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California employers must reimburse remote workers for all necessary expenses

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Re: California employers must reimburse remote workers for all necessary expenses

#201

Post by johnnyanmac »

changoplatanero wrote: post #155
cptskippy wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your claim is baseless right now. How does it do more harm than good?

Similar to how California made a law that prohibited charging for access to public restrooms. The intention was free public restrooms for everyone but the result was that most of the public restrooms closed up and it’s harder than ever to find somewhere to go. The top comment is warning people that these type of laws that attempt to mandate certain behavior often backfire

Dunno about SF, but the mitigating factor in. LA is that the bathroom is locked, you ask for a key, the key is only for customers. Not every place has a public bathroom but they didn't before either.

Don't know if that's illegal but I doubt anyone cares about mom and pop shops. All the large chains still have open restrooms.

Re: California employers must reimburse remote workers for all necessary expenses

#202

Post by ToucanLoucan »

FireBeyond wrote: post #157
lopkeny12ko wrote: post #99

Many young people or those cheering for employee/consumer rights do not seem to understand that this does more net harm than good. For small businesses and startups, this can amount to millions of dollars of additional expenses. Like any economically rational entity, your employer is going to respond by reducing headcount, not hiring in CA anymore, cutting costs in your annual raises, or some combination of the above…

> For small businesses and startups, this can amount to millions of dollars of additional expenses. There's an adjustment needed. I have worked for and applied to healthcare startups that want you to BYO device. For working on PHI. In Production. We're not "all in this together". We all know that equity is worth nothing until proven otherwise. Stop cheaping out and expecting your employees to invest in your success w…

> If that means fewer/smaller startups, small businesses? Ultimately, so be it.

This is really what it comes down to. If your business can't afford to employ people then people don't need to work for less, your business needs to cease operations.

This bizarre entitlement entrepreneurs seem to experience baffles me. I don't care if the cost of labor makes your business inoperable. Tough shit. The last year or so I've had to make a lot of adjustments to my life to account for everything getting more expensive, it happens. If your business is on such a razor's edge that you can't deal with new expenses then it sounds like your business is poorly operated.

I don't even understand how this isn't the norm. When I was hired on to my current job, they were prepared to send me home from my onboarding with everything I could need, including monitors and an expensable amount to equip an office. I didn't need really any of it because I was already setup for remote, but like, why wouldn't you be ready to do this? Asking workers to use their personal devices to do their jobs is some top tier horseshit, not only from ethics but from security perspectives too.

Re: California employers must reimburse remote workers for all necessary expenses

#203

Post by valianteffort »

civilitty wrote: post #147
timtom39 wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My company is largely remote at this point and is moving away from CA for cost/tax reasons. For some portion of companies this is just one more reason to move headquarters. That being said, I live in a pretty population dense area and my largest cost by far is dedicated home office space. It would be nice for my company to pay for that but it would have also been nice for them to pay for gas for my commute when I had…

As a Californian who has lived here for a quarter century and has never threatened to leave, I’m glad the state doesn’t cater to startups who can’t afford an extra 5% for home office expenses for their remote workers. They have zero loyalty to the state and if all employees are remote there’s little benefit keeping the corp in CA. Everyone has to register to do business here and the FTB will get the bulk of its cut a…

And destroy the property values of all the people that worked their whole lives to own a home there. You're being myopic or selfish, neither is fair to your neighbors.

Re: California employers must reimburse remote workers for all necessary expenses

#204

Post by AlotOfReading »

NeoTar wrote: post #79

Can I make my periodic reminder to US-Americans that two-letter state abbreviations are not universally recognized, and please to use full state names where possible. The case of California / CA is especially bad, since this is the ISO-code for Canada, so the article title is unnecessarily ambiguous.

I was curious about the historical precedent here. The earliest usage of "CA" referring to Canada I could find was a 1913 British abbreviation guide, and it doesn't seem to have been in common use until ISO 3166 was published in the 70s. "CA" referring to California was standardized by the USPS in 1907 to avoid confusion with Colorado, and the term seems to have been in wide use well before that point because it's documented in the 1880's Webster dictionary as referring to California.

It doesn't help that the official subdivision code for California according to 3166 is "CA".

Re: California employers must reimburse remote workers for all necessary expenses

#205

Post by vineyardmike »

FireBeyond wrote: post #157
lopkeny12ko wrote: post #99

Many young people or those cheering for employee/consumer rights do not seem to understand that this does more net harm than good. For small businesses and startups, this can amount to millions of dollars of additional expenses. Like any economically rational entity, your employer is going to respond by reducing headcount, not hiring in CA anymore, cutting costs in your annual raises, or some combination of the above…

> For small businesses and startups, this can amount to millions of dollars of additional expenses. There's an adjustment needed. I have worked for and applied to healthcare startups that want you to BYO device. For working on PHI. In Production. We're not "all in this together". We all know that equity is worth nothing until proven otherwise. Stop cheaping out and expecting your employees to invest in your success w…

> If that means fewer/smaller startups, small businesses? Ultimately, so be it.

People rush to claim that XYZ will hurt businesses, glossing over the fact that the alternative hurts employees.

It’d sure be better for small businesses if pay was optional and employment could be forced but that doesn’t sound like a very nice world. The government could also make no taxes, give out free money, and give every company free office space.

Just because it’d be good for small businesses doesn’t mean it’s actually good for society - which is the real metric to measure.

Re: California employers must reimburse remote workers for all necessary expenses

#206

Post by ryandrake »

lopkeny12ko wrote: post #99

Many young people or those cheering for employee/consumer rights do not seem to understand that this does more net harm than good. For small businesses and startups, this can amount to millions of dollars of additional expenses. Like any economically rational entity, your employer is going to respond by reducing headcount, not hiring in CA anymore, cutting costs in your annual raises, or some combination of the above…

This is the tired old Libertarian Anthem of "All regulation that helps [workers or customers] will backfire because it incentivizes businesses to [do worse behavior]." The solution is not to throw our hands up and say we cannot possibly regulate businesses because they're so crafty and will always get around it. The solution is to write more comprehensive regulation with fewer loopholes, such that the other, worse behavior is also regulated.

Re: California employers must reimburse remote workers for all necessary expenses

#208

Post by FireBeyond »

renewiltord wrote: post #135
mempko wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you are using your own equipment and resources, how are you an employee and not a contractor? Businesses should compensate because the agreement is the business uses their capital and your labor to make money. But if they also use your capital in addition to your labor, then the employee needs ownership of the business because they are devoting their capital to the business.

Fails ABC test. They get to tell you what to do etc. Makes you an employee not a contractor. Already established.

Exactly. Except now you're an employee who is often expected to furnish your own workspace out of pocket, up to and including computers, sometimes.

Companies want it both ways.

Re: California employers must reimburse remote workers for all necessary expenses

#209

Post by arrosenberg »

safety1st wrote: post #191
onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That would be true except the types of companies hiring a lot of remote workers already have a lot of remote workers in California. California has the luxury of being able to do whatever it wants and companies not really having much of a choice to say - we'll just skip the California market. It's a bigger market than Germany & Japan. This would go over less well if a state like Mississippi tried it.

This simply isn't true except when you're talking about the largest companies. The vast majority of American businesses don't have a place of business in all 50 states, or retail outlets, etc. etc. -- the majority of American businesses are small, operate in one or a handful of states, and as a result do in fact skip California. Sames goes I expect for "businesses hiring remote workers," only a Californian would have…

> Sames goes I expect for "businesses hiring remote workers," only a Californian would have the arrogance to believe that all those businesses are somehow addicted to hiring in California.

It's not arrogance when history bears it out time and time again.

> So what this kind of stuff does is crush small businesses in California, and leave only the large ones standing.

You are claiming that small businesses will stop existing in California if employers have to pay necessary costs? The same ones they'd have to pay in an office setting, less rent? Doubt.

Re: California employers must reimburse remote workers for all necessary expenses

#210

Post by tristor »

I've worked remotely for about 10 years now. I actually don't want my employer covering these expenses. If the employer is covering these expenses it requires me to document the expenses and comply with employer policies related to these expenses. For instance, an employer may mandate what speed of Internet service I am required to have, where I always want the fastest option (gigabit generally) and redundant links. Filing more expense reports in the horrid system made by SAP also is not on my list of things I want to do.

For the ~$1k/yr or so in expenses that I'd get back, I'd rather eat it. This is less than you spend on gas to commute and that's not covered, so frankly I don't care. Just pay me a fair salary with reasonable benefits and stay the fuck out of my personal life/home as an employer.

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