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To make this discussion maybe a little bit more solution oriented, what would be your solution to problems of labor mistreatment? Or do you suggest that nothing
by ace_of_spades 8y ago
To make this discussion maybe a little bit more solution oriented, what would be your solution to problems of labor mistreatment? Or do you suggest that nothing like that exists?
I recently came across an interesting talk by Richard Wolff at Google [1] which suggests that a great solution would be the democratization of the work place in the form of worker coops. It’s actually a tried and true model that works well in a variety of contexts. It would probably solve the problem you outline as well as make labor mistreatment a lot less common.
1: https://youtube.com/watch?v=ynbgMKclWWc https://youtube.com/watch?v=ynbgMKclWWc
- tomohawk 8y agoStart a "consulting" business that provides really good pay and benefits to all of the workers. Be very selective about who you let in. You're now in the business of providing workers for companies that produce stuff. If they want access to your workers, they sign a contract with your company. If some workers don't like working for some particular company, transfer them to places where they like to work. You've now created a private union that operates on a consensual basis rather than a coercive / adversarial basis.
- TheLuddite 8y agoWasn't this the way the Guilds were operating in the Medieval era?
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- bluntfang 8y agoSome of my peers have thrown around the idea of team hires. Interviewing as a team and working as a team. The team is hired and quits together and is generally a collective that works within itself.
- crdoconnor 8y agoYou haven't described a private union. You've described a co-op - a solution to an entirely different problem - how to deploy capital and labor in an egalitarian way. Unions exist to counter an existing adversarial and coercive economic relationship with counter-coercion. It's kind of like saying that instead of using tanks to fight a war you should use really persuasive arguments because then you don't have to use "coercion".
- ace_of_spades 8y agoSure that was the whole point, to broaden the discussion beyond tending the symptoms and trying to get at the causes. An interesting idea could be to use a union or similar vehicle to start a co-op. Or start to strive for more democratic practices in companies. I actually like the comparisons to consulting companies in the sibling comments which seem to be an attempt at doing something like the outlined, however, with more of a traditional paint on top and probably more vulnerable to coercion in the long run.
- crdoconnor 8y agoCo-ops don't address the causes of coercive economic relations though. If they did they'd be much more common - Walmart and John Lewis both exist but they simply can't compete effectively in the same market. The only way to counter a Walmart is with a union - and a really aggressive one, too.
- ace_of_spades 8y agoIf you look at the video I posted at least one professor seems to think otherwise and I kind of find his arguments at least worthy to consider. Corporations will by nature have place an emphasis on pleasing owners, which in the case of coops are the workers. So, it doesn’t dispense with competition in general but aligns interests better with workers which should have a profound effect on “coercive economic relations”. If you just mean that coops just cannot really compete, I would say that’s a myth. Look at Mondragon for example [1] or some large German coops. They also run successful competitors to walmart at leasr in europe. I think that one reason that they are just not as common is a general need to raise capital quickly, general availability of capital and a lack of education. But you are right that none of that is likely to counter an existing monopoly with access to huge capital baring some kind of legislative changes. There is certainly a place for unions. 1: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mondragon_Corporation https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mondragon_Corporation
- nerder92 8y agoYou are basically describing ThoughtWorks.
- zaksoup 8y agoExcept afaict the big agile consultancies underpay relative to tech industry big names. Source: fmr pivotal labs
- fphhotchips 8y agoSure - there are overheads in running a company where people like to work, and there's only so much that can come from the top line in a consulting business.
- zaksoup 8y agoParent to my comment was responding to somebody suggesting that consultancies provide "really good pay and benefits" and I was suggesting that this isn't true, currently, in the tech industry.
- fphhotchips 8y agoYeah, I missed that the parent was suggesting good pay and benefits. My point is that the consultancies generally pick one or the other, because otherwise they'd be priced out of the market - even for really good staff that are hard to find elsewhere.
- frogperson 8y agoThis model already exists and does really well in practice. Both clients and employees love it.
- conanbatt 8y agoWhy would you pay workers above what they are willing to work for you?
- falcor84 8y agoTo be able to hire them for a particular unit of work and then let them go once the project is over, without having to worry about labor laws. This kind of flexibility and optionality can be very valuable.
- conanbatt 8y agoAnd expensive. Firm theory has studied this subject in the field of economics. There's a reason there are employees in the world, and not everyone is a contractor.
- Angostura 8y agoAnd suddenly you've created Accenture
- Aeolun 8y agoThey literally provide ‘stuff’. Not sure whether it’s actual solutions.
- president 8y agoMy friend from Europe explained that this is how companies get around labor laws (for example, laws that restrict the number of hours a given employee can work). Companies essentially hire contractors who are paid higher wages which results in fewer actual positions hired by the company. Now there are fewer positions hired directly by the employer so in-effect, the labor laws haven't impacted much. At least that's how he explained it to me.
- falcor84 8y agoI don't understand. What you're describing is individual contracting, no? The comment above described contracting a company with employees. These employees would than drop be bound by the labor laws.
- president 8y agoTo my understanding it happens with both individual as well as company based contracting. Unsure which is more prevalant though.
- baddox 8y agoBut I mean, how different is that really from any normal corporation that offers its services to other corporations? The issue is still how the workers protect themselves from you (the employer).
- drb91 8y agoJust to point out the obvious, that doesn't serve the main purpose of the union at all: collective negotiation with the employer.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- JamesBarney 8y agoThe problem of course is if you give your employees really good pay and benefits you price yourself out of winning any jobs.
- arcticbull 8y agoThis is actually called a PEO (professional employment organization) and is often used for small companies looking to hire workers in foreign countries. The PEO becomes the employer of record and the employee is assigned 100% of the time to the foreign company. It’s pretty neat.
- sonnyblarney 8y agoThat's all fine and good, but now you have to find contracts and compete/bid competitively on RFP's for work.
- intended 8y agoYou just described a body shop. Heck this is what is done in India and other countries as well, to get around worker protection rules. Keep several rota of workers, employ them at firm X. When the 9.999 years of work are up, “switch” the workers to a new firm. Thus dodging the legal test which states that any worker who has worked at a role for more than 10 years at a single company, is a de facto employee and should be given pension and other recognitions. Your design degenerates to this situation. The same way Uber degenerated from ride sharing and using surplus resources to people barely squeezing by.
- trhway 8y ago>problems of labor mistreatment i don't think there have been times in tech when employees were paid and overall treated better than today (maybe the boom 20 years ago comes somewhat close). Even more, I think tech employees situation today beats any other mass employment situation in the history of humankind.
- perfmode 8y agoThere’s the issue of TVCs.
- swiftcoder 8y agoThis is generally true for full-time engineers. It isn't true for the vast legions of contract workers that stoke the fires of large tech companies. See, for example https://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-tn-apple-contract-workers-20190212-story.html https://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-tn-apple-contract-wor...
- trhway 8y agoyes, the companies are happy to shaft anybody they can (it is just right now they cant do that to tech employees). And i'm all for rising tide for everybody, for [significant] minimum wage increase, for more protections for contractors, for single payer, safety net and universal college education (and for higher taxes to cover all of it), etc. What i'm saying is that tech employees complaining should understand how much better they are off than everybody else, otherwise it becomes just a self-entitled whining.
- Apocryphon 8y agoTell it to the tech employees in the game industry.
- JamesBarney 8y agoFor tech workers specifically a organization like the AMA that can fight for certain contractual safeguards against death marches, non competes, and abusive IP practices. For workers in general a UBI that decreases the supply of workers thus increasing their bargaining power.
- ace_of_spades 8y agoYeah, thank you for bringing up UBI! I think UBI is an interesting development and seems like a good part of the solution given our current situation. However, it adresses inequality mostly in terms of redistribution of resources and not really in terms of power. For example, to finance a UBI large companies like would maybe be taxed more but that money would be evenly distributed across the company, thus, only marginally affecting Sergeys and Larrys position relative to their workers or society. They still remain in control, even though the population at large may have a little more wiggle room. Thus, UBI seems like a great way to make the status quo more tolerable but it wouldn’t really threaten accumulated power. That’s why basically everone in silicon valley is for it. Something like co-ops on the other hand bake in a lot more accountability and checks and balances into companies. This would also affect the distribution of power. But I wouldn’t say that this would be the obvious thing to push for or any kind of silver bullet. As I wrote in another comment, there are multiple sides to these problems (e.g., company and society level). Thank you for engaging with this question, hope you find some value in my response!
- solidasparagus 8y agoThere was an article that I can't find right now about European union practices. Create a union for an entire industry and then leverage union scale to push for government regulation that impacts the entire industry. I'm sure it would be imperfect, but you have to do a solution like that because if you don't, companies will see unions as a competitive disadvantage and prevent them. The biggest problem is that I and many others see unions as short-sightedly protecting workers while their companies and industries die around them. The last real bastion of union workers in the US is the government and no one is calling their employment model effective.
- ace_of_spades 8y agoI totally agree that there are two sides to this coin. On the one hand, you need to involve or support people who are negatively affected by changes (e.g., unions, co-ops, etc.) and, on the other hand, there needs to be effective regulation and decision making in the interest of the overall system of people (e.g., countries or the world). It’s important to look at both of these sides when considering solutions, I guess I didn’t really do this in my comment. So thank you for this important insight! To offer some additional thoughts on this, I can recommend the thought provink book Radical Markets by Eric Posner and Glen Weyl. They present quadratic voting (next to some other ideas) as one means of arriving at better regulatory outcomes. To me it’s not a complete or perfect solution but certainly interesting and maybe one piece of the puzzle :)
- cambaceres 8y agoThe solution to problems of lablor mistreatment is to quit and get a job at another company that treats their employees better.
- ace_of_spades 8y agoI would argue that today there are many oligopoly type situations where there is actually not too much choice to go around, especially if you are limited in terms of moving about. In these cases unionization or other types of collective action seem more appropriate. In general, I would argue for more diversity in company structures and better education about alternative organizational models (i.e., talk more openly about the pros and cons of all forms of organization - not only from a profit making but a societal perspective). It seems to me that there is a strong dogma of how things need to be done in start ups. But maybe I am wrong, I am still working at a German University so maybe I am misrepresenting the situation in your country.
- repolfx 8y agoKickstarter is a software firm based in New York. There's no shortage of firms hiring in New York. Kickstarter employees who are unhappy would be able to easily get jobs elsewhere. However, observe that their goal is not to tackle abusive working practices but apparently to take over the firm and impose a "social justice" agenda on it: enrich Kickstarter’s charter commitments to creativity, equity, and a positive impact on society promote our collective values: inclusion and solidarity, transparency and accountability; a seat at the table,” "equity" means equal outcomes e.g. 50% of all jobs being reserved for certain genders, races, etc. "Inclusion" is a codeword for the same thing. Obviously the goal of forcibly converting Kickstarter into using identity politics based management isn't something they can achieve by just going to work elsewhere, as would be the case if they were being mistreated, because Kickstarter would just hire replacement employees.