Most of the history of labor unions involved meeting in secret in venues outside of work's control. Very few labor unions were ever formed in the halls of an office building.

Also, human connnection isn't irrational, but expecting all or most of your human connections to come from your job may be.

"Officies, especially the great ones (as in also very expensive) create an irrational emotional attachment "

I was responding to that part. Office create a rational connection in an irrational setting.

My grandfather and most of my great uncles were coal miners in Shamokin, Pennsylvania. They all talked about unions and striking in the mines. And they formed close bonds which made going on strike much easier as well as created a huge social bond when they where striking supplying each other with food and pirated coal.

Ok that might have been poorly worded on my end.

The irrational attachment I was talking about is about having a large, status-symbol office with ~20% average occupancy. Downsizing to a smaller office harms morale even though most people work most of the time at home, yet they feel attached to almost always empty office, that's the irrational/sentimental part for me.

Having recently spent a few weeks in large, quite nice, but nearly empty offices (because I wanted to work in office for a change, but most of my cow orkers had other plans), I realized that holding on to oversized offices can backfire, because as nice as the space is, it felt somewhat demoralizing after a while to be nearly alone in such a vast building.

It seems like the thing to do is to downsize offices until they correctly meet usage. So, take your number of employees, multiply by percentage that usually comes into the office, add a buffer for growth, and have an office for that.

Commercial leases are usually multi year affairs, so difficult to titrate this ratio.

I'm not sure human connection is an equal comparison with offices. There's plenty of human connection, both in person and not, to be had with coworkers without centralized offices.

Office is where people used work, it is not a monument which I think many here seem to make it so

If no one is working there anywhere it doesn’t need to exist

It's not that the human connection is immoral, it's just that paying rent and heating for a pretty empty office space doesn't make much sense. As long as there is sufficient space for all the employees that want to go to the office, being against downsizing doesn't make much sense.

human connection to a workplace is why unions formed? I thought it was the hours, dangerous working conditions, and unlivable pay.