This gets to the question "what is the employer paying for?"
Let me flip your question around - do you think that it is fine that one person is paid extra to live 2h away or that they should be paid twice what I get paid for effectively the same time spent in service of the company because I only have a 10 minute commute?
Alternatively, consider the person who commutes into the office 1h each way while I'm WFH and have effectively 0 commute. Let's say the wages are $50/h. Should they get paid an extra $100 a day because they are commuting rather than taking advantage of the WFH option?
On Wednesday nights I'd head to dinner with my family from the office. This involved going about 20-30 minutes out of my way from my normal commute. Should I get paid for that adjustment to my commute?
Alternatively, instead of taking route 1 home, I took route 2 home and did some shopping on the way (the route is actually faster sometimes, but less enjoyable and a harder drive), how does that factor into what I should get paid for my commute?
If I took a 15 minute deviation from my normal commute to drive through McD's for breakfast, should I get paid for 15 more minutes?
I'm older now than I was, and so prefer taking city surface streets that are properly illuminated and plowed in the winter rather than country roads. This was a change that I made to my commute back in '18. Should I get paid more because I changed my commute to surface streets? It's a 30 minute drive... I could switch to taking a bus, but that's 80-100 minutes each way (yea, the particular route options are awkward - two transfers for the fastest route).
When I was in Northern Wisconsin, there was a Hmong community that lived 45 minutes away from the office. Would it be fair for the employer to say "you must live within 30 minutes of the office because we're not going to be paying more than 1h/day for a commute"?
The "not paying for commute at all" is the simplest and (I believe) most fair way to approach the commute and issues of non-productive time, personal choices for transportation, personal choices for "where you want to live", and significant complications for overtime and verification of overtime. It avoids issues of outright discrimination of people who take public transportation or live certain distances from the office.
Your examples have a level of granularity that borders on absurdity. We all know that what it comes down to is this: Company makes an offer, i.e. "One of the perks of this job is you receive a 2 hour daily commute stipend". Employee accepts or rejects that offer.
Why not raise everyone's salary by $100/day ($2,500/y) and call it even?
Less accounting to be done when someone's commute changes based on inclement weather, no needing to punch time clock when you leave and get home (or record milage on your vehicle), no difficulty with alternate commute choices (if I bike to work and it takes 1h rather than 30 min driving)...
What benefit to the employer is there to pay someone more if they live further away? What problem would there be if every employee was given the same pay increase regardless of where they lived?
It means that payroll has a lot less work to do too (rather than trying to keep track of everyone's commute).
If Meta HQ did this, would they be giving less to someone who lives in East Palo Alto rather than Gilroy (because of the "difference in commute")?
