Empathy is a hell of a drug. Try imagining that I'm caring human being and empathizing with that instead of assuming I'm some corporate demon.

The "backfills" are new hires who are alleviating the workload for the people who worked through the rough times. The people that I'm talking about don't have lowered work loads just because the storm passed, but because we brought in and trained up those new hires so they had fewer clients. So no, they're not being asked to work harder, they're being asked to do new things.

Now, why are they being asked to do new things? What I'm implementing are programs that they've asked for as people who survived hell and don't want to go through it again. But they are the subject matter experts and so, at a point, they are the only ones able to make the training content. This is a project they have decided will save them time and heartache in the future, so that nobody ever has to deal with the past year's frustrations again.

I get it, righteous indignation is your thing, but if you're going to go around proselytizing the virtues of empathy, you should try to practice it first.