Suppose there are two employees: Alice and Bob, who do the same job at the same factory. Alice has a 10 minute (20RT) commute, Bob commutes 35 minutes(70RT).
If you’re the owner of the factory, would you compensate them for their commutes? How would you do it?
Employees living far away is not something I would want to incentivize for so many reasons.
But that’s not what compensation for the commute would incentivize. I don’t understand why people think getting paid to drive to work would mean employees would spend most of the week driving. It would mean employers would only hire employees who live upstairs.
If someone enjoys driving more than their actual job, and they’re getting paid to do it, it’s arguably an incentive. At the very least, you’re no longer decentivizing the commute by paying for it.
Paying money for a behavior is an incentive for that behavior.
Does that mean every employee would choose to live far away to maximize their commuter mileage benefit? No.
Does that mean some barriers to living far away would be reduced, thus increasing odds that some employees would live further away, or that some prospective employees that live at distance would consider applying to this company over a company that doesn’t offer a commuter mileage benefit? Yes.
Companies also aren’t worried employees “would spend most of their weeks driving”. Most companies don’t include drive time as hours worked.
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I would think free time is still more valuable in most cases.
Never had an employer that cares about what I do with my free time nor how optimized it is.
The question is what a person might offer as an employer, not what benefit a person might like to have as an employee.
In my opinion, I don’t think employees should be compensated for their commute. How an employee chooses to arrive to work and how far they live away from a company is not a responsibility of the company. Their job is to be ready to work when their shift starts.
However, this is an X-Y question. The overwhelming majority of jobs historically required you to show up to work. We didn’t consider paying for their commute unless they had to travel for work outside of commuting. This was never an issue.
You asked the “X” question, but the “Y” question (the question you’re probably asking) is how the burden of commuting should be handled for employees being asked to come in when they have been working remotely.
I think that there are many more nuances to this than simply compensation. If the employee has a working agreement with the company, and they have been managing their time with full-time remote hours, then they should consider that as part of the work agreement.
If they’re being asked to come in (when they would normally be WFH), that’s outside of the work agreement. It’s basically like being asked to get coffee for your boss or something. If it was advertised as part of the job, and you accepted it, then that’s fine. If you started work, and a year later, your boss asks you for daily coffee runs under the threat of being fired, that is not acceptable.
You have to keep in mind that the recent WFH popularity has challenged a lot of companies by making their own interests difficult. A lot of it is shitty stuff that the company doesn’t want to say out loud, like:
- They cannot walk around and micromanage you
- They cannot watch you work
- They don’t like the idea of taking breaks, even if you put in the same amount of work throughout the day
- They don’t have that corporate appearance of an office of business casual-dressed employees
- They have real estate they paid for that is sitting half-empty
This kind of thing. Realistically, from an employee perspective, they’re doing the same work, and they don’t see any issue hanging around their house in their pajamas. From a higher-up perspective at some companies, though, they don’t have the same goals.
It makes sense that a lot of employees are leaving their positions with companies forcing them to come into the office. In my opinion, they’re breaking their working agreement. It may not be written down and it may not be a legal difference, but there is no doubt that they’re radically changing the work requirements, which might not be what they signed up for. And what if you’re in a wheelchair?
Unfortunately, if Alice and Bob live in the US, there is hardly any hope for them if the company doesn’t have goodness in its heart. The workers’ rights laws in the US are almost non-existent. There are even about three dozen states that can even legally fire you for being gay. It’s that bad.
In my opinion, workers’ rights should be highlighted, and side effects like working agreements and compensation for commuting should be solved problems by proxy.
I believe my company’s arrangements are agreeable for remote workers.
For those who are classified as fully remote, they can claim travel expenses on mileage up to a certain range. Basically, the radius of the city that their “core” office is based out of plus the surrounding towns. But they can’t claim more than that (unless they’re out of state and they’ll pay for like plane tickets and whatnot).
For those who are hybrid (expected to show up at least once a week) and fully onsite, they don’t get any mileage for travel to their home office but do get mileage to satellite offices, calculated by distance from the home office.
The compensation is also very generous. While I am hybrid, I have one day per week at my home office and one day per week at another, and that is more than enough to pay for my gas (even factoring in non-work related travel, which I admittedly don’t do much of).
But there are definitely some people who are able to benefit from this more than others. If you live a 5-minute drive away from the furthest office from your home office (would that I could be so lucky), you get to claim a lot of travel reimbursement with minimal actual travel, which seems unfair for those who are routinely asked to commute even further than their norm.
Yeah why not. That shit is normal in my country. People get paid per kilometer or they get a transit pass. Of course the amount is capped and it’s a tax write off for the company anyway. Not sure why some of the comments here are against it. I guess they are all Americans
of course the Americans are against it
“BuT WHY IS SHE GEAtatING PaId MORE”
Pretty normal here in the San Francisco / Silicon Valley area. Although it usually comes in the form of chartered busses, transit passes or free parking. And parking in San Francisco can be like $400 a month, so free parking is nice.
The commute in this area averages 1-2 hours one way for many. So transportation perks are important to retaining high value employees.
And because the commute sucks, remote / hybrid work options are also key for many gigs.
Is this their time as well, or just travel costs?
Not the person you’re replying to but in the Netherlands it’s just a standard amount per KM from home to work with no compensation for travel time.
It sounds like an incentive not to hire people who live too far away from the office to me.
It’s a small country so most commutes are relatively short anyway. On average, people live within 22km of their place of work.
There’s also al lot of employers that offer other benefits or ways of compensating. Things like discounted or even free public transport, free parking, use of company cars, tax benefits when you purchase a bicycle etc.
Why? It’s just a fraction of the salary anyway. Like most people only get €0.20 per km since that is what an employer can compensate tax free. With an average one way commute in my country of 20km that’s only €8 a day for a round trip so about €160 a month.
Or a lot of people get a lease car from the company as a perk but then they don’t get compensated for their travel cost.
Why? It’s no skin off anyone’s back.
The amount is not exactly standard. There’s a maximum the employer is allowed to pay tax-free, but not every employer chooses to use that option. Some simply don’t, others stick with lower, preexisting tariffs.
It’s absolutely ridiculous of course, giving someone the maximum amount of tax free compensation is just about the cheapest way to raise wages and keep employees happy. However, the rate is not mandatory (outside of some CAOs, perhaps) and there’s no legal right to claim compensation unless there’s a contract that says you get to.
Just the travel cost. Not their time.
I would make sure they are both payed well enough that they can afford to live close to the factory. If they chose to live far away anyway, that is not my problem.
What if iI own my house and the job icomes in and end up built too far? Is it my fault?
I would put then on the same shift so they eat lunch together. Soon they will fall in love, get married and move in together. Problem solved.
What do you mean compensate employees for their commutes? If I were a self-respecting factory owner, I would figure out how to get the municipality to scale back any public transit options so I could lease vehicles to my employees. They should be paying me to get to work, ha!
Spoken like a true businesstorian.
like a subscription!! yes!!!
they would pay you everyday to get to and from work. would it be a flat rate or by the length of commute? length in minutes? miles?
They’d just be typical leases at competitive rates, but with expensive penalties for going over milage limits (those limits being the yearly necessary travel distance to and from work for each employee). The cars will be underpowered, “environmentally friendly” electric vehicles.
Blowjobs
If we have to be hypothetical, let’s go wildYou’ve got union rep written all over your post.
I’m gonna be all over the union rep
It’s none of the company’s business how an employee gets to work. It’s just not.
The company should compensate the employee fairly or well for the COL in the area the job is. That’s it. It’s not their job to worry about how the employee gets to work.
Other than allowing/encouraging WFH where it makes sense the company shouldn’t try to tell the employees how to live.
I disagree. If a company chooses to NOT be in a huge city, yes. But if they are in a city just to flex with the address, and basically noone actually lives there (which is a very big thing here), then yes it is their responsibility
Then they can pay their employees more for the trouble as a whole. Which is what generally already happens for employers in high cost of living areas anyway.
Anything short of my commuting time being considered part of my working hours is a non-starter for me. I value the time I gain by not commuting a lot more than most employers do. If my day starts the moment I close my front door, then we can start talking about additional concessions.
Any compensation for commuting to your regular work place is considered taxable income.
The government allows for a tax deduction if commuting costs exceed a certain amount.
I would not do anything about it as is the custom in Sweden. If they want to change it their union can negotiate it, but they are generally more interested a bigger raise than misc benefits.
That’s cute that you think America is unionized. Many, many places do not have unions or support for their workers past base things at government level. More often than not, we are shat upon and expected to thank our corporate overlords for the opportunity.
I don’t think it is. I don’t live in America. Question does not specify where it is. A vast majority of the world is not America.
That’s fair. The majority of the world isn’t Sweden either. Not sure why OP brought country up to begin with, just saying “bring it up to your union” isn’t exactly a universal experience either.
Nor is having the opportunity to be within walking distance of your place of employment. Some people live in more rural areas because the cost of living is lower, and that is what they can afford. I speak from experience. I think a universal “cost of transportation” would be helpful to the populous in general. Who foots that bill? The employer. They need you to make their product after all. You shouldn’t need a second job just to make it to your first job. Your first job should be able to pay for all of your expenses, including transportation to and from the job.
If the employer foots the bill they will discriminate based on where you live, which as far as I know is legal in the US and Sweden.
Besides, why should they pay one person more because where they live? You’re providing the same value to the company. Would it not be better to pay both workers a bit more rather than only the one living far away?
They wouldn’t be paying one person more based on where they live. They would be paying a fair rate based on a formula using miles of commute and current gas prices. Everyone would be paid the same rate. If someone works less hours, is it unfair that the person that works more gets paid more? No, they are being compensated for time, just as the commuters should be compensated for their time and maintenance on their vehicle.
Is it fair that the people that live farther away should have to pay more to come to work that those who live closer? Its not fair to me who has to pay sooo much more in maintenance and gas!
Previous smartass paragraph aside, paying both more doesn’t solve the problem. This isn’t about who is getting paid more. It’s about giving everyone the same tools to succeed. And if I am paying 100$ more a month, I’m making 100$ less a month.
In the U.S., employers can subsidize bus passes, van pools, and bicycling to work (I guess provide bikes?) as a tax-free benefit. I’d certainly offer that.
I would not provide more $ to the employee who took a job further from home, unless I was doing on-site jobs on various job sites, work that moved around. Events, construction, etc. My employer pays for airfare or mileage for event work, that is not taxable to the employees.
Even when I did temp work I wouldn’t take jobs far from my house, or any that were not one bus away, even though I have a car because cars break sometimes.
I DO think of commute time in a car as unpaid work but manage that in my life by working near home, or living near work.
My employer gives us a commuting payment based on the distance from home to work (paid per km) on days we go to the office. We get an additional €60 a month to cover our working from home costs.
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You want me to give up 10 hours of my day to get paid for 8 hours of work? No thanks.
Sitting in traffic still keeps me from living my life. I’ve got a limited amount of time, so Im not giving it up cheaply.
Remote work where possible is the best option for both parties. If only employers could believe it.
This is so simple equation, ai can not believe how many people are agains it.
One my friend lives near Oslo and works in Oslo. He checks in as soon as he sits in a train and starts checking his emails.
So either move house or move job then.
Sounds like a simple choice. Moving house to be closer to where jobs are is getting more and more expensive.
So that leaves moving jobs.
I wonder why so many employers are complaining ’No one wants to work’.
Some countries actually pay your commute fees or part of them. In Argentina it’s called viático. It can be advertised as part of the job payment or discussed upon closing the agreement, regardless of whether the job is legal (by the books, officially taxable) or otherwise.
I think it’s pretty standard in the EU.
I had no idea! Cool
lol Argentina is a strange place to use as an example. I see what you mean though
I know… lol I’m not trying to say it’s any better. Wealthier countries don’t see the point in compensating this way, because the expense in the grand scheme of things is just petty change for the workers.
But if it was necessary, then it’s not too bad a system, which is what OP was after.
No. I don’t know or care where they live. I will provide parking.
The government will get upset with you if you don’t have your employees’ addresses. You need that for tax purposes.
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Yeah, let me know how that works out for you.
Easy to dump the burden of the commute on the staff as the cost of living close to city centres keeps climbing way faster than you’re raising their pay.
Times change, and the old standards don’t make sense anymore.
They have the choice of paying for the convenience of living close to work, or spending time commuting. That’s not something an employer will or should care about.
Or the third option, changing to a better employer.
Since everyone seems to think no one wants to work anymore, maybe theres a lot more better options out than than the shitty employers realize.
I would raise pay before paying for commute.
Statistically speaking, employers don’t.
This is why the UAW are asking for 40% raise, because that would bring their pay back in line with what they were making in 2008 in terms of inflation.
you mean, you’ll give them a discount on parking? ;)
I hope you’re not my boss. If you are. Go fuck yourself buddy.
Od rather pay you more and then pay your peers equally than pay everyone differently based on how long of a drive they have. It’s an odd subsidy that likely has unintended consequences.
Fuck you, nobody owes you anything
Downvote me if you want. Do you actually not think it’s fair that I get paid to travel to work? Please explain
They do if I work for them. Get Fucked bitch. FYI I get paid per km to travel to work. Suck it. They also pay my gas. Just cus you’re getting ripped off and miserable doesn’t mean everyone else should be.
The details of our individual situations are irrelevant! The assumption that my disagreement with you is based on envy rather than the merits of your ideas says a great deal about you. Your employer is not obligated to pay you for getting to work mostly because you choose where to live and you knew where the office/restaurant/factory was located when you took the job. Whose fault is it if you take a job that’s far away? Whose fault is it if you decide to move to another town afterwards? Whose fault is it if you take the bus for an hour each way instead of driving in half the time? Being an adult means taking responsibility for your own choices.
They hired me and they know where I live. It’s their choice to hire me as much as it’s my choice to be hired and my choice to choose where to live. There’s an upper limit on how much they will pay, some of the guys are at that limit and so some of their driving too and from work isn’t paid for. All of their driving while clocked in is. I think this should just be the norm for everyone. Do you get paid at all to travel to work?
