a meeting on a Friday and told this is your last day without any real reason.

Remote working does not mean working "alone".

Nope

Its funny how some people are so against people working from home.

I say that as someone who has done it since before covid etc.

Plenty of people wfh in a healthy manner and are very successful in their professions.

they’ll be happy if they lose people in mid and high cost locations and where replacements are needed they’ll go to low cost countries. If you claim your job can be done fully remote then it’s on the slate for low cost countries.

im not really against it, a hybrid set up is good as it gives a bit of flexibility, but its a benefit imo and i would generally support the majority of time being office based.