by WorldTribune Staff, August 9, 2023
The Chinese Communist Party-linked videoconferencing company that made remote work commonplace during the pandemic is now demanding that its employees work from the office.
Zoom, which enjoyed a cash bonanza during Covid lockdown orders, said on Monday that all employees who live within a 50-mile radius of one of its offices must return for in-office work at least two days a week.
“We believe that a structured hybrid approach – meaning employees that live near an office need to be onsite two days a week to interact with their teams – is most effective for Zoom,” a company spokesperson said in a statement.
Zoom has 14 global offices, with two located in the U.S., one in Denver and at its headquarters in San Jose, California.
Following the announcement, Zoom stock dropped .91 percent to $68.43. Zoom’s stock is down 88 percent from an all-time high of $559 in October 2020.
In February, Zoom announced that it would be reducing its staff by 1,300 employees, or about 15 percent of its staff, CEO Eric Yuan revealed in an internal message to employees at the time. Yuan said that “each organization” across Zoom would be affected by the job cuts.
In 2020, U.S. lawmakers asked Zoom to clarify its relationship with the communist government in China after the firm said it had suspended user accounts to meet demands from Beijing.
Three U.S. and Hong Kong-based activists said their accounts had been suspended and meetings disrupted after they tried to hold events related to the anniversary of China’s Tiananmen Square massacre.
Wang Dan, a U.S.-based dissident and exiled student leader of the crushed 1989 Tiananmen Square protests, had his Zoom account suspended. He said he was shocked to hear Zoom acknowledge it had interrupted meetings he was participating in. His June 3 event with about 200 participants was deactivated midstream, he said.
“Zoom complied with China’s request, preventing us from going about our lives smoothly,” Wang said in an email to Reuters. “It cannot get away with just a statement. We shall continue to use legal means and public opinion to ask Zoom to take responsibility for its mistake.”
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