AIBU to think if your boss wants you in the office, they should help pay to get you there?

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Barclays has delayed moving UK staff from two to three office days after thousands asked for help with commuting costs, and TSB staff are reportedly preparing legal action over a similar plan. In one survey, 29% of UK office workers said a subsidised commute would get them in more often.

One side says more office days is effectively a pay cut. The other says getting to work has always been the employee's cost.

Should employers chip in, or is that just part of having a job?

This isn’t true. It can be a business expense and can be tax exempt for the employer.

This is a really good point actually - we all make a decision about commute time and cost vs housing area costs and desirability. It's not necessarily the main factor for some people, but for others it is

I understand what people are saying. Wages haven't risen in line with costs, and commuting can cost a lot.

I work for a company that has made us go in 3 times a week instead of 2. We’re quite a large company with offices all over the UK and the commuting challenge is that London weighting was stopped so now the people in London get paid the same as the people in Birmingham - even though the people in Birmingham can drive into work and park for free (albeit petrol does cost), and in London we either pay £800k for a house or live somewhere cheaper and pay £50 a day.

People are already starting to loose their jobs to AI. Demanding employers pay commuting costs is presumably just going to serve to make AI even more attractive than real life whining employees and incentivise employers to speed up AI adoption.

It depends really. I’ve been with my employer since pre-Covid so the expectation was five days in the office. It would have been reasonable now that we go to the office three times a week that I should feel happy about it. However my employer closed the original office and moved bang in the middle of central London so my commuting costs are now much higher for the three days in the office compared to my previous 5 days in the office. No help was offered and if they ask us to go back full time I would be looking for a job elsewhere due to commuting costs and length of commute.

It depends what it says in their contract.

This. But also is it not classed as an assumed change to your role if you’ve been wfh for a sustained period of time (change to contract due to actions and acceptance by employers and employees)? Unless the bank was regularly saying that offering home working was just a temporary thing (my last employer did this - law firm - and kept reminding us every six to eight weeks, so that they could eventually force us back five days a week). So I moved somewhere where it’s only 3 days a week we need to be in, and they’re actually very flexible and will permit more wfh on a basis if it’s needed.

Commuting costs for hybrid workers are taxable. https://www.att.org.uk/employers/welcome-employer-focus/commuting-costs-hybrid-workers

Why would your company be responsible for your travel costs to work?

If I break down and my car doesn't work should my boss pay for my taxi to and from every job I need to get to?

No, I don't think anyone reasonable would believe they are entitled to travel costs to and from work outside of the obvious, ie mileage - you need to work in an office 3 hours away to cover, we will pay for your time etc.

Why take a job you can't get to when needed by public transport / bike / car / walking.

People take jobs knowing the commute is an hour or so, I don't think most people factor in the hour getting to work / back home as 'i should be paid for this'

Travel costs have always been the employees responsibility these entitled workers are having a laugh unless the office have moved further away then no it’s not employers responsibility. Anyone who thinks it is are delusional. Any excuse to work from home.

Funny no one suggested their pay was cut when they started to work from home,

I cannot imagine that Barclays workers don’t have contracts specifying an office-based place of work or a place of work as agreed by line manager. People are surely beholden to their contracts. Employers have not historically paid commute costs.

My thoughts exactly!
This wfh has rewired a lot of peoples brains re normality and entitlement.

Sort of an aside. I agree with pp about train travel. More trains and cheaper journeys would massively improve people's lives.

Employers have been slow to work out what "normal" looks like after Covid.

So, employees have got used to wfh completely or wfh for a certain number of days a week. Increasing the number of days in the office is suddenly a cost they weren't expecting. But, if their contract says they should be in the office every day (as many did pre-Covid) or has some words such as "as required" then they don't have a choice about it. They should consider the times they didn't have to pay for commuting as a bonus, rather than now having to increase office days as an extra.

I live in Essex, less than an hour from central London by train, 2 days a week by rail including travelcard for underground is £785 a month plus over £10 a day for parking say another £100, thats almost £900 a month for two days - three days would take it over a grand a month.

Would be totally reasonable to expect a pay rise to travel to work if you got a pay cut when you started to WFH which was attributed to the savings in travel costs.

But no-one did, so no. It's not reasonable.

Whether companies might choose to offer a (taxable) benefit to encourage RTW is another thing but I can't see many doing it if they have a right to enforce your contractual requirement to attend work.

Joke isn’t it? People have become very entitled since the pandemic.

So work in the town you live in?

Plus Barclays is off-shoring and ramping up on AI so cutting back on their London staff, this way they won't need to pay them redundancy.

Pre covid my employer offered an interest free loan to cover a rail pass so people could buy a cheaper annual pass and spread the cost.

I guess one issue my colleagues who rely on trains had post covid was that the number of trains an hour were cut so if everyone suddenly had to go back full time the trains wouldn’t have the capacity

my morning commute on the tube can be a squash and a squeeze too

Yep. I know another company who have done this

my boss was very clear to us that if we want to protect our jobs we need to attend the office as we don’t want management thinking that someone offshore can do the role - and we are in a very specialist role. I’m seeing a lot of people being made redundant and training their offshore replacements before they leave

I’ve never heard such utter nonsense in my life.

I think what’s somewhat unreasonable about employers insisting on coming in more is that they fully took advantage of location agnostic hiring when working from home was the thing. Now it’s become obvious that it’s not all it was cracked up to be, they’re wanting those same employees to come in several days a week and it’s often not financially feasible. Obviously unless home was the contractual work location the employees haven’t got a leg to stand on.