> Some things are just inflexible in any workplace, both from an employee's and an employer's perspective, and a legal one. They're just shifted from official

> Some things are just inflexible in any workplace, both from an employee's and an employer's perspective, and a legal one. They're just shifted from official numbers to some form of hidden cost. The economic situation is the same. I'm presuming no one at the apple store actually makes minimum wage, so ultimately Apple will counter an increase in hours clocked by a reduction in hourly pay. Though I'd expect them to be sneaky about it. The cutoff for reporting hourly wage is something like $47k. Everyone either negotiates directly or else affects the wage indirectly by not competing for the job (requiring the company to offer more to attract employees). Companies give regular raises to their wage workers for completely rational self-serving reasons. And obviously a business wants to employ from a larger (and therefore better) pool of potential employees beyond those who live on the same block. Common sense says people are going to consider the cost of the commute (both in time and money) when considering the gross income they would get from the job. So for everyone apart from minimum wage workers, there's still some overall average component of pay based on how much people think the commuting part is worth.