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"In his complaint, Mr. Ayanna cited a “macho” culture that “encourages male associates and partners to fulfill the stereotypical male role of ceding family resp

"In his complaint, Mr. Ayanna cited a “macho” culture that “encourages male associates and partners to fulfill the stereotypical male role of ceding family responsibilities to women.”" Ah yes, the good old macho culture that has been disfiguring men emotionally and physically for longer than I know. The macho culture is probably one reason why we don't live as long as women do, since we consider going to the doctor to be expressing weakness, which is verboten. Aside from that aspect of the issue, it's no secret that worker rights barely exist in the US, and a strong parental leave policy enshrined into law would massively help both men and women. Getting real worker rights in the US be like pulling teeth from a stone (sic), though. We don't even have sick days by law-- seems like those should come first. A quick list of things we direly need which we don't have: 1. Paid sick days 2. Paid vacation days 3. Hard limit of hours worked per week 4. Overtime pay for salaried employees 5. Paid parental leave 6. Control over scheduling of hours 7. A realistic minimum wage or some other way of guaranteeing survival of the poor 8. Paid childcare

wang_li 11y ago
I'm curious... when you travel do you pay extra for services you don't receive? For example, if you are going to stay in a hotel for five days, do you pay for seven?
- cryoshon 11y ago
  Labor isn't the same as other commodities, and shouldn't be treated in the same fashion. For instance, you don't go to the store, take a can of WD-40 home, use it, then go back to the store to pay for the can. Labor (unjustly, but not hugely so) is given to employers on credit from workers. You work a week (giving the commodity of labor away for free during that week because you have no choice in the matter) then get paid afterward. The point of this push for labor rights is that laborers aren't being fairly compensated in a variety of dimensions for the work they've done.
  - JoeAltmaier 11y ago
    You said it! Contractors have it worse. You typically get paid net-60, you're actually working for a quarter for nothing and hoping the company is still solvent to pay you. E.g. start working Jan 1st; bill for the month on Jan 31st. Net-60 means getting paid for that April 1st. You work 90 days on hope.
    - cryoshon 11y ago
      That's pretty bad. Reminds me of Amazon's payment schemes for authors. Month ends, your pay is marked off-- and the check is in your bank account long, long after, allowing them to have more liquidity at your expense.
  - dasmoth 11y ago
    > For instance, you don't go to the store, take a can of WD-40 home, use it, then go back to the store to pay for the can. That's true, but may have more to do with an unwillingness to track a squillion IOUs for individual cans of WD-40 than a sign of a fundamental difference. Were you a company buying a pallet of the stuff, things would be different. (That said, if I pay by credit card it'll be at least a month before the card issuer thinks about charging me interest, so things aren't so very different as an individual, either...)
  - wang_li 11y ago
    >Labor isn't the same as other commodities, Depends on the relationship. Instead of a hotel, say you decided that you enjoy a massage and after some research you find a license therapist in your area and you have a trial massage and, having appreciated said massage, you decide to establish twice weekly massages. So you talk with the therapist and establish a nice $125/hour rate for them to come to your house every Tuesday and Thursday at 2:00pm for an hour massage. Having negotiated a rate, you agree that this is an ongoing deal until one or the other of you decides to cancel it. Now, you've agreed to effectively $1,000/month salary for this person. Are you really going to go ahead and pay them the agreed upon $1,000/month even though they: a) catch a virus and are unable to come for two weeks. b) take a vacation to Pittsburgh and are not going to be there next Thursday. c) have a child and aren't going to be coming to give your massage for the next six, eight, or ten weeks? d) have signed up extra clients and will reach sixty hours by Thursday morning, so they won't be able to provide their Thursday afternoon or Friday appointments due to hard limits on overtime. e) now that they have a kid, you're going to pay an extra $10 per session for child care. For some reason, my gut feeling is that you're not going to do any of those things and instead put it on the therapist to manage their business and accept that they will get paid for services rendered and nothing else.
- swalsh 11y ago
  I bet you don't have kids, or aren't currently thinking through the logistics of having them. Your mind games just don't apply equally to labor.
  - escherize 11y ago
    I'm curious about what your argument is, since "think about having children though" and stating an opposite position doesn't lead anywhere.
    - mnglkhn2 11y ago
      Kids have to be picked up at 3pm or, if you want to keep them for the whole day in school, at 5pm. Unless you hire a nanny, 5pm becomes a hard stop for you, no matter what start-up life you dream of having. Then, during the week-end, your guilt of not spending too much time during the week will eat at you and you will try and to use most of the free time with your kid(s). Or, you can decide not to get involved too much with your kinds, eventually shipping them off to a boarding school. even for that, you have to pay dearly.
- michael_h 11y ago
  Absolutely! The hotels I usually stay at have: * a business center with pc/printer/fax machine * a gym * a 'meet-and-greet' with complimentary beverages * an inexplicable twice a day cleaning schedule * tennis/basketball courts * shuttle service * cable television All of which I do not use, but are definitely included in their overhead costs and passed on to me, the consumer.
mc32 11y ago
I think a "living wage" is a somewhat ill defined, but also overly political concept for several reasons. One, what does it mean? Does it mean allowing you to get by at a minimum level, or, does that mean allowing you to have an upper lower class income? Also if we mean it to allow upper lower class to lower middle class, then we could see consequences such as: people not caring about education and higher skills development (blue collar union job mentality) no big deal by yet could strand these people later. Second, it pushes lower skilled people out of the labor force. Why hire someone who barely went to highschool when you can get a liberal arts grad at that wage?
- yarrel 11y ago
  "Defining" something is a fuzzy concept. Do we mean trying to find an obvious and reasonable meaning for it (like "get by at a minimum level") or are we trying to make it appear a worrying and unjustified excess with important and negative unintended consequences?
- paulmd 11y ago
  Those two consequences you predict are entirely contradictory. Less educated people will be pushed out of the workforce, but for some reason people will also disregard education that would increase their employability? Say what? Living wage does have a specific definition - it is a minimum subsistence wage, that takes into account the cost of living for a various area as well as various things that are necessary to be able to work (eg child care, transportation, and medical coverage). It does not budget time or money for any entertainment or leisure time, or any long-term financial planning such as retirement or savings. So in short it's a minimum wage, except a minimum wage that's actually based on the immediate day-to-day costs needed to keep you working at your job. In fact it's really less political than the minimum wage itself, since the minimum wage is just an arbitrary number someone chose - one that's usually low enough to require the government to subsidize businesses who employ minimum-wage workers, through various social programs. Why is the minimum wage currently $7.25 instead of the $15 equivalent it was in the 70s? We simply haven't legislated an increase. Can you change what costs are considered essential to keeping you working? Sure, and those do change over time. 70 years ago you wouldn't have had to include child-care costs since you'd have a stay-at-home wife to care for them. And indeed such things should change when justified by conditions on the ground - we no longer live in an economy of 1-income households, and it's not just foolish to pretend we do - it's harmful. I assure you that Americans demonstrate ample resistance to perceived increases in the living standards of the poor, it's unnecessary to preemptively rule out any changes down the road.
jkot 11y ago
Some of those suggestion are counterproductive. For example unpaid overtime is great way to eliminate gender pay gap.
smartt 11y ago
Completely agree. It's unfortunate how many Americans don't realize how poorly they're treated as employees. I don't think it even becomes obvious until you've traveled globally and had children.
- nether 11y ago
  But this is also why we have more billion-dollar startups than the EU. Isn't it?
  - dudul 11y ago
    Yep, that's how America works. The holy dollar over its citizens happiness and well-being.
    - nether 11y ago
      I seriously looked into relocating to Germany as a mechanical engineer after salivating over their extended paid vacation time and ease of taking transit all over Europe. But if I were ever to start a company, fuck paying for that. I'd do it in the US where labor is cheap and business taxes are low.
  - cryoshon 11y ago
    You're right, but think about what the implication is. In exchange for a lower quality of life, we have more billion dollar startups. Not the only billion dollar startups-- just more relative to the more civilized countries. Most of these startups don't actually improve the public's daily life significantly, and offer incremental efficiency, convenience improvements, or services that people will be not using 99% of their waking time. Sure, on the long view software is "eating the world", but it's nibbling around the edges first, occupied with the condiments and garnishings rather than the meat. Successful startups in exchange for shitty labor protections are a shitty trade for the vast, vast majority of people.
    - nether 11y ago
      That's true of tech startups. But think of startups that aim bigger. The South African who founded SpaceX would have struggled to amass his army of engineers in Europe. In the long run, these moon-shot innovations that are only possible with huge amounts of cheap talent might save humanity. The low-hanging fruit (first airplane, first rocket motor, first PC) that could be started in a garage by a few folks working in their off time is gone. I like that we have both types of labor climates in the first world. High-risk, no safety-net and unshackled by regulation like in the US, but also a more cushy albeit less dynamic one in Europe.
albertop 11y ago
You realize that your proposal would kill startups. No small company can afford this list of benefits.

wang_li 11y ago

I'm curious... when you travel do you pay extra for services you don't receive? For example, if you are going to stay in a hotel for five days, do you pay for seven?

cryoshon 11y ago
Labor isn't the same as other commodities, and shouldn't be treated in the same fashion. For instance, you don't go to the store, take a can of WD-40 home, use it, then go back to the store to pay for the can. Labor (unjustly, but not hugely so) is given to employers on credit from workers. You work a week (giving the commodity of labor away for free during that week because you have no choice in the matter) then get paid afterward. The point of this push for labor rights is that laborers aren't being fairly compensated in a variety of dimensions for the work they've done.
- JoeAltmaier 11y ago
  You said it! Contractors have it worse. You typically get paid net-60, you're actually working for a quarter for nothing and hoping the company is still solvent to pay you. E.g. start working Jan 1st; bill for the month on Jan 31st. Net-60 means getting paid for that April 1st. You work 90 days on hope.
  - cryoshon 11y ago
    That's pretty bad. Reminds me of Amazon's payment schemes for authors. Month ends, your pay is marked off-- and the check is in your bank account long, long after, allowing them to have more liquidity at your expense.
- dasmoth 11y ago
  > For instance, you don't go to the store, take a can of WD-40 home, use it, then go back to the store to pay for the can. That's true, but may have more to do with an unwillingness to track a squillion IOUs for individual cans of WD-40 than a sign of a fundamental difference. Were you a company buying a pallet of the stuff, things would be different. (That said, if I pay by credit card it'll be at least a month before the card issuer thinks about charging me interest, so things aren't so very different as an individual, either...)
- wang_li 11y ago
  >Labor isn't the same as other commodities, Depends on the relationship. Instead of a hotel, say you decided that you enjoy a massage and after some research you find a license therapist in your area and you have a trial massage and, having appreciated said massage, you decide to establish twice weekly massages. So you talk with the therapist and establish a nice $125/hour rate for them to come to your house every Tuesday and Thursday at 2:00pm for an hour massage. Having negotiated a rate, you agree that this is an ongoing deal until one or the other of you decides to cancel it. Now, you've agreed to effectively $1,000/month salary for this person. Are you really going to go ahead and pay them the agreed upon $1,000/month even though they: a) catch a virus and are unable to come for two weeks. b) take a vacation to Pittsburgh and are not going to be there next Thursday. c) have a child and aren't going to be coming to give your massage for the next six, eight, or ten weeks? d) have signed up extra clients and will reach sixty hours by Thursday morning, so they won't be able to provide their Thursday afternoon or Friday appointments due to hard limits on overtime. e) now that they have a kid, you're going to pay an extra $10 per session for child care. For some reason, my gut feeling is that you're not going to do any of those things and instead put it on the therapist to manage their business and accept that they will get paid for services rendered and nothing else.
swalsh 11y ago
I bet you don't have kids, or aren't currently thinking through the logistics of having them. Your mind games just don't apply equally to labor.
- escherize 11y ago
  I'm curious about what your argument is, since "think about having children though" and stating an opposite position doesn't lead anywhere.
  - mnglkhn2 11y ago
    Kids have to be picked up at 3pm or, if you want to keep them for the whole day in school, at 5pm. Unless you hire a nanny, 5pm becomes a hard stop for you, no matter what start-up life you dream of having. Then, during the week-end, your guilt of not spending too much time during the week will eat at you and you will try and to use most of the free time with your kid(s). Or, you can decide not to get involved too much with your kinds, eventually shipping them off to a boarding school. even for that, you have to pay dearly.
michael_h 11y ago
Absolutely! The hotels I usually stay at have: * a business center with pc/printer/fax machine * a gym * a 'meet-and-greet' with complimentary beverages * an inexplicable twice a day cleaning schedule * tennis/basketball courts * shuttle service * cable television All of which I do not use, but are definitely included in their overhead costs and passed on to me, the consumer.

mc32 11y ago

I think a "living wage" is a somewhat ill defined, but also overly political concept for several reasons. One, what does it mean? Does it mean allowing you to get by at a minimum level, or, does that mean allowing you to have an upper lower class income? Also if we mean it to allow upper lower class to lower middle class, then we could see consequences such as: people not caring about education and higher skills development (blue collar union job mentality) no big deal by yet could strand these people later. Second, it pushes lower skilled people out of the labor force. Why hire someone who barely went to highschool when you can get a liberal arts grad at that wage?

yarrel 11y ago
"Defining" something is a fuzzy concept. Do we mean trying to find an obvious and reasonable meaning for it (like "get by at a minimum level") or are we trying to make it appear a worrying and unjustified excess with important and negative unintended consequences?
paulmd 11y ago
Those two consequences you predict are entirely contradictory. Less educated people will be pushed out of the workforce, but for some reason people will also disregard education that would increase their employability? Say what? Living wage does have a specific definition - it is a minimum subsistence wage, that takes into account the cost of living for a various area as well as various things that are necessary to be able to work (eg child care, transportation, and medical coverage). It does not budget time or money for any entertainment or leisure time, or any long-term financial planning such as retirement or savings. So in short it's a minimum wage, except a minimum wage that's actually based on the immediate day-to-day costs needed to keep you working at your job. In fact it's really less political than the minimum wage itself, since the minimum wage is just an arbitrary number someone chose - one that's usually low enough to require the government to subsidize businesses who employ minimum-wage workers, through various social programs. Why is the minimum wage currently $7.25 instead of the $15 equivalent it was in the 70s? We simply haven't legislated an increase. Can you change what costs are considered essential to keeping you working? Sure, and those do change over time. 70 years ago you wouldn't have had to include child-care costs since you'd have a stay-at-home wife to care for them. And indeed such things should change when justified by conditions on the ground - we no longer live in an economy of 1-income households, and it's not just foolish to pretend we do - it's harmful. I assure you that Americans demonstrate ample resistance to perceived increases in the living standards of the poor, it's unnecessary to preemptively rule out any changes down the road.

jkot 11y ago

Some of those suggestion are counterproductive. For example unpaid overtime is great way to eliminate gender pay gap.

smartt 11y ago

Completely agree. It's unfortunate how many Americans don't realize how poorly they're treated as employees. I don't think it even becomes obvious until you've traveled globally and had children.

nether 11y ago
But this is also why we have more billion-dollar startups than the EU. Isn't it?
- dudul 11y ago
  Yep, that's how America works. The holy dollar over its citizens happiness and well-being.
  - nether 11y ago
    I seriously looked into relocating to Germany as a mechanical engineer after salivating over their extended paid vacation time and ease of taking transit all over Europe. But if I were ever to start a company, fuck paying for that. I'd do it in the US where labor is cheap and business taxes are low.
- cryoshon 11y ago
  You're right, but think about what the implication is. In exchange for a lower quality of life, we have more billion dollar startups. Not the only billion dollar startups-- just more relative to the more civilized countries. Most of these startups don't actually improve the public's daily life significantly, and offer incremental efficiency, convenience improvements, or services that people will be not using 99% of their waking time. Sure, on the long view software is "eating the world", but it's nibbling around the edges first, occupied with the condiments and garnishings rather than the meat. Successful startups in exchange for shitty labor protections are a shitty trade for the vast, vast majority of people.
  - nether 11y ago
    That's true of tech startups. But think of startups that aim bigger. The South African who founded SpaceX would have struggled to amass his army of engineers in Europe. In the long run, these moon-shot innovations that are only possible with huge amounts of cheap talent might save humanity. The low-hanging fruit (first airplane, first rocket motor, first PC) that could be started in a garage by a few folks working in their off time is gone. I like that we have both types of labor climates in the first world. High-risk, no safety-net and unshackled by regulation like in the US, but also a more cushy albeit less dynamic one in Europe.

albertop 11y ago

You realize that your proposal would kill startups. No small company can afford this list of benefits.