Apple employees are pushing against CEO Tim Cook’s call for them to return to the office next month, arguing they have proven their efficiency and “exceptional work” during the past two years of flexible working arrangements.

Apple Together, a group of workers that formed during 2021 when staff were first forced to work remotely, have started circulating a petition to demand flexible work conditions.

Cook ordered workers back to the office three days a week from September 5, saying he wished to reinstate the “in-person collaboration that is so essential to our culture”.

Apple Together counters with a number of reasons why this isn’t beneficial to employees, writing: “three fixed days in the office and the two WFH days broken apart by an office day, is almost no flexibility at all.”

The letter argues: “Besides the fact that serendipity is a weak argument for office-bound work, in-person collaboration can be achieved in much better ways, the current policy being very inflexible, wasting a lot of time, and having a negative impact on diversity, there is an even more important reason for us to oppose the Hybrid Working Pilot and the general push to return to office-bound work: It’s bad for Apple, both the employees and our products, and ultimately our customers.

“We tell all of our customers how great our products are for remote work, yet, we ourselves, cannot use them to work remotely? How can we expect our customers to take that seriously? How can we understand what problems of remote work need solving in our products, if we don’t live it?

“How can we expect to convince the best people to come work with us, if we reject anyone who needs the smallest bit of flexibility? How can we expect them to do their best work, but don’t trust them to know how to do so?”

The petition goes on to conclude that “office-bound work is a technology from the last century, from the era before ubiquitous video-call-capable internet and everyone being on the same internal chat application.”

Apple Together also quotes Steve Jobs, who said: “It doesn’t make sense to hire smart people and then tell them what to do. We hire smart people so they can tell us what to do.”

“Here we are, the smart people that you hired,” the letter continues, “and we are telling you what to do: Please get out of our way, there is no one-size-fits-all solution, let us decide how we work best, and let us do the best work of our lives.”