I also think companies should start paying for commute times, and that the time paid should be adjusted based on the cost of living in the area and the salary.

Of someone chooses to live 3 hours away when they could live in walking distance, that's one thing. But I work for a municipality in a prohibitively expensive area. 0 city employees live in the city they work and literally 100% of households are multi-millionaires or better. I have a 90-120 minute commute depending on traffic because that's where I can afford to live on my salary, but it also means I'm essentially working 3-4 hours extra a day.

Of course the city isn't gonna pay me 50% again more money, but if they were required to pay for my commute time they'd suddenly agree that I only really need to be in the office about once a week for public meetings since mostly what I do is Teams meetings, plan review, phone calls and emails, which could be done just as easily from my home office as at City Hall.

Shit - I get more done remote because I don't have to deal with people walking in without an appointment and demanding a meeting.

Not to be argumentative or anything like that, just wanted to state that I used to have a job where we worked 4 tens and I loved it. Two more hours a day kinda sucked, but having a 3 day weekend every week was nice. Granted, 4 8s would be better if I still made the same money every week.