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But...is it the employers issue if you choose to work 4 hours away from where you live? Are they allowed to not employ people based on where they live as it is

by verelo 11y ago

But...is it the employers issue if you choose to work 4 hours away from where you live? Are they allowed to not employ people based on where they live as it is going to impact their costs? I like the idea, but i get the feeling the implementation will result in no major benefit for anyone. Edit: I'm an idiot and i understand now :-)

ropiku 11y ago
This is only if there is no fixed office, if they had an office they this would not matter and would be the employees issue. Obviously the travel time from the office to the client is during work time.
- nevdka 11y ago
  What if you're a sales rep working out of your car (so no fixed office). Your region is London, but you live in (checks google maps...) Manchester. Your first sales appointment is always going to be 250km away. Should traveling that 250km count as work?
  - kuschku 11y ago
    Yes, this is what this law case was about: Only the first and last appointment on a day.
  - lmm 11y ago
    The company can solve that by having a London office, and then your time to and from that London office isn't work, but between there and anywhere else is. I think the spirit is that the employee should know where they're supposed to be working from and be able to choose where to live based on that.
  - Symbiote 11y ago
    Your contract would define a usual place of work, but if that is London then the company would have to pay your time to come into the office in Manchester. (I think. I'vec not had a job like this.)
  - dagw 11y ago
    If the company is insisting on sending a rep. from Manchester down to London then absolutely.
    - nevdka 11y ago
      Sure, a rep whose normal region is Manchester should be able to claim an extra commute to London as time worked. I was thinking more that the rep was hired as a London rep, but chooses to live in Manchester. So the rep is abusing the rules to work fewer hours, and coding his startup/watching Netflix on the commute.
      - dagw 11y ago
        I think that problem would end up 'solving' itself when that sales rep ends up making 1-2 sales call in the time it takes colleagues to make 10-12 and the company firing him for gross inefficiency.
InclinedPlane 11y ago
This isn't about this. This is about people where travel is some part of their job. If your employer says you have to be 20 miles north of town at 8 am and 30 miles south of town at another appointment starting at 2pm, they can't pretend that driving those 50 miles in between shouldn't be on the clock. For ordinary folks who have a fixed workplace every day this ruling has zero impact.
- verelo 11y ago
  Right! OK that makes a lot of sense. Thank you I don't know why I didn't get that right away.
thesimon 11y ago
"The ruling came about because of [...] a company which [...] installs security systems. The company shut its regional offices down in 2011, resulting in employees travelling varying distances before arriving at their first appointment." (Using US examples in the following, because probably the majority of the readers understand it better than European cities, even though it does not apply to the US). Say you are living in NYC where your company is based. Every day you get an email telling you where you have to install a new security system. One day it might be Brooklyn, one day it might be Washinton D.C, because everything is being managed from the central NYC office. Why exactly should traveling to and between the appointment (say Newark in the morning, Bronx in the evening) not be considered work? The employee is not living 4 hours away from the first appointment because he wants to own a bigger house, but because his employer has told him to work there.
- owen_griffiths 11y ago
  That example makes sense, but if you want to impose a rule you have to worry about the cases where it doesn't make sense. What about a plumbing business which dispatches jobs within a 5 mile radius. If the employee moves 2 hours away, suddenly the company has to pay 4 hours a day of commuting. The net result of this could easily be workers being required to travel to and from a central location as a workaround, when they could have better outcomes travelling straight from home - hurting the people you are supposedly want to help.
  - salvadors 11y ago
    > What about a plumbing business which dispatches jobs within a 5 mile radius. If the employee moves 2 hours away, suddenly the company has to pay 4 hours a day of commuting. As you say, if the company has a fixed office at the centre of that radius, they can still tell the worker that their days begin when they arrive at the office, and then the 'worktime' begins once they get there, ready to travel out to the first customer. That's how many businesses operate anyway — and how the business at the centre of this case used to work. The case was brought once they closed that office down.
- ascagnel_ 11y ago
burger_moon 11y ago
I realize working in the tech industry we are not exposed to the real issues that resulted in this, but prior to my work in this field, I worked in the energy industry. We worked on the road travelling to different job sites. Our employer would put us up in a hotel and we would drive to the job site. Some big jobs had 'man camps' on site so you didn't have to worry about this, but often we would be an hour or more from the job site and commute everyday. We didn't get to decide where we lived. In one instance my hotel was in one country and my work site in another. We spent an hour just dealing with border control each way, every day. Now I am US citizen so this doesn't help me any but this is a global job and the same circumstances exist in Europe as they do here for working field service jobs. I gave just one small example, but think about all the plumbers, HVAC, electricians, construction workers, highway crews, that all have to travel to the job site. Their employer bids on jobs that are often very far from their homes and the shop. It really sucks having to bust ass for 12 hours a day and have an hour or more commute back home, or back to the shop everyday after work. It sucks even more that it's unpaid, but until now people just had to accept as being a norm. I'm certain there will need to be adjustments in labor rate/job bids to accommodate this, but the hopeful in me is that it's worth it. edit: sorry I saw your edit after I posted.
Cthulhu_ 11y ago
> Are they allowed to not employ people based on where they live as it is going to impact their costs? Yup, I'd say so. It's up to an employer to decide whether someone's good enough to be worth paying their travel expenses. In my company's case, traveling expenses are about a quarter of people's wages (or maybe that's just me). Lease cars and such. We've had colleagues that had a two hour commute here, who stayed with the company not because they liked the commute, but because they liked the company and the company paid for their travel expenses. In higher-end IT, people are worth their weight in gold, and one has to do anything to get and keep them.

by verelo 11y ago

ropiku 11y ago

This is only if there is no fixed office, if they had an office they this would not matter and would be the employees issue. Obviously the travel time from the office to the client is during work time.

nevdka 11y ago
What if you're a sales rep working out of your car (so no fixed office). Your region is London, but you live in (checks google maps...) Manchester. Your first sales appointment is always going to be 250km away. Should traveling that 250km count as work?
- kuschku 11y ago
  Yes, this is what this law case was about: Only the first and last appointment on a day.
- lmm 11y ago
  The company can solve that by having a London office, and then your time to and from that London office isn't work, but between there and anywhere else is. I think the spirit is that the employee should know where they're supposed to be working from and be able to choose where to live based on that.
- Symbiote 11y ago
  Your contract would define a usual place of work, but if that is London then the company would have to pay your time to come into the office in Manchester. (I think. I'vec not had a job like this.)
- dagw 11y ago
  If the company is insisting on sending a rep. from Manchester down to London then absolutely.
  - nevdka 11y ago
    Sure, a rep whose normal region is Manchester should be able to claim an extra commute to London as time worked. I was thinking more that the rep was hired as a London rep, but chooses to live in Manchester. So the rep is abusing the rules to work fewer hours, and coding his startup/watching Netflix on the commute.
    - dagw 11y ago
      I think that problem would end up 'solving' itself when that sales rep ends up making 1-2 sales call in the time it takes colleagues to make 10-12 and the company firing him for gross inefficiency.

InclinedPlane 11y ago

This isn't about this. This is about people where travel is some part of their job. If your employer says you have to be 20 miles north of town at 8 am and 30 miles south of town at another appointment starting at 2pm, they can't pretend that driving those 50 miles in between shouldn't be on the clock. For ordinary folks who have a fixed workplace every day this ruling has zero impact.

verelo 11y ago
Right! OK that makes a lot of sense. Thank you I don't know why I didn't get that right away.

thesimon 11y ago

"The ruling came about because of [...] a company which [...] installs security systems. The company shut its regional offices down in 2011, resulting in employees travelling varying distances before arriving at their first appointment." (Using US examples in the following, because probably the majority of the readers understand it better than European cities, even though it does not apply to the US). Say you are living in NYC where your company is based. Every day you get an email telling you where you have to install a new security system. One day it might be Brooklyn, one day it might be Washinton D.C, because everything is being managed from the central NYC office. Why exactly should traveling to and between the appointment (say Newark in the morning, Bronx in the evening) not be considered work? The employee is not living 4 hours away from the first appointment because he wants to own a bigger house, but because his employer has told him to work there.

owen_griffiths 11y ago
That example makes sense, but if you want to impose a rule you have to worry about the cases where it doesn't make sense. What about a plumbing business which dispatches jobs within a 5 mile radius. If the employee moves 2 hours away, suddenly the company has to pay 4 hours a day of commuting. The net result of this could easily be workers being required to travel to and from a central location as a workaround, when they could have better outcomes travelling straight from home - hurting the people you are supposedly want to help.
- salvadors 11y ago
  > What about a plumbing business which dispatches jobs within a 5 mile radius. If the employee moves 2 hours away, suddenly the company has to pay 4 hours a day of commuting. As you say, if the company has a fixed office at the centre of that radius, they can still tell the worker that their days begin when they arrive at the office, and then the 'worktime' begins once they get there, ready to travel out to the first customer. That's how many businesses operate anyway — and how the business at the centre of this case used to work. The case was brought once they closed that office down.
ascagnel_ 11y ago

burger_moon 11y ago

I realize working in the tech industry we are not exposed to the real issues that resulted in this, but prior to my work in this field, I worked in the energy industry. We worked on the road travelling to different job sites. Our employer would put us up in a hotel and we would drive to the job site. Some big jobs had 'man camps' on site so you didn't have to worry about this, but often we would be an hour or more from the job site and commute everyday. We didn't get to decide where we lived. In one instance my hotel was in one country and my work site in another. We spent an hour just dealing with border control each way, every day. Now I am US citizen so this doesn't help me any but this is a global job and the same circumstances exist in Europe as they do here for working field service jobs. I gave just one small example, but think about all the plumbers, HVAC, electricians, construction workers, highway crews, that all have to travel to the job site. Their employer bids on jobs that are often very far from their homes and the shop. It really sucks having to bust ass for 12 hours a day and have an hour or more commute back home, or back to the shop everyday after work. It sucks even more that it's unpaid, but until now people just had to accept as being a norm. I'm certain there will need to be adjustments in labor rate/job bids to accommodate this, but the hopeful in me is that it's worth it. edit: sorry I saw your edit after I posted.

Cthulhu_ 11y ago

> Are they allowed to not employ people based on where they live as it is going to impact their costs? Yup, I'd say so. It's up to an employer to decide whether someone's good enough to be worth paying their travel expenses. In my company's case, traveling expenses are about a quarter of people's wages (or maybe that's just me). Lease cars and such. We've had colleagues that had a two hour commute here, who stayed with the company not because they liked the commute, but because they liked the company and the company paid for their travel expenses. In higher-end IT, people are worth their weight in gold, and one has to do anything to get and keep them.