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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

admin2022-03-23  53
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 does the author say about working from home?
选项 A、It will become the norm sooner or later.
B、It requires employees to adapt promptly.
C、It benefits employers at the expense of employees.
D、It will force cities to transform their infrastructure.
答案C
解析 由题干中的the author和working from home定位到第一、二段。细节辨认题。第二段指出，雇主们认为，当工作人员从办公室转到家中工作时，他们在房地产方面节省了大量资金。然而，这些节省下来的资金来自于将成本转嫁到工人身上。由此可见，远程工作这一模式虽然使雇主从中受益，但是却以牺牲雇员的利益为代价，故答案为C)。首段最后一句提到，如果这一工作模式常态化，谁将受益?由此可见，该模式现在只是兴起，并没有成为常态，故排除A)；首段第一句提到，很多工作人员适应了远程工作的模式，但是并没有要求所有员工迅速适应该模式，故排除B)；首段第一句提到，如果城市办公室不能充分利用的话，城市将经历根本性的改变，但这并不是作者对于远程工作的观点，故排除D)。
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