Sure, you can frame it however you want, but the reality is that companies are using people’s attachment to WFH as a tool to cut costs and churn out employees more cheaply. By pushing return-to-office mandates, they’re nudging people to leave without having to call it a pay cut or layoff—it’s a workaround that makes it easier for them to replace folks with new hires who’ll take the conditions they’re setting.

Whether you want to call it a “rescinded raise” or not doesn’t change the fact that this tactic is all about control and cutting down labor costs. And unlike an actual rescinded raise, there aren’t as many laws and rules about notification, etc. So it’s fine to think of it that way as long as you don’t convince yourself RTO has the same provisions required of a pay cut, which is why it’s being used in the ways I described previously.