“They (workers) don’t get to choose their compensation, they don’t get to choose their promotion, they don’t get to choose to stay home five days a week,” said James Gorman, CEO of Morgan Stanley…”<p>Absolutely they do.<p>They get to make that choice by choosing a company that values their talent to the degree they are paid what they feel their time is worth; they make that choice by choosing to work for a a company that values their talent enough to give them the opportunity for promotion; they make that choice by choosing to work for a company that values results over butts-in-chair.<p>For almost 2 years, many, many workers proved they could be as productive, if not MORE productive than pre-pandemic times. They got creative on how to be collaborative; it worked.<p>If Gorman doesn’t see and embrace that, may he find himself setting the “open to work” flag on his LinkedIn.
Morgan Stanley is an investment bank, with significant exposure to commercial property holdings (1).<p>It's easy to see why their CEO was disappointed when everyone left the office and these assets became redundant.<p>Usually, when a big well known business magazine prints an article like this, the Leader or CEO quoted is someone with significant exposure to commercial property assets. Conflict of interest, anyone?<p>If you're a business leader, I'd be taking James's words here with a grain of salt. He wants you as a customer to pay exorbitant amounts of money for commercial property that his company will benefit from.<p>(1) <a href="https://www.afr.com/street-talk/morgan-stanley-knight-frank-launch-sydney-office-portfolio-sale-20220531-p5aq06" rel="nofollow">https://www.afr.com/street-talk/morgan-stanley-knight-frank-...</a>
Interesting take from Mr Gorman. I wonder if he knows that when I worked at Morgan Stanley 10 years ago, I absolutely did choose to work remotely whenever I liked. My team was spread all over the world, I was in London and my boss was in New York.
Nothing to do with the pandemic obviously… and my productivity was good enough to get promoted 18 months after joining.
Morgan Stanley employees aren't unionized? If not, are there examples of similar companies where they <i>are</i>?<p>This seems like something that's negotiated at a contract level, company-wide.
Individual workers have no power, and collectivizing is impossible when their attention spans and ability to think and reason are shot. The moment they leave, 100 replacements are ready to take their role.<p>Good luck.