Your Employer Should Be Funding Your Commute
Commuting is increasingly undermining employees’ health and happiness. It’s also free labor.
Commuting is a necessary evil. For some, it’s a quick trip with public transport, on a bike, or in the car. But, for many people, it’s a long and painful journey via multiple modes of transport, often in cramped conditions.
And it can take several hours out of the day.
What’s worse is that we pay for it, but we don’t get paid for it because tradition on this matter favors the employer, not the employee—but the principles upholding this don’t stand up to scrutiny anymore. Something needs to change.
We are a world of commuters
Commuting is on the rise across the world. And the statistics are astonishing.
- In Japan, 8 million commuters pass through Tokyo every day.
- In the United States, 3.6 million workers commute for 90 minutes or more, one way. This translates into one whole month of commuting every year—that’s twice the average amount of annual vacation a worker gets.
- In the U.K., commuters traveling into London will spend, on average, £305 ($397) a month and 2.5 hours commuting each day.
