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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   34981 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of April 3, 2023

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Driving is labor

I have no idea why you don't think public transit is labor by this same standard. Yes, people can talk to each other. They can also talk to each other at their actual jobs. Since you admit that people use public transport for a goal, but you don't think that their failure to use it as an end in itself makes it labor, I can get no coherent, definition of "labor" out of this post. By my standards, I would say that both driving and public transport are labor. The person with the 45 minute commute by train is also donating 90 minutes of unpaid labor.

He could however translate that into paid labour if his company accepted that he was at work on the train.

This is also true if you replace "train" with "car".

Hard to work while driving.

The condition was "if his company accepted that..." The company is perfectly capable of "accepting that" driving to work is something he should be paid for doing.

Driving is necessary for him to do his job. Unless this is a minimum wage job, the company is going to have to pay a salary that is subject to market forces, and those will be affected by the relative desirability of the job. So on the average, the company will pay him for driving to work in his car, even if driving isn't a separate line item on his paycheck.

I am talking about people actually working on trains - writing emails, using their laptops, attending meetings, writing code etc. very common on many commuter trains in Europe.

Rrmember, the argument is that driving is labor. You're now trying to argue the reverse of the OP.

Just because you can't use your laptop when driving, that doesn't mean that driving isn't 1) labor and 2) labor that you're getting paid for.

(Also, the kind of job that it is possible to do on a train is pretty limited, and if you can do it on a train, you can do it without commuting at all.)

I wasn’t making or dismissing the point of the op. I’m making my own point. That people do actual paid work on trains, and that they are paid for it. Trains to London that arrive post 9am are full of workers avoiding the rush hour crush (and premium pricing), and are actually paid for it - the company considers that work part of the 9-5. And all office workers can do this, it’s hardly limited. Nor does “they can do it at home” work as a counter, because even prior to covid when I lived outside London, and worked in London, I did both.

However people are not paid for commuting in the kind of job where they commute and can’t work the commute. As in they drive. In that case they are paid 9-5. If commuting were part of the payment then companies would pay more compensation to people who commute longer.

I never worked at a job that let me clock in just because I'm driving to the office, but my last 2 jobs do let me clock in to answer some emails, or do code reviews.

I suppose you're right that I could clock in and do these things while driving a car, but I don't want to die.

Whether you clock in is irrelevant. In a free market, the fact that you have to spend time driving to get to work is taken into account in the market price for the job.

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Well, post-COVID, those people don't even really need trains--or travel in general--to do those things as much anymore.

It's not any easier on the train.

Er….ok.

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