This sounds like the sort of property inflation scam I'd expect from the UK. Hopefully the Swiss have thought it through carefully - they do usually seem to.
Swiss companies must pay share of rent for employees working from home
91–100 of 264 posts
Re: Swiss companies must pay share of rent for employees working from home
#92what does this change? companies can still adjust the rest of the wage accordingly
Re: Swiss companies must pay share of rent for employees working from home
#93Earlier quoted context omitted.
>Given Facebook's propensity to attract and hire young twentysomethings then surely their exact location in the Bay Area is immaterial Twenty somethings are the exact group of people who don't want to live in a socially dead place. And except for recent college grads even twenty somethings will have significant others who won't want to suddenly move to somewhere else. It's why startups keep being created in SF which…
But the Bay Area is a big place and I consider the whole area to be socially alive. I fully understand wanting to stay in the Bay Area - but there's a big difference in land-value between being situated around Mountain View and San Francisco vs. the east-side of the Bay). What I don't understand is why the east-side of the Bay seems overlooked or even neglected lately (even more-so considering Berkeley's history).
> I consider the whole area to be socially alive.
Ha.
A lot of twenty-somethings are not so open-minded. Disparaging nearby neighborhoods as socially dead or otherwise undesirable is practically a pastime for young city folk (especially if they're dating!)
Re: Swiss companies must pay share of rent for employees working from home
#94Thought: - Companies that now realised that remote schemes works for them, will push for that scheme to remain, with the aim of reducing their fixed costs (office rent, utilities, insurance, etc). - This eliminates a big chunk of fixed costs... as most are shifted to the employees. - If authorities/employees start demanding that part of those costs are covered by the company, companies will push to get avoid work-fro…
> I'm sure that there are other unintended consequences, such as higher rents, but who knows. For Amazon's reputation for internal cost-cutting (such as displaying the pricing on computer peripherals in vending-machines in their SLU offices), Amazon makes me scratch my head for building-up their HQ in one of the most expensive cities to buy land in the world - ditto Facebook in Menlo Park. Why didn't Amazon choose Ke…
Seattle wasn't as expensive back in the day and if I recall correctly, Bezos actually chose to move to seattle and start Amazon there for cost reasons (I think taxes were a big part of that). Moving an entire headquarters is expensive and did you forget about the HQ2 plan to expand elsewhere?
Re: Swiss companies must pay share of rent for employees working from home
#95This makes no sense to me. Why not just give the employee a commensurate tax deduction? Now the companies will be disincentivized from keeping to quarantine when it isn't mandated, and from hiring back when it is. They're going to deduct it from their profit anyway if it's an employee cost, so it's going to come out of state tax revenues as it is.
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Re: Swiss companies must pay share of rent for employees working from home
#96Earlier quoted context omitted.
Somewhere in between. In Zurich 1500 would be a low rent, and 3000 would get you a 2 bedroom with view and quite spacious +80m^2
Wow I had thought the cost of living was high in Switzerland but I guess when you’re used to the Bay Area everything else seems cheap. In SF you’d pay like $5000 for that 2bd unless you go out pretty to the more remote, harder to commute from neighborhoods. In any case, $154 is still not that significant, definitely not enough on its own to let you afford an extra bedroom to turn into an office, for instance.
Compared to SF, Zurich is 50% cheaper in rent, but pretty much more expensive across the board for everything else.
From Numbeo: https://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/compare_cities.jsp?cou...
Re: Swiss companies must pay share of rent for employees working from home
#97Earlier quoted context omitted.
>Given Facebook's propensity to attract and hire young twentysomethings then surely their exact location in the Bay Area is immaterial Twenty somethings are the exact group of people who don't want to live in a socially dead place. And except for recent college grads even twenty somethings will have significant others who won't want to suddenly move to somewhere else. It's why startups keep being created in SF which…
But the Bay Area is a big place and I consider the whole area to be socially alive. I fully understand wanting to stay in the Bay Area - but there's a big difference in land-value between being situated around Mountain View and San Francisco vs. the east-side of the Bay). What I don't understand is why the east-side of the Bay seems overlooked or even neglected lately (even more-so considering Berkeley's history).
Berkeley itself is as expensive and hard to build in as just about anyplace in the Bay Area.
Re: Swiss companies must pay share of rent for employees working from home
#98I'm confused, what is the additional expense that employees are incurring by being home? Don't they pay the same rent either way?
One could argue that you don't need a separate room in your house, if you don't work from home. Something you might need if you have a family with multiple people working/studying from home. Also CHF150 is not really a lot for Switzerland, so this probably won't pay for a whole room on its own. But definitely an interesting decision from the court.
150 CHF/month is not a lot but it would still cover about 8m² of my rent, which seems fair to me (I don't live in the center of Zürich, but not exactly in a cheap place either).
I'd see that as a way to offset electricity costs and maybe invest in my setup, rather than cover the square meterage per se, but in my opinion it's a pretty good middle ground.
Re: Swiss companies must pay share of rent for employees working from home
#99> The judges estimated a monthly compensation of CHF150 ($154) for the employee’s rent to be justified. I thought it was a token amount, but then I don't know what rent in switzerland is like. Is that like 3% or 30% ?
The court in question is licated in Argau, where an extra room may cost 400-500CHF per month.
Re: Swiss companies must pay share of rent for employees working from home
#100Earlier quoted context omitted.
I mean, since I started working from home my eletric bill is up by 20%. So is only fair to assume that they should pay me more, to cover that cost.
Do you pay your employer for the utilities at work?
No, they pay for it. They should still pay for the costs associated with that work. I'm shoving $50 a month to keep the AC when normally it would be off. They're shifting a cost to the employee otherwise.