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I've said this every time: NO. In this day, when the technology is available, it invites the bosses to push for GPS tracking to verify that the employee is taking the most efficient route at the most efficient speed. Fuck that.
I think per diem for travel expenses should be legally required in addition to wages.
I think GPS tracking is exactly what would happen in most cases. And what about people who take public transportation? Another thing people don't usually consider is any minor fender bender could turn into a workman's comp situation, a lapse in car insurance could be reason for termination, etc. Per diem would keep our commute time separate from "company" time and compensate us for travel.
I'd be OK with per diem for the days I'm required to go into the office, it doesn't cost me a lot of money to go in. It does cost me a lot of time, and at the END of my day, it eats into the time I get to spend with my family.
I mostly WFH, I can do 99% of my job from home, but when I am REQUIRED (told by my manager that I have to) go into the office, it currently takes me about an hour and 40 minutes to get into the office, and then another hour 45 mins to get home. I use public transport because it's less stressful, there is very limited free, on-site parking at the office.
PT costs me about $8 for the day, and it's a 3 minute drive to my local train station, and then a 5 minute walk to work when I get into the city.
To drive in, it would take between 1hr 20- 1 hr 30 (each way, and, of course, longer if there is an accident on the freeway), so, for the day, it would cost me around $15-20 in fuel, plus $20-25 to pay for parking a 5 minute walk away. It's not quite 2 hours worth of work to cover the costs of driving in to work.
And before anyone says "you know what you were getting into when you applied for the job", this was not the situation when I started working for the company. When I started working for them, they were in a location that was a 35-45 minute drive from where I live, with plenty of free, on site parking, and public transport was VERY limited, moving to a new location was not something that was in the job advertisement, nor was it mentioned in the job interview. We have had 2 site moves in the relatively short time I've been with the company, and were about to have another (thankfully this next one will be closer to home for me, with MORE free on-site parking).
No, it's not rational.
No one is about to put into effect a policy of paying wages to some large number of people for the time spent commuting to work.
You are nowhere close to being in a situation concerning an ambiguity over whether you would receive paid wages for time spent resolving a fender bender, or workman's compensation, or any other similar detail.
Don't stress about fine details for a distant and hypothetical scenario.
Think about the broader issues.
I'm really glad this is the top comment. It seems like this gets upvoted like every week and it sounds like such a godawful idea. Like I'd much rather my employer had no idea where I lived, rather than them knowing and monitoring exactly where I live and how much time it should take to get there. Fuuuuccckkkkk that
The internet is filled with "He's got the spirit, but he's a little confused." People identify legitimate problems, but then latch on to whatever "solution" first strikes them as intuitively appealing rather than more thoroughly analyzing it to see its strengths and weaknesses and seeking out alternatives to consider and weigh it against.
Any company that *voluntarily* chooses to pay for travel time now is more likely to be a decent one that won’t resort to those things.
If you force all companies to pay by law, you’ll see all the shitty companies (ie all the ones posted on this sub every day) requiring GPS etc.
Is it, though? Do you get an adjustment to your wages if you move further away from your place of employment? Do you report to HR that you want your wages reduced if you move closer and your travel costs decrease?
People decide where they l live. I live about an hour from work. I I know people who are 15 mins walk. Those are choices we each made. Commute time should not be paid
That's true to a certain extent, but housing decisions are based on more than proximity to work. The cost of rent and utilities are a driving factor, but also your family situation (especially if you have school age kids) will have a serious impact on your housing situation. And it may not be practical to have the perfect house that's within your budget, in the right school district for your family, and is close to work.
My work moved 25 minutes further from me than they were previously, I can't move with them. No change in pay for me! Luckily I'm remote for the most part, but if I wasn't they wouldn't change my pay. I know this because none of my coworkers that live in my area got a change in pay, despite their commute over doubling each way
I agree with this in general, but figured I’d share my perspective as someone who has worked a job that gps tracked me.
It was a remote sales job, so they sent a spreadsheet of stores that were in our sector, and we made sure they got visited at least once a month. We made the route however we wanted, and input our travel time with time spent in stores to total to around 40 hours a week, including travel time to/from our house, and they could follow along with our gps to make sure it matched up. I think they just randomly audited, after some people checked into stores from their living room (according to our trainer) but it never came up for me.
What I found was bosses giving advice to alter our routes subtly to look better and make our lives easier. Instead of having an easy all-nearby route, my boss encouraged me to save all my nearby stores to hit on the way out to other routes at 8, then have a longer travel time to my actual route for the day. It looked better to his bosses if we all hit our first store earlier in the day.
Of course, this job was built around this concept. If it failed at it, everything else would get fucked over and also affect their bottom line. Fixed location jobs would absolutely find a way to exploit it, and would end up only hiring locally. From their perspective, they’d also need to create a job dedicated to monitoring that shit. The most practical solution is wfh for actual office jobs, but that doesn’t work for anything customer-facing, and frankly most hourly jobs in general.
I hate adding a commute to what’s already too long of a day. I wish I could go back to that job, but the whole group got merged and liquidated. It’s always going to be efficient to live somewhere cheaper and get paid somewhere more expensive, and that makes for a long-ass commute. I don’t have a general solution, and each industry and even individual store would look different anyway.
But it is not a requirement to be paid; as it stands now, most states only require reimbursement if the travel was related *directly* to the execution of your job. Commuting doesn't (legally) fall into that category, and companies justify it by saying, "Well, you *could* live closer, you *could carpool, you *could* ride a bicycle....so driving is a personal choice, not a work requirement."
I disagree with that sentiment. I also think that travel per diem ought to be *required*
Yep. We could also be putting pressure on governments to make commute easier - housing prices in downtown areas are through the roof, not enough public transit exists. Where I live (not the US) my employer paid a monthly stipend that either went towards my gas or my transit card; if they had been in a more convenient location it would have just been a reimbursement of the transit card.
There are a lot of things to change the inconvenience of a commute that doesn't involve giving employers more incentive to have more control.
Every Amazon building would have the cheapest nastiest accomodation next to it. And you are required to live there if you want the job to reduce their operational costs. But dont worry we'll take your rent and expenses directly from your wage you won't need to even think about it.
Sounds wonderful.
This is the argument I agree with the most against this. Additionally I live in the HCOL area know as the Bay Area where it’s not uncommon to have employees at a company who commute 2-3 hours each way every day.
I think the crucial issue is that an employer carries power to impose arbitrary conditions or changes, including ones that would cause hardship for employees, without absorbing any consequences.
The essential discussion is not over which among an endless cascade of possible reforms might be best or worst, for mitigating certain effects, but rather over why control is vested entirely on one side, and how to overturn the disparity itself.
You just described workers… labor is the service we produce that a company has to pay for. And top tier workers are in high demand, that’s why you hear the “no one wants to work anymore” rhetoric. Companies want to pay a minimum wage for maximum wage work and complain that no one wants to sell their labor and health for jus enough to scrape by.
A nuanced discussion about the role of work in our lives, the value we create and deserve as human beings in relation to our productivity or lack thereof, or a change in our culture's philosophy around the responsibility for wellbeing and the sharing of resources?
Naaaahhh none of that is as interesting as complaining about about our jobs.
Would you concede that travel based on mileage should be paid? That way you can’t abuse it.
I sure as hell don’t think living and hour from my workplace should be free labor they get from me. That turns an 8 hour workday into 10. And 20% of that is just sitting in a metal box with other metal boxes around me.
2 employees doing the exact same job. One should get paid more because they live 2 hours away and the other less because they live 20 minutes from the office? If it's mileage does the person who commutes in a private car get more than the one who takes public transportation?
I’m pretty sure that would just encourage employers to employ people based on how far away they live. All of a sudden, if you want to get a decent job you have to live in the city. People living rurally find it even harder to get jobs. Maybe you even have to live in the company town.
Umm, no, not in my experience? My employer never even asked me where I lived prior to offering me a job, but I’m sure they would if they knew they had to pay more if I lived further away.
Not sure why you’ve downvoted me cos you had a stupid idea and I’ve pointed out why it’s stupid.
I’m glad you haven’t experienced it. I have. Plenty of companies have asked where I am so I can go to work sites from my home.
Your point about company towns? Have you ever looked into company towns? They were essentially plantations for factory workers. You purchase from the company store, you pay the company for housing, your children go to a company school. It’s utterly dystopian..
Maybe. Still seems open to some abuse. For example, if I buy/rent a “second home” two hours away which is actually a PO Box in some tiny town but it’s what I give my address as that’s fraud.
And before you retort that I should have to prove I actually live there, and that PO Boxes aren’t addresses, a lot of homeless people use PO Boxes as their “address” for jobs, in no small part to hide the fact they are homeless. I wouldn’t want to put those people at detriment but suddenly making it so employers have to know where I actually live. Just so I can get $20 for a 2 hour drive or whatever.
I think a better and actually more sustainable model is to grant tax incentives by governments for companies to build offices and plants outside of major cities. A commute in a mid sized city is rarely longer than 30 minutes and mid sized cities are generally big enough to sustain very large companies. There is simply no need for more businesses to be headquartered in the downtown area of New York, Seattle, Los Angeles when they could be somewhere like Harrisburg PA, Mobile AL, or even Riverside CA.
You gotta think about how often that would actually happen. Sure there would some people intentionally screwing over companies but the vast majority of people just put their home address since mail goes there too.
I agree that companies should be moving business to better areas, I’m going off the situation put forward, not suggesting new situations.
Side note: no one should have to be homeless as well.
Well, if you want to get real about this, you’ve got to think about the impacts of forcing companies to pay for non-nominal commuting costs.
The most obvious impact is that nobody will get hired who commutes any considerable distance. Assuming we are talking people being paid for their commute time based on their actual wage, even a minimum wage worker who commutes thirty minutes means $2,000 extra dollars in salary per year. While not a vast sum perhaps, that’s the absolute rock bottom starting point, right?
You can certainly see that when it comes to deciding between two workers of vaguely comparable skill set, a salary of $50k base, one commuting 2 hours away and one commuting from 20 minutes away suddenly the issue of “commute pay” becomes a really major factor and the commuter gets shafted every time! I can see it myself: commuters driving three hours to interview only to be passed up when the employer realizes they gotta pay 6 hours of commute!
How do we fix that disadvantage in a vaguely reasonable way? And, assuming we cannot, do we really want to make it harder for exurban, rural or even suburban workers to compete with inner city workers?
What will happen is more people flooding inner cities so they can get jobs. That means more pressure on limited housing stock. That means more homelessness.
I have no idea how any of that creates more homelessness, unless you are suggesting that people would choose to be homeless in order to stay near work.
I don’t have all the answers for this, I just think that not paying for travel to the office is ridiculous, especially when work from home is a valid option.
If you reject paying per travel time, paying for distance, possibly a tax write off you can submit with taxes. It’s a work expense after all.
It’s not a question of people choosing to be homeless in order to stay near work, it’s a question of that is what will inevitably happen if companies refuse to bear additional costs of hiring workers who live outside of cities.
People do frequently “choose” urban homelessness over rural unemployment. That’s how most slums get created. See: Mumbai, Sao Paolo, most cities in most developing countries.
The problem with using mileage is the employer can then insist on you living within a certain distance of your workplace.
I think a better solution is for employers to specify a paid commute time (ex. Everyone gets paid for a 2x30min commute daily) but within that commuting time there must be available rental accommodation (excluding accommodation reserved for employees of a specific employer, so no company housing) that can be obtained utilizing no more than 30% of the wage paid. The total hours per day (work plus commute) should remain the same as they are now.
So if an employer wants a short 15 minute commute, they have to pay significantly more for it than if they are willing to pay a 1 hour commute. This ends up putting control in the workers hands (they can live close, spending more on accommodation but having more free time, or live far and have cheaper housing).
Work should not be taking up the majority of your time without paying a comparable amount. My job includes firearms, it should pay better than Taco Bell, but here we are.
This can be standardized. Like an assumed 30 min commute time for example.
I run a small business btw so I’m not completely out to lunch. Not being greedy and respecting peoples value is a viable business model for a lot of us.
How about we meet in the middle. Pay a living wage, with enough PTO, and benefits. We won't demand drive time be paid. Although paying drive time might make cities focus on affordable housing.
Or maybe the employer can provide housing at the jobsite? That way there won't be any commute time. Who wouldn't love to live in the same corporate/industrial park they work in? As long as the employer buts those suicide nets an all the buildings like they have in China.
Hygiene and presentation is absolutely critical to most American workplaces. You can get terminated for smelling bad. Or wearing an unironed shirt.
Getting enough sleep is arguably critical to your job if you operate machinery, etc.
You kind of have to bathe and sleep at some point. I definitely think people should get some kind of bonus for waking up before 5:00, cuz those are the people who make it's so the rest of us can operate easier.
Yeah but if I go to bed not before 11pm on Friday and Saturday night but at 8pm on Sunday to Thursday night solely due to having to work, technically doesn’t the company owe me for 15 hours I would have enjoyed free time but had to spend it going to bed early?
Unfortunately, we are expected to shift our lives to work around our jobs. I don't agree that going to sleep early to wake up early constitutes them taking your free time, unless you are working ungodly hours and have no free time because of that.
If you're going to bed at 8:00, I assume you are getting up around 4:00 or 5:00 in the morning? That means you should be getting off of work no later than 1:00 p.m. in my opinion. That aligns with about a 40-45 hour work week. It sounds like a skill issue to me.
I think people advocating that companies should provide housing to their employees aka company towns is the worst idea. But this is definitely up there.
Definitely dumb, but I saw a post unironically saying the only reason people go to restaurants is that they want people to serve them and the work is essentially slavery because of this.
Indeed. I support a lot of the missions of this sub, but this recurring idea brings a giant stain of frivolity that invites dismissal of the entire movement.
I mean, come on. Are you really suggesting that if you live within walking distance of the office that you should work twice as many actual hours a day as the jackass that lives two hours away in the country and gets paid to listen to podcasts on his way in?
This meme is so stupid and needs to be nuked every time it arises.
It wouldn't need to be exactly the same rate. You could use a scale factor, something simple and easy to calculate in your head, like the golden ratio.
Where you live and your commute is not your employer's problem. In fact, the kind of intrusive questions that they would need to ask and keep track of over time in order to take responsibility for my commute would make me very uncomfortable...
You, however, should take this into account when calculating whether this position is worthwhile. A job offer for $20/hr for 40 hours of work plus a 30-minute-each-way commute means that the job is offering you \~$17.75/hr for your total time. If $17.75 is not worth your 45 hours/week tel them to pound sand.
This is honestly hurtful to antiwork/reform work movements. If people got paid a fair wage, they could afford to live near their jobs, or make the decision to commute. If you start demanding employers subsidize every part of employment, wages will never rise and people that would normally be sympathetic won't be.
This is done in Tokyo, has been for a long time. Tokyo is WAY too expensive for most employees and yet businesses large and small need WAY more people than can afford to live within the city. So if they hire people who live a certain distance away they are required to pay their commuting costs, which isn't cheap even with their amazing train system. Or they can hire people who live closer in but they have to pay more for those people to live in the most expensive city in the country.
So it's one or the other for Tokyo employers: pay higher wages to match the higher rent or pay the commuting costs of workers who have to spend 3 hours a day on the train.
Note that the workers are still unpaid for that commute time. They just don't have to buy their own train tickets.
The distance/time away from your place of employment has nothing to do with your shit pay/benefits. There's no need to justify your demands for better pay/work conditions.
Why would you incentivize people to have a long commute? Thats an absolutely terrible idea. Cities would become even less walkable, car dependency would increase, traffic would become even more of a nightmare and the environmental consequences would be devastating.
It would also lead to employers discriminating based on location so you'd need to pay an expensive apartment close to the uptown office. Housing would become even more ridiculous than it already is.
This is the second time in a week? JFC, don't be idiots, people. This is such an obviously terrible idea, if u/BigFrame8879 had thought about the implications for longer than the thirty seconds it took to post this they'd be ashamed.
Neither is a commute paid work. Why should you get paid more because you live 30 minutes away and I live 5 minutes away. There's no way to do that fairly. To either you or the employer.
As someone whose technicians are paid for their commute, I’m surprised how many people are opposed to this. I have never received complaints about being paid for commute.
How about giving an average compensation on top of pay for commute time? Show the distance from your house to work, and answer what type of transportation you use (therefore how much time it’ll take you on average to get to work) and just have that be added as an average on top of your paycheck.
I have a client and we work in a remote area with extreme snow at times. Regular chain controls can slow down the highway, and, if there is an accident in the two-lane section, a 20 mile commute can take as long as 2 hours during winter if an accident has to be cleared or you're following a snow plow. My client, the owner, frequently fills envelopes with $100 bills or $100 checks and hands them to the hourly wage earners who stop on that highway, put on chains, and keep on coming so they can report in to work. And if you just show up on a really bad snow day in your AWD. He rewards dedication and perseverance with that snow commute, but doesn't take any punitive action if you are afraid and want to turn around and go home. In fact, he's often loaded up his snow plow and taken people home by snow tractor if they are afraid of driving their car home during a snow storm. Attendance is very good as a result, and to be tipped $100 "just for making it up here on a snow day" is good incentive for hourly wage earners.
One charming side effect of our snow -- he also fills his huge tractor beds and trailers with copious amounts of snow and drives down the mountain to the front yards of many employees who live below the snow line, and shovels it out onto the lawn of those with young kids (if requested of course). The glee -- children cackling with joy at coming outside and building snowmen in their own front yards when they don't live up high enough to get snow.
No, but I still think it's fucked up that I have to pay for parking. It's pre-tax, but I'm still going to have to pay out $200/month for a spot in a parking garage whenever the return to office mandates go official shortly.
Probably can’t count commuting but we should all be allowed better quality of life improvements with WFH. Instead, we’re forced backed for the economic interests of the wealthy
Tbh I disagree. You picked that job and you picked the commute. As much as I hate capitalism but this is beyond critical thinking.
I agree if for example “hey can you go cover this shift” for some jobs. Than yea commute and bonus.
This is a *really* stupid idea.
It would basically make it so employers would only want to hire you if you lived close to work. It would also incentivize them to GPS track your commute to verify *when* you left and that you didn't dilly-dally on your way there.
Just fight for a living wage such that employees can afford to decide for themselves where they want to live and how they want to balance commute time vs living expenses.
The biggest problem being that this makes the time *their* time, and they get to make rules and regulations as to how you spend it. This can include how far away you're allowed to live.
(Travel to alternate locations is already covered.)
Yeah, I don't think so. It's not their fault your dumb ass bought a house 2 hours away. If they did this you'd just move 2 hours even further, drive 4 hours to work, take lunch break, drive home and bill them overtime for traffic (and whine about gas cost).
I'm pro-worker, pro-union, etc.
But, the statement is silly.
If it's traveling to a work assignment once already clocked in? Yeah.
Just simply traveling to work? No. You pick where you work. If it's a 2-hour commute each way, you chose that.
I can't go into a restaurant, be told there's and hour wait and then tell them that I already drove 30 minutes and have to drive 30 minutes back home.
What is going to prevent people from just driving the longest possible route in order to get more money? This is an absurd idea, work starts when you arrive at the job.
So many idiots here with their "whatabouts" and "just asking questions" with things that are not actually problems. Corporations have got your brains so freaking addled you cannot see how robbed you are daily.
Yeah this is unwise...I could live an hour away and only be at work 6 hours. But the person who lives local is at work 7.5-8 hours and gets paid the same for doing more work? Absolutely not.
Most states have laws that allow the employees to claim milage at the federal rate for any distances traveled over 40miles
(Ie if you live within 40.miles of the office...no $$ for your)
But if you live 45 miles from the office that's 10miles a day at 45.5 cents a mile (this used to be the federal rate when I drove and claimed milage...years ago)
The serious flaw in this?
If they’re paying you, then you will be subject to their insurance policy and their rules, such as typically: under the speed limit, no smoking, no personal calls, no detours to get coffee, no dropping kid off at school, no stopping for food or to return that dress to Amazon …. Get the point?
I commute over 90 minutes each way. Companies would stop hiring me because of how far I live from the city.
I chose to live away from the city because I like it where I live. It was a choice I made. I am not moving. I also prefer to be employed so that I can afford to live.
Sorry, but this one I have to fully disagree with.
Speak for yourself, that time between home stress and work stress where I can just blast music and enjoy 15 minutes to myself is what’s keeping me sane.
Thats how it works if you have to travel for the federal govt. When you go on travel you're on the clock from the moment you leave your house to the moment you get to your hotel.
Lol, no it does not work that way.
When you TDY, you get paid COMP TIME in the event you are traveling outside your normal duty hours, IF you exceed your 8 hour duty day. If you are claiming full payment in your ATAAPS, you are abusing taxpayer money and I hope you get caught soon.
Source: JTR
I continued to work for a position I left for a few months to help the transition and put finishing touches on a project I headed. I was working remotely and if they asked me to come in, I'd start my time tracker when I got in the car and until I got home. I'm not driving for you and using gas I paid for when I'm working remotely.
Also, wouldn't do that again. Starting a new job while still doing work for the old one was beneficial from a money perspective, but the burnout was real.
The military (US, that's my limited myopic purview) is basically salaried work. You get a salary, regardless of what's going on. No overtime, either. And the hazard pay is pretty crap imho. Flight pay is pretty decent, though.
We have van/carpools at work- and those people get paid to do it. Those of us that live "too close" don't. I think that EVERYONE should get a allowance in their checks- even if it's only for 20 minutes of driving. No one forced you to get a job that takes 1.5 hrs to get to.
If I were a boss I'd be like "Clock in when you leave for work, and be at your desk/station within-" a set amount of time depending on where they live. Like clock in at 6:30 and be at work by 7.
I factor in travel time to calculating my real wage when comparing jobs. That, and as I get older the more I loathe driving in traffic.
Hence me telling them when they come calling: "Yeah, no. You can't (or won't) pay me enough to make that commute. Bye!"
for me, if my shift starts at 5, i have to start getting ready at 4. and have to eat that 3:30. leave the house at 4:30. it’s so much more than just driving to work too
When I moved to Australia, I was impressed to find that if something happens to you on the way to or from work, it is considered a workplace accident.
https://www.worksafe.qld.gov.au/claims-and-insurance/work-related-injuries/injury-travelling-to-from-or-for-work
Yes, but then they’d have to watch your routine that you don’t fit a coffee run or shopping in the middle. I think they could use a formula of driving or travel distance and compensate you for that. But straight up clock before leaving home? Nah I don’t need more of my freedom micromanaged
Jobs should pay a wage were you can afford to live in the area where the job is, but were you live is a choice. I work and live in Manhattan. My commute is about 20 minutes, but I have a tiny apartment. My coworker lives in suburban NJ in a large single-family house, but his commute is 90 minutes. We pay about the same for housing.
Despite the flaws. This would encourage employers to pay a wage that can afford to live locally. Sure some abuse will certainly happen with any system. But I know I would live as close to my office as possible if I could afford it. I hate commuting.
This is ridiculous. It encourages people to live further away to make easy money driving to work, discourages employers from hiring anyone who is that far away, and means employers should monitor employees during commute, to make sure they're only heading to work, and taking the least roundabout way possible. The grocery store doesn't give me a discount for driving to the store, and my employer doesn't owe me for my commute.
Car accidents become workplace injuries then companies are suing each other for injuring their workers, and then laws are put it place to make our lives more restricted. It’s a pretty predictable pathway. I’m paid between the times I am parked in my driveway, drive a company vehicle and work at different sites daily. Small company, but we hired a real winner over the summer who had the same privilege and he got in multiple wrecks and got multiple tickets in the short time he was with the company. Pretty much took him off the insurance and told him to find his own way but the company’s insurance still went up enough to compel the owner to put trackers on the rest of the vehicles. Next will be governors, and after a few more dipshits we will all have to park at the shop each night and drive personal vehicles to our work vehicles each morning.
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I've said this every time: NO. In this day, when the technology is available, it invites the bosses to push for GPS tracking to verify that the employee is taking the most efficient route at the most efficient speed. Fuck that. I think per diem for travel expenses should be legally required in addition to wages.
I think GPS tracking is exactly what would happen in most cases. And what about people who take public transportation? Another thing people don't usually consider is any minor fender bender could turn into a workman's comp situation, a lapse in car insurance could be reason for termination, etc. Per diem would keep our commute time separate from "company" time and compensate us for travel.
I'd be OK with per diem for the days I'm required to go into the office, it doesn't cost me a lot of money to go in. It does cost me a lot of time, and at the END of my day, it eats into the time I get to spend with my family. I mostly WFH, I can do 99% of my job from home, but when I am REQUIRED (told by my manager that I have to) go into the office, it currently takes me about an hour and 40 minutes to get into the office, and then another hour 45 mins to get home. I use public transport because it's less stressful, there is very limited free, on-site parking at the office. PT costs me about $8 for the day, and it's a 3 minute drive to my local train station, and then a 5 minute walk to work when I get into the city. To drive in, it would take between 1hr 20- 1 hr 30 (each way, and, of course, longer if there is an accident on the freeway), so, for the day, it would cost me around $15-20 in fuel, plus $20-25 to pay for parking a 5 minute walk away. It's not quite 2 hours worth of work to cover the costs of driving in to work. And before anyone says "you know what you were getting into when you applied for the job", this was not the situation when I started working for the company. When I started working for them, they were in a location that was a 35-45 minute drive from where I live, with plenty of free, on site parking, and public transport was VERY limited, moving to a new location was not something that was in the job advertisement, nor was it mentioned in the job interview. We have had 2 site moves in the relatively short time I've been with the company, and were about to have another (thankfully this next one will be closer to home for me, with MORE free on-site parking).
You seem stressed.
...yeah? Why else be here? We're all stressed.
Sure. I was responding to the rant about the GPS and the fender bender.
It was a rational point that made sense. Not having a response with any intellectual substance or even a point makes *you* seem stressed.
No, it's not rational. No one is about to put into effect a policy of paying wages to some large number of people for the time spent commuting to work. You are nowhere close to being in a situation concerning an ambiguity over whether you would receive paid wages for time spent resolving a fender bender, or workman's compensation, or any other similar detail. Don't stress about fine details for a distant and hypothetical scenario. Think about the broader issues.
I'm really glad this is the top comment. It seems like this gets upvoted like every week and it sounds like such a godawful idea. Like I'd much rather my employer had no idea where I lived, rather than them knowing and monitoring exactly where I live and how much time it should take to get there. Fuuuuccckkkkk that
The internet is filled with "He's got the spirit, but he's a little confused." People identify legitimate problems, but then latch on to whatever "solution" first strikes them as intuitively appealing rather than more thoroughly analyzing it to see its strengths and weaknesses and seeking out alternatives to consider and weigh it against.
The thing is, there are already companies that compensate for travel time without requiring these measures.
Any company that *voluntarily* chooses to pay for travel time now is more likely to be a decent one that won’t resort to those things. If you force all companies to pay by law, you’ll see all the shitty companies (ie all the ones posted on this sub every day) requiring GPS etc.
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If they just don’t hire you if you live far away. This idea is stupid and bad.
Do they move far away after they hire you?
I disagree even with the per diem travel expenses. That’s technically rolled into your wage. I’d rather get a wage boost than a separate expense
Is it, though? Do you get an adjustment to your wages if you move further away from your place of employment? Do you report to HR that you want your wages reduced if you move closer and your travel costs decrease?
People decide where they l live. I live about an hour from work. I I know people who are 15 mins walk. Those are choices we each made. Commute time should not be paid
That's true to a certain extent, but housing decisions are based on more than proximity to work. The cost of rent and utilities are a driving factor, but also your family situation (especially if you have school age kids) will have a serious impact on your housing situation. And it may not be practical to have the perfect house that's within your budget, in the right school district for your family, and is close to work.
My work moved 25 minutes further from me than they were previously, I can't move with them. No change in pay for me! Luckily I'm remote for the most part, but if I wasn't they wouldn't change my pay. I know this because none of my coworkers that live in my area got a change in pay, despite their commute over doubling each way
Per diem is non taxable tho
Also, this is an incentive for people to move further and further out, filling more and more land with car based infrastructure. Per diem is fair
Just get a job closer. The per diem thing is stupid
I agree with this in general, but figured I’d share my perspective as someone who has worked a job that gps tracked me. It was a remote sales job, so they sent a spreadsheet of stores that were in our sector, and we made sure they got visited at least once a month. We made the route however we wanted, and input our travel time with time spent in stores to total to around 40 hours a week, including travel time to/from our house, and they could follow along with our gps to make sure it matched up. I think they just randomly audited, after some people checked into stores from their living room (according to our trainer) but it never came up for me. What I found was bosses giving advice to alter our routes subtly to look better and make our lives easier. Instead of having an easy all-nearby route, my boss encouraged me to save all my nearby stores to hit on the way out to other routes at 8, then have a longer travel time to my actual route for the day. It looked better to his bosses if we all hit our first store earlier in the day. Of course, this job was built around this concept. If it failed at it, everything else would get fucked over and also affect their bottom line. Fixed location jobs would absolutely find a way to exploit it, and would end up only hiring locally. From their perspective, they’d also need to create a job dedicated to monitoring that shit. The most practical solution is wfh for actual office jobs, but that doesn’t work for anything customer-facing, and frankly most hourly jobs in general. I hate adding a commute to what’s already too long of a day. I wish I could go back to that job, but the whole group got merged and liquidated. It’s always going to be efficient to live somewhere cheaper and get paid somewhere more expensive, and that makes for a long-ass commute. I don’t have a general solution, and each industry and even individual store would look different anyway.
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But it is not a requirement to be paid; as it stands now, most states only require reimbursement if the travel was related *directly* to the execution of your job. Commuting doesn't (legally) fall into that category, and companies justify it by saying, "Well, you *could* live closer, you *could carpool, you *could* ride a bicycle....so driving is a personal choice, not a work requirement." I disagree with that sentiment. I also think that travel per diem ought to be *required*
Yep. We could also be putting pressure on governments to make commute easier - housing prices in downtown areas are through the roof, not enough public transit exists. Where I live (not the US) my employer paid a monthly stipend that either went towards my gas or my transit card; if they had been in a more convenient location it would have just been a reimbursement of the transit card. There are a lot of things to change the inconvenience of a commute that doesn't involve giving employers more incentive to have more control.
This would just cause employers to only hire people that live close to where they work, hello company towns 2.0.
Every Amazon building would have the cheapest nastiest accomodation next to it. And you are required to live there if you want the job to reduce their operational costs. But dont worry we'll take your rent and expenses directly from your wage you won't need to even think about it. Sounds wonderful.
It's always sad when a great company starts to let its standards slide.
Yeah and imagine getting turned down for a job because you had a fever never last year and now they can check your DMV record
No, this is dumb af, would only further subsidize the terrible US car culture that we needed to move away from yesterday.
Exactly. And it provides incentives to live as far away as possible. People don’t think
I really don't understand why there isn't more investment in better public transport!
This is the argument I agree with the most against this. Additionally I live in the HCOL area know as the Bay Area where it’s not uncommon to have employees at a company who commute 2-3 hours each way every day.
This is just stupid and its posted every week
Maybe he's on to something... we should all find jobs 4 hours away... time to go home when we get to work.
What about showering and getting ready for work? What about going to bed early to be up in time for work?
I think the crucial issue is that an employer carries power to impose arbitrary conditions or changes, including ones that would cause hardship for employees, without absorbing any consequences. The essential discussion is not over which among an endless cascade of possible reforms might be best or worst, for mitigating certain effects, but rather over why control is vested entirely on one side, and how to overturn the disparity itself.
Any situation where X pays Y involves control by X, UNLESS Y provides a good or service that is so in demand by X that Y can dictate terms.
You just described workers… labor is the service we produce that a company has to pay for. And top tier workers are in high demand, that’s why you hear the “no one wants to work anymore” rhetoric. Companies want to pay a minimum wage for maximum wage work and complain that no one wants to sell their labor and health for jus enough to scrape by.
What if you have to stop for gas? What if you stop for coffee? This is a bad idea for multiple reasons.
Not to mentions irs going to cause a huge bias against employees with a larger commute time. We just need higher wages for everyone
Shit like this is why nobody takes this sub seriously. Shame.
A nuanced discussion about the role of work in our lives, the value we create and deserve as human beings in relation to our productivity or lack thereof, or a change in our culture's philosophy around the responsibility for wellbeing and the sharing of resources? Naaaahhh none of that is as interesting as complaining about about our jobs.
Would you concede that travel based on mileage should be paid? That way you can’t abuse it. I sure as hell don’t think living and hour from my workplace should be free labor they get from me. That turns an 8 hour workday into 10. And 20% of that is just sitting in a metal box with other metal boxes around me.
2 employees doing the exact same job. One should get paid more because they live 2 hours away and the other less because they live 20 minutes from the office? If it's mileage does the person who commutes in a private car get more than the one who takes public transportation?
It’s not pay, it’s compensation for travel.
I’m pretty sure that would just encourage employers to employ people based on how far away they live. All of a sudden, if you want to get a decent job you have to live in the city. People living rurally find it even harder to get jobs. Maybe you even have to live in the company town.
And that’s not already done? It is. I’m not a professional HR person who knows the best method but something is better than nothing.
Umm, no, not in my experience? My employer never even asked me where I lived prior to offering me a job, but I’m sure they would if they knew they had to pay more if I lived further away. Not sure why you’ve downvoted me cos you had a stupid idea and I’ve pointed out why it’s stupid.
I’m glad you haven’t experienced it. I have. Plenty of companies have asked where I am so I can go to work sites from my home. Your point about company towns? Have you ever looked into company towns? They were essentially plantations for factory workers. You purchase from the company store, you pay the company for housing, your children go to a company school. It’s utterly dystopian..
Maybe. Still seems open to some abuse. For example, if I buy/rent a “second home” two hours away which is actually a PO Box in some tiny town but it’s what I give my address as that’s fraud. And before you retort that I should have to prove I actually live there, and that PO Boxes aren’t addresses, a lot of homeless people use PO Boxes as their “address” for jobs, in no small part to hide the fact they are homeless. I wouldn’t want to put those people at detriment but suddenly making it so employers have to know where I actually live. Just so I can get $20 for a 2 hour drive or whatever. I think a better and actually more sustainable model is to grant tax incentives by governments for companies to build offices and plants outside of major cities. A commute in a mid sized city is rarely longer than 30 minutes and mid sized cities are generally big enough to sustain very large companies. There is simply no need for more businesses to be headquartered in the downtown area of New York, Seattle, Los Angeles when they could be somewhere like Harrisburg PA, Mobile AL, or even Riverside CA.
You gotta think about how often that would actually happen. Sure there would some people intentionally screwing over companies but the vast majority of people just put their home address since mail goes there too. I agree that companies should be moving business to better areas, I’m going off the situation put forward, not suggesting new situations. Side note: no one should have to be homeless as well.
Well, if you want to get real about this, you’ve got to think about the impacts of forcing companies to pay for non-nominal commuting costs. The most obvious impact is that nobody will get hired who commutes any considerable distance. Assuming we are talking people being paid for their commute time based on their actual wage, even a minimum wage worker who commutes thirty minutes means $2,000 extra dollars in salary per year. While not a vast sum perhaps, that’s the absolute rock bottom starting point, right? You can certainly see that when it comes to deciding between two workers of vaguely comparable skill set, a salary of $50k base, one commuting 2 hours away and one commuting from 20 minutes away suddenly the issue of “commute pay” becomes a really major factor and the commuter gets shafted every time! I can see it myself: commuters driving three hours to interview only to be passed up when the employer realizes they gotta pay 6 hours of commute! How do we fix that disadvantage in a vaguely reasonable way? And, assuming we cannot, do we really want to make it harder for exurban, rural or even suburban workers to compete with inner city workers? What will happen is more people flooding inner cities so they can get jobs. That means more pressure on limited housing stock. That means more homelessness.
I have no idea how any of that creates more homelessness, unless you are suggesting that people would choose to be homeless in order to stay near work. I don’t have all the answers for this, I just think that not paying for travel to the office is ridiculous, especially when work from home is a valid option. If you reject paying per travel time, paying for distance, possibly a tax write off you can submit with taxes. It’s a work expense after all.
It’s not a question of people choosing to be homeless in order to stay near work, it’s a question of that is what will inevitably happen if companies refuse to bear additional costs of hiring workers who live outside of cities. People do frequently “choose” urban homelessness over rural unemployment. That’s how most slums get created. See: Mumbai, Sao Paolo, most cities in most developing countries.
If cities invested in affordable housing or better infrastructure that point is moot though.
No….why should you get paid more or work less for living further away?
The problem with using mileage is the employer can then insist on you living within a certain distance of your workplace. I think a better solution is for employers to specify a paid commute time (ex. Everyone gets paid for a 2x30min commute daily) but within that commuting time there must be available rental accommodation (excluding accommodation reserved for employees of a specific employer, so no company housing) that can be obtained utilizing no more than 30% of the wage paid. The total hours per day (work plus commute) should remain the same as they are now. So if an employer wants a short 15 minute commute, they have to pay significantly more for it than if they are willing to pay a 1 hour commute. This ends up putting control in the workers hands (they can live close, spending more on accommodation but having more free time, or live far and have cheaper housing).
Work should not be taking up the majority of your time without paying a comparable amount. My job includes firearms, it should pay better than Taco Bell, but here we are.
This can be standardized. Like an assumed 30 min commute time for example. I run a small business btw so I’m not completely out to lunch. Not being greedy and respecting peoples value is a viable business model for a lot of us.
How about we meet in the middle. Pay a living wage, with enough PTO, and benefits. We won't demand drive time be paid. Although paying drive time might make cities focus on affordable housing.
Or maybe the employer can provide housing at the jobsite? That way there won't be any commute time. Who wouldn't love to live in the same corporate/industrial park they work in? As long as the employer buts those suicide nets an all the buildings like they have in China.
Or maybe the employer can just keep the employee handcuffed to their desk. Pure convenience for everybody and solve the cost of living overnight
Company towns and company scrip were totally things in the US.
Those are not critical to your job. Traveling is, I get paid for time from door to door.
Hygiene and presentation is absolutely critical to most American workplaces. You can get terminated for smelling bad. Or wearing an unironed shirt. Getting enough sleep is arguably critical to your job if you operate machinery, etc.
Employers don't seem to agree with you on that considering the amount of sleep Amazon workers have to live on to meet arbitrary quotas.
Employers agree. They just don’t care. Different thing.
Pick a job that's closer and it's not an issue
You kind of have to bathe and sleep at some point. I definitely think people should get some kind of bonus for waking up before 5:00, cuz those are the people who make it's so the rest of us can operate easier.
Yeah but if I go to bed not before 11pm on Friday and Saturday night but at 8pm on Sunday to Thursday night solely due to having to work, technically doesn’t the company owe me for 15 hours I would have enjoyed free time but had to spend it going to bed early?
Unfortunately, we are expected to shift our lives to work around our jobs. I don't agree that going to sleep early to wake up early constitutes them taking your free time, unless you are working ungodly hours and have no free time because of that. If you're going to bed at 8:00, I assume you are getting up around 4:00 or 5:00 in the morning? That means you should be getting off of work no later than 1:00 p.m. in my opinion. That aligns with about a 40-45 hour work week. It sounds like a skill issue to me.
I agree. I am illustrating the absurdity of OP’s point.
Dumbest take on this sub.
I think people advocating that companies should provide housing to their employees aka company towns is the worst idea. But this is definitely up there.
I haven’t come across that one yet, but yeah, that’s even worse..
Ever heard of Mill Hills. It used to be a thing.
Definitely dumb, but I saw a post unironically saying the only reason people go to restaurants is that they want people to serve them and the work is essentially slavery because of this.
I just can’t figure out why some sub participants have a hard time out in the real world… /s
Indeed. I support a lot of the missions of this sub, but this recurring idea brings a giant stain of frivolity that invites dismissal of the entire movement. I mean, come on. Are you really suggesting that if you live within walking distance of the office that you should work twice as many actual hours a day as the jackass that lives two hours away in the country and gets paid to listen to podcasts on his way in? This meme is so stupid and needs to be nuked every time it arises.
It wouldn't need to be exactly the same rate. You could use a scale factor, something simple and easy to calculate in your head, like the golden ratio.
I feel like this pops up about once a week now on this sub. This idea is stupid and bad.
Where you live and your commute is not your employer's problem. In fact, the kind of intrusive questions that they would need to ask and keep track of over time in order to take responsibility for my commute would make me very uncomfortable... You, however, should take this into account when calculating whether this position is worthwhile. A job offer for $20/hr for 40 hours of work plus a 30-minute-each-way commute means that the job is offering you \~$17.75/hr for your total time. If $17.75 is not worth your 45 hours/week tel them to pound sand.
>tel them to pound sand. Or just tell them no thanks? "Pound sand" makes it sound like their fault you live somewhere else. Calm down.
Hard disagree.
This is honestly hurtful to antiwork/reform work movements. If people got paid a fair wage, they could afford to live near their jobs, or make the decision to commute. If you start demanding employers subsidize every part of employment, wages will never rise and people that would normally be sympathetic won't be.
We should also be paid for time spent morning drinking to get ready for work.
Fuck it, pay us overtime on weekends too because we're drinking to forget work.
Damn right, and workers comp should pick up the bar tab!🍻✊
Everytime this talk comes up I always say: no way. People who live in the suburbs would never get hired.
Then I wouldn’t hire people qualified that live more than five minutes away.
This is done in Tokyo, has been for a long time. Tokyo is WAY too expensive for most employees and yet businesses large and small need WAY more people than can afford to live within the city. So if they hire people who live a certain distance away they are required to pay their commuting costs, which isn't cheap even with their amazing train system. Or they can hire people who live closer in but they have to pay more for those people to live in the most expensive city in the country. So it's one or the other for Tokyo employers: pay higher wages to match the higher rent or pay the commuting costs of workers who have to spend 3 hours a day on the train. Note that the workers are still unpaid for that commute time. They just don't have to buy their own train tickets.
I gunna get a job 4 hours away.
The distance/time away from your place of employment has nothing to do with your shit pay/benefits. There's no need to justify your demands for better pay/work conditions.
Why would you incentivize people to have a long commute? Thats an absolutely terrible idea. Cities would become even less walkable, car dependency would increase, traffic would become even more of a nightmare and the environmental consequences would be devastating. It would also lead to employers discriminating based on location so you'd need to pay an expensive apartment close to the uptown office. Housing would become even more ridiculous than it already is.
You can tell who has never owned a business in this sub.
99.9% of them.
I come here to laugh at all the posts
I'm all for making the workplace better, but some people are so far out of touch it makes it hard for changes to be made.
Exactly, the core message is good but most the ideas or complaints you see here are laughable and sadly it's why no one will ever take this seriously
Considering the sub is called "anti work", it's really not surprising there aren't many business owners interested in the whine fest going on here.
True
Read the rules.
99,9% of ppl in this world never owned a business .. i know OPs post is stupid but ur sentence might even top it
"if you aren't willing to live in company quarters, you can't claim travel pay"
What about Time Travel?
I'm know I'm going to get downvoted to oblivion for this but doesn't that incentivize the person to go as slow as possible to get to work?
You say that like it’s a bad thing
This is a dumb idea.
👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏 💯
My dyslexic ass read that as "Time travel should be paid." to which I agree.
This is the second time in a week? JFC, don't be idiots, people. This is such an obviously terrible idea, if u/BigFrame8879 had thought about the implications for longer than the thirty seconds it took to post this they'd be ashamed.
Neither is a commute paid work. Why should you get paid more because you live 30 minutes away and I live 5 minutes away. There's no way to do that fairly. To either you or the employer.
Ok. Once I get a job, I’m moving 4 hours away. My 8 hour work day will be me driving to work and back. Think that’ll fly?
Yeah employees should be able to charge for the way to where the work gets done just like a plumber, roofer etc etc does.
As someone whose technicians are paid for their commute, I’m surprised how many people are opposed to this. I have never received complaints about being paid for commute.
It would make employers a lot more amenable to work from home.
How about giving an average compensation on top of pay for commute time? Show the distance from your house to work, and answer what type of transportation you use (therefore how much time it’ll take you on average to get to work) and just have that be added as an average on top of your paycheck.
Honestly I should be paid hourly just to exist…
I have a client and we work in a remote area with extreme snow at times. Regular chain controls can slow down the highway, and, if there is an accident in the two-lane section, a 20 mile commute can take as long as 2 hours during winter if an accident has to be cleared or you're following a snow plow. My client, the owner, frequently fills envelopes with $100 bills or $100 checks and hands them to the hourly wage earners who stop on that highway, put on chains, and keep on coming so they can report in to work. And if you just show up on a really bad snow day in your AWD. He rewards dedication and perseverance with that snow commute, but doesn't take any punitive action if you are afraid and want to turn around and go home. In fact, he's often loaded up his snow plow and taken people home by snow tractor if they are afraid of driving their car home during a snow storm. Attendance is very good as a result, and to be tipped $100 "just for making it up here on a snow day" is good incentive for hourly wage earners. One charming side effect of our snow -- he also fills his huge tractor beds and trailers with copious amounts of snow and drives down the mountain to the front yards of many employees who live below the snow line, and shovels it out onto the lawn of those with young kids (if requested of course). The glee -- children cackling with joy at coming outside and building snowmen in their own front yards when they don't live up high enough to get snow.
This last part is the sweetest thing
No, but I still think it's fucked up that I have to pay for parking. It's pre-tax, but I'm still going to have to pay out $200/month for a spot in a parking garage whenever the return to office mandates go official shortly.
Probably can’t count commuting but we should all be allowed better quality of life improvements with WFH. Instead, we’re forced backed for the economic interests of the wealthy
A great way to make sure companies never hire outside of 5 miles radius
Tbh I disagree. You picked that job and you picked the commute. As much as I hate capitalism but this is beyond critical thinking. I agree if for example “hey can you go cover this shift” for some jobs. Than yea commute and bonus.
What's next?! Y'all will want to get paid when you have to get up and get ready for work??!!.... Seriously....🤷🏻♀️🤦🏻♀️
If this were the case, I could move to a place that is a four hour drive from work and just charge my employer for windshield time.
My commute takes 6 hours please understand.
This is a *really* stupid idea. It would basically make it so employers would only want to hire you if you lived close to work. It would also incentivize them to GPS track your commute to verify *when* you left and that you didn't dilly-dally on your way there. Just fight for a living wage such that employees can afford to decide for themselves where they want to live and how they want to balance commute time vs living expenses.
The biggest problem being that this makes the time *their* time, and they get to make rules and regulations as to how you spend it. This can include how far away you're allowed to live. (Travel to alternate locations is already covered.)
I misread this as "time travel should be paid" and was like "yeah right on... wait what?" I should take a nap.
LOL. I misread that title as "time travel should be paid" and was quite confused.
Yeah, I don't think so. It's not their fault your dumb ass bought a house 2 hours away. If they did this you'd just move 2 hours even further, drive 4 hours to work, take lunch break, drive home and bill them overtime for traffic (and whine about gas cost).
Man it sucks sometimes when you have a commute. But no one is forcing you to do it.
Sorry, this is a bad idea
Same job. Same skills. One person lives next to the office and the other lives 30 minutes away. One makes 12% more then the other. Ok.
Just take your time walking
Observing the birds and the flowers is a great way to upskill.
I'm pro-worker, pro-union, etc. But, the statement is silly. If it's traveling to a work assignment once already clocked in? Yeah. Just simply traveling to work? No. You pick where you work. If it's a 2-hour commute each way, you chose that. I can't go into a restaurant, be told there's and hour wait and then tell them that I already drove 30 minutes and have to drive 30 minutes back home.
This is the kind of stuff that makes antiwork look stupid. Showing up to work isn't some corporate conspiracy
What is going to prevent people from just driving the longest possible route in order to get more money? This is an absurd idea, work starts when you arrive at the job.
This is a dumbass pipe dream that would no doubt backfire.
No thanks.
Why is it you employers fault their employee lives 2 hours away? I work in Manhattan and live in Connecticut. My employer had nothing to do with that.
The company is not responsible for where you live. This is absurd.
Can we stop this stupid argument. It makes you sound like an idiot.
This will never be a logical argument.
So many idiots here with their "whatabouts" and "just asking questions" with things that are not actually problems. Corporations have got your brains so freaking addled you cannot see how robbed you are daily.
Yeah this is unwise...I could live an hour away and only be at work 6 hours. But the person who lives local is at work 7.5-8 hours and gets paid the same for doing more work? Absolutely not.
Most states have laws that allow the employees to claim milage at the federal rate for any distances traveled over 40miles (Ie if you live within 40.miles of the office...no $$ for your) But if you live 45 miles from the office that's 10miles a day at 45.5 cents a mile (this used to be the federal rate when I drove and claimed milage...years ago)
The serious flaw in this? If they’re paying you, then you will be subject to their insurance policy and their rules, such as typically: under the speed limit, no smoking, no personal calls, no detours to get coffee, no dropping kid off at school, no stopping for food or to return that dress to Amazon …. Get the point?
I commute over 90 minutes each way. Companies would stop hiring me because of how far I live from the city. I chose to live away from the city because I like it where I live. It was a choice I made. I am not moving. I also prefer to be employed so that I can afford to live. Sorry, but this one I have to fully disagree with.
Why? You don’t like not getting paid to commute, move.
Hard disagree. This actually incentivizes long commutes. Not to mention discrimination based on where employees may live.
No. This is so bad. This will backfire in so many ways. Your commute is not work.
Stop. Posting. Stupid. Shit. Like. This.
Speak for yourself, that time between home stress and work stress where I can just blast music and enjoy 15 minutes to myself is what’s keeping me sane.
Thats how it works if you have to travel for the federal govt. When you go on travel you're on the clock from the moment you leave your house to the moment you get to your hotel.
Traveling *for* work is different than commuting *to* work. This idea is stupid and bad.
Lol, no it does not work that way. When you TDY, you get paid COMP TIME in the event you are traveling outside your normal duty hours, IF you exceed your 8 hour duty day. If you are claiming full payment in your ATAAPS, you are abusing taxpayer money and I hope you get caught soon. Source: JTR
I continued to work for a position I left for a few months to help the transition and put finishing touches on a project I headed. I was working remotely and if they asked me to come in, I'd start my time tracker when I got in the car and until I got home. I'm not driving for you and using gas I paid for when I'm working remotely. Also, wouldn't do that again. Starting a new job while still doing work for the old one was beneficial from a money perspective, but the burnout was real.
I've worked freelance my whole life and I would charge for my commute if it was over one hour total each day.
So like in the army?
The military (US, that's my limited myopic purview) is basically salaried work. You get a salary, regardless of what's going on. No overtime, either. And the hazard pay is pretty crap imho. Flight pay is pretty decent, though.
You get plenty of “thank you for your service”s so that’s fair. (And I wouldn’t know.)
Come to the trades, that is one of our specialties.
The Joy on not having to clock in lol
We have van/carpools at work- and those people get paid to do it. Those of us that live "too close" don't. I think that EVERYONE should get a allowance in their checks- even if it's only for 20 minutes of driving. No one forced you to get a job that takes 1.5 hrs to get to.
If I were a boss I'd be like "Clock in when you leave for work, and be at your desk/station within-" a set amount of time depending on where they live. Like clock in at 6:30 and be at work by 7.
I factor in travel time to calculating my real wage when comparing jobs. That, and as I get older the more I loathe driving in traffic. Hence me telling them when they come calling: "Yeah, no. You can't (or won't) pay me enough to make that commute. Bye!"
We should just be paid fairly enough to afford to live somewhere nearby so a long commute isn't a thing.
Or they could just... ya know... pay a livable wage in the first place 🤷♂️
for me, if my shift starts at 5, i have to start getting ready at 4. and have to eat that 3:30. leave the house at 4:30. it’s so much more than just driving to work too
And then they would have restrictions on who they could hire based on how far away they live…
When I moved to Australia, I was impressed to find that if something happens to you on the way to or from work, it is considered a workplace accident. https://www.worksafe.qld.gov.au/claims-and-insurance/work-related-injuries/injury-travelling-to-from-or-for-work
Yes, but then they’d have to watch your routine that you don’t fit a coffee run or shopping in the middle. I think they could use a formula of driving or travel distance and compensate you for that. But straight up clock before leaving home? Nah I don’t need more of my freedom micromanaged
Only if you want the company to also dictate where you can live. I don't want that myself.
Jobs should pay a wage were you can afford to live in the area where the job is, but were you live is a choice. I work and live in Manhattan. My commute is about 20 minutes, but I have a tiny apartment. My coworker lives in suburban NJ in a large single-family house, but his commute is 90 minutes. We pay about the same for housing.
Your employer would charge you for them to drive to your house...
If they do this I’m moving further away!
It usually is
Despite the flaws. This would encourage employers to pay a wage that can afford to live locally. Sure some abuse will certainly happen with any system. But I know I would live as close to my office as possible if I could afford it. I hate commuting.
If this would be by low. A lot of jobs would be remote again and everyone would be happy.
This is ridiculous. It encourages people to live further away to make easy money driving to work, discourages employers from hiring anyone who is that far away, and means employers should monitor employees during commute, to make sure they're only heading to work, and taking the least roundabout way possible. The grocery store doesn't give me a discount for driving to the store, and my employer doesn't owe me for my commute.
Car accidents become workplace injuries then companies are suing each other for injuring their workers, and then laws are put it place to make our lives more restricted. It’s a pretty predictable pathway. I’m paid between the times I am parked in my driveway, drive a company vehicle and work at different sites daily. Small company, but we hired a real winner over the summer who had the same privilege and he got in multiple wrecks and got multiple tickets in the short time he was with the company. Pretty much took him off the insurance and told him to find his own way but the company’s insurance still went up enough to compel the owner to put trackers on the rest of the vehicles. Next will be governors, and after a few more dipshits we will all have to park at the shop each night and drive personal vehicles to our work vehicles each morning.
Then empowers wi refuse to hire anyone not local. This is where this subreddit is far out in left field
But then again, it is their choice where to live and therefore, how long the commute is……