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When you take on a job it's up to you to determine if your commute is acceptable. Your employer is not required to pay you for travel to and from your primary p

When you take on a job it's up to you to determine if your commute is acceptable. Your employer is not required to pay you for travel to and from your primary place of employment. If there is special travel and or needs thats one thing, but to your daily job that's just not going to happen. If you took a job that was remote 100% and they changed the job to in person, it's your right to decline and accept employment elsewhere.

ElevenLathe 4y ago
Yeah but we want more. There's no morally correct answer to how much I should try to squeeze out of my employer, just what I can get away with.
- gruez 4y ago
  Right, but even if you agree that workers deserve more, surely there are better ways of distributing that excess than basing it on commute length?
  - ElevenLathe 4y ago
    Why? Anything we don't want to do, we should get paid for. Commuting sucks, they should pay us for it. We should get more to work in an open plan office, for dealing with a shitty boss, or for a miserly vacation policy too. Unless there is a cost, they'll keep doing it.
    - gruez 4y ago
      >Commuting sucks, they should pay us for it. At the end of the day, the amount of money that can be allocated to workers is finite, so we have to choose some way of distributing that money. Doing that by how much you "worked" (ie. commuted) might seem superficially fair, but comes with other issues like encouraging people to live far away because they no longer bear the costs. I don't think most people are on board with subsidizing commutes. >We should get more to work in an open plan office, for dealing with a shitty boss, or for a miserly vacation policy too. Unless there is a cost, they'll keep doing it. You're free to do that by voting with your feet, and companies pay by having less applicants. If they're not "paying for it" (via higher wages or poorer quality candidates), then that probably indicates it's not a big factor for the average employee (ie. they might complain about it, but they won't give up a $300k job for it).
      - ElevenLathe 4y ago
        >At the end of the day, the amount of money that can be allocated to workers is finite, so we have to choose some way of distributing that money. Agreed, and this method has been chosen in advance for us: employers squeeze as hard as they can, while we squeeze back as hard as we can. If billing for our commute is a strategy that will allow us to extract more wealth from ownership, we should do it. If not, we shouldn't. It has nothing to do with what makes more "sense" or what is "fair." There is no policy decision to make here. I'm just describing reality.
brailsafe 4y ago
I guess, but these are all just statements about the way things are. You could also say "Sure, if you'll compensate me for my time and subsidize a means to get there, or increase my salary by such an amount that I'm able to live within 10 minutes walking distance and net the same" and they have the right to turn you down. If my employer required me to move to the city the company is mainly based out of, I'd ask for visa support and moving expenses, and if the living expenses were higher, a compensatory increase. If the terms aren't reasonable, then ya they can get fucked. Upon hire though, yes that's part of the negotiation I suppose. If what they're offering to pay is only persuasive if you had no or a free commute, then you should ask for sufficiently more to make it worthwhile.
- vineyardmike 4y ago
  > You could also say "Sure, if you'll compensate me for my time and subsidize a means to get there, And Silicon Valley giants are famous for offering this. Proving that companies will provide if people want it enough.
jowdones 4y ago
I commuted 2 hours each way. Now I work 2 jobs from home and it's obvious that commuting was not only not paid but preventing me from making a decent income, keeping me poor and trapped in a crappy suburb.

ElevenLathe 4y ago

Yeah but we want more. There's no morally correct answer to how much I should try to squeeze out of my employer, just what I can get away with.

gruez 4y ago
Right, but even if you agree that workers deserve more, surely there are better ways of distributing that excess than basing it on commute length?
- ElevenLathe 4y ago
  Why? Anything we don't want to do, we should get paid for. Commuting sucks, they should pay us for it. We should get more to work in an open plan office, for dealing with a shitty boss, or for a miserly vacation policy too. Unless there is a cost, they'll keep doing it.
  - gruez 4y ago
    >Commuting sucks, they should pay us for it. At the end of the day, the amount of money that can be allocated to workers is finite, so we have to choose some way of distributing that money. Doing that by how much you "worked" (ie. commuted) might seem superficially fair, but comes with other issues like encouraging people to live far away because they no longer bear the costs. I don't think most people are on board with subsidizing commutes. >We should get more to work in an open plan office, for dealing with a shitty boss, or for a miserly vacation policy too. Unless there is a cost, they'll keep doing it. You're free to do that by voting with your feet, and companies pay by having less applicants. If they're not "paying for it" (via higher wages or poorer quality candidates), then that probably indicates it's not a big factor for the average employee (ie. they might complain about it, but they won't give up a $300k job for it).
    - ElevenLathe 4y ago
      >At the end of the day, the amount of money that can be allocated to workers is finite, so we have to choose some way of distributing that money. Agreed, and this method has been chosen in advance for us: employers squeeze as hard as they can, while we squeeze back as hard as we can. If billing for our commute is a strategy that will allow us to extract more wealth from ownership, we should do it. If not, we shouldn't. It has nothing to do with what makes more "sense" or what is "fair." There is no policy decision to make here. I'm just describing reality.

brailsafe 4y ago

I guess, but these are all just statements about the way things are. You could also say "Sure, if you'll compensate me for my time and subsidize a means to get there, or increase my salary by such an amount that I'm able to live within 10 minutes walking distance and net the same" and they have the right to turn you down. If my employer required me to move to the city the company is mainly based out of, I'd ask for visa support and moving expenses, and if the living expenses were higher, a compensatory increase. If the terms aren't reasonable, then ya they can get fucked. Upon hire though, yes that's part of the negotiation I suppose. If what they're offering to pay is only persuasive if you had no or a free commute, then you should ask for sufficiently more to make it worthwhile.

vineyardmike 4y ago
> You could also say "Sure, if you'll compensate me for my time and subsidize a means to get there, And Silicon Valley giants are famous for offering this. Proving that companies will provide if people want it enough.

jowdones 4y ago

I commuted 2 hours each way. Now I work 2 jobs from home and it's obvious that commuting was not only not paid but preventing me from making a decent income, keeping me poor and trapped in a crappy suburb.