Yeah, and Larry Fink Doesn’t Like Remote Work, Either

BlackRock CEO Larry Fink

Joining a chorus of some top executives who want their white-collar workforce back in the office, BlackRock CEO Larry Fink lambasted working from home.

“Can you get transformative ideas from Zoom calls?” the head of the world’s largest asset manager ($7 trillion) asked a Morningstar virtual conference Thursday. “You don’t have that water cooler moment.”

The baleful cumulative effect on corporate culture will get worse over time, he lamented. “Cultures were not meant to be done in a remote fashion,” he warned. He worried that new hires haven’t been able to acclimate to how BlackRock does business. BlackRock has hired 400 young staffers during the pandemic “and none of them has been to the office yet,” he said.

BlackRock has indicated that it will permit staffers to work from home for the rest of the year. Fink acknowledged that, in the firm’s three hubs (New York, San Francisco, and London), some are fearful of taking mass transit. But after the pandemic is over, Fink said, he expects some 70% of employees will be in the office, and that might be a rotation of people cycling between home and the office.

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Right now, 30% are back, he said, and he himself expects to be in three days a week.

Jamie Dimon, CEO of JPMorgan Chase, wants to start bringing a lot of his folks back later this month, aiming for half the staff to return to the company’s New York offices. In remarks to analysts, Dimon said “overall productivity and ‘creative combustion’ have taken a hit” from remote work.

Around the country, some CEOs are echoing Fink’s and Dimon’s sentiments. Netflix CEO Reed Hastings told the Wall Street Journal recently that remote work was a “pure negative” because “debating ideas is harder now.” His workforce will come back to the office, he added, “12 hours after a vaccine is approved.”

Although Microsoft hasn’t announced any plans yet, CEO Satya Nadella has expressed qualms about the impact of remote work to the New York Times. “Maybe we are burning some of the social capital we built up in this phase where we are all working remote,” he said recently. Others, such as Facebook and Google parent Alphabet, have said people could work from their residences until next July.

Fink’s attitude on remote work has changed. In a client call in March, at the onset of sheltering in place, he said his initial leeriness about working from home disappeared. Laboring at home, he said then, made him more productive. Now he is walking that back.

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Tags: BlackRock, Coronavirus, Jamie Dimon, JPMorgan Chase & Co., Larry Fink, Microsoft, Netflix, Reed Hastings, Satya Nadella, working from home

The England and Wales Court of Appeal has rejected an appeal by two women who are challenging an increase in the United Kingdom’s state pension age for women to 66 from 60. The ruling could affect an estimated 4 million British women who were born in the 1950s.

Julie Delve, 62, and Karen Glynn, 63, whose case was taken up by activist group BackTo60, challenged the changes created by a series of legislation approvals between 1995 and 2014 that equalized the state pension age for women with that of men by increasing the state pension age for women. Delve and Glynn argued that the age change was discriminatory on the basis of both age and gender.

The women argued that although the Pensions Act 1995 was partially intended to end the gender discrimination that had allowed women to claim their pension five years earlier than men, the equalization “has run ahead of actual improvements in the economic position of women in their age group.”

They argue that they were in no better position in terms of opportunities for stable, well-paid work than women born earlier who received their pensions at age 60.

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They also argue that women born in the 1950s were not treated equally with men during their working lives and, as a result, are in a poorer financial position than men when they turn 60.

They said this has made it difficult for many of them to manage without a state pension. Delve and Glynn say the legislation not only doesn’t end gender discrimination but “in fact gives rise to direct age discrimination.”

In its ruling, the court said that it is “undoubtedly the case” that many groups have suffered discrimination in the workplace, such as racial minorities, disabled people, single parents, and transgender people.

However, “the eradication of those disparities of opportunity is in large part the purpose of the anti-discrimination law that has been put in place,” said the court. “That does not mean, however, that every measure that has that kind of prejudicial effect on a disadvantaged group in society amounts to unlawful discrimination.”

Delve and Glynn are applying for permission to have the case heard before the UK’s Supreme Court.

“For a generation of women, this is nothing short of a disaster,” Christina McAnea, assistant general secretary of the UK’s largest pension, UNISON, said in a statement. “Raising the state pension age with next to no notice has had a calamitous effect on their retirement plans. It’s now time MPs intervened to give them the financial help many so desperately need.”