RTO is effectively a cut to your hourly wage since you need to commute. I think people would be less sore about it if Amazon and others extended an olive branch of “commute time pay” or something.
(And no, free food and snacks don’t count. Amazon doesn’t have that anyways.)
I wonder how different things would be if there were laws where if a company required you to RTO then your commute time is included in your expected working hours.
Some companies are asking to RTO for half the week even if you're 50 miles away. Depending on where you're at that could be a ~5 hour round trip commute. If you factor in parking in certain places like NYC you're almost forced into taking a train so having meetings during the commute wouldn't be too realistic. That would mean getting to work at
11:30am and leaving at 3:30pm to work a usual 9-6 hour job. If you take a lunch with your commute then you end up working 3 hours total at the office.
(And no, free food and snacks don’t count. Amazon doesn’t have that anyways.)