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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   34961 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of April 3, 2023

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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.

Well, for one, we're not in a free market. For another even if we were, it's not irrelevant. My commute is factored in in the sense that if I can get a job that is just as good, but is located closer, I'll opt for that one instead, but whether or not I can clock in while commuting is one of the factors that determines whether or not I'll consider the other job as just as good.

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