Australian Atheists Forum

Ok, work from home is back in the news;

However, 37 per cent, or around 4900 people, thought the idea of paying remote workers less was a good one and that people should be rewarded for going into the office.

The question was also posed on news.com.au’s Facebook page, with a significant amount of commenters explaining why they thought those who go into the office deserve higher salaries than their work from home counterparts.

The problem with these people is they have made a "category" error by using two categories that don't compete. What they are actually arguing for, and which would soon become clear as nonsense once it's expressed, is that workers be paid differently based on the expense required to access the work environment, in other words the business should pay for a workers travel expenses to and from work, the deduction for WFH workers being specifically targeted at this in the article. This is not a thing anywhere as far as I know.

So how do we demonstrate the nonsense here? Well simple, what about Roger? Well who is Roger you say. Well Roger is that guy who owns a flat in town, and every morning leaves the flat 5 minutes before work starts, hops on a city clipper bus for free and walks into the office. In other words his access to work environment costs are exactly the same as a WFH worker, should he get paid more than them? And what about Chrissy and Bob. What about them, you ask. Well you see Chrissy has an electric car that she charges every day from home solar and Bob drives a lifted V8 SUV. It costs Chrissy 0$ per week to drive in to work but it costs Bob, who lives the same distance away, $150 a week, should they get paid the same?

So there you have it, Office workers are arguing that the business should pay their travel expenses to get to and from work, and once you put it like that what are businesses and companies going to say? If it doesn't include the words "fuck off" somewhere in the response I would be very disappointed!

In other words this isn't a controversy, it's an entirely made up thing by people who don't want to go into the office but have been forced to by their employers and it's being probably pushed by the employers but said employers simply haven't thought it through to the ultimate conclusion, they are in fact arguing they should pay employees travel expenses to and from work, which is silly and not a thing anywhere.

https://www.news.com.au/finance/work/at ... de4956aae4

@stevebrooks - Landlords, owners of inner city suppliers of overpriced food and drink, and middle-managers who can't shake the power trip... these are the prime movers of anti-WFH sentiment.

Interesting blog post from economist John Quiggin on the WFH/mandatory office attendance divide.

https://johnquigginblog.substack.com/p/ ... olution-in

Spoilers, sweetie:

In the absence of a really deep recession, firms that demand and enforce full-time attendance will find themselves with a limited pool of disgruntled workers dominated by those with limited outside options.

But I am using my home power and gas (for heating) and home computer etc, so I have an expense the working in the office people don't have, so can we factor that in and just call it even?