Wife Returning From Maternity. Employer Is Attempting To Change Her Role/expectations As She Returns.

Location: Los Angeles, CA

My wife is on Maternity and was calling her boss to arrange for her return to work soon. On this call my wife updated her boss on the baby, and our move to a further location for childcare services several hours away. She is a remote worker and has been on the company's exempt list for RTO for the past 3 years. Her boss asked her to email her the details of her return-to-work date and her expectations as to her role in the company.

She Emailed the details and highlighted her return to work would be as she left it, remote and with the same role as she had prior to leave.

Her boss called her back and said she would actually have to choose between two options. Return to office 1 day a week, or option B was a remote work position with potentially less pay and change of responsibilities. She asked for all the details of this second option and said she would consider them and let her know, but needed to know the details of option B. Her boss claimed she needed to ask the Director of the department to verify and would get back to her.

Four days Later, my wife sends a quick follow up as to what the details of option B were, her Boss said they hadn't been able to pin down the director yet and would get back to her.

The next business day, my wife's coworkers are calling her asking her what she said or did to make the director so mad. Apparently, through the mouths of co-workers, the Director was so mad, called my wife ungrateful for not accepting and jumping at option A right away, that he was going to force her back 3 days a week now. Upon hearing this, my wife calls the Director directly to try to see what is happening, and he basically says she should have accepted option A and when she tries to explain she didn't ever deny any of the options, he hangs up on her.

She writes an email to the director to try to clear up any miscommunication as he has hung up on her from trying to understand and explain things. She sets the timeline out, spoke to boss, emailed expectation, offered two options, asked for clarification... so what went wrong?

He responds back CCing Boss and claims its beyond any miscommunication at this point and he has made up his mind. On top of this, he is going to make her entire department have to return to office now. He claims in recent emails he made the decision as a business decision to increase efficiency and productivity of the team.

Obviously the drive duration puts a strain on a new mother. But all of this seems so wrong and unexpected, we are at a loss right now and hoping for some insight as what our options are and what to keep an eye out for and how we should proceed.