I’ve been thinking a lot lately about norms in the employer-employee relationship.
It seems quite obvious to me that if an employer is requiring an employee to commute to a job they have demonstrated they can do from home, then the commute time is work time and should be paid.
Hourly time *and* expenses. These are unnecessary costs imposed by the employer that should be borne by the employer, not offloaded onto the employee.
An employee’s “free” time should not be spent subsidizing their employers.
(Thoughtful comments are welcome. (Your email address will not be published.))
The immediate pushback I can anticipate for a policy like this is that people will complain about those who live relatively far from work, and call it unfairness. There may be something there, but a commuting compensation policy really just needs to be calibrated to have gradiations and/or maximums.
I think you hit the key point is that this kind of policy would have to be predicated on a demonstrated ability to work from home. After that, I think there’s the possibility of making another kind of analogy – when required to travel *from* a workplace to carry out work functions, it’s standard policy for employers to provide compensation in the form of mileage, a stipend, per diem, what have you. Once an employee can demonstrate that they’ve performed effectively at home, then a requirement to RTO could be seen as analogous to being required to travel during work?
I’ve heard the objection it would be unfair to employees who live closer to the office but I don’t think that’s insurmountable. There are already policies that certain employees benefit from more than others, like “family” leave; that’s just the unequal nature of life. Also, it seems unlikely there would be wide-spread, long-term abuse of this norm since employees who spend multiple hours per work day commuting are unlikely to be able to finish their work within their regular hours. But most importantly, I think that kind of objection misses the point of solidarity. How will employees ever get improvements to their working conditions if they direct their anger at each other for minor differences instead of at the employers who are demonstrably exploiting them? It is unhelpful.
It was indeed my long-ago experience of being given mileage and per diems for employer-required travel that made me think of this!