What happens when people can’t afford to actually get to work?

[Standbylove]

We have this scenario potentially cropping up, one of our team members is struggling for money since the cost of living has risen - they are tied into a large mortgage and even though we are paid well she’s finding it hard to find the money to make the 50 mile commute daily. It’s starting to make her stressed and anxious.
We don’t really have a WFH policy but the job could be done WFH but then that would open the can of worms for the whole organisation.
Surely this is going to crop up more and more. I wonder how sympathetic businesses will be….

Why does it require pay cuts? How come Germany and Canada can do i just fine?

We’ve become so inured to things being shit in this country, we can’t even fathom that it might not have to be like this.

Government subsidies? The government doesn’t have any money of its own. So more tax, then? How much extra tax, per year, are you, personally, prepared to pay to make childcare cost much less than £50 a day and simultaneously pay the staff more, or to provide heavily subsidised social care and residential care for the elderly with higher paid care staff?

I think that income taxes should go up, but I’m in a small minority. How well do you think an extra 2% on higher rate tax would go down with the people complaining about the cost of petrol for their 50/100 mile daily commute to their ‘well paid’ (according to the OP) jobs? How about an extra 2% on VAT, which affects everyone?

Because they couldn't afford to buy near work and at that time petrol was £1.23/litre as opposed to £1.80 now (this is my situation). Area I moved to is cheaper largely because it is rural with hardly any jobs. No jobs in fact (in my profession) and I've been looking for 5 years 🥺

It would be better for everyone and the planet if people went back to working close to home. The morning traffic is horrendous around here because people want to live in a different town to the one they work in. People need to move closer to the jobs. Obviously London is a slightly different situation and always has been, but 50 years ago, most people worked locally.

People deserve to expect a fair income for their labour and to be able to afford a reasonable standard of living on that income.

That doesn’t mean a six bed house with a flat screen in every room. But that does mean being able to meet all reasonable needs and not having to sell your house and move into a flat just to be able afford to transport yourself to your job.

How low does the bar have to be before you think it’s unacceptable? Because for me, we’re already there.

Ah, got you, you want other people to pay for it, rather than you.

No, I don’t think that that’s reasonable. These are costs that you should know about before you decide to have children. It is completely unreasonable to just have children that you can’t afford and to expect other families to have to work harder to pay for them.

It’s personal responsibility needed here, not asking for a handout.

So no flats then, everyone “deserves” a nice house, even if they work part time in an unskilled job?

No, I can’t get on board with that. Nowhere in the world has come up with such a ludicrous scheme.

After five years perhaps you need to accept that you need to look outside your current profession, or move home.

Another option is to buy a scooter, or an electric bike, to make the commute cheaper.

Well, you’ve answered your own question there, haven’t you?

If you’ve bought a house that you can’t afford to live in when interest rates rise from rock bottom, and when the cost of fossil fuels rises - entirely predictably - then you’ll have to move to somewhere smaller. That is what people have always done.

The impending cost of living crisis for well paid people, like the OP’s colleague, will have been obvious for years to anyone who reads this site and has the sense that they were born with. It’s been an approaching iceberg for ages.

Example: threads about the cost of houses. Always the same. A poster complains that a lender won’t lend enough for them to buy their ‘dream home’. Others urge her to contact a mortgage broker, who can get them access to a bigger loan. Nobody stops to think, hang on, why was the lender not keen to advance me a massive mortgage at the limits of what I can afford? Can anybody ‘tied into a massive mortgage’ like the OP’s colleague really be surprised that they are struggling?

Or a poster asks whether to be untruthful on the mortgage application, to get a bigger loan, when in fact she’s planning to go part time. A chorus of approval is the response. Gotta get your dream home!

Or the endless advice to ‘stretch yourself’. Not just here, on property programmes. What do people think that the phrase means? If you are ‘stretching yourself’ when interest rates are as low as they have ever been, and when we haven’t had an oil and gas price shock for a while, what do you think might happen when conditions are less favourable?

As PP have said, it's not really the companies responsibility

I used to have a job that was a distance from home. We only had one car and DH needed it for work so I would get the train and cycle 15 miles from the station (including up Winnats Pass - if anyone knows that hill, it's a killer!).

Then the train company changed the rules so you had to reserve a spot for your bike on the train every day - which I couldn't do - so ended up leaving that job because of that.

I really think public transport sucks in this country. Cycling is the answer to a lot of issues but it's made very hard, unsafe and a logistical nightmare.

You left your job rather than leaving your bike at the station?

That’s quite extreme.

?

Bit more extreme to walk 15 miles from the station.

Explain your question?

... she had to sell her house and get a smaller mortgage then. Or they'll fire her for not coming to work.

Why would employers be sympathetic?

It's not been their problem for anybody on low wages and ZHCs - will they suddenly start caring because it's 'their type' that's complaining about it?

I think the previous poster meant you could have left your bike at the train station overnight. So train from home to wherever in Derbyshire (Hope?), collect your bike, cycle to work and then cycle back to the station, lock your bike up and get the train home. I used to leave my bike locked at Sheffield train station all the time rather than run the risk of the Northern conductor saying there were too many bikes on the train and not letting me in. I only used to cycle 3 miles across Sheffield though, certainly would not have fancied 15 miles up Winnats.

I had an honest conversation with my boss, that my commute was costing me 1/6 of my net income. This after they moved the office further away.
He gave me a pay rise and organised an interest free season ticket loan.
Skills are in short supply, it would cost the company more to rerecruit than to help so many companies will be practical about the issue.

Some of it will also come down to secure bike facilities which ties in with crap public transport. Sheffield train station for example has fairly secure bike storage but even then I wouldn’t leave an expensive bike. I’d assume the previous poster may have had an electric bike for such a commute and the small train stations in the Hope Valley will just have a normal non covered bike rack. So likely her bike would have been stolen if left.

They should probably get on with it then,

Or, they can sit and moan and constantly find excuses why nothing is ever their fault and wait for someone else to sort their lives out.

I’m constantly amazed at how many people go for option two.

There was no need to take the bike on the train. It’s not rocket science.

Agree. A city centre station might have secure facilities, but I certainly wouldn't fancy leaving a bike at one of the stations along the main line - and even secure facilities aren't 100% secure.

Then the train company changed the rules so you had to reserve a spot for your bike on the train every day -

I think this is why recently we found even foldable electric bikes have massive dropped in price and become affordable to us- DH says is difficult but possible to get on trains with one.

There's no storage at all at local station, or any ones we travel to so foldable bikes are only option and they used to be horrendously expensive.

Exactly. Staff are the business. It’s not the employees’ problem. Good employers will find solutions. But they need staff to be honest and not play games.

I’d be wary of relying on the ‘staff are the business and hence the staff being unhappy at the rise in petrol costs is the employer’s problem’ argument if I were you.

It’s the same argument that was deployed on the working from home threads: posters scandalised that their employers wanted them back in the office and threatening to withdraw their precious skills. Because THEY had the power, or similar nonsense.

The reality, of course, is that unless you have a set of very special, scarce and unique skills then you are eminently replaceable. Has nobody noticed that our universities are turning out hundreds of thousands of graduates? All of them keen to get on in life. Many of whom feel that they have been sold a pup after having been assured that a degree will buy them a great career and a good salary. Many of whom will be all too happy to step into a job vacated by somebody who has voluntarily and foolishly committed themselves to a lifestyle they can’t afford and now thinks that their employer should pay their travelling costs.