The 100-mile office
Posted by Dalton48 on 28 May 2008 at 08:15 am | Tagged as: Business
Canadian gas prices have risen (though they haven’t kept pace with the increase in crude oil), and by enough, apparently, to drive some change in behaviour. Unless, of course, someone steps in to subsidize the high cost of commuting. A story in today’s Careers section in the Globe outlines how some employers are responding to the pressure on their workers:
“Thanks to my company, the price of gas doesn’t bother me at all,” Ms. Byer says. “I can just imagine commuters in their cars thinking: ‘I wish our company had a van pool, too.’ “
Now, Enbridge employee Ms. Byer shares a van from cottage country to her office in Toronto for her 160-kilometre commute. Yes, 160 kilometres. It’s certainly better that several long distance commuters are in one vehicle, but it doesn’t negate the environmental damage caused by employing people who don’t live in the same municipality.
Another company’s assistance is even more destructive:
Douglas Adams became a hero last month when he decided to pay for the gas his employees use to commute. “It’s been an outcry of bravos, thank-yous and hugs. One employee who drives 60 miles a day each way even broke down and cried,” the chief executive officer of engineering parts distributor EFC International in St. Louis, Mo., says of the response to his offer last month.
He’ll be sharing his gift of unremitting emissions with Southern Ontario next month later this year, when he opens an office in Hamilton.
The article also features companies that are doing more environmentally-friendly things, such as encouraging working from home, providing bicycle storage and showers, etc. But here’s an idea that could make all of these innovations unnecessary: why don’t companies restrict hiring to people who live in the same Census Metropolitan Area? Lower commuting costs for employees, no subsidies required from employers, less smog — win, win, win.
I believe it would also be illegal to discriminate on the basis of address. It’s the employee’s responsibility to get to work, and if s/he says s/he could make it, then you have to take that at face value.
However, I also read the article and agree that renting a van for people who live that far away is goofy. (And the thought of commuting that far with co-workers in a van every day is enough to grind my teeth down to nubs.) Any kind of “help” provided by employers is a short-term solution.
I remember reading articles from Europe about people who “commuted” from the South of France to London — flights on charters were so cheap at one time it was viable to fly back and forth during the week. Those days are over, but I’m sure it was nice while it lasted. Ditto living in cottage country and commuting to Bay St.
And according to Slate, gasoline is still horrendously UNDERpriced:
http://www.slate.com/id/2191491/
The federal government used to (not sure if it still does?) discriminate on the basis of address — lots of job posts were open only to residents of certain areas. I’m not sure what their legal basis there was.
I have colleagues who work from Sault Ste. Marie, Wawa, and a small town outside Belleville, and our last remaining admin works mostly out of Hamilton… we’re not picky about where people are, generally, so long as they have a plan for how the work will get done (and the computer skills to back it up — that’s previously been an issue). Heck, I’m working from home today myself. I think — hope — regular, long-distance commuting’s time is drawing to a close; there are so many better options these days.
Possibly true that it would be considered discriminatory (the federal government changed its policy, if I recall correctly, at the beginning of the Harper government because of political pressure from Westerners, who were excluded from even applying almost all fed. govt. jobs — but it could also have been because of a looming legal challenge) — but it’s the type of pre-screening that would be phenomenally simple to do (where is that postal code?) and pretty much undetectable — and, from my perspective, entirely justifiable as part of a “green” strategy for any company.
The Ont. govt. has many postings that are limited to applicants within 125 km. of certain buildings.
She lives outside Keswick. I’m interested that she doesn’t take the Bradford GO train, but then again it’s close to the top of the 404.
Dalton48 – I’m not sure how you’d allow for people who would move closer to work if they got the job.
They’d have to self-identify in the cover letter — as one generally does if applying for a job out of town so as not to be screened out.
Wonder if a company-provided van pool is technically a taxable benefit? Not sure, and the government might not focus on it anyhow because uncommon. But would certainly change the economics if you got taxed on the cost (like for gym memberships and other perks).
But leaving aside subsidies from the company or taxpayers, I don’t see why it should be (i) a company’s responsibility to check where employees commute from or (ii) (to make a somewhat different point) any of their business. Not to deny a role for companies in promoting social goods or CSR generally, but it seems to me to be a question of where the employer’s sphere ends and where the increasingly limited private sphere starts. There must be many other ways to reduce long-distance commuting ($4 gas, for starters) that don’t involve invasive and paternalistic corporate oversight. Following this logic, shouldn’t the company reward the employee who dutifully stays with his mistress in the city several nights a week rather than driving out to his family in the suburbs?… (ok, so maybe I’ve been watching too many episodes of Mad Men…).
(Also, and to make up for that last comment, a strict rule like this would seem to impose particular hardship on two-working-out-of-the-house-spouse couples, whose jobs might not be that close by.)
Having said this, at my last job, one of my assistants commuted from a town several counties and something like 100 miles north of the city, and it was remarkable how the slightest drizzle outside my house inevitably translated into a howling blizzard in her town that shut down roads and trains for days. There were a few times I thought that a policy like this might have some value…
Any transportation or parking subsidy is a taxable benefit, is it not? I’m pretty sure I’ve seen RevCan stuff on that issue — not covering van pools specifically, but they would certainly fall under the general heading of things RevCan would intend to include.
Yes, company-paid parking and company cars are taxable benefits. If the company pays for the lease of the car, you definitely get dinged for it. Not sure how much you’d get dinged in a case like in the article — where various people are sharing one vehicle. I look forward to the case making its appeal through the Rev Canada bureaucracy…
The feds still have geographical eligibility criteria for some jobs (e.g., open to residents of National Capital Region); the Ontario ads I’ve seen sometimes say something like you have to live within X km of the office; you can apply from elsewhere but we’re not going to pay you to move.
I don’t think there’s anything in the Charter or in private sector anti-discrimination law that prohibits discrimination based on place of residence, with the exception of on-reserve vs. off-reserve (an odd ground of discrimination called “aboriginality residence”) which arose out of a case a few years ago about legislation denying voting rights to off-reserve band members (the legislation was held to be unconstitutional). But as I recall there was language in that decision fairly explicitly making the point that they weren’t referring to place of residence in general.
The government cannot require its employees to live within a specific area, e.g., Toronto can’t require its municipal employees to live within the City of Toronto, etc. — that’s a s. 7 violation of liberty rights according to an early rather wonky (IMO) Charter decision. But private corporations that are not bound by the Charter would not be bound by a similar restriction. It occurs to me though that certain positions (e.g., MPs I think, and SCC judges) require a place of residence in Ottawa. I don’t know how this all gets sorted out. It seems to be a balancing.
That said, I imagine most employers would not want to impose place of residence limitations on employees, for the simple reason that it’s hard to see how they could benefit from doing so.
As an aside, I notice this issue of Toronto Life has a Real Estate feature about a couple of environmental consultants (!) who commute in from Cambridge. (Ont., not UK, but still, it’s far enough.)