Re:SF restaurants are suffocating
by oh_sigh on Sunday January 13, 2019 @04:17PM
(#18898740)
I don't see how or why the employer should care how long their employees commute is it is incumbent on the employee to make the decision if the commute is worth it. Maybe people would prefer a 2 hour commute to a place where they can make $80k/year, over working 10 minutes from home and only being able to make $35k/year.
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Small business owners do care about the health and happiness of their employees. But even if we pretend for a moment that they do not, it's a threat to the business viability if workers cannot afford to live within a reasonable commute. If rents continue to outpace wages, those workers will eventually leave the area or the industry. The article talks about the business impacts of people leaving in detail (loss of talent, reduced quality of service, direct hiring costs associated with turnover, etc).
'Reasonable' is defined differently by everyone. Some people would balk at a 30 minute commute. Other people like long haul truckers and sailors choose to be away from home for weeks or months on end. Some people would be okay with and even prefer a 2 hour commute if it means they get paid 3x what they would get paid with a 15 minute commute.
That may be, but good luck running a business that relies on all of your staff deeming 4 hours of daily commuting reasonable.
How do you even recruit someone living that far away for a (relatively) low paying, low skill job? 2 hours get's you almost the entire way across the state I live in, people living that far away have often never even visited my city once in their lives. Why would someone who lives as far away as San Jose (apparently just 1hr 30min from SF) be tuned in to the local job boards in SF when there are plenty of job opportunities in their back yard?
I can understand why people with valuable skillsets are willing to balance the cost of commuting from their dream homestead to their place of work but I can't see how this system works for those on the bottom rungs of the societal ladder.
Re:SF restaurants are suffocating
by thatoneuser on Sunday January 13, 2019 @04:20PM
(#18898761)
The very subject of this article is why the employer should care. Ethically the owner has no requirement to care. When you can’t find people willing to make the commute then you’ve found when the employer should care.
> I don't see how or why the employer should care how long their employees commute
Long commute times makes it far more difficult to hire. Why wouldn't an employer care about that?
That's what they should care about. So they care about the commute as a factor in how easy it is to hire.