Seems like companies should offer lower pay for work-from-home jobs

[Road Runner]

There was a piece on the local news about this last night.  If you think about the extra time involved in preparing to go to work and the commute time, along with the significant dollar cost of commuting, as well as just the huge convenience of staying at home, it would seem that employees might be willing to take a cut in pay to compensate for the benefits of working from home.  

What say you?  Would you take a 5-10% pay cut to stay at home?  I would.  

[maddmaxx ★]

Business is already hurting for workers.  IMO a cut in pay would worsen that dramatically.  That's a bit like saying you should pay workers who commute longer distances more for the same job.

[Dirtyhip]

No.  I am already underpaid.  Sounds like a way for companies to further enrich themselves.  Wages have stagnated for the middle class for decades compared to corp. profits and inflation.  

[12string]

sure, for many the commute is a substantial cost.  For me, I only drive once or twice a week, only a few miles.  But when I was working at home, my utility bills were way higher.  Had to keep the heat and AC up, my computer sucks watts

There is a trend now for places like California.  Wages are higher because cost of living is higher.  They are starting to cut pay for remote workers living in low cost areas

[Kzoo]

16 minutes ago, 12string said:

They are starting to cut pay for remote workers living in low cost areas

Some were doing that pre-Covid.  I have a young friend that did an internship at Google in S.F.  After his internship he was hired full-time.  He was WFH pre-Covid.  He moved back to Michigan during Covid.  They attempted to cut his pay because he was no longer living in a high cost of living area.  He said no think you, others can use my services.  They backed down.

 

[Tizeye]

You have it backwards. Businesses can downsize their space to facilities not requiring the higher number of workers. Workers save money not having the commute and parking garage fee if not assumed by the company and some flexibility with work time and businesses save on their expenses. Assuming productivity is not cut, it is a win, win for both parties.

Realtor is a good, but extreme, example. In the old days, had your office or cubicle that coordinated work from and met clients. Now, most work from home with a common area for when need to go into the office. If meeting clients at the office, set up in the conference room. Those with office (typically a Realtor Team) pay rent to Broker for the office space,

[Randomguy]

1 hour ago, Road Runner said:

What say you?

Bullshit, same work gets done.  You want people to come in to the office with all this inflation?  Gotta pay more at this point, much more.

[Chris...]

If companies want workers back in the office they could pay them more. 

[MickinMD ★]

59 minutes ago, Road Runner said:

There was a piece on the local news about this last night.  If you think about the extra time involved in preparing to go to work and the commute time, along with the significant dollar cost of commuting, as well as just the huge convenience of staying at home, it would seem that employees might be willing to take a cut in pay to compensate for the benefits of working from home.  

What say you?  Would you take a 5-10% pay cut to stay at home?  I would.  

It would depend on how much it costs to get to work and how much the company saves by not having me at work, but in general I'd be willing to take a small cut, say 2% if I wanted to work from home.

My driving distance to work was 7.5 miles, meaning I'd be burning 1/2 gallon of gas/day or 2.5 gallons/week.  That's, say, $10/week which would be less than 2% of the avg. worker's pay and less than 1% of what I was making when I retired in 2006.  If I was taking care of a little kid at home and could still do the job at home as well as the office, I'd take at least 5%.

Personally my careers, industrial research chemist and chemistry/physics teacher with at least 1 lab per week, require major physical materials and can't be done well from home. But in any case, I'd want to go into work because it's more efficient, there's more professional interaction, and I think I'd be more likely to be promoted or become aware of first and assigned better projects.

[Prophet Zacharia]

1 hour ago, Dirtyhip said:

Sounds like a way for companies to further enrich themselves.  Wages have stagnated for the middle class for decades compared to corp. profits and inflation.  

Amen. Although the next step companies will take will be to eliminate positions that people currently hold and work in-person,  and outsource them to remote, whenever possible. 

[maddmaxx ★]

It seems there is a fundamental difference between workers willing to volunteer a small pay cut for the ability to work at home and companies that see an opportunity to explain away pay cuts because of cost of living issues.

One is pro worker by choice and the other is simply corporate greed showing.

[Longjohn ★]

If I have to work from home I want more pay to provide a home office,