3 ms·

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.

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.