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Pay cuts for homeworkers?

Sue Pertwee-Tyr

Sue Pertwee-Tyr

Accuphase all the way down
I hear talk that people who wish to work from home after the pandemic may face pressure on pay. Google, apparently, is considering reducing pay for people who work from home, and there have been calls for civil servants in the UK to have their pay reduced if they choose to work from home rather than return to the office. The argument, it seems, is that homeworkers save the commuting costs.

Obviously, this is a mostly spurious argument. Over the winter, I saved on diesel, but spent more on heating the house. And I have numerous colleagues who walk or cycle to work so the argument has no relevance there.

But more fundamentally, I get paid for the job I do, for my experience, knowledge and skills. There’s nothing in my pay rate to reflect the cost of my commute, and nor should there be.

The MP arguing this is one of the usual right wing muppets, but it seems the government wishes to open another front in the culture wars and set homeworkers against office workers. I suspect lobbying by the commercial property sector.
 
In fairness our Tory kleptocrats have stuck so many £bns of our tax revenue along with some epic national borrowing in their own and their donors back pockets there simply isn’t enough to pay public sector workers anything like decent wage. “There are no magic money trees”.
 
davidsrsb said:
Reducing office space requirements is already cutting their operating costs.
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..and reducing the income of Tory donor property magnates, some of whom pay a quarter of a million a year to be on the ‘advisory board’ set up by the Conservative co-chair that has monthly off the record meetings with Boris and Rishi.
 
I spent the last 16 years before I retired (eleven years ago) working from home as it was something my employer wanted. They even supplied a comfy chair that I'm still using and before we had computer conferencing a telephone headset and backup micro HDDs. Oh and I still kept the car allowance as from time to time I would have to present to our customers either at my employers or the customers location.

However I can see the case where someone who has been given a London Weighting allowance having it removed. I read of a case recently where an employee lets out his house and lives abroad in sunnier climes and WFH. Others are moving out of London altogether.

Cheers,

DV
 
Ultimately people will decide whether it’s worth working for such a company, a good company will be flexible and treat its employees decently, they will get the best staff. Google has always had a thing about working in the office, they approached one of my friends but he knocked them back because of there, at the time, refusal to allow homeworking.
 
Sue Pertwee-Tyr said:
I hear talk that people who wish to work from home after the pandemic may face pressure on pay. Google, apparently, is considering reducing pay for people who work from home, and there have been calls for civil servants in the UK to have their pay reduced if they choose to work from home rather than return to the office. The argument, it seems, is that homeworkers save the commuting costs.

Obviously, this is a mostly spurious argument. Over the winter, I saved on diesel, but spent more on heating the house. And I have numerous colleagues who walk or cycle to work so the argument has no relevance there.

But more fundamentally, I get paid for the job I do, for my experience, knowledge and skills. There’s nothing in my pay rate to reflect the cost of my commute, and nor should there be.

The MP arguing this is one of the usual right wing muppets, but it seems the government wishes to open another front in the culture wars and set homeworkers against office workers. I suspect lobbying by the commercial property sector.
Click to expand...
I thought pretty much the same as you when I read about about this.

When I dug a bit deeper, the term "London Waiting" was mentioned as an allowance that might be cut back. Over 35 years ago when I considered working in London for the civil service, this was an important addition (general additional costs of working in London) to an accepted base salary for people who worked in London vs people doing the same job outside of London..
 
Not all Civil Servants get the weighting allowance. My daughter is on a CS grad scheme. No extra for London based job on that, at least for the length of the scheme - so she has decamped elsewhere for remote working (to Wales!) and is, as a result, rather better off....
 
Depends on the job, of course. Consider that if a job allows, someone who wants to be based 100% at home can be based anywhere. That means outside of the UK in far cheaper places to live, with far lower salaries.
Those who want to get on in their career will know the value of face time (not the Apple version).
 
Ponty said:
Depends on the job, of course. Consider that if a job allows, someone who wants to be based 100% at home can be based anywhere. That means outside of the UK in far cheaper places to live, with far lower salaries.
Those who want to get on in their career will know the value of face time (not the Apple version).
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Working for a UK company abroad for a period of time (I think 6 months?) introduces a whole raft of tax and other issues though - many UK employers may not tolerate that, even if simpler things like time zone differences can be worked out...
 
IanW said:
I thought pretty much the same as you when I read about about this.

When I dug a bit deeper, the term "London Waiting" was mentioned as an allowance that might be cut back. Over 35 years ago when I considered working in London for the civil service, this was an important addition (general additional costs of working in London) to an accepted base salary for people who worked in London vs people doing the same job outside of London..
Click to expand...
I think again this is misguided. London Weighting, to the extent it still persists, is intended to cover the additional costs of housing in London. If you're already in London, because pre-pandemic you worked in the office, you may not be in a position to move out of London but still wish to work from home, because of the work/life balance advantages. You may have a partner who works in London, or kids who are settled at school, or a social circle, or any number of reasons why you prefer to stay in London.

The the piece I read was very much about civil servants who didn't want to return to the office and preferred to work from home even after the office had reopened fully. The subtext was very much along the lines of 'starving them out' by hitting them in the pay packet.

My employer is talking about a blended working system, where we work from home the majority of the time, but come into the office some of the time, perhaps as much as a couple of days a week, or as little as a day a month, whatever turns out to be workable for both sides. I hope very much that this becomes the norm.
 
Sue Pertwee-Tyr said:
I think again this is misguided. London Weighting, to the extent it still persists, is intended to cover the additional costs of housing in London. If you're already in London, because pre-pandemic you worked in the office, you may not be in a position to move out of London but still wish to work from home, because of the work/life balance advantages. You may have a partner who works in London, or kids who are settled at school, or a social circle, or any number of reasons why you prefer to stay in London.

The the piece I read was very much about civil servants who didn't want to return to the office and preferred to work from home even after the office had reopened fully. The subtext was very much along the lines of 'starving them out' by hitting them in the pay packet.

My employer is talking about a blended working system, where we work from home the majority of the time, but come into the office some of the time, perhaps as much as a couple of days a week, or as little as a day a month, whatever turns out to be workable for both sides. I hope very much that this becomes the norm.
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There is no one size fits all approach.

And that would be correct for the London Waiting Allowance. Using it as a means to try to force people back to work en masse does sound wrong.

I would agree that the approach your employer is taking does sound like a good approach.
 
davidsrsb said:
Reducing office space requirements is already cutting their operating costs.
Click to expand...


My better half works for the local council and does most of her shifts at home along with the majority of her colleagues (in their respective homes of course - we ain't got that much space!)

The Council are already monetising this by renting out vacant space and facilities at City Hall ....
 
Funk said:
Working for a UK company abroad for a period of time (I think 6 months?) introduces a whole raft of tax and other issues though - many UK employers may not tolerate that, even if simpler things like time zone differences can be worked out...
Click to expand...

They don’t have to be UK employees, too expensive…
 
If this happens, how will ones this last year that signed up to big mortgages 'in the country' to escape the rat race survive...it;s all swings and roundabouts...
 
andyoz said:
If this happens, how will ones this last year that signed up to big mortgages 'in the country' to escape the rat race survive...it;s all swings and roundabouts...
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Oooops! It will happen within the UK as well if location doesn’t matter. Let’s say a company has a job requirement which, if in the south east is a £50K role but can 100% WFH. Someone living in remote Scotland for example could say well, I’ll do it for £35K and so forth. 100% WFH roles could effectively be put out to tender. Lowest bidder with the right experience wins the contract. I can see plenty of people in remote areas who’d grab this with both hands.
 
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