Engineer Sues Amazon For Not Covering Work-From-Home Internet, Electricity Bills (theregister.com) 153
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Register: Amazon's attempt to dismiss a lawsuit, brought by one of its senior software engineers, asking it to reimburse workers for internet and electricity costs racked up while working from home in the pandemic, has been rejected by a California judge. David George Williams sued his employer for refusing to foot his monthly home office expenses, claiming Amazon is violating California's labor laws. The state's Labor Code section 2802 states: "An employer shall indemnify his or her employee for all necessary expenditures or losses incurred by the employee in direct consequence of the discharge of his or her duties, or of his or her obedience to the directions of the employer."
Williams reckons Amazon should not only be paying for its techies' home internet and electricity, but also for any other expenses related to their ad-hoc home office space during the pandemic. Williams sued the cloud giant on behalf of himself and over 4,000 workers employed in California across 12 locations, arguing these costs will range from $50 to $100 per month during the time they were told to stay away from corporate campuses as the coronavirus spread. [...] Amazon's lawyers, however, believe the broadband and utility bills, and similar expenses, aren't the company's problem since it was following shelter-at-home orders, which require employees to stay away from the office.
But Vince Chhabaria, a US federal district judge in northern California, slapped down Amazon's attempt to kill off the lawsuit, and said the local government's orders don't necessarily absolve the company from liability. "What matters is whether Williams incurred those expenses 'in direct consequence of the discharge of his or her duties, or of his or her obedience to the directions of the employer'," Judge Chhabaria ruled [PDF] this week. "According to the complaint, Amazon expected Williams to continue to work from home after the stay-at-home orders were imposed. That is sufficient to plausibly allege liability, even if Amazon itself was not the but-for cause of the shift to remote work. Williams also plausibly alleges that his expenditures were necessary to do his job." Chhabaria did grant Amazon's request to dismiss the engineer's claims that it violated California's laws alleging "unfair business practices," but gave Williams's legal team 14 days to file an amended complaint.
Williams reckons Amazon should not only be paying for its techies' home internet and electricity, but also for any other expenses related to their ad-hoc home office space during the pandemic. Williams sued the cloud giant on behalf of himself and over 4,000 workers employed in California across 12 locations, arguing these costs will range from $50 to $100 per month during the time they were told to stay away from corporate campuses as the coronavirus spread. [...] Amazon's lawyers, however, believe the broadband and utility bills, and similar expenses, aren't the company's problem since it was following shelter-at-home orders, which require employees to stay away from the office.
But Vince Chhabaria, a US federal district judge in northern California, slapped down Amazon's attempt to kill off the lawsuit, and said the local government's orders don't necessarily absolve the company from liability. "What matters is whether Williams incurred those expenses 'in direct consequence of the discharge of his or her duties, or of his or her obedience to the directions of the employer'," Judge Chhabaria ruled [PDF] this week. "According to the complaint, Amazon expected Williams to continue to work from home after the stay-at-home orders were imposed. That is sufficient to plausibly allege liability, even if Amazon itself was not the but-for cause of the shift to remote work. Williams also plausibly alleges that his expenditures were necessary to do his job." Chhabaria did grant Amazon's request to dismiss the engineer's claims that it violated California's laws alleging "unfair business practices," but gave Williams's legal team 14 days to file an amended complaint.
You could work from home or get no salary at all (Score:2)
But, of course, you are going to fight for every Dollar now, right?
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Yes why wouldn't you.
My company paid a small amount as internet allowance before the pandemic, and did a big audit to determine actual costs to employees once mandatory WFH started.
How much space you're using, heating/coolign expenses, depreciation on any asset personal assets you're using for work purposes etc. The allowance was then increased appropriately. Because it's not a horrible greedy monster like Amazon.
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Being able to work from home results in substantial savings in pants, petrol and personal time that would otherwise be spent commuting, none of which are usually paid for by the company.
That's only for historical reasons. Any action done by the employee for the sake of their job should be compensated by the employer. The way it's done now is that it's considered included in the salary. However, turning commuting costs into a business expense is actually beneficial to both parties, as business expenses do not incur income or payroll taxes.
If Amazon's smart, they'd realize that offering cheap benefits like internet or gas has an outsized effect on employee morale compared to an extra $1000 o
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Transportation is different. The employer is not requiring a particular time frame to get to work, and not requiring a particular mode of transportation. So the worker could decide to walk, ride a bike, or take mass transit, rather than purchase an automobile. So the employer is not on the hook. For federal tax deductions, commute time is not deductible. But the expense of travelling between buildings while on the job may be deductible. And when it is deductible, it only covers gas and oil but not repa
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Decrease their wages when WFHing because they won't have to pay for transportation to and from work.
Problem solved.
It only takes one. (Score:2)
Re:It only takes one. (Score:5, Informative)
This isn't new law in California. It's been this way for years. Employers have to be very careful about letting employees check their email on their personal phones, because if they allow it, they then have to pay at least part of the phone bill. Been that way for years.
And the counterpoint here is: How much did Amazon save on electricity in their empty office complexes? Without taking that into account, not paying for electricity and internet for home works is literally shifting necessary business expenses onto employees.
And that is why the law is what it is in California.
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But the real question is, did he turn his internet off when he was not at home, and if he was charged by the bit.
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The reimbursement is not for 100% of the internet costs. It would be a reasonable and fair amount given the assumption that the ISP was probably used for other purposes. Not sure why so many are rushing to Amazon's defense. You know they're just going to chip in $10 a month and then reduce $20 a month from the paychecks.
But imagine this guy was on dialup and now he's being asked to suddenly attend zoom calls. You might ask who is still on dialup, if you are a privileged techie paying $150/mo for your IS
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You can't deduct federal taxes transportation for commuting, but you can deduct transportation if required to while at work such as transport between sites. It's a real thing. In some places, you can get reimbursed for the commute itself in some exceptions, such as if your work site changed towns and you have not yet had enough time to relocate.
In California, Montana, and a few other places, the law says you can get reimbursed for job expenses performed at home if it is required for the job and you are re
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A pittance compared to how much the company saved in reduced water, electricity, coffee, snacks, and general wear-and-tear on the office buildings. If they are able to reduce square footage leased, probably quite a bit more.
Personally, I think the real question here is did the employee's phone bill and internet bill go up from what it was before WFH? Did they have Internet at home before? If so, did their costs increase?
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Yes, this is pretty predictable. The employer is responsible for providing the workspace and tools required to do the job (for salaried personnel). [Slighty ironic that it doesn't work for teachers though.]
California labor law is miserable for employers. A "guilty until proven innocent beyond all reasonable (and some unreasonable) doubt" kind of environment.
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Indeed. I wonder whether this guy is a complete moron or whether he was put up to this. Or maybe both?
Shrug, just fire him. (Score:2)
Good luck getting another job "guy who sues his employer over dumb shit"
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The judgement for the whistleblowing violation will have a couple more zeros on it over the one for the employment violation.
And this is California. That Labor Board here lives and breaths to fuck over companies. They buy their crosses and nails by the train car, they have so many crucifixions.
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This has absolutely nothing to do with whistleblowing. Although we've seen attempts at expanding the definition the past several years in the name of woke politics.
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Whatever it's called in a particular location, it is illegal to fire someone who sues the company over illegal practices at the federal level, and more so in California.
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Indeed. Somebody is tone-deaf and probably a complete ass. Maybe Google should sue him back for the time and money he saved not commuting...
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Maybe Google should sue him back for the time and money he saved not commuting...
He works for Amazon, so Google is unlikely to have standing to sue him :)
He's probably not going to be popular with remote workers in general, for doing the "why we can't have nice things" damage and increasing the return-to-office pressure.
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Maybe Google should sue him back for the time and money he saved not commuting...
He works for Amazon, so Google is unlikely to have standing to sue him :)
Ooops, right.
He's probably not going to be popular with remote workers in general, for doing the "why we can't have nice things" damage and increasing the return-to-office pressure.
What I do not get it is that it is not even a lot of money.
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You're right, it's not a lot of money, so why is Amazon breaking the law here over such a tiny amount?
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You're right, it's not a lot of money, so why is Amazon breaking the law here over such a tiny amount?
Is this a serious question?
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Because I'm trying to flip it back. So when Amazon (whom everyone hates) is breaking the law, a Slashdot subset suddenly loves Amazon and is trying to show how this worker must be a complete loser and the request is completely ludicrous. I just don't see their viewpoint, except the contrarian angle to it. The principle is sound: if you require a worker to have an expense, then it needs to be reimbursed. This includes things like food too, if you require a worker to stay in the office beyond normal supper
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Because I'm trying to flip it back.
So basically trying to derail the discussion. Right. Well, I have no interest in discussing the other question. That Amazon is scum and treats its workers like crap
does not mean the workers are saints and can do no wrong.
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You're right, it's not a lot of money, so why is Amazon breaking the law here over such a tiny amount?
I'll freely admit to not reading the article, but my first question if I were involved in the case would be: Did the employee submit an estimate of the increase in costs over and above what they were paying pre-WFH and get approval from their boss prior to incurring the costs and did they then submit expense reports with supporting documentation which were subsequently denied? Or did they merely send an email demanding a bunch of money months later?
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"Did the employee submit an estimate of the increase in costs over and above what they were paying pre-WFH"
Not necessary in California. If your employer requires you to have it, they're required to provide it or pay for it. This goes from uniforms to vehicles. This is state law. Read it, some time. You might be enlightened.
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Right now, my boss is bugging me to get a new microphone. He claims I should just reimburse it. But based upon what the slashdot people think, I'm a loser for even thinking I might want to reimburse it instead of sacrificing for the good of the glorious capitalist system since I should be grateful I even have a job
No, you're a loser for misrepresenting what other people are posting. And I'm assuming you don't know the difference between "reimburse" and "expense" so I'm assuming that in the quote above you mean your boss told you to expense the microphone, not to reimburse the microphone.
If your boss told you to to get a new microphone and to expense it and there's a company policy allowing employees to purchase approved items for work and submit an expense report to receive reimbursement from the company (as opposed
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Firing an employee would only increase the employer's legal liability.
What a dumbass! (Score:2)
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>"He's gonna ruin it for employees of all the companies that are on the lenient side of work-from-home models."
Probably true. But this is California we are talking about...
>"If you're working from Amazon and working from home, you can fucking afford electricity and internet.
If you are working from home for Amazon, you ALREADY HAVE electricity and internet. It is extremely doubtful you have to pay MORE for your internet to "work from home" over what you already had. You could argue your electricity
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I know people who upgraded their internet to handle working from home.
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I don't know. Maybe if they had DSL and 8 Mbps, then sure. But if that's what you have, then you're way behind the times.
For reference, here's an article from Microsoft about bandwidth requirement for remote desktop [microsoft.com] and it looks like it's quite minimal. I checked a massive 3000x1800 X desktop session using X2go and the average bandwidth for regular file editing and web browsing is about the same as Microsoft's remote desktop. So if the people you know didn't have that little bit of bandwidth to spare, t
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I know people who upgraded their internet to handle working from home.
And if they gave their boss an estimate of the price difference of the upgrade (not the new total bill, just the delta between what they were already paying and the new rate they were proposing to upgrade to) and requested approval to expense the difference, and if their boss gave them verbal, or better yet emailed, approval and then later rejected expense reports when the employee submitted them, THEN they have a great basis for a lawsuit.
On the other hand, if the employee simply chose to upgrade their Int
Percentage used for work? (Score:2)
I hope the employee(s) kept very detailed records of the Internet, electricity, etc... usage used explicitly for work and can demonstrate an actual difference as a percentage of their usual costs, excluding any personal usages, especially those in the background, like automated DVR/TiVo updates, or by other family members, like kids, etc... that may have *also* occurred during work hours. People usually pay for their monthly internet service (often as a flat rate), and some base electricity, whether they'r
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Most likely their VPN solution keeps track of bytes transferred and session length. ...
Sure, but unless the employee's ISP plan has a data cap/limit and they exceeded that, most home internet plans are a monthly flat-rate so they'd be paying the same regardless -- even if they were actually at the office.
Others here have noted (a) they have an at-home business and actually track work related usage expenses like electricity, etc... and they're rather small and (b) any work-related expenses accrued at home are probably *way* less than auto/fuel expenses commuting to/from the office and the t
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I thought most ISPs had data caps. Mine does. And if I go back 5 years in time my plan then would not have covered the heavier usage that working from home entailed. I can tell also from the calls I've been in that I have coworkers whose data plans can't quite handle the load.
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I thought most ISPs had data caps.
I'm with Cox in Virginia and according to Learn About Cox Internet Data Usage [cox.com] the initial (soft) limit is 1.25 TB / month -- which I've never even come close to using. This is what happens after that:
1.25 TB (terabytes) of data included every month
What happens if I go over my data plan?
If it's your first time going over, we’ll issue a one-time courtesy credit that covers any overage charges in that cycle.
If you go over in future billing cycles, we’ll automatically add another 50 gigabytes for $10 and so on until you reach our $100 limit of data overage charges ($30 limit for ConnectAssist customers), or until your next usage cycle begins.
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First time going over for AT&T is an extra $50, according to what they had on their site back when I had a cap. That's one reason I set up a DD-WRT router so that I could track my usage.
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That's one reason I set up a DD-WRT router so that I could track my usage.
Cox has a web page to view usage (as they see it), I imagine AT&T has one too... Hopefully your accounting and theirs matches up. :-)
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They won't need it in California. This isn't new law, and it isn't all that obscure.
If you use a personal cell phone for work purposes - at all - even if it has unlimited calls, texts and data, your employer is still on the hook for part of the bill.
He's got a pretty solid case under California law. Amazon's only defense is "We're so big and have such powerful friends the law doesn't apply to us." And it won't work here. The labor board will crucify them. If they resist hard enough, we may see a news story
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They won't need it in California. This isn't new law, and it isn't all that obscure.
If you use a personal cell phone for work purposes - at all - even if it has unlimited calls, texts and data, your employer is still on the hook for part of the bill.
Sure, but how would the employer's share be calculated? :-)
If they have an "unlimited", flat-rate phone / internet plan, any percentage used for work would amount to $0.
n / (infinity) = 0
Okay... I suppose the employee could keep detailed records or get an itemized bill and calculate a percentage, but it still seems (morally) wrong as they'd be paying the same regardless...
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I don't know what the formula is, but I know there is one.
This isn't a new requirement.
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The laws of the state the employee lives in apply. That's why the company has to pay income tax to that state, not the state they're in.
Something similar happened when Colorado passed a law requiring job listings to include pay range, and some companies went from advertising for remote workers anywhere to remote workers anywhere except Colorado.
Again, not a new area of law.
I quit over this (Score:2, Insightful)
I quit my last job when they changed from covering all of my personal expenses to like 30% of my expenses. I had words with fucking idiot in accounting about her inability to do basic math. Then I had words with the CFO. Then I had words with my boss, and my bosses boss - they kicked me down $5k extra in pay to try to make up for the fucked up accounting people. Then I quit and told HR why I quit.
You can ask me to work from home, but you'd better cover my work expenses or you can get fucked. I'm not her
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You can ask me to work from home, but you'd better cover my work expenses or you can get fucked.
Not everything is a zero sum game. I'm more than happy to work at home on my own expense. It works out to about $60/m in utilities. In the meantime I save $300/m in petrol by not commuting to say nothing of the 1.5hours of unpaid "work" I was doing every day stuck in traffic.
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There are consequences when you change the deal. This was pre-pandemic and I was working in the office. My expenses were related to on-call, nights and weekends. You don't ask me to work nights and weekends and then decide to stop paying my expenses for that without notice.
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I don't know about you, but I could use an extra $60 a month. That's a lot of beer and pizza. Flip it around and imagine what you'd do if the boss decided to take $60/month off your paycheck after requiring you to be in the office, because you no longer need that expense.
Or imagine that your boss calls and says "since you're already working from home, and you have all the equipment and internet you need, I need you to work Saturday and Sunday too, because you should be glad you have a job."
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I think it depends on whether you're supposed to be working at the office or your job was remote to begin with.
If you were working from the office, then it's hard to argue that the company must pay your electricity and internet - becaus
Re: I quit over this (Score:5, Interesting)
Not everything is a zero sum game. I'm more than happy to work at home on my own expense. It works out to about $60/m in utilities. In the meantime I save $300/m in petrol by not commuting to say nothing of the 1.5hours of unpaid "work" I was doing every day stuck in traffic.
This! On an average Sillycone Valley tech salary, if you save an hour off your commute a month then you're already ahead of the increased costs to WFH.
I save about 12 hours a week being at home full time. If it costs me $50 a month to achieve that then I'm more than happy to pay that $50. That's 12 hours of my life - they're way more valuable and non-renewable so I want to save them! If you add on saved travel costs them I am actually miles ahead. Fuel was about $60 a week if I drove or the bus was about $40 a week. Over a month I was out more than the $50-$100 that it costs me to work from home. I'll take the win, thanks!
There's reasonable expenses you should expect covered. If you need a computer and monitor the company should pay that. Need a decent desk and chair? Company should pay. My company provides all of those things without so much as a second thought. They would quibble about internet and electricity bills though.
As dirty as it makes me feel to side with Amazon, this twit suing them appears to just be trying to greed out money despite probably already being miles ahead after all is said and done. He hasn't considered the other effects that a win will have:
- companies will drop WFH like a hot potato to avoid paying up. Have fun spending more on fuel and time commuting.
- the tax man will declare that the portion of your home you got compensated for using is now used for profit-making enterprise and will be taxed accordingly.
But you know, he's got his short term gain right now. Too bad he'll end up spending it all on the increased costs he's trying to insist we should all endure so he can make a few hundred bucks today!
Fucking tunnel vision, I've got mine syndrome!
Re: I quit over this (Score:4, Insightful)
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The issue was that one day the company decided to change the deal. They didn't tell anyone they were doing this, they just started paying less. Then accounting tried to make me go away with voodoo math that didn't add up.
The real issue was that the company was trying to cut expenses, and decided not to mention cutting payments for expenses 70%. I was working way more than the 40 hours I got paid for, lots of nights and weekends. I quit over the lack of clarity followed by bullshit and voodoo math.
A coupl
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They changed the deal without notice. An on-going expense was replaced with a one-time payment, and I paid tax on that payment. The Director that gave me the $5k was cool, the management team above him was not. I would have been happy without the $5k and proper compensation for my expenses. Management was being unreasonable, in the end Management got what it wanted - less expense. Deciding to change compensation without notice and then trying to hide it with some complicated looking formula is unscrupul
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What is with you people? The company flat out insults him and you are blaming the worker for feeling insulted enough to leave? Let me guess, you're an employer and you wish to go back to the old days of not having to treat workers like people?
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I'm not here to subsidize the company while the executives make all of the money.
Under capitalism, that’s exactly what employees are used for.
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You're compensated market value for what you provide. If you believe you're underpaid, you can find a different employer who values you more. In a socialized system, you'd be assigned a rank and have no options of finding a different employer that wants to pay you more. The government would control wages everywhere and your bureaucratic ranking and official pay grade would follow you everywhere.
Re: I quit over this (Score:5, Insightful)
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To the market I went, where everything worked out fine.
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If you’re not generating significantly more money than you are being paid, it’s doubtful the job exists in the first place.
A significant number of jobs are not directly related to cash flow. Companies have loads of services that are essential to staff, and are an ongoing cost, not a profit centre.
Question (Score:3)
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Complying with the Internal Revenue Code is for peons. This guy is stigginit to Amazon!
I use much less electricity by working from home! (Score:2)
Not having to charge the EV for commuting reduces my electricity usage by quite a lot. It doesn't actually save me any money because I have solar panels and I don't pay anything beyond the mandatory minimum electricity charges.
In this case, though, proving that their Internet service (and other services) was an actual expenditure may be tricky: they are going to have to show that they were not paying for Internet service before working from home, or that they had to opt for a higher service tier.
What does it cost him to get to work? (Score:2)
He can save 3 dollars a day on bus fare daily, that is 3 times 23 which is $115. Probably less than his internet and energy costs.
Also, I am not counting that he does not need to buy clothes, laundry detergent, soap, shampoo, and deodorant, which is additional savings.
Re: What does it cost him to get to work? (Score:2)
Oops math fail - I had calculated it for 5 dollars a day then decided to lower it to 3 dollars a day anyway whatever it is still close to 70 dollars.
Plaintiff seems not wrong, just needs tracking (Score:2)
This could be easily solved with network metered power strips. It could capture and report the power used, along with the timeframe of usage. Then either reimburse the employee directly, or work with the power company to automate splitting it out of the bill. If the metered usage occurs outside of expected hours, or is beyond the limit of their company issued equipment, then flag it for review and contest the payment for that cycle.
Now, of course, you'll be submitting back to your employer a clear record of
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I have such metering smartplugs, that I use to check personal usage, not work. CA has a gazillion different electricity rates. If you have solar and EVs, good luck figuring our the $ portion attributable to work.
My E6 rate has both TOU and tiers. Running your computer equipment all day can make you jump tio the next tier. The work hours may coincide with the peak hours. If your PV was sized precisely for a zero net bill, suddenly you may owe hundreds of dollars extra a year once you work from home. And if y
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Sure, lots of locations across the US have tiered energy pricing structures - yes, even rates based on time of usage during the day. Sorry, but CA is no where near unique in this respect. Also, this is incredibly easy to solve.
If your employer does nothing at all, then they are liable at the average kw/hr price for your entire bill, based on the rate charged during the hours of usage, according to their power strips. If they are the primary cause of your high usage, then surely they will have the bulk of th
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So, yea, again, I'm just pointing out (gratis) a legit business opportunity for someone that has the wherewithal to follow it through.
Go get yourself some smart metered power strips, set up some manner of data collection, and work with the major energy providers to make this easy for businesses to negotiate and pay for.
ffs, do I need to do it for you first and just hand it over? I thought kids these days were smart
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Sure. Filing as a class action suit was obviously stupid -- I bet their lawyer had too many dollar signs in their imagination blocking out the signals of reality their brain should have been giving.
I'm just pointing out that this sort of reimbursement request is not unfeasible -- in fact, it's quite doable. And tech companies are well suited to actually make it happen. If you want to get it at the ground level, go make a network connected, metered, power strip that ships telemetry off to your 'secure server
$4.8 million USD (Score:2)
4000 * $50 * 24 months = $4,800,000. That's probably the upper limit in recovery that could be made. If Internet access is $100/mo but you use it for other things besides work, then only the time used for work can be counted as part of the cost, so maybe $50/mo at most. The final judgement would be divided up among all employees, so $1,200 per person. However, with 90% of it all going to the lawyers, all anyone might ever see is $120. The final payout might cover one month of Internet access in exchang
Fuckwittery All Round (Score:2)
Then again $100/month is likely not a significant amount for most of the stay-at-home workers and they probably came out ahead as noted above. The people at the bottom of the pay-scale were deemed "essential" and so had to continue to pay for their commute and other expenses related to going to work.
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Object Lesson (Score:2)
The company saves but... (Score:2)
Since my partner started working remote, all our bills are up: heating, power, food, hardware... so the company saves and we pay for the "luxury" of working from home (yes, above costs are higher than fuel etc. to get to the office)
It's a no brainer (Score:2)
Complete moron seeks to harm everyone else (Score:2)
[a] This will arm every idiot in a corporate board room with an argument to force everybody back into the office: "we could end up getting sued by every worker we let work from home...".
[b] Most people working from home are likely to save far more than they spend on the arrangement (net employee gain). Consider:
1. We're only talking about INCREASES in utilities, NOT full costs - for stuff like electricity (your boss does NOT need to pay to run your appliances, pool pump, etc), and SOME internet/phone expens
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On [a], employers have to pay for workplaces, including certain amenities and essentials. It is cheaper overall to not pay for a single colocated air-conditioned floor, since the employer already has to indirectly cover employee rent and utilities.
On [b], employer-employee relations are not zero-sum, and it is possible that employer investment in employees can help both employers and employees. For example, when employees do not commute, the employee saves money and the employer saves time.
You seem to belon
Throwing away a good deal (Score:2)
I am much better off working from home (Score:2)
I started working from home in June 2019. Actually, it was Working From Hospital at first. I was bored to tears. My boss got me a laptop, and I did quite a bit of useful work. After leaving hospital, I continued working on the laptop at home, and that worked out just fine. I still had regular hospital visits, but it was easy to fit work around those. This would have been a good deal more difficult if I was working regular hours at the office/workshop.
At the start of the first lockdown, I asked my boss if th
Too bad it's just California (Score:2)
This is the type of thing that should exist everywhere. If you have to work away from work, your time and expenses should be covered. Many if not most offices have climate controls and lighting which adjust based on working hours, and I would be willing to bet many of Slashdot's readers do, too. Since it's crazy hot where I live for more than half the year, you run the AC when you're home, but not while you're away at work. You probably turn off the lights during the day. Running the AC during the day to ma
It's called telecommuting for a reason (Score:2)
(I'm not in California, and I'm not in the USA.)
There are plenty of expenses that employers (also in california) never covered -- like commuting expenses. Obviously your commute to work was a necessary expenditure for work; the question is only is it in direct consequence of the duties.
We've said no since the dawn of time. You're expected to get to and from work as a personal expense, and you can't even write it off. And this makes sense for the over-arching logic of everyone-does-it-and-therefore-meh.
We
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...and hey, didn't this guy at amazon just get an enormous raise when amazon upped everyone's salaries? Is this guy really suing for way less than 1% of his salary?
called it. (Score:2)
At the start of covid work from home, I opined that as companies realized they could avoid paying vast $ on fancy office buildings having people work from home, they would start to grow more comfortable with the idea.
I also noted that as soon as people realized they should demand compensation for the now-mandatory work spaces in their own homes, companies would suddenly feel we should all get back in the office.
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Government? You mean you, me and all the other tax payers, right?
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Nah, endless money printing doesn't cause runaway price inflation. They told us so, QED!
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I mean CA had things locked down pretty hard, something not all the country faced.
And you're telling me THIS guy didn't already have internet at home and only signed up and paid for it just to work from home?
[rolls eyes]
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He also likely saved more on gasoline then his electric bill went up.
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Gasoline was cheap back then, also an employee who walked or biked to work or had a transit pass didn't save any money on their commute. It's an interesting argument, but rather than calculate each case individually, it might make sense to just pay everyone a flat rate and be done with it.
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Gasoline was cheap back then
The gasoline for a car is not as cheap as the electricity for a laptop.
also an employee who walked or biked to work
That burns calories, which means more food. Also, his shoes would wear out faster.
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Another dispatch from bizarro-world
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And you're telling me THIS guy didn't already have internet at home and only signed up and paid for it just to work from home?
[rolls eyes]
He bought an Internet service to support his personal, family needs. Internet is not unlimited. All that video teleconferencing, VNC, and maybe large code up/downloads, can actually affect your kid's abiliy to do remote schooling, videogrames, and multiple movie streams in the house. ISPs even advertise that fact. (And I'e been on plenty of Zoom calls where the issue came up -- nobody else in the house could use the Internet while in session.) And don't forget about data caps, and throttling.
They should als
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Re: Make the government pay (Score:2)
No kidding. Assholes like this fuck it up for everyone.
I hope he gets his ass severely beaten.
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Ah, as long as we're grateful for having a job we should accept all indignities along the way? The ultimate in pro-corporate think.
Many people do not have internet suitable for the daily video calls, sometimes not even for audio calls. I have a relatively inexpensive plan because I don't have heavy internet use. And that plan has CAPS on it. So suddenly I am doing audio and video from home, and I'm downloading and uploading tons of large files. I've been in the calls with people with poor internet qual
Re: Make the government pay (Score:2)
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There are 4th amendment issues there. And in a few decades, those lawsuits will bubble up to the top and any surviving plaintiffs will get a pittance (while the lawyers all buy how villas on the French Riviera with their share).
In all seriousness, one attorney I know is expecting the first trillion dollar judgement to out of California's mishandling of it all.