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All workers can be abused regardless of their salary. Examples for programmers that come to mind: - Companies that require workers to enter arbitration and gi
by chomp 7y ago
All workers can be abused regardless of their salary.
Examples for programmers that come to mind:
- Companies that require workers to enter arbitration and give up their right to sue.
- Companies that force workers to give up IP generated in their free time (not using company resources)
- Companies that require programmers to work 12 hour days, "crunch times", minimal paid leave (game dev industry, VFX industry comes to mind.)
Unions collectively negotiate with employers to reduce or eliminate these abuses. Some unions have poor leadership, which is to be expected. Some companies have poor leadership. Not everyone is good at negotiating, which can create power imbalances on either end of the table. But on the whole, unions are a Good Thing, even for IT folk.
- notJim 7y agoA lot of people on HN are interested in a 30-hour work week. A strong union movement could get that done, as they have been working on in Germany: https://www.businessinsider.com/german-workers-can-now-work-a-28-hour-week-2018-2 https://www.businessinsider.com/german-workers-can-now-work-...
- vjktyu 7y agoWe need a stronger law: any employee should be able to choose how many hours or days per week to work AND work for any other company at the same time (NDA applies, but non compete bs doesn't). Execs do this all the time: they can be on boards in multiple companies, run other companies, while possessing material information about them all. The way I see it's working is the total comp negotiation goes as usual, but the employer isn't allowed to ask how much time the employee indends to work and whether one works for other companies. The salary and other comp is paid bi weekly as usual, but is pro rated to the number of hours or days worked. All the machinery is already in place: big corps have very detailed per minutes compensation for vacations, various on call duties and so on. This will be strictly better for the IRS, because more competition means more taxes, but much worse for the dividend seeking investors. Obviously, this will be a decade long legal battle with tens of millions in expenses, and it can't be done without a full time team of motivated and very expensive lawyers. However if 100k engineers spend 1k/year as membership fees, this organization will have a 100m/year budget and can keep courts busy forever.
- username90 7y agoAnother example of abuse: - Unions that forces its members to only work specific contracts giving up their right to work.
- Proven 7y agoNonsense. They can't force you to do anything, you can always quit before you agree to doing that.