City mandate for in-office work no cure for downtown

Opinion

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This article was published 22/03/2025 (198 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Lazy. Selfish. Entitled. These words are seared into the collective understanding of millennials: those of us born between 1981 and 1996.

In my case, I landed somewhere just after the cynical and pessimistic sunset of generation X but before the dawning of the selfish and entitled millennial generation. Some of my cohort refer to themselves as “Xennials” — people who lived an analogue childhood but came of age with the internet.

A lifetime of adapting to new ways of doing things while retaining the problem-solving skills learned through decades of change has certainly contributed to the misunderstanding of why we so plainly expect accommodation to balance our needs. We’ve only ever anticipated new and better ways of doing things, and we’ve become accustomed to constant innovation and recalibration of our processes to adapt to shifting realities.

This has been misidentified as entitlement, because the ones who report this behaviour only see one facet of our lives. This isn’t about work-life balance. It’s about survival. We know the odds are stacked against us, and we know our children will likely have it even rougher, so we’re doing everything we can to maximize efficiency and productivity.

It seems Mayor Scott Gillingham is among those who are only seeing one side of the story. Not all of his staff are millennials, of course, but their union’s outspoken dismay at the mayor’s proposed edict that they all work in-office full-time communicates the same disdain for the need for accommodation and balance currently felt by workers.

Absolutely, some of us have jobs that require us to be on-site, and the positive effects of face-to-face interaction and workplace camaraderie are obvious, but currently the targeted employees are already on-site three out of five days. Why, then, this push to have them back every day?

He won’t say it, but it’s about perception of productivity. It’s the same millennial tripwire: just because you can’t see how hard we’re working doesn’t mean we’re not working at all. In fact, Stanford University researchers found employees working from home two days per week are just as productive as others, and that the positive effects on employee retention, specifically with women, are enormous.

For workers, it’s not as simple as “work here” or “work there.” The cost of transportation, vehicle insurance, extra time required to commute, additional planning that goes into meal prep and coffees and getting the kids to school and paying for daycare and the myriad other variables of modern living are all woven into our work-life decision-making.

In the City of Winnipeg’s own employee diversity report released last summer, it was revealed the city has employed fewer women year over year for the last five years. The city workforce was shown to be 73.6 per cent male and 83.2 per cent white. Doing away with measures that actually open the door for workers from other demographics is a great way to ensure these patterns continue, and a very poor way to develop the diverse viewpoints and areas of expertise that are needed to create sustainable growth and innovation in our city.

According to the mayor, part of his reasoning is down to consulting with local businesses, who see office workers as customers to help keep them afloat. There’s inarguably a need to bring more money downtown, but this seems like a thin way to breathe life into our core. Instead, our civic and business leaders need to think a bit more creatively and holistically when looking at downtown.

Little has been done to support the resident population of downtown, largely seniors and newcomers to Canada. These people also have money to spend, but have to commit some of it to travel outside of the core for basic amenities like groceries or medical care. If the mayor wants money to be spent downtown, perhaps he could help to create the conditions needed so the people who spend the most time there can do so.

Though I am conflicted at what appears to be wholesale colonization of our downtown by True North, I look forward to the revitalization of Portage Place and the the former Hudson’s Bay Co. flagship store. The arrival of cranes and building materials creates a sense of anticipation that is unfortunately pretty foreign for those few blocks of our city’s centre.

In the meantime, perhaps instead of blaming his own workers for the continued demise of downtown, the mayor could take a page from the Xennial handbook: we may not have everything we need yet, and we may have to do things a little creatively, but by using the resources we have in the best possible way we can get to a place where all of us are still able to meet the demands of our complex lives.

rebecca.chambers@freepress.mb.ca