Certainly for an at-will contract they could have some influence, as they could always fire anyone who lives farther than, say, 10 minutes away. Then their challenge would be to find enough workforce within that 10 minute radius. For a low paid on-site job located in an expensive city center, that could be hard.

I'm sure there would be all sorts of loopholes and weird situations in paid commutes. But there are also many of them in the remote tax suggested by the article. For instance, what would happen if a company officially says "no, you have to come to the office" but then in practice does nothing to enforce the rule?

Also, as a curiosity, where I live, there's a tax deduction for commute costs. Obviously, it's fine-tuned so that most people don't get to use it (i.e. would be so small that the effort to claim it exceeds the benefit), and so that you can never recover all your practical expenses. But some of those who have become remote workers because of COVID have lost access to that deduction.