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  3. As many office workers adapt to remote work, cities may undergo fundamental change if offices remain under-utilized. Who will be

As many office workers adapt to remote work, cities may undergo fundamental change if offices remain under-utilized. Who will be

admin2022-03-28  48
问题     As many office workers adapt to remote work, cities may undergo fundamental change if offices remain under-utilized. Who will benefit if working from home becomes the norm?
    Employers argue they make considerable savings on real estate when workers shift from office to home work. However, these savings result from passing costs on to workers.
    Unless employees are fully compensated, this could become a variant of parasitic (寄生的) capitalism, whereby corporate profits increasingly rely on extracting value from the public—and now personal—realm, rather than on generating new value.
    Though employers are backed by a chorus of remote work advocates, others note the loneliness, reduced productivity and inefficiencies of extended remote work.
    If working from home becomes permanent, employees will have to dedicate part of their private space to work. This requires purchasing desks, chairs and office equipment.
    It also means having private space dedicated to work: the space must be heated, cleaned, maintained and paid for. That depends on many things, but for purposes of illustration, I have run some estimates for Montreal. The exercise is simple but important, since it brings these costs out of the realm of speculation into the realm of meaningful discussion.
    Rough calculations show that the savings made by employers when their staff works from home are of similar value to the compensation workers should receive for setting up offices at home.
    What does this mean for offices in cities? One of two things may happen: Employers pass these costs onto employees. This would be a form of expropriation (侵占), with employees absorbing production costs that have traditionally been paid by the employer. This represents a considerable transfer of value from employees to employers.
    When employees are properly compensated, employers’ real estate savings will be modest. If savings are modest, then the many advantages of working in offices—such as lively atmosphere, rapidity of communication, team-building and acclimatization (适应环境) of new employees—will encourage employers to shelve the idea of remote work and, like Yahoo in 2013, encourage employees to work most of the time from corporate office space.
What can we conclude from the author’s calculations?
选项 A、There is no point in transferring office work to working from home.
B、Employees can benefit as much from remote working as their employers.
C、Employers’ gain from remote working should go to employees as compensation.
D、Effective measures should be taken to motivate employees to set up offices at home.
答案C
解析 由题干中的the author’s calculations定位到第七段。细节辨认题。定位段提到，粗略计算表明，当员工在家工作时，雇主所节省的费用与员工在家设立办公室所应获得的补偿金额相当。由此可知，雇主所节省下来的费用应该给予雇员，补偿他们设立办公室的费用，故答案为C)。定位段提到，当员工在家工作时，雇主所节省的费用与员工在家设立办公室所应获得的补偿金额相当。由此可见，并非远程工作模式没有意义，而是创造的价值是一样的，只不过受益人发生了变化，故排除A)；即使员工收到补偿，也是对自己创造的价值的回报，不能说他们获取了和其雇主一样多的收益，故排除B)；文中未提及D)“采取有效措施激励员工在家设立办公室”，故排除。
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