7 ms·

Do we live on the same planet? Tech jobs are insanely awesome compared to basically every other job out there. I've consulted for unicorns, the amenities for em

Do we live on the same planet? Tech jobs are insanely awesome compared to basically every other job out there. I've consulted for unicorns, the amenities for employees are ridiculous. Employees are incredibly sought after and can (and many do) regularly shop themselves around for better offers.

shantly 7y ago
That doesn't mean there isn't more value to extract for workers—very probably there is—or more that could be done to even out availability of things like parental leave, for example, or that an easy, cheap, acceptable route to professional and legal counsel & insurances outside the direct control of the company one is working for wouldn't be very valuable—and besides, the overwhelming majority of tech jobs aren't the kind you're talking about, even restricting ourselves to the US. [EDIT] more to the point, if your company doesn't say things like "you know, this contract pays really well, no need to negotiate for more even if we think we could get it" there's no reason employees should have that kind of attitude about their pay & work conditions.
CharlesColeman 7y ago
They get those amenities because the people employing them are making so much more money off of them that the cost is easy to swallow.
- toasterlovin 7y ago
  So what? The existence of someone else's profit is not justification for it to be taken. The moral justification for unions is that they prevent mistreatment of employees, not that they can transfer as much of the company's profit as possible to employees.
  - shantly 7y ago
    Do you also oppose companies negotiating "unfair" contracts that extract "too much" of some other company's profit? [EDIT] I mean... wow, is it immoral if an individual negotiates with the aim to gain as much pay as possible, or only if workers band together to do so more effectively?
    - toasterlovin 7y ago
      I would oppose a cartel of companies acting in a way that extracts too much money from consumers. We have a whole area of law for dealing with this. Unions are a cartel of employees who use the threat of financial harm to limit the freedom of employers and individual workers from freely entering into mutually beneficial work arrangements. I think this is justified if the purpose is to prevent employers from exploiting workers. I don't think it's justified if their sole purpose is to use power to extract more value from the employer.
      - shantly 7y ago
        > Unions are a cartel of employees who use the threat of harm to limit the freedom of employers and individual workers from freely entering into mutually beneficial work arrangements. Individual workers are in a weaker negotiating position than employers, so without a union it's highly likely that, on average, they are receiving lower compensation than they might absent that weaker bargaining position (the short-version explanation being that, in the typical case, it harms an employee more to miss an opportunity than for a company to pass on an employee, simply due to the nature of the two entities). I don't see why employees being in a weak bargaining position does not cause "harm" but their banding together to be in a stronger position does, nor why, given that position, they should be expected to voluntarily make worse deals than they could. Further, we collectively choose, via government, to permit such a thing as a corporation to exist in the first place, so in my view there's no natural or moral argument for the state of their being in a better negotiating position than labor, and even if we go on to arrange things such that they are made weaker than labor, somehow—not just equal or less-dominant—it's gonna take more than the simple fact of things being that way to convince me they're being harmed in some sense that should make me feel bad for them or that some moral wrong is being committed. I don't think corporations, provided their privileges and their very existence by force of law, are being particularly harmed in some sense worthy of moral assignment by having to deal with strong collective bargaining entities for labor, nor that we can call gains in negotiations made by those labor entities unfair or immoral if they aim to gain the best deals they can without also having to label much of Capitalism as such (I might follow you down that road, actually, as I'm not sure it's wrong and it seems, at first glance, consistent, at least).
  - CharlesColeman 7y ago
    > The moral justification for unions is that they prevent mistreatment of employees, not that they can transfer as much of the company's profit as possible to employees. In your opinion. In my view, one of the many moral justifications of unions is that they create a more even playing field between workers and already organized management/capital, and that includes the workers receiving a greater share of the profits the they had an essential role in creating. A worker without a union is like a defendant without a lawyer.
    - toasterlovin 7y ago
      > A worker without a union is like a defendant without a lawyer. That's a bad analogy. Defendants cannot avoid a hearing. Employees can just get another job. Starting businesses is hard. It entails a lot of risk. Risk that was never taken by employees. And employees are not bound to the fortunes of the company the way owners are. If the company loses money or goes belly-up, the employees get new jobs. But the owners must simply bear the loss.
      - shantly 7y ago
        Am I to understand that you see labor as systemically privileged under Capitalism?
        toasterlovin 7y ago
        No, I simply see it as one party to a transaction, similar to any of the company's other suppliers. Editing to expand: Being able to depend on a regular paycheck is a helluva thing. Sure, you don't participate in the upside of a company. But you don't participate in the downside, either. That's the bargain that labor makes. If you don't like the bargain, then take some risk and start a company. Most people prefer a steady paycheck, though.
      - CharlesColeman 7y ago
        > That's a bad analogy. Defendants cannot avoid a hearing. Employees can just get another job. I don't share your quibbles, but all right. How about this: A worker without a union is like going to court without a lawyer. A lot of court cases are optional. You can always just not demand what you're owed or pay whatever your asked. If you lose, just hope the next person you do business with will be more trustworthy. > Starting businesses is hard. It entails a lot of risk. Risk that was never taken by employees. And employees are not bound to the fortunes of the company the way owners are. If the company loses money or goes belly-up, the employees get new jobs. But the owners must simply bear the loss. So what? None of that is a convincing argument that non-business-owners should not benefit form organization. It's not like owners are the only ones taking a risk [1], workers do too. Do you think they somehow fantastically shift into equivalent new jobs whenever their laid off? Workers invest in company-specific knowledge and put down roots near their employer that are harder relocate than capital, for instance. You also oddly fail to differentiate between groups like the struggling small business owner and the private equity firm billionaire who lays off 10,000 workers just because he'd prefer that he and his shareholders be richer. Whatever sympathy the former deserve is not due to the latter. [1] they're the only ones risking capital, not the only ones taking a risk.
Pfhreak 7y ago
Where does the money from to fund those amenities? The surplus generated from their wage labor. You can pay someone $300,000 a year and expect to make $400,000 from their contributions. It can absolutely be the case the workers are well treated and still be losing their surplus value.
- toasterlovin 7y ago
  As I replied in another comment, the moral justification for unions is to prevent mistreatment of workers, not to transfer as much of the wealth created by a company to its employees as possible.
  - Pfhreak 7y ago
    I'm not sure who defines 'the moral justification for unions' but I see a moral justification just from balancing the power dynamic between the company and the individual worker. Negotiating as a single worker against a company one has profound disadvantages. > prevent mistreatment of workers, not to transfer as much of the wealth created by a company to its employees as possible. The wealth is created by the workers, not the company. And some would argue that keeping too large of a share of that wealth is, in fact, a mistreatment of workers.
    - shantly 7y ago
      Moreover, I'm finding this notion that some economic actors have more "moral" right to a big slice of the profit-pie than others really hard to pin down. As in, it sure seems like the idea collapses as soon as you breathe in its direction, unless I'm missing something big. [EDIT] that is, I don't follow why it's fine (presumably) for companies to seek to maximize returns, negotiating as a large block of people pooling their labor and capital, but not for workers to do that.
      - toasterlovin 7y ago
        I own a business. I have undertaken lots of work and risk to get this business off the ground. Why should someone else, who has risked nothing, be entitled to anything other than a reasonable work environment and wages that both parties agree to if I decide to hire them?

shantly 7y ago

That doesn't mean there isn't more value to extract for workers—very probably there is—or more that could be done to even out availability of things like parental leave, for example, or that an easy, cheap, acceptable route to professional and legal counsel & insurances outside the direct control of the company one is working for wouldn't be very valuable—and besides, the overwhelming majority of tech jobs aren't the kind you're talking about, even restricting ourselves to the US. [EDIT] more to the point, if your company doesn't say things like "you know, this contract pays really well, no need to negotiate for more even if we think we could get it" there's no reason employees should have that kind of attitude about their pay & work conditions.

CharlesColeman 7y ago

They get those amenities because the people employing them are making so much more money off of them that the cost is easy to swallow.

toasterlovin 7y ago
So what? The existence of someone else's profit is not justification for it to be taken. The moral justification for unions is that they prevent mistreatment of employees, not that they can transfer as much of the company's profit as possible to employees.
- shantly 7y ago
  Do you also oppose companies negotiating "unfair" contracts that extract "too much" of some other company's profit? [EDIT] I mean... wow, is it immoral if an individual negotiates with the aim to gain as much pay as possible, or only if workers band together to do so more effectively?
  - toasterlovin 7y ago
    I would oppose a cartel of companies acting in a way that extracts too much money from consumers. We have a whole area of law for dealing with this. Unions are a cartel of employees who use the threat of financial harm to limit the freedom of employers and individual workers from freely entering into mutually beneficial work arrangements. I think this is justified if the purpose is to prevent employers from exploiting workers. I don't think it's justified if their sole purpose is to use power to extract more value from the employer.
    - shantly 7y ago
      > Unions are a cartel of employees who use the threat of harm to limit the freedom of employers and individual workers from freely entering into mutually beneficial work arrangements. Individual workers are in a weaker negotiating position than employers, so without a union it's highly likely that, on average, they are receiving lower compensation than they might absent that weaker bargaining position (the short-version explanation being that, in the typical case, it harms an employee more to miss an opportunity than for a company to pass on an employee, simply due to the nature of the two entities). I don't see why employees being in a weak bargaining position does not cause "harm" but their banding together to be in a stronger position does, nor why, given that position, they should be expected to voluntarily make worse deals than they could. Further, we collectively choose, via government, to permit such a thing as a corporation to exist in the first place, so in my view there's no natural or moral argument for the state of their being in a better negotiating position than labor, and even if we go on to arrange things such that they are made weaker than labor, somehow—not just equal or less-dominant—it's gonna take more than the simple fact of things being that way to convince me they're being harmed in some sense that should make me feel bad for them or that some moral wrong is being committed. I don't think corporations, provided their privileges and their very existence by force of law, are being particularly harmed in some sense worthy of moral assignment by having to deal with strong collective bargaining entities for labor, nor that we can call gains in negotiations made by those labor entities unfair or immoral if they aim to gain the best deals they can without also having to label much of Capitalism as such (I might follow you down that road, actually, as I'm not sure it's wrong and it seems, at first glance, consistent, at least).
- CharlesColeman 7y ago
  > The moral justification for unions is that they prevent mistreatment of employees, not that they can transfer as much of the company's profit as possible to employees. In your opinion. In my view, one of the many moral justifications of unions is that they create a more even playing field between workers and already organized management/capital, and that includes the workers receiving a greater share of the profits the they had an essential role in creating. A worker without a union is like a defendant without a lawyer.
  - toasterlovin 7y ago
    > A worker without a union is like a defendant without a lawyer. That's a bad analogy. Defendants cannot avoid a hearing. Employees can just get another job. Starting businesses is hard. It entails a lot of risk. Risk that was never taken by employees. And employees are not bound to the fortunes of the company the way owners are. If the company loses money or goes belly-up, the employees get new jobs. But the owners must simply bear the loss.
    - shantly 7y ago
      Am I to understand that you see labor as systemically privileged under Capitalism?
      - toasterlovin 7y ago
        No, I simply see it as one party to a transaction, similar to any of the company's other suppliers. Editing to expand: Being able to depend on a regular paycheck is a helluva thing. Sure, you don't participate in the upside of a company. But you don't participate in the downside, either. That's the bargain that labor makes. If you don't like the bargain, then take some risk and start a company. Most people prefer a steady paycheck, though.
    - CharlesColeman 7y ago
      > That's a bad analogy. Defendants cannot avoid a hearing. Employees can just get another job. I don't share your quibbles, but all right. How about this: A worker without a union is like going to court without a lawyer. A lot of court cases are optional. You can always just not demand what you're owed or pay whatever your asked. If you lose, just hope the next person you do business with will be more trustworthy. > Starting businesses is hard. It entails a lot of risk. Risk that was never taken by employees. And employees are not bound to the fortunes of the company the way owners are. If the company loses money or goes belly-up, the employees get new jobs. But the owners must simply bear the loss. So what? None of that is a convincing argument that non-business-owners should not benefit form organization. It's not like owners are the only ones taking a risk [1], workers do too. Do you think they somehow fantastically shift into equivalent new jobs whenever their laid off? Workers invest in company-specific knowledge and put down roots near their employer that are harder relocate than capital, for instance. You also oddly fail to differentiate between groups like the struggling small business owner and the private equity firm billionaire who lays off 10,000 workers just because he'd prefer that he and his shareholders be richer. Whatever sympathy the former deserve is not due to the latter. [1] they're the only ones risking capital, not the only ones taking a risk.

Pfhreak 7y ago

Where does the money from to fund those amenities? The surplus generated from their wage labor. You can pay someone $300,000 a year and expect to make $400,000 from their contributions. It can absolutely be the case the workers are well treated and still be losing their surplus value.

toasterlovin 7y ago
As I replied in another comment, the moral justification for unions is to prevent mistreatment of workers, not to transfer as much of the wealth created by a company to its employees as possible.
- Pfhreak 7y ago
  I'm not sure who defines 'the moral justification for unions' but I see a moral justification just from balancing the power dynamic between the company and the individual worker. Negotiating as a single worker against a company one has profound disadvantages. > prevent mistreatment of workers, not to transfer as much of the wealth created by a company to its employees as possible. The wealth is created by the workers, not the company. And some would argue that keeping too large of a share of that wealth is, in fact, a mistreatment of workers.
  - shantly 7y ago
    Moreover, I'm finding this notion that some economic actors have more "moral" right to a big slice of the profit-pie than others really hard to pin down. As in, it sure seems like the idea collapses as soon as you breathe in its direction, unless I'm missing something big. [EDIT] that is, I don't follow why it's fine (presumably) for companies to seek to maximize returns, negotiating as a large block of people pooling their labor and capital, but not for workers to do that.
    - toasterlovin 7y ago
      I own a business. I have undertaken lots of work and risk to get this business off the ground. Why should someone else, who has risked nothing, be entitled to anything other than a reasonable work environment and wages that both parties agree to if I decide to hire them?