Amazon Engineer Loses Bid For Class Action Over Work-From-Home Expenses (reuters.com) 55
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: Amazon on Tuesday defeated a proposed class action lawsuit on behalf of nearly 7,000 workers in California that claimed the company should have reimbursed employees who worked remotely during the COVID-19 pandemic for home office expenses. U.S. District Judge Vincent Chhabria in San Francisco said the named plaintiff, David Williams, failed to show that Amazon had a company-wide policy of not reimbursing employees for internet, cell phone and other costs, and the judge denied his motion to certify the workers as a class.
The judge said that more than 600 of the 7,000 proposed class members were reimbursed $66.49 on average for home internet expenses, and some were reimbursed in full. Williams' motion for class certification was denied without prejudice, meaning he can file a renewed motion later on. Craig Ackermann, a lawyer for Williams, said he plans to file a new motion excluding the 619 workers who received reimbursements from the proposed class. Williams sued Amazon in 2021 individually and added class-action claims last year. He has accused Amazon of violating a California law requiring employers to reimburse workers for reasonable work-related expenses.
The judge said that more than 600 of the 7,000 proposed class members were reimbursed $66.49 on average for home internet expenses, and some were reimbursed in full. Williams' motion for class certification was denied without prejudice, meaning he can file a renewed motion later on. Craig Ackermann, a lawyer for Williams, said he plans to file a new motion excluding the 619 workers who received reimbursements from the proposed class. Williams sued Amazon in 2021 individually and added class-action claims last year. He has accused Amazon of violating a California law requiring employers to reimburse workers for reasonable work-related expenses.
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Sure you are, and your mommy is very proud of you.
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The reason we can tell you're lying is because:
a) You have time to impersonate rsilvergun all day. No actual tech worker has enough time to piss away being such an irrelevant waste of oxygen, they're too busy getting shit done which is how they got there in the first place
b) You're just not smart enough. You're parroting classic far right talking points, and no one far right is smart. It's firmly the ideology of the terminally stupid. That's why far right ideology has never ever been successful in the whole
Re: Tech workers (Score:2)
I am a tech worker, look after a Universities HPC facility. I work from home now and I turned down an offer of a work provided PC. Simply put a work provided PC could only be used for work, so I would need two PC's and no thank you. Meanwhile I can decide to allow my personal PC to be used for work, and the internet connection I have anyway as I do my mobile phone with an anytime plan. It would be disingenuous to ask for payment for something I was paying for anyway. I save way more than the cost of the PC
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So we're now to blame that you're too stupid for a job that doesn't include the catchphrase "do you want fries with that?"?
Akin to commuting costs (Score:4, Insightful)
An employer does not have to reimburse you for "commuting costs." Commuting costs are those that one must reasonably expect to pay in order to get to and from work.
Appellate courts in many jurisdictions have already ruled that, for work-at-home employees, internet, computer, and other costs are "commuting costs" that a worker should reasonably expect to pay to get to any job.
The just ALMOST had this decision right. The one error the judge made was to dismiss the case without prejudice, as it was clearly filed in bad faith.
Re:Akin to commuting costs (Score:4, Interesting)
An employer does not have to reimburse you for "commuting costs." Commuting costs are those that one must reasonably expect to pay in order to get to and from work.
Appellate courts in many jurisdictions have already ruled that, for work-at-home employees, internet, computer, and other costs are "commuting costs" that a worker should reasonably expect to pay to get to any job.
The just ALMOST had this decision right. The one error the judge made was to dismiss the case without prejudice, as it was clearly filed in bad faith.
That's true. If the commuting costs are too great and you're not willing or able to relocate don't take the job. If they are not willing to share some of the risk of you relocating or even help you find an apartment don't take the job. Same for job interviews. If they don't pay for the costs and expect you to pay for it yourself, tell them to go pound sand (in the politest way possible).
Re:Akin to commuting costs (Score:4, Insightful)
Good God, buy yourself couple of pens and some paper and let it go....like others said, at least you aren't having to pay to commute.
Accept this as a really GREAT trade-off.
It's not like anyone in this position doesn't already have a home internet connection...it's not like this is really costing any more money.
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Geez, this guy is just trying to fuck up a good thing like WFH with this stupid litigation crap.
Good God, buy yourself couple of pens and some paper and let it go....like others said, at least you aren't having to pay to commute.
Accept this as a really GREAT trade-off.
It's not like anyone in this position doesn't already have a home internet connection...it's not like this is really costing any more money.
Some people are just obsessive penny pinchers. Most work places provide you with a computer to use anyway so I don't see how that is a 'commuting cost' for the WFH person. The internet connection can reasonably be construed as a 'commuting cost' although I'd probably want to pay for that myself simply because having the employer pay for it gives the employer the right to monitor what you do with that connection and it's quite frankly none of their business what kind of stuff I'm browsing after work hours be
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And silly lawsuits like this only strengthen the case of "Return To Office". I get the penny pinching, but you're basically making the employer demand everyone return to the office as they're paying for the equipment and everything anyways.
I can only imagine the new rallying call for RTO - "we don't want to get sued" if this case actually went forward.
Employers are usually happy to pay for equipment and connections because it gives them 'big brother' rights on that connection and on the equipment they provide and also for all kinds of legal reasons. Employers will actually turn you down if you offer to provide your own connection and equipment because they would lose all of that of control. And yeah, penny pinchers always have, do now and always will ruin good things for the rest of us.
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In many cases, even in Silicon Valley, you cannot get good quality broadband at home without a huge expense. An ISP that's good enough for your home web browsing might be not good enough to join zoom or teams meetings (and I had one coworker were it was obvious because his audio constantly was breaking up).
Part of the problem is that this changed over time. Orignally we were told we'd be working from home just one or two months. It turned out to be more than two years. Thats a huge expense if you needed
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I really have a hard time believing that unless you live in extreme rural BFE....you can't get enough internet speed for simple work connection and Zoom/other screen share....
I especially have a hard ti
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When I moved into my condo in San Jose, cable was analog, with an A/B switch. This was in 2002 I think, and analog was already outdated. To get digital cable, it would require an adapter box that the A & B cables plugged into, which was not close to where the TV was and definitely not near the computer. I went with satellite instead. Even today, if I got cable internet it would be a massive headache, and double the cost, luckily I'm close enough to a telephone end point that u-verse internet is somew
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In the guise of giving advice you're claiming that things like your computer actually are commuting costs. Internet access, sure. But computer, printer, webcam and the like? No those are things a company should provide. If I need it to do my job it's not right for a company to refuse to pay it regardless of the fact that agreeing may be the only way for me to get the job.
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I can see that having an adequate Internet connection counts as a WFH commuting cost. However, I'm not so sure about the computer. As I understand it, your employer is generally obligated to provide you with the tools necessary to do your work as an employee (consultants are different, of course). If your job requires using a computer, it should be provided. Note that Google almost certainly does this, since missing computers were not part of the complaint.
On the other hand, what is less clear is the offi
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In the US, internet sucks. If have a cable tv provider, then you get decent bandwidth but lousy service If you have to go with DSL then you have lousy bandwidth and mediocre service. For a first world nation we're pretty backwards here. I do notice that even though my internet is good enough for streaming (one show only, HD), it lagged severely if I was on a group call (audio only) and had to simultaneously be cloning a repo or visiting some of Microsoft's script heavy web sites. The company was ok tho
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And indeed, in the early days this was all going to be very short lived, just a couple months at most was what most of us thought. So put up with crappy audio/video calls for a short period only, no need to have someone come out to upgrade the internet, buy new routers, or add some wiring.
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I'd agree ... But having worked there during the start of the pandemic myself? I observed a lot of inconsistency with reimbursement policies of that sort.
We'd literally have one team where the manager told them there was a budget of $50 to put towards buying yourself a computer chair to use for the transition to full-time work-from-home, while another team would have a manager who approved $150 for the same thing.
Some people seemed to get their cellphone expenses approved while others were told those were
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Appellate courts in many jurisdictions have already ruled that, for work-at-home employees, internet, computer, and other costs are "commuting costs" that a worker should reasonably expect to pay to get to any job.
That's all good and fine providing they understand my equipment is my equipment, just like my car is my car. As soon as they start making demands on it they can foot the bill.
Incidentally that happened to me. My employer concerned about us working from home decided we needed to conduct a ergonomics survey on our home working environment. I agreed, sent them pictures and they made recommendations. I said thanks and then sent them an itemised bill for meeting their requirements. They told me heck no, and then
Home office expenses (Score:5, Insightful)
A company isn't going to pay to equip 10,000 remote offices when they're also paying for their headquarters. They can eliminate that expense completely by just eliminating remote work. I'm not saying the company shouldn't reimburse for company expenses, but suing the company to pay for your home internet sounds like a good way to get them to rethink whether it's worth it to them to allow remote work. They don't pay you to commute, either. You going to sue them for mileage?
Commute (Score:1)
Maybe the company should pay for my commute.
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Why don't they eliminate expenses by selling the useless real estate instead.
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Many companies are doing just that. Our company was doing that before the pandemic. We were a big anxious about how we were combining two buildings into one and how cramped everything would be, and then the pandemic hit... This year, an entire factory is closing and the jobs moved to a different state, and the non-factory workers there will probably get a much smaller/cheaper building that's less local and with inadequate lab space. I suspect my own building will be closing within a year (Silicon Valley
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The article said they DID pay for home internet.
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The problem with this is that this also eliminates the most efficient workers who can easily jump ship to work at a company that lets them WFH.
So, technically, you're right...
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They don't pay you to commute, either.
My company pays for my train and subway pass.
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Yes, lots of companies do things to try and attract and retain workers. This is cyclical though, when unemployment gets high often the benefits start to decline and the whole "be glad you have a job at all" mentality takes over. Sometimes it all vanishes when the company gets bought out and the larger conglomerate wants to start counting pennies.
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Lawsuit idea probably started with WFH whiner found out from their tax advisor that their WFH expenses were not (or were questionable, and thus AUDITABLE) tax deductible for some reason.
In USA the IRS has some interesting and strict rules on tax deductions for "home office" expenses.
Working from your sofa or breakfast bar at home is probably not a tax deductible expense in the USA; my own experience here. I am not a tax law expert.
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This seems wrong, somehow.
This is what happens when you walk into a court with nothing but a wishful desire that something is against the law, when in fact it is not against the law.
Remember his original claim:
That not a single remote worker was compensated for a HUGE list of items, a list that included things like existing office furniture (his desk and chair), his morning coffee and breakfast, his *entire* homes monthly electric bill...
Yes, his list also included other things one may reasonably expect compensation for, like the In
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I remember taking the bus back in the 90s when my car was in for repair. The commute was awful because there was no direct route. I ran across one person that just seemed put out that I could not arrive at a certain time reliably.
However instead of reimbursements they should allow tax deductions of a certain amount (not to subsidize the auto sales, but to help with the minimum costs of mass rail or gas). Won't happen though, too many legislators don't know what it's like to work for a living.
surprised that some find WFH to be expensive (Score:3)
My employer gave me a laptop and pays for a portion of my cell phone bills and cable internet, covers a personal office chair that I may use at work or at home, etc. This has been policy here for over a decade before COVID. What more do I need for a home office than internet, a computer, and something to sit on? Instead of noisy coworkers constantly interrupting me at an open office I have noisy family and pets. I feel like for most tech workers not much has changed. Even taking meetings in pajamas is not new, if you have a 7:30am and 9pm meeting on the same day (we're an international company), you're hopefully doing one of those at home if not both.
Mechanics provide their own tools (Score:2)
Every garage I ever worked in required that mechanics bring their own tools. Those big rollaways you see and their contents are all owned by the mechanics, and they take them with them when they change jobs. Now my rollaway is in my home garage.
As a developer when working from home I've always used my own equipment unless if they had a specific hardware requirement (like a secured developer workstation). The only thing an employer ever provided me was a pager, back in the day. Now all employees are expe
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Using a personal phone for work regularly does have an effect on the phone, though. You have to have a phone that's in support, usually, so that means buying a new one more often than you might, otherwise (support for most Android phones, if any, lasts no more than 2-3 years, obviously with a (very) few outliers). The "work enclave" can take up a fair amount of space; when I finally retired (from working for the most recent bunch), removing the "work enclave" from my Pixel 5a freed up several GB of storage.
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Using a personal phone for work regularly does have an effect on the phone, though. You have to have a phone that's in support, usually, so that means buying a new one more often than you might, otherwise (support for most Android phones, if any, lasts no more than 2-3 years, obviously with a (very) few outliers). The "work enclave" can take up a fair amount of space; when I finally retired (from working for the most recent bunch), removing the "work enclave" from my Pixel 5a freed up several GB of storage. And the employer can and does monitor what you do with the phone even outside of work.
As for personal computer, depends. If all of your work is done via VPN and Remote Desktop to something in the office, fine, use your own, I would. Main issue then would be the quality of the home internet connection, which might need to be upgraded (you were looking for an excuse to get that Gbit fiber anyway, right?). But if I have to buy significantly more or better hardware and expensive software that I don't otherwise use to do the work, that's a different story. In my case, the company supplied the laptop, dock, monitor, keyboard, etc. I just needed a place to reasonably securely use and store it.
All of these things are tools of the software development trade. It's one of your costs of doing business.
Mechanics tools wear, break, and even go missing too. I spent thousands on garage tools over the years.
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I got my first phone (at Nokia) precisely because I didn't have one (way too expensive) and someone was unable to call me early in the morning. So these things to get provided often. Also computers are almost _always_ provided, even for contractors. Getting a few malware infestations means you need to make sure your work computers are all up to snuff and properly secured and that you can't VPN in from a home computer but only from a work laptop.
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I got my first phone (at Nokia) precisely because I didn't have one (way too expensive) and someone was unable to call me early in the morning. So these things to get provided often. Also computers are almost _always_ provided, even for contractors. Getting a few malware infestations means you need to make sure your work computers are all up to snuff and properly secured and that you can't VPN in from a home computer but only from a work laptop.
If they want a specially secured workstation then they should provide it. If it's just Citrix than there's no issue.
I've worked for: Morgan Stanley, Credit Suisse, First Boston, UBS, Swiss Bank, Bankers Trust, Deutche Bank, Goldman Sachs, and a few others, as an employee and as a contractor. None of them provided any equipment, except Goldman gave me an Avaya office desktop phone at home which used to wake me up a lot. I am aware of some companies that provide a secured laptop, but I'm fine with thin clie
What kind of cheapo grabass tries this? (Score:1)
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You don't have to buy gas.
You don't have to wear out your car.
You don't have to risk your live on the freeway thunder dome every day.
You don't spend 2 hours in the car every day.
vs
You have to buy a decent chair, and use the Internet you already pay for, at no additional cost.
The judge should have had the bailiff smack this fool.
Maybe beat him with the gavel too
human thing to do (Score:3)
I run a small business.
From lockdown, we gave each employee:
$300 one time payment to get a decent chair, table, light (it's what we priced at ikea for those)
$50/mo to subsidize their internet connection
I said at the very start of lockdown that this would be largely the end of corporate offices, and we would see that once it works, corporations would shed their office leases, push people to work from home WITH NO COMPENSATION FOR THE SPACE. Which imo is bullshit.
I get, and am sympathetic to the idea that a business can't afford to pay for an office lease AND subsidize everyone working from home forever. But if a business drops it's $300k/mo office lease, a goodly share of that THEN should go back to the employees in this context to cover their workspace/home needs.
In the end, we kept our office, and yet continue to subsidize their internet but if they want to continue to work from home that's up to them; we have a space here for them.
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It's nice of you to compensate your employees for their work-from-home expenses. But I'm not sure it should be mandatory. Commuting expenses, especially in large cities, easily overwhelm the small remote work expenses like internet (which nearly every employee already has) and cell phones (which literally every employee already has). Some may not already have a nice chair and desk, so maybe a case could be made for subsidizing those. Employers are already legally required to provide equipment such as laptop
Some Companies Did Reimburse (Score:2)
The company I worked for during most of the pandemic did reimburse, in a small way. The first paycheck of the month had a small fixed amount (between $20-30 iirc) added to reimburse for home office expenses. Yes, there are some: added power for the work computer, perhaps heating/cooling an extra room, perhaps buying some furniture so you don't have to take up the kitchen table, perhaps upgrading the internet connection so the VPN isn't always crashing, etc. Or, you could simply call it rent. The reimburseme
Dude should be happy (Score:2)
Unreimbursed business expenses (Score:2)
I think it's form 600 or schedule 600 or something like that...
Did it one year and found it was a giant PITA and got almost no money.
IRS lets you deduct only in excess of your "normal commute" and things like that.
You can also deduct a portion of your mortgage equal to the square footage you allocate to work. But your office has to be just an office. You can't put a desk and chair in a bedroom and then deduct the square footage of the bedroom.
Same thing with second phone line for fax machine (yes i am old
You were already coming out ahead, dumbass. (Score:2)