An hour spent commuting is 1/16th of your daily life, and that hour is by far the biggest risk to your life every day. You should be getting triple pay to ameliorate the hazard risk it represents.
When they started pushing for $15 federal minimum, it should have been $50.
Today, it should be about $150.
At $150/hr, you could afford to buy a an average home with a years pay.
People don’t realize how insanely bad it’s been getting.
I disagree that we should be paid triple to travel. We should just be paid appropriately. That’s all.
Ok, so we have a lot effed up in our system right now and I’m not trying to discount that. But this is like high school economics level stuff when I ask…
At $150/hr, you could afford to buy a an average home with a years pay.
Between the lowered supply of creating houses (in that it becomes more expensive to produce a house because everyone is getting paid a hell of a lot more) and the increased demand for housing because everyone has a bigger number in their bank account… Do you really expect that housing prices would just… Stay the same?
I’m also curious when any society at any point in history has been able to sustain decent housing with about a year’s worth of wages?
Agreed. My wife and I are doing pretty well and we don’t even make anywhere near $150/hr combined. Maybe in the Bay and NYC that wage would make sense but not most places. Making that the minimum wage would just cause a ton of inflation and put most people back at square one.
Maybe not one year, but it looks like a median home in the US in 1965 cost around 6 years of a median income.
In the 1854 book Walden by Thoreau, he gives a pessimistic account of how long it would take to afford a property in a town, that is still less than today:
An average house in this neighborhood costs perhaps eight hundred dollars, and to lay up this sum will take from ten to fifteen years of the laborer’s life, even if he is not encumbered with a family- estimating the pecuniary value of every man’s labor at one dollar a day, for if some receive more, others receive less
Although he goes on to describe building his own more remote cabin for $28.
Something is very, very wrong with incomes and housing prices currently that wasn’t as bad a problem in the past.
You’re out of your mind if you think a $300k salary for every working citizen is feasible. Paying that out would require $53 trillion, which is more than our GDP.
That’s the thing though, the number doesn’t matter.
We have people starving and then we have people traveling to the other side of the planet to throw a wedding that could feed millions of people.
Fuck a number, fuck money, eat the rich then we can all eat and live wherever we want.
Sometimes I think about trying to buy a tiny home or a single wide, and then 5 seconds later, I realize that its just not going to fucking happen. That’s an insane thought. If we don’t start hitting the streets soon, we’re all going to lose.
$150 per hour? I’m in salaried software engineering and barely making a third of that after a promotion.
If what you propose happens, all the prices of everything would skyrocket… It seems good on paper, but it ignores all the greed of capitalism…
For better or worse, (the latter for rich folks…) there “needs” to be tiers of incomes (in Capitalism). Bumping the minimum just bumps the prices. We’ve already experience it with minimum wage bumps in the US. We don’t have an actual solution that works at the moment in the US because minimum wage increases automatically lead to greedier CEOs.
I mean, I agree with a lot of what you said but also we haven’t had any federal minimum wage bumps in a decade and a half. States that follow federal minimum wage haven’t exactly kept their cost of living frozen.
The implication of this is that if that job can’t be done from home, it’s not theft. So the guy making pretty decent money in an office job that could be done at home should get compensated for their commute, but the sandwich artist making far less should not because that can’t be done at home?
And before we start saying that everyone should have their commute compensated, that has a lot of baggage to it too. I live in the suburbs. I chose to live there knowing there was a trade-off between having more house for the money, but also spending more time in my car to get anywhere. If I were searching for a job, I wouldn’t want to be passed over for it because of the longer commute time I was expecting to have from my own choice in where to live. And let’s say I decided to move 3 hours away to be closer to my in-laws or something. But don’t worry boss, I’ll keep working here! I just won’t be in the office for more than 2 hours a day unless you want to pay me overtime. That’s… A little ridiculous.
Then how about the employer gets to pick one of two options: Either compensate for a reasonable commute, or pay a wage that allows the employee to live within walking distance?
Arguably there is an average commute time baked into the wage already along with other expenses people have in life. I’m not sure it needs to be itemized out as its own thing.
And this also assumes an IMO flawed assumption that working from home is entirely expense-free. I have a decent work area in my home. If I didn’t, that space could be used for another kid’s bedroom. Or a craft room for the wife. Or a dedicated Lego room. Or a sex dungeon. Maybe some of those things can be paired up with an office easily enough, but that’s my choice, not my employer’s. Plus there are other day to day costs, like the electricity to run my equipment, the Internet connection I probably would have had in the 21st century but technically don’t have to, heating/cooling costs… You get the idea.
Choose a house with 1 extra room, courtesy of your WFH savings.
An itemized cost paid straight by your employer will have the effect of encouraging them to waste less of your time with a commute. They might try to hire locally, might pay for moving expenses, might keep you out of rush hour traffic, might be worried about keeping you late such that now you’re driving on overtime, might actually align their concerns with the planet’s by reducing all the oil going literally up in flames to transport people around to do knowledge work in a cubicle.
Choose a house with 1 extra room, courtesy of your WFH savings.
You’re not totally off-base there
An itemized cost paid straight by your employer will have the effect of encouraging them to waste less of your time with a commute.
When WFH is an option. Where it isn’t (eg, the sandwich dude)…
They might try to hire locally, might pay for moving expenses, might keep you out of rush hour traffic, might be worried about keeping you late such that now you’re driving on overtime, might actually align their concerns with the planet’s by reducing all the oil going literally up in flames to transport people around to do knowledge work in a cubicle.
I have a really hard time seeing this actually happening in practice, especially on low-level jobs. Or people who live with their family (of whom others work elsewhere). Or when you say “hire locally” I say “can’t get a damn job in my field because I don’t live nearby and moving would take my wife away from her job”
You brought up fast food workers in your first comment only to then make this one all about office workers, how come?
Because I’m talking about different things: paying for commute times for jobs that could be done at home, and paying for commute times in general.
If you do the math, its just horrible. If you have one hour to work, its 2 hours every day just getting to and back from work, which is 10 hours per week.
So you are spending more than an entire work day every week in traffic! Every year, you are spending 41 full working days in traffic!!
Isnt that just insane? If you are working from home, you have 10 hours of free time every week. The value of that is insane. You could go to gym, spend time with family, learn how to cook, whatever. Its a lot of time.
On a related note, you should get off big tech social media because that will suck up so much time you could use to improve yourself instead.
Small tech social media is just as bad at sucking all that time up. Ask me how I know :(
Yeah in most cases if a job gave you a 25% increase for always in office and you are wfh you would be better off staying work from home unless your wage was inadequate to begin with (which unfortunately it often is).
You would need more, because also paying for fuel or public transport, expensive lunch, maybe coffee…in my case I spent hundreds of dollars every month just from office related costs.
Its scary how bad it is for us to go to an office. Sure, if you single and you need coworkers to not feel lonely, it may be worth it. But im super happy not going.
yeah 25% the equation still leans wfh (ie from above: you would be better off staying work from home) but somewhere over that it becomes a fair trade off if you like money.
Historically unpaid commute originated before urban sprawl, car culture and a massive spike in population, it’s been grandfathered in, but it’s absolutely theft in the current environment, whether the job can be done at home or not. Posit 1 hr commute either way, that’s 10hrs a week, and should probably get hazard loading as well. When unpaid commute originated it was more like 10-15 minutes walk per day.
One of the most significant and efficient policy changes to combat CO2 and other pollutants would be to legislate paid commuting (with just protection against discrimination for both employee and employer). Just watch every employer WFH everyone who can be, not to mention improved quality of life, local services and being hugely popular. Expect one hell of a fight.
Plus unnecessarily damaging the environment which is already in critical condition
We care about the environment, but if you could commute an hour and a half to go on MS Teams that’d be greeeat.
I have always felt that you should be paid for travel time for a job. If it takes 30 mins to drive to work then the company should be paying you that time.
Look at how many bosses/CEOs bill their daily travel expenses to the company
Which CEO downvoted this?
Also I have seen many office location decisions seem to be about the ceo’s commute.
That would be good except that you could literally get a job far away for “was” money, or you would disadvantage people living farther away from jobs (cities)
There are people who take Work from Home jobs in high CoL areas and then move to low CoL places to pocket the difference, so that’s not too far off from what already happens.
Plus, on the other side, incentivizing companies to hire locally could cause companies to be selective in their location to maximize the convenience of commuting from multiple areas for reduced overhead, or increase the desire for increased urban density and lessen suburban sprawl, which is literally choking the life out of places in infrastructure costs alone. Garbage and water services for the wealthy suburbs is subsidized from the taxes of poor people’s apartment buildings.
Of course, we all know that what would really happen is that we’d see the return of company towns where you sleep in the same bed as 2 other guys on 8 hour shifts so the bed has 100% occupancy 24 hours a day.
Accepting an onsite job, regardless of whether it can be performed at home or not, places the responsibility on you to be able to commute there, and it wouldn’t be fair to compensate only office workers for their commute time when other workers face the same risks while traveling. I’d rather have reliable public transportation and fair salaries relative to costs of living.
The rich and poor alike are prohibited from sleeping under bridges. Just choose a better job! Easy! Why didn’t everyone else think of that?
Not sure how your takeaway from that was “just choose a better job” unless you’re digging for something to be upset about.
I am advocating for employers offering salaries that can cover workers’ essential needs, including their own individual transportation needs, rather than reimbursing only people whose jobs have the possibility of being done remotely, OR having reimbursement available to everyone. That, and the more affordable option of public transportation becoming more accessible.
This fails to take into account unemployment rates or any other factors that apply pressure to such decision-making. We need legislation that enshrines payment for commute time universally, as it would encourage WFH mandates rather than RTO ones. As well as compensate other workers for their commute. Or perhaps a flat rate of one hour each way’s pay no matter the distance, to stop certain workers finding it harder to get a job.
My employer gives everyone an annual public transport ticket for commuting.
Taking into account expenses, and no need to financially budget for travel and stress about it, this is a fairly low cost way to satisfy your employees. Is the work not possibly WFH or employer would rather have people in office?
It’s in Germany, people are really weird about WFH. Most people were forced back into the office, even software developers.
Can you use that for non-work travel too?
Yes. The ticket is valid on most public transport at all times.
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I would kill for 1/16th. I’m at 1/8th trying not to go into the office more than three times a week.
I wouldn’t kill for 1/16th it wouldn’t make a difference to these people. Maybe a bomb threat.
Downvoted purely for sharing ai content. Eww.
You wouldn’t say that when a plumber or any physical trade suddenly charge you triple for commute.
Not that i mind, really, would be sweet if us tradesman get a salary/commission hike.
Don’t know about household plumbers, but in a B2B setting you totally do charge for mobilization. Usually, the site is like 500-2000 km away from the specialist you happen to need today. Those service engineers need to travel everywhere in the EMEA region anyway, so a distance like that is just another Thursday for them.
No, but I would be nice if they charged for mileage separately. That would give a discount to more local businesses. Of course they may also have to bid based on your distance to the hardware store.
Quite some businesses in my area do that. I was quite surprised the first time I saw it, but it makes sense. They usually have distance bands and some extra cost if you are further than a 15-20 minute drive.
I’ve never had a plumber not charge a callout fee. Same applies for any trade. Idk where you live that you don’t, but in my experience, any kind of tradesperson will always charge a fee for their commute
Not trying to be a capitalist shill or anything. But in that case, wouldn’t need for a more local plumber spring up? Supply and demand eventually meeting the mentality of someone in the local community to say, “Well being a plumber wasn’t my first choice but the money makes it hard to ignore.” or the demand being so great that a plumber in a more saturated supply area decides its too good of an opportunity to not move.
The issue now would be there isn’t possible to have plumbers in all corner of the city/town, especially when some place the rent is so high it’s not gonna worth it. Commute is still gonna be around 40min to 60min round trip, more in rural area. Not to mention people also tend to have their trusted or recommended tradesman for the job, as it’s a skilled profession, everyone gonna have different level of skill, ware, price, and attitude toward customer, which mean the trusted one might be further away than the unknown company closer to you.
Tradesman that work on site already factor in commute into the pricing anyway, but in no way that commute is 3 times of anything. My counter argument to OP is really just that 3 times is stupidly high, while agreeing that people should be compensated for the time spend commuting, maybe with a bit higher in salary per day they spend in workplace.
Dont you get charged a “callout fee” when you call a tradesman? thats basically what that is
Less congestion for people that do need to travel.
Less pollution.
More free time.
Cheaper housing because we won’t all need to be clustered in the places with decent paying jobs.
But no, fuck it all because the mega rich might have to make do with very slightly less.
You should be getting triple pay to ameliorate the hazard risk it represents.
That’s something a union can help with. Most compensation above poverty wages has been won by unions at one point or another. Most of them a long ago and we’ve been regressing for a few decades.
I mean… It can be. You just have to ask for a raise. That is what I do. If I get a job that is further away, I expect to be paid more. One of the reasons I’m sticking with my current job even though the pay is not great, is that I’m less than 10 minutes away from home. I even get to come home for lunch.
If your boss decides where you have to live, then sure. But, when you choose where to live, and you choose where to work, and you choose to work for a company that requires you to work in person, and you choose to live far away from that job, then… these are your choices.
Now, if a company wants to make it much more attractive to come into the office, paying a 20% bonus that people get if they choose to come into the office, that’s great. They’ll probably attract a lot more applicants.
Fundamentally, the issue here is the concentration of wealth. If wealth were more evenly distributed, workers would feel like they had more choices. If a company offered a shitty employment contract requiring that the person be in the office 5 days a week for a job that was easily done remotely, the worker could just say “nah” and choose a different job. It’s the same for all the other things that Americans complain about: vacation days, parental leave, sick days, etc. All of those could be things that are up for negotiation, or that employers could offer as a competitive advantage if the power balance were more even.
Even if you think these are things that should be fixed by laws, that’s also down to concentration of wealth. The wealthy control the government, and so the government passes laws that are friendly to them. If the difference between the richest and poorest were more reasonable, regular people’s votes and opinions would matter.
it’s unpaid labor either way, it’s a bit arbitrary to say owning a car and commuting for a job isn’t time and money spent for the employer in your capacity as an employee
Not to mention the environmental damage.
