5 ms·

Unpaid commute... I know lots of folks in the Bay area spending hours per day commuting (and NOVA/DC area, if you live there you know). I'm not sure why it isn'

Unpaid commute... I know lots of folks in the Bay area spending hours per day commuting (and NOVA/DC area, if you live there you know). I'm not sure why it isn't considered stolen wages.

sneak 4y ago
Stealing implies unilateral and without consent. People opt-in to jobs and the associated commutes completely voluntarily and consensually.
- itake 4y ago
  Also, your commute time is your commute time. Your employer does not control how you go to your work nor what you do while traveling. Your employer also doesn't choose your housing.
  - bcrosby95 4y ago
    > Also, your commute time is your commute time. Your employer does not control how you go to your work nor what you do while traveling. Not necessarily true. Some employers offer company buses to/from certain cities, with wifi, and they count that as working hours.
    - dragonwriter 4y ago
      > Some employers offer company buses to/from certain cities, with wifi, and they count that as working hours. Yes, effectively your company is choosing to send your worksite to (a place closer to) your home, so that you can start working sooner and stop working later.
  - Teever 4y ago
    I bet that if employers were legally mandated to pay their workers for the time they commute that those employers would suddenly appreciate the importance of effective public transit and increased urban density.
    - dragonwriter 4y ago
      > I bet that if employers were legally mandated to pay their workers for the time they commute that those employers would suddenly appreciate the importance of effective public transit and increased urban density. I bet that if employers were legally mandated to pay their workers for the time they commute, that those employers would suddenly see effective reserved private transit as a competitive advantage.
    - itake 4y ago
      One of my coworkers lives 1.5 hours drive from work. I think this would incentivize people to live as far as possible from their office.
  - uberduper 4y ago
    Hasn't the last couple years demonstrated that employers do exactly that? - You can work remote, but you must live within X miles of an office. - You can work remote, but you must live in one of these states / countries. - You can work remote N times per week. - You can work flexible hours! Choose any 10 consecutive hours from this list of 13 hours! - You can work from any one of our N offices. - We're closing this office. You can continue with your duties if you relocate to one of our other locations. - Here's a laptop and travel bag. Give us your cell # so you can work from anywhere at any time we need you. edit: I can't be bothered to fix the formatting of this message.
- JoshTriplett 4y ago
  "wage theft" in general includes things like forcing employees to clock out before the end of their work or clock in after the start of their work (e.g. "first clock out, then do this long procedure, then you can leave"). People "opt into" those jobs too, but that doesn't mean they shouldn't get paid for all of their work. It's not unreasonable to draw a parallel to commuting, and when the alternative is work-from-home, expecting to get paid for commuting seems perfectly reasonable.
- bestcoder69 4y ago
  Makes sense - kinda like taxes.
- wing-_-nuts 4y ago
  Sure, just like how coal miners used to spend their paychecks at the company store, and came home to pay rent at the company town. In society, we recognize that one cannot always have a fully 'consensual' agreement between parties of wildly different levels of power. The only reason this hasn't been extended to corporations is because our political system serves them, not the common man.
  - aetherson 4y ago
    Software engineers in historically well-comped roles in the 21st Century: "My commute is exactly like being a 19th Century coal miner in a company town."
    - wing-_-nuts 4y ago
      No of course not. I just took issue with the idea presented that an agreement between a corporation and worker is always 'consensual and voluntary'. It's not. It never has been. If I disagree with the terms of my employment, me being unemployed is a far higher burden than the company not having one extra worker. To act like the employee and employer are equals in negotiation is laughable.
    - wwweston 4y ago
      It's good to appreciate the privileges that come with being a well-paid 21st Century knowledge worker. It's also good to appreciate what even a well-paid 21st C knowledge worker has in common with other labor, including coal miners. Solidarity helps achieve goals.
  - zx8080 4y ago
    Pretty much the same power balance and probably even worse wealth gap exists in such a socialistic european country like Sweden. Unions do exist there, however they probably do more harm than good for software engineers because they effectively do not allow raising salaries if needed (any rise in every employment contract needs approval by the union).
- cardamomo 4y ago
  This doesn't really ring true in large urban areas, where many people cannot afford to live near their workplace—the rent is too damn high.
  - maxerickson 4y ago
    The cost of living is typically a factor in the wages offered though, with people considering the job having the opportunity to decide what trade offs are available and which ones to make. Like if 2 people get hired into the same role at the same time and one decides to rent a small apartment near the subway and the other decides to drive 45 miles to a suburb, why is the company on the hook to then compensate them differently? Or am I misunderstanding the argument?
    - cardamomo 4y ago
      I think your argument makes some sense when it comes to high-paid, salaried jobs. I don't think this is the reality for low-wage earners, however. There often exists a significant gap between their pay and a livable wage for the area immediately around their workplace.
      - maxerickson 4y ago
        I guess I maybe implied an argument, but I didn't directly make an argument, I put forth a scenario and asked a question. You've not answered the question, instead pointing out that some people have wages that encourage a commute (at the moment we can probably at least assume that they are choosing that job over other choices, for reasons left unexplored as of yet).
        cardamomo 4y ago
        I'm arguing that, within many major urban areas, wage levels in certain classes of work necessitate a commute. Read the section "A persistent spatial mismatch for American low-wage workers" in this report: https://www.americanprogress.org/article/expanding-supply-affordable-housing-low-wage-workers/ https://www.americanprogress.org/article/expanding-supply-af...
- mvc 4y ago
  Companies choose to do business in a certain state and yet I hear many "pro-business" types claim that all taxation is theft.
  - hangonhn 4y ago
    Sure but both parties can be wrong. Saying taxation is not theft and commute expenses for salaried workers is not wage theft seems non-contradictory to me.
chaostheory 4y ago
It’s probably more accurate to say wasted hours. Aren’t we all salaried and not hourly?
- notyourwork 4y ago
  Generalizing an entire population, not everyone is salary in the world.
  - webdood90 4y ago
    consider the audience of HN
    - notyourwork 4y ago
      Not only are there non-salaried workers on HN, that is also a narrow view of the world.
      - Shared404 4y ago
        Checking in as a non-salaried worker on HN, who has been on HN for years and worked a variety of non-salaried jobs - technical and non-technical.
  - chaostheory 4y ago
    It’s a safe assumption given the following 1. HN users are not “everyone in the world” 2. Compared to the normal population, software engineers, near equivalent tech professionals, and people working in the sciences or medical industry disproportionately represent most of HN users based on the content being posted.
- skyyler 4y ago
  I wish we were all salary. I drive 85 minutes one direction to work a $25/hr helpdesk job right now. Barely making ends meet. Gas + car maintenance is killing me slowly.
smeeth 4y ago
Just because you can theoretically perform your job from the location of your choice doesn't mean you have a right to restitution for doing it somewhere else. Your employer has a right to set their terms of employment and you have a right to tell them to pound sand if you don't want to abide by them.
- ok_dad 4y ago
  A massive power imbalance to be sure. I have a right to my time, and an employer located in a place with zero affordable housing closer than an hour or two away should definitely be responsible for providing restitution for that time. An employer doesn't have the right to my time, but they currently have the power to force me to accept terms via the "wouldn't it suck if you and your family lived on the street" tactics.
- fleddr 4y ago
  It doesn't work that way as employment terms are based on industry norms and expectations. That makes the relation asymmetrical and your personal leverage is about zero. Three years ago, if you'd skip over any employer not offering fully remote, you'd simply not find a job. So your "right" has no meaning.
raincom 4y ago
Maybe, tech companies should build company towns and rent out cheap apartments.
- pixl97 4y ago
  Yes, good idea, and they can pay with scrip that you use at the company store. And then we can sell our soul to the company store like it's 1850.
- bravetraveler 4y ago
  Please, no - Appalachia is still recovering from this idea
- babypuncher 4y ago
  I'm pretty sure this is sarcasm, but just in case it isn't: please god no!
nojs 4y ago
Aren’t the FAANG SF - south bay shuttles paid time?
- paxys 4y ago
  Paid vs unpaid time is irrelevant for salaried jobs, which describes the vast majority of tech. I will say though that only a minority of people get any real work done on shuttles, and so you end up staying at the office for the full ~8 hours regardless.
sokoloff 4y ago
If your employer dictated where you worked AND where you lived, the time traveling between the two would logically be their responsibility. Since they've only dictated at most one of those two things, I don't see it as reasonable for them to pay you to move between a place they didn't pick and one they did. My office used to be just outside of Boston. Could I move to Utica, NY and claim that my 8 hour round-trip was the entirety of my work obligation and that I was, by definition, "meeting expectations" merely by driving back and forth every workday?
- thrwawy74 4y ago
  I'm sure this is a false equivalency in some way, but many gov postings have wages set to the locality. My cousin was offered wages for a particular agency location, and required to move to the area.
  - sokoloff 4y ago
    If your cousin had the freedom to pick the specific address in a reasonably broad area, I think the worst-case obligation for that agency would be to cover the commute time from the single closest residential address to the agency's location. If your cousin picked a place farther away than that, for whatever combination of reasons mattered to them, they own the outcome of that choice (same as I'd own the decision to move to Utica).
- dublinben 4y ago
  If your employer requires you to report to an office to work, then they are indirectly dictating where you live based on the salary they pay you. It is rational for people to live in the best / most convenient place they can afford to. Why else would the people cleaning your office live an hour or more away, while senior employees can live a only short walk / bike / drive away?
- mensetmanusman 4y ago
  I wish they forced us to live in $8,000,000 mansions near the office/CEO’s house.
wyager 4y ago
Mandatory commute (e.g. from site entrance to site) is considered work time. Commute you inflict on yourself by choosing to live elsewhere is not.
- babypuncher 4y ago
  The problem is many places not paying a wage that makes living close by affordable. This is compounded in the bay area by its ridiculous housing market.
- dublinben 4y ago
  I've tried living in my office, but they told me I had to leave. The next best option I could come up with was living in a van in the parking garage, but that didn't last very long either. It turns out that it's not actually my choice to live somewhere that requires commuting to a work location dictated by my employer.
  - wyager 4y ago
    OK, how about this - your employer has to pay you for the commute you would have on the closest possible housing option to your employer at the time you sign your contract. You'd probably average a whole extra 3 minutes of pay every day.
    - reeckoh 4y ago
      This sounds fun, I have a good one. How about your employer has to cover the rent or mortgage of an average single-family unit within a 30-minute rush hour commute of the office if they require you to come in?
dragonwriter 4y ago
> I’m not sure why it isn’t considered stolen wages. Because the employer isn’t choosing where you live. If they did, then, sure, the commute time would be a cost they imposed, rather than a cost imposed by your choice of residence.
newsclues 4y ago
Are we going to pay for peoples commutes if they can’t work from home? Are the jobs that don’t work from home start paying more to compensate for the lesser quality of work life?

Unpaid commute... I know lots of folks in the Bay area spending hours per day commuting (and NOVA/DC area, if you live there you know). I'm not sure why it isn't considered stolen wages.

sneak 4y ago

Stealing implies unilateral and without consent. People opt-in to jobs and the associated commutes completely voluntarily and consensually.

itake 4y ago
Also, your commute time is your commute time. Your employer does not control how you go to your work nor what you do while traveling. Your employer also doesn't choose your housing.
- bcrosby95 4y ago
  > Also, your commute time is your commute time. Your employer does not control how you go to your work nor what you do while traveling. Not necessarily true. Some employers offer company buses to/from certain cities, with wifi, and they count that as working hours.
  - dragonwriter 4y ago
    > Some employers offer company buses to/from certain cities, with wifi, and they count that as working hours. Yes, effectively your company is choosing to send your worksite to (a place closer to) your home, so that you can start working sooner and stop working later.
- Teever 4y ago
  I bet that if employers were legally mandated to pay their workers for the time they commute that those employers would suddenly appreciate the importance of effective public transit and increased urban density.
  - dragonwriter 4y ago
    > I bet that if employers were legally mandated to pay their workers for the time they commute that those employers would suddenly appreciate the importance of effective public transit and increased urban density. I bet that if employers were legally mandated to pay their workers for the time they commute, that those employers would suddenly see effective reserved private transit as a competitive advantage.
  - itake 4y ago
    One of my coworkers lives 1.5 hours drive from work. I think this would incentivize people to live as far as possible from their office.
- uberduper 4y ago
  Hasn't the last couple years demonstrated that employers do exactly that? - You can work remote, but you must live within X miles of an office. - You can work remote, but you must live in one of these states / countries. - You can work remote N times per week. - You can work flexible hours! Choose any 10 consecutive hours from this list of 13 hours! - You can work from any one of our N offices. - We're closing this office. You can continue with your duties if you relocate to one of our other locations. - Here's a laptop and travel bag. Give us your cell # so you can work from anywhere at any time we need you. edit: I can't be bothered to fix the formatting of this message.
JoshTriplett 4y ago
"wage theft" in general includes things like forcing employees to clock out before the end of their work or clock in after the start of their work (e.g. "first clock out, then do this long procedure, then you can leave"). People "opt into" those jobs too, but that doesn't mean they shouldn't get paid for all of their work. It's not unreasonable to draw a parallel to commuting, and when the alternative is work-from-home, expecting to get paid for commuting seems perfectly reasonable.
bestcoder69 4y ago
Makes sense - kinda like taxes.
wing-_-nuts 4y ago
Sure, just like how coal miners used to spend their paychecks at the company store, and came home to pay rent at the company town. In society, we recognize that one cannot always have a fully 'consensual' agreement between parties of wildly different levels of power. The only reason this hasn't been extended to corporations is because our political system serves them, not the common man.
- aetherson 4y ago
  Software engineers in historically well-comped roles in the 21st Century: "My commute is exactly like being a 19th Century coal miner in a company town."
  - wing-_-nuts 4y ago
    No of course not. I just took issue with the idea presented that an agreement between a corporation and worker is always 'consensual and voluntary'. It's not. It never has been. If I disagree with the terms of my employment, me being unemployed is a far higher burden than the company not having one extra worker. To act like the employee and employer are equals in negotiation is laughable.
  - wwweston 4y ago
    It's good to appreciate the privileges that come with being a well-paid 21st Century knowledge worker. It's also good to appreciate what even a well-paid 21st C knowledge worker has in common with other labor, including coal miners. Solidarity helps achieve goals.
- zx8080 4y ago
  Pretty much the same power balance and probably even worse wealth gap exists in such a socialistic european country like Sweden. Unions do exist there, however they probably do more harm than good for software engineers because they effectively do not allow raising salaries if needed (any rise in every employment contract needs approval by the union).
cardamomo 4y ago
This doesn't really ring true in large urban areas, where many people cannot afford to live near their workplace—the rent is too damn high.
- maxerickson 4y ago
  The cost of living is typically a factor in the wages offered though, with people considering the job having the opportunity to decide what trade offs are available and which ones to make. Like if 2 people get hired into the same role at the same time and one decides to rent a small apartment near the subway and the other decides to drive 45 miles to a suburb, why is the company on the hook to then compensate them differently? Or am I misunderstanding the argument?
  - cardamomo 4y ago
    I think your argument makes some sense when it comes to high-paid, salaried jobs. I don't think this is the reality for low-wage earners, however. There often exists a significant gap between their pay and a livable wage for the area immediately around their workplace.
    - maxerickson 4y ago
      I guess I maybe implied an argument, but I didn't directly make an argument, I put forth a scenario and asked a question. You've not answered the question, instead pointing out that some people have wages that encourage a commute (at the moment we can probably at least assume that they are choosing that job over other choices, for reasons left unexplored as of yet).
      - cardamomo 4y ago
        I'm arguing that, within many major urban areas, wage levels in certain classes of work necessitate a commute. Read the section "A persistent spatial mismatch for American low-wage workers" in this report: https://www.americanprogress.org/article/expanding-supply-affordable-housing-low-wage-workers/ https://www.americanprogress.org/article/expanding-supply-af...
mvc 4y ago
Companies choose to do business in a certain state and yet I hear many "pro-business" types claim that all taxation is theft.
- hangonhn 4y ago
  Sure but both parties can be wrong. Saying taxation is not theft and commute expenses for salaried workers is not wage theft seems non-contradictory to me.

chaostheory 4y ago

It’s probably more accurate to say wasted hours. Aren’t we all salaried and not hourly?

notyourwork 4y ago
Generalizing an entire population, not everyone is salary in the world.
- webdood90 4y ago
  consider the audience of HN
  - notyourwork 4y ago
    Not only are there non-salaried workers on HN, that is also a narrow view of the world.
    - Shared404 4y ago
      Checking in as a non-salaried worker on HN, who has been on HN for years and worked a variety of non-salaried jobs - technical and non-technical.
- chaostheory 4y ago
  It’s a safe assumption given the following 1. HN users are not “everyone in the world” 2. Compared to the normal population, software engineers, near equivalent tech professionals, and people working in the sciences or medical industry disproportionately represent most of HN users based on the content being posted.
skyyler 4y ago
I wish we were all salary. I drive 85 minutes one direction to work a $25/hr helpdesk job right now. Barely making ends meet. Gas + car maintenance is killing me slowly.

smeeth 4y ago

Just because you can theoretically perform your job from the location of your choice doesn't mean you have a right to restitution for doing it somewhere else. Your employer has a right to set their terms of employment and you have a right to tell them to pound sand if you don't want to abide by them.

ok_dad 4y ago
A massive power imbalance to be sure. I have a right to my time, and an employer located in a place with zero affordable housing closer than an hour or two away should definitely be responsible for providing restitution for that time. An employer doesn't have the right to my time, but they currently have the power to force me to accept terms via the "wouldn't it suck if you and your family lived on the street" tactics.
fleddr 4y ago
It doesn't work that way as employment terms are based on industry norms and expectations. That makes the relation asymmetrical and your personal leverage is about zero. Three years ago, if you'd skip over any employer not offering fully remote, you'd simply not find a job. So your "right" has no meaning.

raincom 4y ago

Maybe, tech companies should build company towns and rent out cheap apartments.

pixl97 4y ago
Yes, good idea, and they can pay with scrip that you use at the company store. And then we can sell our soul to the company store like it's 1850.
bravetraveler 4y ago
Please, no - Appalachia is still recovering from this idea
babypuncher 4y ago
I'm pretty sure this is sarcasm, but just in case it isn't: please god no!

nojs 4y ago

Aren’t the FAANG SF - south bay shuttles paid time?

paxys 4y ago
Paid vs unpaid time is irrelevant for salaried jobs, which describes the vast majority of tech. I will say though that only a minority of people get any real work done on shuttles, and so you end up staying at the office for the full ~8 hours regardless.

sokoloff 4y ago

If your employer dictated where you worked AND where you lived, the time traveling between the two would logically be their responsibility. Since they've only dictated at most one of those two things, I don't see it as reasonable for them to pay you to move between a place they didn't pick and one they did. My office used to be just outside of Boston. Could I move to Utica, NY and claim that my 8 hour round-trip was the entirety of my work obligation and that I was, by definition, "meeting expectations" merely by driving back and forth every workday?

thrwawy74 4y ago
I'm sure this is a false equivalency in some way, but many gov postings have wages set to the locality. My cousin was offered wages for a particular agency location, and required to move to the area.
- sokoloff 4y ago
  If your cousin had the freedom to pick the specific address in a reasonably broad area, I think the worst-case obligation for that agency would be to cover the commute time from the single closest residential address to the agency's location. If your cousin picked a place farther away than that, for whatever combination of reasons mattered to them, they own the outcome of that choice (same as I'd own the decision to move to Utica).
dublinben 4y ago
If your employer requires you to report to an office to work, then they are indirectly dictating where you live based on the salary they pay you. It is rational for people to live in the best / most convenient place they can afford to. Why else would the people cleaning your office live an hour or more away, while senior employees can live a only short walk / bike / drive away?
mensetmanusman 4y ago
I wish they forced us to live in $8,000,000 mansions near the office/CEO’s house.

wyager 4y ago

Mandatory commute (e.g. from site entrance to site) is considered work time. Commute you inflict on yourself by choosing to live elsewhere is not.

babypuncher 4y ago
The problem is many places not paying a wage that makes living close by affordable. This is compounded in the bay area by its ridiculous housing market.
dublinben 4y ago
I've tried living in my office, but they told me I had to leave. The next best option I could come up with was living in a van in the parking garage, but that didn't last very long either. It turns out that it's not actually my choice to live somewhere that requires commuting to a work location dictated by my employer.
- wyager 4y ago
  OK, how about this - your employer has to pay you for the commute you would have on the closest possible housing option to your employer at the time you sign your contract. You'd probably average a whole extra 3 minutes of pay every day.
  - reeckoh 4y ago
    This sounds fun, I have a good one. How about your employer has to cover the rent or mortgage of an average single-family unit within a 30-minute rush hour commute of the office if they require you to come in?

dragonwriter 4y ago

> I’m not sure why it isn’t considered stolen wages. Because the employer isn’t choosing where you live. If they did, then, sure, the commute time would be a cost they imposed, rather than a cost imposed by your choice of residence.

newsclues 4y ago

Are we going to pay for peoples commutes if they can’t work from home? Are the jobs that don’t work from home start paying more to compensate for the lesser quality of work life?