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

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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.
Why do some people oppose working from home?

选项 A、It discourages team spirit.
B、It invades employees’ privacy.
C、It undermines traditional values.
D、It negatively impacts productivity.

答案D

解析 由题干中的some people oppose working from home定位到第四段。推理判断题。定位段提到,尽管雇主得到了远程工作倡导者的异口同声的支持,但其他人注意到长期的远程工作所带来的孤独感、生产率降低和效率低下。由此可知,远程工作模式并不是受到大家的一致肯定,也有人持反对意见,而这些反对意见就包括:孤独感、生产率降低和效率低下,所以人们反对的原因是认为它会对生产力产生负面影响,故答案为D)。文中并未提及A)“它挫伤了团队士气”、B)“它侵犯了员工的隐私”和C)“它破坏了传统的价值观”,故排除。
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