Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey is trying a unique strategy to get remote workers to return downtown: insulting them.
“I don’t know if you saw this study the other day,” Frey told an audience of 1,000 at Minneapolis Downtown Council’s annual meeting on Wednesday. “What this study clearly showed … is that when people who have the ability to come downtown to an office don’t — when they stay home sitting on their couch, with their nasty cat blanket, diddling on their laptop — if they do that for a few months, you become a loser!”
The comment was a “complete joke” and the study was made-up, the Minneapolis mayor’s office told Fortune, but there are serious facts to back up Frey’s worry about the impact of remote work on Minneapolis’ downtown economy.
working in office culture = more people in his city spending money day to day + more offices needed because workers are expected to be there + more property value from more property demand due to return to office culture.
Mayors of cities have a vested interest in having full office buildings which provide more funding to the city through worker/poor tax (sales tax) instead of corporate tax hikes.
If the ownership class stands to benefit from the status quo continuing they will 100% impose the status quo.
Sure, and you don’t accomplish that by insulting all your employees. This guy shot himself in the foot with a howitzer.
Yeah I know. My point is how is being an ass going to achieve that.
If I’m paying him to try to get people to come back to the office how is anything that he is doing achieving that goal?