6 ms·

> if you give an inch, your employees will take a foot. Employers have been eating up to 10 hours (2 hours per day) of unpaid commute time of employees for age

> if you give an inch, your employees will take a foot. Employers have been eating up to 10 hours (2 hours per day) of unpaid commute time of employees for ages. Is it then really surprising that no one wants to waste time coming to work. If that time was paid, if commute time was paid, then maybe you would consider it. But it's a very simple economic calculation. It's like why am I paying for that time. I don't have to, so I won't. That 10 hours is 20% extra salary that is not paid. And if your argument is that you could live closer, then the counter argument is that employers should have their offices in affordable areas where any employee can afford to easily live because rent is cheap. Not in the middle of downtown because that's what their peers or customers expect.

del82 9y ago
It's interesting to view commute time as the employer's time rather than employee's time, and therefore as time that should be compensated. I'd always thought of it as the employee's time, and the employee's decision about where to live and how to commute, etc. As an employee I'd factor in the commute when making decisions about a job. Playing with this idea a bit: do you view the clothes that someone (only) wears to a traditional in-person office as rightfully the responsibility of the employer? Lunch?
- devoply 9y ago
  Everyone has to eat at all times regardless. Everyone has to wear clothes. I bought steel toed boots that I only needed for work, company had a $150 allowance for that.
- wickawic 9y ago
  Many workplaces require a certain attire. You probably already own dress clothes, but someone who doesn't might have to spend hundreds or thousands of dollars to obtain clothes for their job. But I'm not just talking about just white collar positions either; construction workers, photographers, waiters, retail workers, telemarketers, etc. all have dress codes, some for safety and some to weed out "undesirables". If I can expense my ergonomic keyboard, a dock worker better be able to expense their steel-toed boots.
  - wolfgke 9y ago
    > all have dress codes, some for safety and some to weed out "undesirables". In Germany if some safety clothes are compulsory by law, the employer has to pay for them: http://www.business-netz.com/Arbeitsschutz-und-Arbeitssicherheit/Arbeitskleidung-Arbeitgeber http://www.business-netz.com/Arbeitsschutz-und-Arbeitssicher...
- firasd 9y ago
  Interesting related court case from a couple years ago: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Integrity_Staffing_Solutions,_Inc._v._Busk https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Integrity_Staffing_Solutions,_...: "a unanimous decision by the United States Supreme Court, ruling that time spent by workers waiting to undergo anti-employee theft security screenings is not "integral and indispensable" to their work, and thus not compensable under the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA). The Court delivered their ruling on December 9, 2014." I found this because I had a vague memory about a case about time spent "closing down stores" but maybe it was this or something else.
  - DoofusOfDeath 9y ago
    I was really shocked at that ruling, and especially at the court's unanimity regarding it. Perhaps there's some deeply technical reason that it makes sense, but the conclusion seems absurd to me based on common sense.
    - lr4444lr 9y ago
      From the actual ruling: Finally, respondents’ claim that the screenings are compensable because Integrity Staffing could have reduced the time to a de minimis amount is properly presented at the bargaining table, not to a court in an FLSA claim.[0] The petitioner brought the claim under FLSA. It sounds really bad on face that the workers have to do this as a condition of employment, but imagine if instead of this pat-down, the complex property was really big, and employees had to walk an extra 25 minutes to their station because public transit could not access those roads, no employee cars were allowed, and no shuttles were provided. It boils down to a worker/employer bargaining dispute, not a labor violation. [0]https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/14pdf/13-433_5h26.pdf https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/14pdf/13-433_5h26.pdf (page 2 as numbered)
    - icebraining 9y ago
      Seems like a sensible application of the Portal-to-Portal Act, which specifically says that "activities which are preliminary to or postliminar" to the main job activity are not compensable. I.e., blame Congress.
- croon 9y ago
  To some extent, yes on all counts. > As an employee I'd factor in the commute when making decisions about a job. Meaning you make concessions to either where you live or where you work. Isn't that a sign that it's not completely your choice? If all jobs could be done from home you would have all choices of housing available. > do you view the clothes that someone (only) wears to a traditional in-person office as rightfully the responsibility of the employer? Lunch? Same reasoning here: The only way you're not making concessions is if you happen to like the clothes that fit within the dress code of the company (if any). And as for lunch, I've done IF for a few years (stopped a while back), and it's really difficult if you don't tailor it around work when it comes to work lunches, fitting meetings, available restaurants around work if you don't bring your own lunch, etc. I don't have much problems with either of it, as I've accepted it as status quo, but it's obviously not a free choice.
  - del82 9y ago
    > Meaning you make concessions to either where you live or where you work. Isn't that a sign that it's not completely your choice? Well yes, I mean there are many things about my job and my life that aren't completely my choice if by that we mean I have to make prioritization decisions and tradeoffs. Not being forced to work from any specific location eliminates one of the constraints, sure. The point was more about the idea that commute time should be compensated for those whose employers to require them to come to an office. That's not obvious to me. Suppose, for example, I chose to live 2 hours away from my office. Should I be compensated for the 4 hours per day I spend commuting?
    - croon 9y ago
      > The point was more about the idea that commute time should be compensated for those whose employers to require them to come to an office. That's not obvious to me. Suppose, for example, I chose to live 2 hours away from my office. Should I be compensated for the 4 hours per day I spend commuting? Yes, you're right. I wasn't arguing for a mandate, but merely questioning the status quo. But if I could change it, I guess I would say; Not if you have the choice to work from home instead. Otherwise, I don't know, maybe? Obviously no one wants to pay wage to someone who chooses to live hours from work, but likewise if my employer forces me to be somewhere far away when I can get the same work done remotely, that's equally bad. Of course both parties has the choice of switching employer/employee, but I digress.
alaskamiller 9y ago
Everything in the valley back in the day was 15 min away. Now that same 15 min takes 1.5 hrs. Because everyone's now here. Who pays for that? You can move Google out of Mountain View to Bumfuck, Idaho. Then you lose the centralization and plugging into the network. Who pays for that? But to be honest, most prefer it this way. This crazy doo-dad lifestyle of fighting that 3 hour traffic. Because the thing is, if you work hard to win (or more likely you're just fortunate enough to win), then you get to enjoy central networking, get to enjoy the year over year growth of your property, get to enjoy the convenience of job hopping, get to enjoy that the smartest and the brightest all want in on this action. So I don't know. I paid for my own uniforms in the marine corps. Someone should be sending me checks!
- devoply 9y ago
  Well the company gets to enjoy having employees, because they tolerate them working from home. They get to make all the sweet sweet profit. They see their revenues increase, etc. Your whole perspective can be framed the exact other way as well. At the end it's a negotiation. Who wins that is a matter of perspective. It's a privilege to have talented employees just as it's a privilege to work for a good company.
  - alaskamiller 9y ago
    Right. And every time one hits up hackerne.ws it's wage theft as well. Cuts both ways.
    - croon 9y ago
      I'm doing that in the office right now, has nothing to do with location. Measure productivity, don't police time. If you as an employer are getting less results from telecommuting (while also not being able to attract better talent, which you should) then of course it's a loss, but I would like to see those numbers. I for one produce better results at home, even if I were to spend 2 hours on hn.
    - angersock 9y ago
jlebrech 9y ago
who pays employees commute time? is this an american thing?
- toomuchtodo 9y ago
  Employees eat commute time, at least in most white collar salary positions in the US.
- 24gttghh 9y ago
  What's interesting is that we can get paid for travel to other customer sites of our employers when using personal vehicles (up to $.535/mile per IRS guidelines[0]), but not to go to our actual workplaces. [0]https://www.irs.gov/uac/2017-standard-mileage-rates-for-business-and-medical-and-moving-announced https://www.irs.gov/uac/2017-standard-mileage-rates-for-busi...
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- carrja99 9y ago
  If you have a home office and commute to a client site you can claim it as a deduction at tax time. Outside of that I do know of some employers who do reimburse mileage as long as it is filed and more than 20 miles but that is rare.
koolba 9y ago
If commute time was paid you'd be incentivizing people to live further from work. The onus is on the employee to optimizing getting to point X by time Y. Whether that means living closer or leaving earlier, they make that call.
- humanrebar 9y ago
  In theory I agree. In practice, has anyone seen anyone work farther from work on purpose to pad their pay? I suspect if commute time was indistinguishable from work time as far as pay goes, employers would still want to encourage employees to live closer to work in various ways.
  - koolba 9y ago
    I've seen it first hand. At one large financial services company employees who came in early (before 7am) or stayed late (after 9pm) had access to free black cars for commuting. That had a direct impact on at least one person I know's decision to move further from the office.
    - sidlls 9y ago
      This sounds like the old conservative canard about some folks not wanting to earn more income because it will put them in the next tax bracket.
  - restalis 9y ago
    "In theory I agree. In practice, has anyone seen anyone work farther from work on purpose to pad their pay?" Look at it in another way -- you're basically penalizing the employees that don't spend time commuting by paying them less money. In practice I've seen this kind of phenomenon with smoking. Many years ago, in the army, the smokers got smoking breaks whereas the non-smokers did not. Soon almost all soldiers were smokers!
    - ryandrake 9y ago
      I knew a guy a long time ago who pretended to be a smoker so he could get periodic "smoke breaks" from the office.
revelation 9y ago
Well if your goal here is to make sure people continue to waste 2 hours of their day on commuting then look no further than making that time paid. It's a perverse incentive for the whole destructive car lifestyle that has you sitting utterly depressed in some metal death box surrounded by millions of your peers in more death boxes as you slowly trample through cities (picking up a few of the locals on the way and leaving them dead by the roadside) to your job.
marcosdumay 9y ago
> Not in the middle of downtown because that's what their peers or customers expect. Clients expecting you to be there is a perfectly valid reason. Peers isn't.
s73ver 9y ago
Those places that are affordable are affordable because not many people want to live there. Those places where people do want to live are quickly becoming less affordable.

del82 9y ago

It's interesting to view commute time as the employer's time rather than employee's time, and therefore as time that should be compensated. I'd always thought of it as the employee's time, and the employee's decision about where to live and how to commute, etc. As an employee I'd factor in the commute when making decisions about a job. Playing with this idea a bit: do you view the clothes that someone (only) wears to a traditional in-person office as rightfully the responsibility of the employer? Lunch?

devoply 9y ago
Everyone has to eat at all times regardless. Everyone has to wear clothes. I bought steel toed boots that I only needed for work, company had a $150 allowance for that.
wickawic 9y ago
Many workplaces require a certain attire. You probably already own dress clothes, but someone who doesn't might have to spend hundreds or thousands of dollars to obtain clothes for their job. But I'm not just talking about just white collar positions either; construction workers, photographers, waiters, retail workers, telemarketers, etc. all have dress codes, some for safety and some to weed out "undesirables". If I can expense my ergonomic keyboard, a dock worker better be able to expense their steel-toed boots.
- wolfgke 9y ago
  > all have dress codes, some for safety and some to weed out "undesirables". In Germany if some safety clothes are compulsory by law, the employer has to pay for them: http://www.business-netz.com/Arbeitsschutz-und-Arbeitssicherheit/Arbeitskleidung-Arbeitgeber http://www.business-netz.com/Arbeitsschutz-und-Arbeitssicher...
firasd 9y ago
Interesting related court case from a couple years ago: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Integrity_Staffing_Solutions,_Inc._v._Busk https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Integrity_Staffing_Solutions,_...: "a unanimous decision by the United States Supreme Court, ruling that time spent by workers waiting to undergo anti-employee theft security screenings is not "integral and indispensable" to their work, and thus not compensable under the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA). The Court delivered their ruling on December 9, 2014." I found this because I had a vague memory about a case about time spent "closing down stores" but maybe it was this or something else.
- DoofusOfDeath 9y ago
  I was really shocked at that ruling, and especially at the court's unanimity regarding it. Perhaps there's some deeply technical reason that it makes sense, but the conclusion seems absurd to me based on common sense.
  - lr4444lr 9y ago
    From the actual ruling: Finally, respondents’ claim that the screenings are compensable because Integrity Staffing could have reduced the time to a de minimis amount is properly presented at the bargaining table, not to a court in an FLSA claim.[0] The petitioner brought the claim under FLSA. It sounds really bad on face that the workers have to do this as a condition of employment, but imagine if instead of this pat-down, the complex property was really big, and employees had to walk an extra 25 minutes to their station because public transit could not access those roads, no employee cars were allowed, and no shuttles were provided. It boils down to a worker/employer bargaining dispute, not a labor violation. [0]https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/14pdf/13-433_5h26.pdf https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/14pdf/13-433_5h26.pdf (page 2 as numbered)
  - icebraining 9y ago
    Seems like a sensible application of the Portal-to-Portal Act, which specifically says that "activities which are preliminary to or postliminar" to the main job activity are not compensable. I.e., blame Congress.
croon 9y ago
To some extent, yes on all counts. > As an employee I'd factor in the commute when making decisions about a job. Meaning you make concessions to either where you live or where you work. Isn't that a sign that it's not completely your choice? If all jobs could be done from home you would have all choices of housing available. > do you view the clothes that someone (only) wears to a traditional in-person office as rightfully the responsibility of the employer? Lunch? Same reasoning here: The only way you're not making concessions is if you happen to like the clothes that fit within the dress code of the company (if any). And as for lunch, I've done IF for a few years (stopped a while back), and it's really difficult if you don't tailor it around work when it comes to work lunches, fitting meetings, available restaurants around work if you don't bring your own lunch, etc. I don't have much problems with either of it, as I've accepted it as status quo, but it's obviously not a free choice.
- del82 9y ago
  > Meaning you make concessions to either where you live or where you work. Isn't that a sign that it's not completely your choice? Well yes, I mean there are many things about my job and my life that aren't completely my choice if by that we mean I have to make prioritization decisions and tradeoffs. Not being forced to work from any specific location eliminates one of the constraints, sure. The point was more about the idea that commute time should be compensated for those whose employers to require them to come to an office. That's not obvious to me. Suppose, for example, I chose to live 2 hours away from my office. Should I be compensated for the 4 hours per day I spend commuting?
  - croon 9y ago
    > The point was more about the idea that commute time should be compensated for those whose employers to require them to come to an office. That's not obvious to me. Suppose, for example, I chose to live 2 hours away from my office. Should I be compensated for the 4 hours per day I spend commuting? Yes, you're right. I wasn't arguing for a mandate, but merely questioning the status quo. But if I could change it, I guess I would say; Not if you have the choice to work from home instead. Otherwise, I don't know, maybe? Obviously no one wants to pay wage to someone who chooses to live hours from work, but likewise if my employer forces me to be somewhere far away when I can get the same work done remotely, that's equally bad. Of course both parties has the choice of switching employer/employee, but I digress.

alaskamiller 9y ago

Everything in the valley back in the day was 15 min away. Now that same 15 min takes 1.5 hrs. Because everyone's now here. Who pays for that? You can move Google out of Mountain View to Bumfuck, Idaho. Then you lose the centralization and plugging into the network. Who pays for that? But to be honest, most prefer it this way. This crazy doo-dad lifestyle of fighting that 3 hour traffic. Because the thing is, if you work hard to win (or more likely you're just fortunate enough to win), then you get to enjoy central networking, get to enjoy the year over year growth of your property, get to enjoy the convenience of job hopping, get to enjoy that the smartest and the brightest all want in on this action. So I don't know. I paid for my own uniforms in the marine corps. Someone should be sending me checks!

devoply 9y ago
Well the company gets to enjoy having employees, because they tolerate them working from home. They get to make all the sweet sweet profit. They see their revenues increase, etc. Your whole perspective can be framed the exact other way as well. At the end it's a negotiation. Who wins that is a matter of perspective. It's a privilege to have talented employees just as it's a privilege to work for a good company.
- alaskamiller 9y ago
  Right. And every time one hits up hackerne.ws it's wage theft as well. Cuts both ways.
  - croon 9y ago
    I'm doing that in the office right now, has nothing to do with location. Measure productivity, don't police time. If you as an employer are getting less results from telecommuting (while also not being able to attract better talent, which you should) then of course it's a loss, but I would like to see those numbers. I for one produce better results at home, even if I were to spend 2 hours on hn.
  - angersock 9y ago

jlebrech 9y ago

who pays employees commute time? is this an american thing?

toomuchtodo 9y ago
Employees eat commute time, at least in most white collar salary positions in the US.
24gttghh 9y ago
What's interesting is that we can get paid for travel to other customer sites of our employers when using personal vehicles (up to $.535/mile per IRS guidelines[0]), but not to go to our actual workplaces. [0]https://www.irs.gov/uac/2017-standard-mileage-rates-for-business-and-medical-and-moving-announced https://www.irs.gov/uac/2017-standard-mileage-rates-for-busi...
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
carrja99 9y ago
If you have a home office and commute to a client site you can claim it as a deduction at tax time. Outside of that I do know of some employers who do reimburse mileage as long as it is filed and more than 20 miles but that is rare.

koolba 9y ago

If commute time was paid you'd be incentivizing people to live further from work. The onus is on the employee to optimizing getting to point X by time Y. Whether that means living closer or leaving earlier, they make that call.

humanrebar 9y ago
In theory I agree. In practice, has anyone seen anyone work farther from work on purpose to pad their pay? I suspect if commute time was indistinguishable from work time as far as pay goes, employers would still want to encourage employees to live closer to work in various ways.
- koolba 9y ago
  I've seen it first hand. At one large financial services company employees who came in early (before 7am) or stayed late (after 9pm) had access to free black cars for commuting. That had a direct impact on at least one person I know's decision to move further from the office.
  - sidlls 9y ago
    This sounds like the old conservative canard about some folks not wanting to earn more income because it will put them in the next tax bracket.
- restalis 9y ago
  "In theory I agree. In practice, has anyone seen anyone work farther from work on purpose to pad their pay?" Look at it in another way -- you're basically penalizing the employees that don't spend time commuting by paying them less money. In practice I've seen this kind of phenomenon with smoking. Many years ago, in the army, the smokers got smoking breaks whereas the non-smokers did not. Soon almost all soldiers were smokers!
  - ryandrake 9y ago
    I knew a guy a long time ago who pretended to be a smoker so he could get periodic "smoke breaks" from the office.

revelation 9y ago

Well if your goal here is to make sure people continue to waste 2 hours of their day on commuting then look no further than making that time paid. It's a perverse incentive for the whole destructive car lifestyle that has you sitting utterly depressed in some metal death box surrounded by millions of your peers in more death boxes as you slowly trample through cities (picking up a few of the locals on the way and leaving them dead by the roadside) to your job.

marcosdumay 9y ago

> Not in the middle of downtown because that's what their peers or customers expect. Clients expecting you to be there is a perfectly valid reason. Peers isn't.

s73ver 9y ago

Those places that are affordable are affordable because not many people want to live there. Those places where people do want to live are quickly becoming less affordable.