When I was doing contract field engineering work, I would charge 50% of my hourly rate for any travel in excess of 30 minutes. Surprisingly I actually received a greater share of clients at remote locations and ended up earning quite a bit for the drive times.
At the end of the day, the amount of money that can be allocated to workers is finite, so we have to choose some way of distributing that money. Doing that by how much you "worked" (ie. commuted) might seem superficially fair, but comes with other issues like encouraging people to live far away because they no longer bear the costs. I don't think most people are on board with subsidizing commutes.
>We should get more to work in an open plan office, for dealing with a shitty boss, or for a miserly vacation policy too. Unless there is a cost, they'll keep doing it.
You're free to do that by voting with your feet, and companies pay by having less applicants. If they're not "paying for it" (via higher wages or poorer quality candidates), then that probably indicates it's not a big factor for the average employee (ie. they might complain about it, but they won't give up a $300k job for it).
Agreed, and this method has been chosen in advance for us: employers squeeze as hard as they can, while we squeeze back as hard as we can. If billing for our commute is a strategy that will allow us to extract more wealth from ownership, we should do it. If not, we shouldn't. It has nothing to do with what makes more "sense" or what is "fair."
There is no policy decision to make here. I'm just describing reality.
If my employer required me to move to the city the company is mainly based out of, I'd ask for visa support and moving expenses, and if the living expenses were higher, a compensatory increase. If the terms aren't reasonable, then ya they can get fucked.
Upon hire though, yes that's part of the negotiation I suppose. If what they're offering to pay is only persuasive if you had no or a free commute, then you should ask for sufficiently more to make it worthwhile.
And Silicon Valley giants are famous for offering this. Proving that companies will provide if people want it enough.
Highly in demand labor sellers have even gotten weekly flights paid for. The only difference is most people are not that in demand, or do not produce work that make it economical to pay them that extra commuting premium.