I used to work for a company that had the right idea. We brought our work trucks home, and our work day started when we turned the key, and ended when we got home.
Had to be at a job for 8 and it was an hour away? You were paid for that. Only had a job 5 minutes away? Enjoy the extra sleep in time and the short commute home.
Now, this is way different than an office job that is stationary, but there is definitely a conversation to be had about it. If nothing else, it may have more companies going back to taking WFH seriously again instead of needlesslt forcing people back into office spaces in order to prop up the commercial real estate sector.
When I had a 1hr commute through heavy city traffic, I needed a break when I walked in the door. It took me at least an hour to get up the energy to do anything. Most of the time I would sip coffee while pretending to read e-mails or talk to coworkers. My body might be there but I wasn’t doing anything. So the company was paying for my recovery time from the “work” of the commute.
I don’t know why any company would push an employee into a long commute if it’s not necessary. It costs the company a ton of money in productivity.
It’s the problem with companies focusing on time spent, not productivity. I can waste a ton of time and get nothing done if I am so inclined.
This idea that to be stable or put down roots means buying a single family home in the suburbs is one of the biggest problems in America. Because of this idea, there’s so little high quality medium density housing designed for families in cities, which only reinforces this idea. It causes people spread out, they isolate, they use more energy to live and commute, they don’t have experiences with a diverse group of people.
In many Labor Economic Models, the distinction in Time is measured as Time spent working vs Time spent not working, in which the commute is factored. Many companies deal with people’s reluctance to commute by offering better pay or better benefits (if they’re seeking specific skillsets that are more difficult to find close by), but sometimes you find a gem like your company.
I know it would be difficult to implement for many companies, but I wish more companies did something like that when they could. The company I work for doesn’t pay for commutes from home, but will pay for them if you are temporarily relocated to a different office by calculating the distance between the two offices and average fuel price
From what understand that is following the U.S. tax code. The commute from your home to your assigned work location is considered the employees responsibility. If they are temporarily assigned to another location further away, the difference in mileage is considered a business expense. In some states they are required to pay the employee. In others it’s an allowable wage theft, the company claims the mileage and doesn’t reimburse the employee.
I drive a work vehicle. I have to declare how many personal miles I used the vehicle for yearly. Personal miles are all non-company related miles and the commute to my primary office. This benefit is considered income and taxed.
Currently my primary office is my home so 95% of my miles are business. At my last job they assigned my primary office to one 20 miles away (even though I was only there 1 day every 2 weeks). As such 20% of my miles were personal. A real dick move in my opinion but perfectly legal.
Oh it’s simple. Would you be commuting if you didn’t have the job? No? Then it’s work related and should be compensated.
If you have a two hour daily commute you should be paid for those two hours. Hell the company should probably pay for the cost of commuting and a tax for offsetting the emissions.
Because that just limits people’s ability to find employment.
I’ve had jobs where I lived 10 minutes away, and took a different job with a further commute because it paid significantly more.
Should an employee have to up and move their house every time they change employers, or should employees be able to decide if a long commute is worth it to them based on the offer?
The people who live closer than 2 hours away can afford to work for a better company
That doesn’t even make sense.
Let’s say I have a job right now that I live 10 minutes from. I interview for a different job in the next city over, or across town, because it’s offering 50% more than my current job, but my commute would end up being an hour and a half.
How does that mean that by living closer to my current job I can afford to work for the company an hour and a half away?
In the US, commutes aren’t covered and that’s part of law. However, the FLSA was passed in the 30s and the Portal-to-Portal Act was passed in the 40s so it’s arguably time to reevaluate.
As pro labor as I am, I do think it’s reasonable to put some cap on commute times so that commuters can’t abuse it. The hard part is coming up with a good one. You can’t give a max time without some idea of things like housing, public transportation, commute costs, etc. because then employers could abuse it by setting up offices away from everything or setting the radius too low.
A completely different problem for paid commutes is that suddenly it becomes work time. When I had a shit job doing pool inspections, the city controlled my time in the car from the office to the pools and back. The city did not control my time commuting. If the company is paying me for my commute, I’m on the clock, which means they can reasonably ask me to do things like not listen to my podcasts or take specific routes. If I’m on public transport, they can reasonably ask me to do work because I’m being paid. My solution here is working from home.
I think this conversation is more about office workers than site workers. You need to get on site to do the work but office workers don’t need to actually go in, they are being told they have to come in and the time needed to adhere to an enforced policy should be included in the work day.
Everything I said applies to office work.
As a manager with a limited budget that I want to stretch as much as possible, I need to limit the amount of it I spend paying for commutes. At the same time, I need to make sure my team is protected from the company abusing a commute cap.
Similarly, if I’m paying for an employee’s commute, I’d like to get some value out of that. That’s money out of my budget I’m spending for no appreciable gains unless they’re producing. I can build work that’s doable on a train or a bus.
Of course, all of this is solved by WFH as I said at the end of my previous post.
If the company is paying me for my commute, I’m on the clock, which means they can reasonably ask me to do things like not listen to my podcasts or take specific routes. If I’m on public transport, they can reasonably ask me to do work because I’m being paid.
You do work: you commute.
If the company wants you to do some other kind of work in that time, they can offer an office space in your car or public transport… or have you stay at your home office, it’s up to them.
There should be a reasonable limit of one hour in normal traffic for the commute each way though. Basing it on time would encourage companies to be flexible on start/end times to avoid needing to pay for people to sit in traffic, and there should be some kind of high but not crazy limit on commute time.
I would move as far as possible from the job site. 2 hours one way on a train watching Netflix, 4 hours work, 2 hours relax on the train. That would be nice.
…and you just wouldn’t get hired, because the guy who lives next to their office is a more attractive option, even if he’s only 80% as productive as you.
And that’s arguably why it makes some sense; companies would be more likely to hire more locally and be more flexible about remote work - both of which save precious planetary resources ánd people’s time.
Companies would also then be incentivized to invest in and lobby for better affordable housing in the communities their offices are located in/around so that employees at all pay scales have affordable options within a few miles of the office.
I would just move temporarily, and after probation period move far away. Surely they can’t fire me because my living situation changed and had to move…
okay but when do chores happen? i can barely keep up on dishes and laundry with a 45 minute commute each way. sleep, too…
Currently you work 8 hours + 1.5 hours commute. With this you’d work 6.5 hours + 1.5 hour commute, so you’d have 1.5 extra hour for chores or whatever.
If you use train/bus for commuting, you can even sleep there :-)
Literally happened at a place I worked at. They hired people near to the work, who then within a year bought a cheap house out in the boonies and increased their commute to 3+ hours daily. And they got paid for it. Such a stupid policy (for the company, I don’t blame the workers for taking advantage).
Imagine how much more chill everyone on the road would be if they were getting paid to be there.
There’s no way the pay would be based on real world commute. But reasonable calculated commute based on region and distance.
It’ll never happen anyway, so the really isn’t much point worrying about it I guess.
Is a worker on the road for their own benefit or for the benefit of their employer? Do people voluntarily choose to drive in godawful rush hour traffic 5 days a week just for shits and giggles, or is it because times are mandated by their employer?
Fuck you. Pay me.
On the other hand, should the distance a employment candidate lives from work be material to the companies employment decision? Should an employees housing options be dictated by the employer?
Maybe employees deserve compansation for commutes, and maybe a company changing their in-office policy should include compensation to make up for the impact to the employees lives.
It’s a nuanced debate. In the military, housing on post is free, and those who chose to live off post receive a housing allowance. You could say this is a comparable arrangement. But the military also dictates where you live, and you don’t have quite the freedom as you do with a private employer. Huh, just something else to think about.
On the other hand, should the distance a employment candidate lives from work be material to the companies employment decision?
This only seems like a difficult question if it’s one worker having the conversation with their employer. The moment it’s one employer vs. all their workers, the answer is obviously yes, with the employer left footing the bill.
Why would the employer have to foot the bill when they could just fire all their workers and hire people who live closer? Because our housing market is hell and nobody lives closer. Either businesses will have to pay for commutes directly by treating them as hours worked, or they’ll have to pay for them indirectly by relocating their offices to places where workers actually live.
Given how sprawled we all are, the latter will be the more expensive option. At least, until sufficiently large businesses lobby governments to subsidize the costs of relocating their offices… ugh.
Maybe employees deserve compansation for commutes,
If companies charge to have their workers commute to work locations to do jobs for them, then yes, they should.
Basically the flip side of the coin of, for example, a plumber coming out to your house to fix a leaky pipe charging you for him to actually come out to the house regardless of any work done when he gets there.
and maybe a company changing their in-office policy should include compensation to make up for the impact to the employees lives.
Well a company should make sure compensation is satisfactory enough for the best talent to do the best work for them.
On the other hand, should the distance a employment candidate lives from work be material to the companies employment decision?
I don’t think a company would want to restrict themselves by using that as a criteria, because someone who is much better for the position but lives farther away may be excluded for the person who lives closer who cannot do the job as well.
Cost to employer is calculated based on many factors, the capability of the worker doing the work is one of them.
It’s a nuanced debate.
Actually, I’m big on nuanced conversations, but I really don’t think it is in this case, I think what you been expressing is more strawmanning than actual real world scenarios.
In the military, housing on post is free, and those who chose to live off post receive a housing allowance. You could say this is a comparable arrangement. But the military also dictates where you live, and you don’t have quite the freedom as you do with a private employer.
I don’t think you can use this as a justification for the points you’ve been expressing, as a military and a corporation are two very different things, and the responsibilities of persons to each of them is very different, and not comparable.
Huh, just something else to think about.
Well, real conversations are always better than just attempts to redirect the narrative, that’s for sure.
People don’t choose to commute for “shits and giggles”, but there is choice involved in how long your commute is, if it’s a job that pays well enough that moving is an option. To be clear, if a job is changing from remote to in-office, I think it should absolutely come with a pay increase to compensate for that increased labor of getting to the office. But should you be paid for the time spent commuting as if they’re working hours? That doesn’t seem right to me.
I live in a city with ridiculous urban sprawl. However, I choose to live in a smaller apartment with a higher $/sq ft so that my commute is just a 10 min bike ride. I chose it both because it saves me time and reduces the amount of pollution I’m contributing every day. I have coworkers, though, that choose to live as far as 2 hrs drive each way, outside of the reach of the city’s public transport. I’ve asked, and their reasons are: to be closer to their relatives, to be in a part of town they just like better, for lower cost housing so they can spend more elsewhere, or bc they want their kids to be raised in a suburb instead of the city. They all technically could live closer, but they choose not to because they have other priorities. Which is fine and valid, but still ultimately a choice.
So, should my coworkers be paid up to 50% more than me (4 hrs per day!) because of their choice? Or to say it another way, should I be paid less than them because of my choice that is already costing me more in rent? Wouldn’t that actually incentivize longer commutes and the problems that come with it, like more road congestion and more pollution? Realistically, I think employers would stop employing those who live so far because they’re not actually getting more value from the employee that’s costing them 50% more.
The transportation situation in the US is fully the failure of cities, states and the federal government to fund and plan for adequate land use and transport networks.
Your commute is your own problem, I don’t pay my employees for driving to work, they can always move closer to the office or sleep in their cars in the parking lot overnight if driving home and back is such a big deal.
So no, I won’t be paying you to drive home and furthermore, at my businesses I have a swear jar policy; every swear word an employee says I take a dollar/hour off their pay for that day. So watch your potty mouth or you’ll be the one who ends up paying me.
Forcing companies to pay for commute time would also force companies to lobby for more efficient public transport and cycleways, and limit private car access to areas with regular traffic jams. In addition, there are certain job categories where driving time is limited by law: truck drivers, bus drivers, and others. However, these rules only apply when the driver is being compensated for being on the road. So, your bus driver may have driven for two hours to get to work, and now he’s towards the end of his nine-hour shift, bone-tired. If the company was forced to pay him for his commute, his shift would end after seven hours, and possibly five (if he has to drive back home for another two hours). That would improve road safety. I think the two aspects - more public transport and more road safety - should be enough for everyone to support the idea of paid commute.
Absolutely! I’m salaried, so paying for my commute wouldn’t make any difference, but I’m incentivizing my employer to let me work from home by spending my potential commute time at the computer. No big difference for me, but enough that they are happy to let me stay on hybrid.
Even salaried workers get overtime in certain situations. You’d either get a raise or a “travel stipend”
In my area, public transport will likely never improve, even with tons of support from local voters and business people because racism.
I lived in Atlanta, and was told that this was the reason one of the counties (Cobb) refused metro transport. Had to reject a job offer there before I got a car.
It would also give employers a shared incentive to address the cost of housing. It would either incentivize the companies to not build all the jobs in a single location (ie. downtown of a major city), or it would give them an incentive to pursue policies that would lower the costs of housing in major metropolitan areas.