6 ms·

Aussies want employers to help with cost of living, travel to the office

31 points by ewgfdgdfgdf 2y ago

wincy 2y ago
Isn’t that what your salary does? Are these people children yearning for the days of the company store and company towns?
- tardoe 2y ago
  But it's well understood that salaries aren't keeping pace with inflation / retail cost inflation. If salaries aren't then the ask starts to make sense.
  - wincy 2y ago
    But in terms of real dollars would total compensation go up? How would this even work? Isn’t this just moving around the chairs on the deck of the Titanic?
    - bobthepanda 2y ago
      Probably the way tax exempt American employee healthcare does, which to sum up is a disaster. Japan currently has tax exempt commuting allowance.
      - votepaunchy 2y ago
        Am not familiar with Japan but the US exempts commuting reimbursements. https://www.irs.gov/publications/p15b#en_US_2024_publink1000193743 https://www.irs.gov/publications/p15b#en_US_2024_publink1000...
        bobthepanda 2y ago
        In Japan, the commuting allowance allows a full pre-tax writeoff of up to ¥100,000 a month, which before the start of Japanese inflation was about $1000 a month, so it is significantly more generous. https://globalvoices.org/2014/11/05/are-employee-transportation-allowances-the-cause-of-japans-commuter-hell/ https://globalvoices.org/2014/11/05/are-employee-transportat...
    - klyrs 2y ago
      So, you prefer the situation where CEO salaries are rising significantly faster than housing costs, and everybody else's salaries are rising slower than housing costs. I suppose you also consider homeless encampments an eyesore?
  - llamaimperative 2y ago
    Unfortunately rising cost of living is mostly generated by people’s salaries going up (due to gradual increase in productivity), then it’s ripe for the taking by landlords. The rising rent requires everyone to raise their prices, thus eating most of the gains of the initial salary increases.
    - coderenegade 2y ago
      Productivity is actually falling. What's happened is that a record number of migrants came in after the fastest rate rises in the country's history, into a historic housing shortage. Competition for rentals (1% vacancy rates in many areas, sometimes lower) has kept the rental yield high, which has in turn buoyed housing prices despite the increase in interest rates. In addition to this, migration and tightening credit are both depressing wages after a short burst of growth during COVID. A big part of this is that work restrictions for student visas have been lifted, which means a flood of full-time cheap labour for those who only use the student visa to gain entry into the country. All of this in a country with a significant money laundering problem in real estate, that has been known about for more than twenty years, and a government that has zero interest in investigating the issue, because 60% of the population either own a home outright, or have a mortgage. Inflation has started increasing again because the cost of housing is included in the CPI, and government price controls on energy (enacted during COVID) are coming to an end. This likely means more rate rises are on the way, at a time when we're seeing a significant decline in per capita GDP.
- pylua 2y ago
  The article says “are demanding” instead of wants, but I don’t see any hard examples of workers demanding anything but remote work in the article. If anything people are wanting more independence from their employer by having more money and time.
  - grecy 2y ago
    Which certainly cuts down on commute expenses.
  - emmelaich 2y ago
    "demanding" is a favourite clickbait word. In this case it feeds the zoomers' sense of importance and feeds boomers' opinion of zoomers as entitled. Win-win.
    - pylua 2y ago
      Sounds like a line from a dr Seuss book.
- ewgfdgdfgdf 2y ago
  [flagged]
  - cooper_ganglia 2y ago
    From the HN Guidelines: Please don't comment on whether someone read an article. "Did you even read the article? It mentions that" can be shortened to "The article mentions that". https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
  - wincy 2y ago
    “Slavery” is an absurd term here. I forgot that if I quit my employer will publicly flog me and drag me back to my workplace. For anyone who thinks about it for half a second it’s obvious productivity is going to be higher in the office, aside from a few possible edge cases. Just because people don’t like it doesn’t mean it isn’t true. The most profitable companies in the world know it. Look, I don’t want to ruin a good thing (I wfh) but obviously there’s a benefit to having people go into the office. Let’s not deceive ourselves that we have some moral high ground just because that’d be awfully convenient. Edit: removed some rude language
    - llm_trw 2y ago
      I have a $50,000 computer at home. At the office I'm forced to use a $1000 laptop and maybe an external screen on the hot desk if I'm lucky and get a good spot. Productivity wise it's not even close.
      - BLKNSLVR 2y ago
        You're going to have to itemise this $50k computer for the rest of us. Are you running some kind of EPYC cluster? Where would you draw the line between the $1k laptop + single monitor and $50k top-of-the-line-plus-many-extras that would be the best productivity for buck compromise?
- llm_trw 2y ago
  A lot of young people can't manage their lives so yes. Google campuses circa 2016 are the dream for many of them.
- rhelz 2y ago
  I'd rather just have additional salary, which I could invest/use however I wanted. What's more, companies and the 1% also want us to have additional salary, they just don't realize it yet :-) This business of 99% going to 1% is creating serious economic distortions, and when those resolve themselves 100% of us are going to wish we hadn't created those distortions in the first place.
  - pylua 2y ago
    The additional salary would just be diluted too? Proper Ownership in the company would be better.
    - bruce511 2y ago
      By Ownership do you mean; 1) shares that earn dividends from profits? 2) responsibilities such as signing personal surities with suppliers, landlords, banks? 3) being paid last - with whatever is left over? 4) sleepless nights from wondering if enough money will come in to make payroll this month? 5) endless meetings with customers, suppliers, employees, to make sure that everyone is happy all the time? 6) being discriminated against by banks when applying for a home-loan and describing yourself as self-employed. 7) feeling responsible for the livelihood of all your employees. Who would all go to zero income immediately on the day your business fails? 8) signing the financials being supplied to the tax man, with associate penalties for inaccuracies? Some combination of the above? I say this only because I have a business. One where multiple people have stepped into and out of ownership from time to time. Most, frankly, just want the ability to profit-share (which we cater for) only some want the other responsibilities and obligations that come with ownership.
      - pylua 2y ago
        This is a great post, thank you for posting it. Starting a business truly is great endeavor. I mean #1. I am mostly talking about companies that pay such low wages that the government needs to subsidize with food stamps and other benefits. Or the fact that the job does not pay enough for rent. I don’t believe the monetary difference between the Walton’s and the cashier is ethical. On the flip side I have seen employees give their life, blood, sweat and tears to a company that made the owners very wealthy. They were promptly laid off upon sale and did not benefit proportionally (or at all). This was a fast food franchise. I guess everyone is being squeezed now. I wish you all the best luck with your business.
- Andaith 2y ago
  Nah I think the argument here is we can work from home, so if the employer chooses to require us to work elsewhere, they should pay for that travel. Disclaimer: Live in Aus but this is the first I've heard of this.
  - defrost 2y ago
    I'm in Australia also and have (amoungst other things) worked FiFo on and off for four decades now .. mining & resource companies certainly pay for the flights to and from the work place .. and provide accomadation while there. I live outside of Perth, if I consult | work for folk in the big smoke I quote charge for time on deck + travel allowance .. if I'm travelling for their benefit it's detracting from time I could otherwise spend on myself or other clients.
- dk1138 2y ago
  There are a lot of things related to business expenses that you cannot ask employees to pay for such as first aid kits, desks, chairs…even travel outside a certain range. this is simply to say that perhaps the categorization of transportation could be expanded
- klyrs 2y ago
  No, and calling people children is unproductive. Especially in tech, RTO mandates can require significant expense, in time and money. Working from home, I spend another $20/mo for more bandwidth so my zoom experience doesn't hinder meetings. To work from a local office, I'd need to buy and maintain a car and spend an hour a day risking life and limb in traffic; or spend two hours a day taking transit. Or, I could buy a very expensive apartment to shorten my commute to my office. If my office wasn't local, I'd need to relocate my family, buy a new house, on top of all those other expenses. Negotiating with your employer to cover the rising cost of living, and especially expenses incurred by their policies, is a very mature thing to do. Why do you consider that behavior childish? If you're working a job that forces you to make lifestyle changes that you cannot afford, what do you think the mature response should be?
- mattnewton 2y ago
  Not what the article discusses, but there is often a significant tax difference between reimbursable expenses and wages.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
nomilk 2y ago
Australia is currently a case of too much money chasing too few goods [1], especially in its rental market. Huge net migrations into Australia without commensurate increases in housing stock have caused rent increases but also left some without a place to live and caused some long-term tenants to be unable to continue to afford their place [2]. Most Australians just see their salaries go a little less far (due to inflation), but on the extreme end it means homelessness, at least in the short term, and all the associated stress. Media has a tendency to piggyback off the hype around this legitimate problem to peddle all sorts of weird and wonderful ideas, sometimes over simplifying the narrative to (wealthy|employer|landlord) == bad, and (poor|employee|renter) == good. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demand-pull_inflation#:~:text=Demand%2Dpull%20inflation%20occurs%20when,money%20chasing%20too%20few%20goods%22 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demand-pull_inflation#:~:text=.... [2] https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-12-12/immigration-house-prices-jobs-economic-growth-migration-review/103214876 https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-12-12/immigration-house-pri...
- crooked-v 2y ago
  It's astounding sometimes to see the sheer scope of conspiracy theories people will invent just to avoid even considering building more housing.
  - edward28 2y ago
    The problem is housing in Australia has been turned into an investment. The Howard government in the 90's gave houses only 50% capital gains tax, which puts it inline with stocks. This has led to rampant speculation in the property market and the idea the price can only ever go up.
    - pan69 2y ago
      I wonder if there are numbers available on this. E.g, oversimplification, if 50% of the population owns 100% of the real estate would mean that the other 50% can't buy.
  - lmpdev 2y ago
fishtoucher 2y ago
No, what I want is a higher salary and lower tax.
- yen223 2y ago
  Australians are getting an income tax cut next year, so that's nice.
- PlunderBunny 2y ago
  What will you cut from government spending to get the lower tax rate that won't affect anyone negatively? I know you didn't say this, and I'm not trying to put words into your mouth, but I'd rather have higher taxes and a better safety net than lower taxes and a look-after-number-one dog-eats-dog world.
  - lmpdev 2y ago
    Not OP and not necessarily in favour of blanket lower taxes: Dramatically push up capital gains taxes on non-speculative investments like land ownership, housing and superannuation (capital movement must be slowed here) Australia has too much unoptimised capital appreciating in these “non-functional” assets which should be moved into more “functional” investments —————— I use “functional” in the sense that certain asset types have potentially emergent utility over others eg: investing a growing business or working-age person has a higher probability of high or non-linear growth over linearly appreciating assets like bonds, stocks or land. Businesses and people “do” things invariant of their quantitative value, while stocks, land and bonds are just fancy ways of dressing up bearer bonds/instruments Our economic system needs to reemphasise the importance of systems which provide utility over a baseline static capital to just syphon into the shortest path to profit —————— Disclaimer: I’m not an economist and don’t claim to be
- grecy 2y ago
  As an Aussie that has spent significant time in the USA - have a look at what lower taxes have done to the quality of life in the USA. You DO NOT want Australia to be like the USA, trust me.
pylua 2y ago
I feel like this is sort of silly. Unless I am missing something I would expect almost everyone to answer the survey in such a manner that would financially benefit them. With the exception of remote work I would imagine if a want isn’t met no one would quit.
phplovesong 2y ago
We sort of have this. My employer REALLY wants everyone back at the office, but there is the obvious pushback, so everyone can choose how much money they want/need to commute and the employer hands the cash. Even with this cash option, many are only doing 2-3 days per week at the office, other simply refuse all together and said they will resign if there is any mandatory at-the-office days.

31 points by ewgfdgdfgdf 2y ago

Isn’t that what your salary does? Are these people children yearning for the days of the company store and company towns?

tardoe 2y ago
But it's well understood that salaries aren't keeping pace with inflation / retail cost inflation. If salaries aren't then the ask starts to make sense.
- wincy 2y ago
  But in terms of real dollars would total compensation go up? How would this even work? Isn’t this just moving around the chairs on the deck of the Titanic?
  - bobthepanda 2y ago
    Probably the way tax exempt American employee healthcare does, which to sum up is a disaster. Japan currently has tax exempt commuting allowance.
    - votepaunchy 2y ago
      Am not familiar with Japan but the US exempts commuting reimbursements. https://www.irs.gov/publications/p15b#en_US_2024_publink1000193743 https://www.irs.gov/publications/p15b#en_US_2024_publink1000...
      - bobthepanda 2y ago
        In Japan, the commuting allowance allows a full pre-tax writeoff of up to ¥100,000 a month, which before the start of Japanese inflation was about $1000 a month, so it is significantly more generous. https://globalvoices.org/2014/11/05/are-employee-transportation-allowances-the-cause-of-japans-commuter-hell/ https://globalvoices.org/2014/11/05/are-employee-transportat...
  - klyrs 2y ago
    So, you prefer the situation where CEO salaries are rising significantly faster than housing costs, and everybody else's salaries are rising slower than housing costs. I suppose you also consider homeless encampments an eyesore?
- llamaimperative 2y ago
  Unfortunately rising cost of living is mostly generated by people’s salaries going up (due to gradual increase in productivity), then it’s ripe for the taking by landlords. The rising rent requires everyone to raise their prices, thus eating most of the gains of the initial salary increases.
  - coderenegade 2y ago
    Productivity is actually falling. What's happened is that a record number of migrants came in after the fastest rate rises in the country's history, into a historic housing shortage. Competition for rentals (1% vacancy rates in many areas, sometimes lower) has kept the rental yield high, which has in turn buoyed housing prices despite the increase in interest rates. In addition to this, migration and tightening credit are both depressing wages after a short burst of growth during COVID. A big part of this is that work restrictions for student visas have been lifted, which means a flood of full-time cheap labour for those who only use the student visa to gain entry into the country. All of this in a country with a significant money laundering problem in real estate, that has been known about for more than twenty years, and a government that has zero interest in investigating the issue, because 60% of the population either own a home outright, or have a mortgage. Inflation has started increasing again because the cost of housing is included in the CPI, and government price controls on energy (enacted during COVID) are coming to an end. This likely means more rate rises are on the way, at a time when we're seeing a significant decline in per capita GDP.
pylua 2y ago
The article says “are demanding” instead of wants, but I don’t see any hard examples of workers demanding anything but remote work in the article. If anything people are wanting more independence from their employer by having more money and time.
- grecy 2y ago
  Which certainly cuts down on commute expenses.
- emmelaich 2y ago
  "demanding" is a favourite clickbait word. In this case it feeds the zoomers' sense of importance and feeds boomers' opinion of zoomers as entitled. Win-win.
  - pylua 2y ago
    Sounds like a line from a dr Seuss book.
ewgfdgdfgdf 2y ago
[flagged]
- cooper_ganglia 2y ago
  From the HN Guidelines: Please don't comment on whether someone read an article. "Did you even read the article? It mentions that" can be shortened to "The article mentions that". https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- wincy 2y ago
  “Slavery” is an absurd term here. I forgot that if I quit my employer will publicly flog me and drag me back to my workplace. For anyone who thinks about it for half a second it’s obvious productivity is going to be higher in the office, aside from a few possible edge cases. Just because people don’t like it doesn’t mean it isn’t true. The most profitable companies in the world know it. Look, I don’t want to ruin a good thing (I wfh) but obviously there’s a benefit to having people go into the office. Let’s not deceive ourselves that we have some moral high ground just because that’d be awfully convenient. Edit: removed some rude language
  - llm_trw 2y ago
    I have a $50,000 computer at home. At the office I'm forced to use a $1000 laptop and maybe an external screen on the hot desk if I'm lucky and get a good spot. Productivity wise it's not even close.
    - BLKNSLVR 2y ago
      You're going to have to itemise this $50k computer for the rest of us. Are you running some kind of EPYC cluster? Where would you draw the line between the $1k laptop + single monitor and $50k top-of-the-line-plus-many-extras that would be the best productivity for buck compromise?
llm_trw 2y ago
A lot of young people can't manage their lives so yes. Google campuses circa 2016 are the dream for many of them.
rhelz 2y ago
I'd rather just have additional salary, which I could invest/use however I wanted. What's more, companies and the 1% also want us to have additional salary, they just don't realize it yet :-) This business of 99% going to 1% is creating serious economic distortions, and when those resolve themselves 100% of us are going to wish we hadn't created those distortions in the first place.
- pylua 2y ago
  The additional salary would just be diluted too? Proper Ownership in the company would be better.
  - bruce511 2y ago
    By Ownership do you mean; 1) shares that earn dividends from profits? 2) responsibilities such as signing personal surities with suppliers, landlords, banks? 3) being paid last - with whatever is left over? 4) sleepless nights from wondering if enough money will come in to make payroll this month? 5) endless meetings with customers, suppliers, employees, to make sure that everyone is happy all the time? 6) being discriminated against by banks when applying for a home-loan and describing yourself as self-employed. 7) feeling responsible for the livelihood of all your employees. Who would all go to zero income immediately on the day your business fails? 8) signing the financials being supplied to the tax man, with associate penalties for inaccuracies? Some combination of the above? I say this only because I have a business. One where multiple people have stepped into and out of ownership from time to time. Most, frankly, just want the ability to profit-share (which we cater for) only some want the other responsibilities and obligations that come with ownership.
    - pylua 2y ago
      This is a great post, thank you for posting it. Starting a business truly is great endeavor. I mean #1. I am mostly talking about companies that pay such low wages that the government needs to subsidize with food stamps and other benefits. Or the fact that the job does not pay enough for rent. I don’t believe the monetary difference between the Walton’s and the cashier is ethical. On the flip side I have seen employees give their life, blood, sweat and tears to a company that made the owners very wealthy. They were promptly laid off upon sale and did not benefit proportionally (or at all). This was a fast food franchise. I guess everyone is being squeezed now. I wish you all the best luck with your business.
Andaith 2y ago
Nah I think the argument here is we can work from home, so if the employer chooses to require us to work elsewhere, they should pay for that travel. Disclaimer: Live in Aus but this is the first I've heard of this.
- defrost 2y ago
  I'm in Australia also and have (amoungst other things) worked FiFo on and off for four decades now .. mining & resource companies certainly pay for the flights to and from the work place .. and provide accomadation while there. I live outside of Perth, if I consult | work for folk in the big smoke I quote charge for time on deck + travel allowance .. if I'm travelling for their benefit it's detracting from time I could otherwise spend on myself or other clients.
dk1138 2y ago
There are a lot of things related to business expenses that you cannot ask employees to pay for such as first aid kits, desks, chairs…even travel outside a certain range. this is simply to say that perhaps the categorization of transportation could be expanded
klyrs 2y ago
No, and calling people children is unproductive. Especially in tech, RTO mandates can require significant expense, in time and money. Working from home, I spend another $20/mo for more bandwidth so my zoom experience doesn't hinder meetings. To work from a local office, I'd need to buy and maintain a car and spend an hour a day risking life and limb in traffic; or spend two hours a day taking transit. Or, I could buy a very expensive apartment to shorten my commute to my office. If my office wasn't local, I'd need to relocate my family, buy a new house, on top of all those other expenses. Negotiating with your employer to cover the rising cost of living, and especially expenses incurred by their policies, is a very mature thing to do. Why do you consider that behavior childish? If you're working a job that forces you to make lifestyle changes that you cannot afford, what do you think the mature response should be?
mattnewton 2y ago
Not what the article discusses, but there is often a significant tax difference between reimbursable expenses and wages.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

nomilk 2y ago

Australia is currently a case of too much money chasing too few goods [1], especially in its rental market. Huge net migrations into Australia without commensurate increases in housing stock have caused rent increases but also left some without a place to live and caused some long-term tenants to be unable to continue to afford their place [2]. Most Australians just see their salaries go a little less far (due to inflation), but on the extreme end it means homelessness, at least in the short term, and all the associated stress. Media has a tendency to piggyback off the hype around this legitimate problem to peddle all sorts of weird and wonderful ideas, sometimes over simplifying the narrative to (wealthy|employer|landlord) == bad, and (poor|employee|renter) == good. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demand-pull_inflation#:~:text=Demand%2Dpull%20inflation%20occurs%20when,money%20chasing%20too%20few%20goods%22 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demand-pull_inflation#:~:text=.... [2] https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-12-12/immigration-house-prices-jobs-economic-growth-migration-review/103214876 https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-12-12/immigration-house-pri...

crooked-v 2y ago
It's astounding sometimes to see the sheer scope of conspiracy theories people will invent just to avoid even considering building more housing.
- edward28 2y ago
  The problem is housing in Australia has been turned into an investment. The Howard government in the 90's gave houses only 50% capital gains tax, which puts it inline with stocks. This has led to rampant speculation in the property market and the idea the price can only ever go up.
  - pan69 2y ago
    I wonder if there are numbers available on this. E.g, oversimplification, if 50% of the population owns 100% of the real estate would mean that the other 50% can't buy.
- lmpdev 2y ago

fishtoucher 2y ago

No, what I want is a higher salary and lower tax.

yen223 2y ago
Australians are getting an income tax cut next year, so that's nice.
PlunderBunny 2y ago
What will you cut from government spending to get the lower tax rate that won't affect anyone negatively? I know you didn't say this, and I'm not trying to put words into your mouth, but I'd rather have higher taxes and a better safety net than lower taxes and a look-after-number-one dog-eats-dog world.
- lmpdev 2y ago
  Not OP and not necessarily in favour of blanket lower taxes: Dramatically push up capital gains taxes on non-speculative investments like land ownership, housing and superannuation (capital movement must be slowed here) Australia has too much unoptimised capital appreciating in these “non-functional” assets which should be moved into more “functional” investments —————— I use “functional” in the sense that certain asset types have potentially emergent utility over others eg: investing a growing business or working-age person has a higher probability of high or non-linear growth over linearly appreciating assets like bonds, stocks or land. Businesses and people “do” things invariant of their quantitative value, while stocks, land and bonds are just fancy ways of dressing up bearer bonds/instruments Our economic system needs to reemphasise the importance of systems which provide utility over a baseline static capital to just syphon into the shortest path to profit —————— Disclaimer: I’m not an economist and don’t claim to be
grecy 2y ago
As an Aussie that has spent significant time in the USA - have a look at what lower taxes have done to the quality of life in the USA. You DO NOT want Australia to be like the USA, trust me.

pylua 2y ago

I feel like this is sort of silly. Unless I am missing something I would expect almost everyone to answer the survey in such a manner that would financially benefit them. With the exception of remote work I would imagine if a want isn’t met no one would quit.

phplovesong 2y ago

We sort of have this. My employer REALLY wants everyone back at the office, but there is the obvious pushback, so everyone can choose how much money they want/need to commute and the employer hands the cash. Even with this cash option, many are only doing 2-3 days per week at the office, other simply refuse all together and said they will resign if there is any mandatory at-the-office days.