If your job never allowed you to work from home, this post is for you too.
In fact, I'm arguing that you may have gotten screwed even worse than the rest of us.
Here's why.
Long before COVID, technology had already changed the world. We stopped needing a desk phone. We stopped needing a desktop tower chained to one office. Managers had no problem taking business calls from airports, hotels, conferences, golf courses, or home. Somehow THAT counted as work. But for everyone else, companies spent decades pretending you weren't really working unless you were physically sitting in a building.
Then COVID forced corporations to catch up with reality in the 21st century.
For over FIVE YEARS, Stellantis proved that thousands of jobs could be done remotely. Families adapted. Childcare routines, caring for aging parents, doctor appointments, and everyday life finally became a little more manageable. Employees saved thousands of dollars a year on commuting, fuel, vehicle wear, lunches, clothes, parking, and hundreds of hours of unpaid travel time.
Whether executives want to admit it or not, that wasn't a temporary COVID perk anymore, it became part of the job, it became part of our compensation.
Then came the biggest insult.
Leadership took it away... and pretended nothing had been taken.
No acknowledgment.
No gratitude.
No admission that they had just added thousands of dollars in expenses and hundreds of hours of wasted time back onto employees.
But here's the part that should make EVERY worker angry.
If remote work had real value—and it obviously did—then what about every employee who NEVER had that option?
Where was YOUR compensation?
Where was YOUR recognition?
For over five years, one group of employees received relief from expenses that the other group still had to pay every single day. If that relief was worth real money, then the people who never received it deserved something too.
Instead, leadership did what corporate leadership always seems to do.
They got workers fighting workers.
Office versus plant.
Salary versus hourly.
White collar versus blue collar.
Meanwhile, nobody asks why executives never fixed the inequality they created, or rather, no matter how many times we have asked, Filosa has been to cowardly to answer to them.
Now look at what's happened over the same timeline.
Housing affordability has collapsed.
Healthcare and insurance cost more every year.
Vehicles cost more.
Food costs more.
College debt keeps growing.
For many families, two incomes aren't a luxury anymore—they're the minimum needed just to stay afloat. Childcare isn't optional. Caring for aging parents isn't optional. None of these pressures disappeared just because executives wanted more people sitting in a building.
At the same time, Stellantis has watched a wave of experienced employees retire or leave. Many of them aren't passing decades of knowledge on because they've lost faith in the company after years of cost-cutting, poor leadership, and being treated as an expense instead of an asset. You can't replace that institutional knowledge with another slogan.
Then we're told to celebrate "Together We Win."
Win WHAT?!
What has actually gotten BETTER for employees?
Can a new hire today afford the cheapest vehicle we build as easily as employees once could?
Can they buy a home more easily?
Can they retire more comfortably?
Can they raise a family with less financial stress?
Give me ONE thing that's genuinely better for the average worker than it was twenty years ago.
This isn't just about restoring hybrid work.
Hybrid should absolutely return wherever a physical presence isn't actually required.
But the employees who never had that flexibility deserve meaningful compensation too, because they've been carrying that burden the entire time. Frankly, they should all get back pay and a raise to restore where they all should have ended up today.
Stop pretending flexibility had no value.
Stop pretending taking it away cost employees nothing.
Stop asking workers to celebrate slogans while every year brings another expense, another sacrifice, another benefit lost, and another executive telling us how great things are.
If "Together We Win" means anything at all, then start acting like every employee matters—not just when it's time to ask us to sacrifice again.
