Remote Work, Unions, Inequality, and Worker Power

Student-selected optional modules · Weeks 14-15 if selected

How do workplace institutions and work arrangements change who gains, who learns, and who has power?

Opening Hook

Remote work can look like freedom: fewer commutes, more flexibility, and more control over time. It can also look like distance from mentors, weaker informal learning, less visibility, and new forms of monitoring. Whether remote work is empowering depends on who you are, what you need from the workplace, and what the organization does with the arrangement.

Here is the question this session is about: how do workplace institutions and work arrangements change bargaining power, learning, and inequality?

This material is available for student-selected optional modules near the end of the Fall 2026 semester. The class may use one or more sections depending on student choices and available class time.

Proximity, Learning, and Productivity

Bloom and coauthors’ hybrid-work research and Emanuel, Harrington, and Pallais on proximity both ask what happens when work moves away from shared physical space. Remote work can preserve productivity for some tasks while changing training, mentoring, collaboration, and promotion paths.

The central tradeoff is not simply office versus home. It is productivity today versus learning, networks, and opportunity tomorrow.

Where work happens can change what workers learn, who sees their work, and how power operates inside the organization.

Which workers are most likely to benefit from remote work, and which workers may lose access to learning or visibility?

Labor-Market Institutions

Unions, noncompetes, monopsony, and labor-market regulation shape the outside options workers have and the bargaining environment firms face. Farber and coauthors connect unions to inequality; Naidu asks about the future of the US labor movement; monopsony readings ask when employers have wage-setting power.

These topics extend the course from the inside of the firm to the labor market around it.

Workplace power depends on internal organization and on the institutions that shape workers’ outside options.

Why might remote work affect inequality among workers?

  1. Because workers differ in tasks, home environments, learning needs, and visibility.
  2. Because everyone experiences remote work identically.
  3. Because remote work eliminates monitoring.
  4. Because productivity today is the only outcome that matters.

Review Cards

Connections

Builds on: Session 11, which emphasized trust, monitoring, and norms inside the workplace.

Sets up: Project presentations and final synthesis, where students connect one fact about the world to a theory of workplace organization or labor-market power.

Reading Guide

Possible module readings

Bloom et al. Reading on hybrid work. Canvas/library.

What to look for: The productivity and organizational tradeoffs of hybrid arrangements.

Emanuel, Harrington, and Pallais. “The Power of Proximity to Coworkers.” Canvas/library.

What to look for: The tension between productivity today and training for tomorrow.

Farber et al.; Naidu; Ashenfelter et al. Canvas/library.

What to look for: How unions and employer market power shape inequality and workers’ outside options.