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Couldn't have said it better. One of the reasons I'm a supporter of universal basic income is so that the employees can have a better negotiating position. I s

Couldn't have said it better. One of the reasons I'm a supporter of universal basic income is so that the employees can have a better negotiating position. I suspect many bullshit rules will go out the window when the alternative to employment isn't destitution. For far too long has this negotiation been highly in favour of the employer.

hangphyr 6y ago
This is a bit of a tangent, but one should be careful with that path. Not all employers are 'evil' and have negative intentions for their employees. Think of an example such as the independently owned restaurant that cannot afford to pay employees high wages and their owners are not wealthy. Just as not all employees can be painted as untrustworthy and hostile, not all employers should be painted as untrustworthy and hostile.
- chepaslaaa 6y ago
  I've been a line cook, restaurant owners are absolutely untrustworthy and hostile. The food industry is one where exploitation, highly aggressive staff retention practices (making employees dependent on you for a visa, threatening to spread lies about you, etc.), crazy unhealthy hours and just a generally awful culture are standard.
  - Avicebron 6y ago
    Can vouch for the life science industry being like this as well. Management threatened to make us check in every hour of work. Spending an eighth of that hour writing an explanatory email was pretty toxic.
  - gbmor 6y ago
    I've worked in the restaurant industry in the US. It's nothing short of horrifying, and often traumatizing for those involved. I've seen no overtime pay happen, lies from management to get unemployment claims denied, management not actually firing people but just giving them zero or reduced hours to mess with the unemployment claim process, the VISA fuckery you mentioned, harrassment. Intentional scheduling of conflicting days for people with multiple jobs. Being made to work 7 days a week for long periods of time. Being made to repeatedly close late at night / early in the morning and then open the restaurant the next morning, a few hours later, and work a double. Being made to work while sick (this happens a lot). A gold comment I heard from one manager was "I don't pay overtime because these motherfuckers already take enough of my money" (referring to the employees). This same guy was shaving time slips to keep them below 40 hours.
- zwkrt 6y ago
  All employers will value the enterprise over any one of their employees individually. When is the last time you saw an employer shutter their business but continue paying their employees? It isn't that they aren't trustworthy, it is that it is a mistake to trust your employer to act in your best interest. As an example you yourself bring up, think of all the restaurants that only function because they pay their employees peanuts and give them unstable hours.
  - grawprog 6y ago
    I had a boss sum it up pretty well for us once. It was stressful and a bunch of people had been arguing at work. The boss rounded everyone up and basically told us all that in the end, the business would go on whether he had to run it alone or not. We could all keep arguing, fucking up jobs, pissing customers off and losing the business money, but then nobody would have work at all. Or we could all get over our differences, work shit out and keep getting paid. That was pretty much all it took. And I understand, he'd been running that business for over 20 years and started it from nothing. He was fairly successful while I was working there, but he'd been at the bottom before and would keep working back up from there again if it came down to it. He's probably one of the best bosses i've had, he was fair and would invest in employees and the business, but the business always came first.
  - davidgay 6y ago
    > When is the last time you saw an employer shutter their business but continue paying their employees? Just last month: https://web.archive.org/web/20200410153705/http://www.lafarine.com/ https://web.archive.org/web/20200410153705/http://www.lafari... (They've since re-opened)
- orangecat 6y ago
  It's possible that a UBI could work out to the benefit of employers that respect their workers. Suppose your job choices are an employer that treats you well and pays $20k/year, and an employer that treats you badly and pays $30k/year. You might end up having to take the higher pay and put up with the abuse just to make ends meet. But with a UBI of $15k/year, the lower paying job becomes a viable option.
_curious_ 6y ago
Of all the reasons to be in favor of UBI, this is a first for me to hear...but to the point, the alternative to employment at a company deploying these kinds of tactics is not destitution, it is employment at a company that does not.
- candu 6y ago
  That works in certain fields - for instance, many of us here on HN can indeed walk across the street and get a new job if our employers are teetering into miniature surveillance states. To be honest, though, the average worker doesn't have that kind of leverage, they don't have pockets deep enough to wade through the interview cycle, and many of the other employers they'd go work for are doing exactly the same thing. For them, the alternative to employment at a company deploying these kinds of tactics is very much destitution - especially right now. I'm with you on one thing: if my employer demanded minute-by-minute accountability for my time, I'd leave, no questions asked and minimum notice given. I have that choice, though; when discussing things like UBI, I always try to remind myself that someone for whom that support would be life-changing is in a very different situation from mine, with a much more constrained set of responses / actions available to them.
  - _curious_ 6y ago
    They have all that they need should they decide to use it: the power of self-agency. That's the only and ultimate leverage anyone has if nothing else...
    - dang 6y ago
      You've been posting all sorts of generic comments in this thread, and worse, and basically derailing it to the point of trolling. Please don't do this on HN. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
lol324 6y ago
Basic income is socialist utopia, state doesn't have money to pay everybody "basic pay". People need to work to earn money. There is no other option.
mar77i 6y ago
Looming destitution never made good work. The way one engages with a good employer is a sense of co-ownership in some way. I can't tell how my way of taking ownership to an arbitrary project is influenced by a relief of financial stress. It might, but I don't believe it's going to up it any, ever. Which means that with UBI, I might be less inclined to take risks. I'm not an economist enough to tell what that means, but a rough estimate say it won't increase my income. And at this point of the discussion, we haven't even touched the topic of taxes...
- pasquinelli 6y ago
  Your sense of co-ownership is an illusion. Why should you engage with your boss by pretending?
  - mar77i 6y ago
    Personal experience. I put more into a job when I see a point in it, because I start to like it. When I don't find my work worthwhile or find interesting in any other way, it's not going to turn out good. What does it take for this? I don't know, maybe I'm screwing up the wording for it somehow.
pasquinelli 6y ago
Why is it that, given your last sentence, your comment is about ubi and not unions?
- Avicebron 6y ago
  UBI seems less risky than a union because of a long history of anti-union action, hostility towards employees, and lack of mobility once one is bound to a union. UBI provides flexible minimum support and someone could transform their life from one place to another by being sure they could at least maintain a minimum standard of living.
  - pasquinelli 6y ago
    If they won't let you have a union then the ubi they give you won't put you on a stronger footing. Ubi could help create a minimum standard of living, that's what that tool is for, but that's separate from getting negotiating power for workers. For that, they need to negotiate together.
    - Avicebron 6y ago
      See jedberg. We have systematically destroyed the concept of growing with a company for it's duration in the US. Without the concept of mutual company-employee loyalty then something needs to protect inter-company transition/bargaining power.
      - pasquinelli 6y ago
        Labor unions don't have to be tied to a single employer, or even a single country.
- jedberg 6y ago
  Unions only protect you in one job. A UBI protects you in all jobs.
  - 6y ago
101404 6y ago
You don't need UBI for that, just a healthy social welfare system, and a health insurance system that doesn't depend on the job.
WalterBright 6y ago
> For far too long has this negotiation been highly in favour of the employer. Henry Ford had to double the pay to lower employee turnover.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

hangphyr 6y ago

This is a bit of a tangent, but one should be careful with that path. Not all employers are 'evil' and have negative intentions for their employees. Think of an example such as the independently owned restaurant that cannot afford to pay employees high wages and their owners are not wealthy. Just as not all employees can be painted as untrustworthy and hostile, not all employers should be painted as untrustworthy and hostile.

chepaslaaa 6y ago
I've been a line cook, restaurant owners are absolutely untrustworthy and hostile. The food industry is one where exploitation, highly aggressive staff retention practices (making employees dependent on you for a visa, threatening to spread lies about you, etc.), crazy unhealthy hours and just a generally awful culture are standard.
- Avicebron 6y ago
  Can vouch for the life science industry being like this as well. Management threatened to make us check in every hour of work. Spending an eighth of that hour writing an explanatory email was pretty toxic.
- gbmor 6y ago
  I've worked in the restaurant industry in the US. It's nothing short of horrifying, and often traumatizing for those involved. I've seen no overtime pay happen, lies from management to get unemployment claims denied, management not actually firing people but just giving them zero or reduced hours to mess with the unemployment claim process, the VISA fuckery you mentioned, harrassment. Intentional scheduling of conflicting days for people with multiple jobs. Being made to work 7 days a week for long periods of time. Being made to repeatedly close late at night / early in the morning and then open the restaurant the next morning, a few hours later, and work a double. Being made to work while sick (this happens a lot). A gold comment I heard from one manager was "I don't pay overtime because these motherfuckers already take enough of my money" (referring to the employees). This same guy was shaving time slips to keep them below 40 hours.
zwkrt 6y ago
All employers will value the enterprise over any one of their employees individually. When is the last time you saw an employer shutter their business but continue paying their employees? It isn't that they aren't trustworthy, it is that it is a mistake to trust your employer to act in your best interest. As an example you yourself bring up, think of all the restaurants that only function because they pay their employees peanuts and give them unstable hours.
- grawprog 6y ago
  I had a boss sum it up pretty well for us once. It was stressful and a bunch of people had been arguing at work. The boss rounded everyone up and basically told us all that in the end, the business would go on whether he had to run it alone or not. We could all keep arguing, fucking up jobs, pissing customers off and losing the business money, but then nobody would have work at all. Or we could all get over our differences, work shit out and keep getting paid. That was pretty much all it took. And I understand, he'd been running that business for over 20 years and started it from nothing. He was fairly successful while I was working there, but he'd been at the bottom before and would keep working back up from there again if it came down to it. He's probably one of the best bosses i've had, he was fair and would invest in employees and the business, but the business always came first.
- davidgay 6y ago
  > When is the last time you saw an employer shutter their business but continue paying their employees? Just last month: https://web.archive.org/web/20200410153705/http://www.lafarine.com/ https://web.archive.org/web/20200410153705/http://www.lafari... (They've since re-opened)
orangecat 6y ago
It's possible that a UBI could work out to the benefit of employers that respect their workers. Suppose your job choices are an employer that treats you well and pays $20k/year, and an employer that treats you badly and pays $30k/year. You might end up having to take the higher pay and put up with the abuse just to make ends meet. But with a UBI of $15k/year, the lower paying job becomes a viable option.

_curious_ 6y ago

Of all the reasons to be in favor of UBI, this is a first for me to hear...but to the point, the alternative to employment at a company deploying these kinds of tactics is not destitution, it is employment at a company that does not.

candu 6y ago
That works in certain fields - for instance, many of us here on HN can indeed walk across the street and get a new job if our employers are teetering into miniature surveillance states. To be honest, though, the average worker doesn't have that kind of leverage, they don't have pockets deep enough to wade through the interview cycle, and many of the other employers they'd go work for are doing exactly the same thing. For them, the alternative to employment at a company deploying these kinds of tactics is very much destitution - especially right now. I'm with you on one thing: if my employer demanded minute-by-minute accountability for my time, I'd leave, no questions asked and minimum notice given. I have that choice, though; when discussing things like UBI, I always try to remind myself that someone for whom that support would be life-changing is in a very different situation from mine, with a much more constrained set of responses / actions available to them.
- _curious_ 6y ago
  They have all that they need should they decide to use it: the power of self-agency. That's the only and ultimate leverage anyone has if nothing else...
  - dang 6y ago
    You've been posting all sorts of generic comments in this thread, and worse, and basically derailing it to the point of trolling. Please don't do this on HN. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

lol324 6y ago

Basic income is socialist utopia, state doesn't have money to pay everybody "basic pay". People need to work to earn money. There is no other option.

mar77i 6y ago

Looming destitution never made good work. The way one engages with a good employer is a sense of co-ownership in some way. I can't tell how my way of taking ownership to an arbitrary project is influenced by a relief of financial stress. It might, but I don't believe it's going to up it any, ever. Which means that with UBI, I might be less inclined to take risks. I'm not an economist enough to tell what that means, but a rough estimate say it won't increase my income. And at this point of the discussion, we haven't even touched the topic of taxes...

pasquinelli 6y ago
Your sense of co-ownership is an illusion. Why should you engage with your boss by pretending?
- mar77i 6y ago
  Personal experience. I put more into a job when I see a point in it, because I start to like it. When I don't find my work worthwhile or find interesting in any other way, it's not going to turn out good. What does it take for this? I don't know, maybe I'm screwing up the wording for it somehow.

pasquinelli 6y ago

Why is it that, given your last sentence, your comment is about ubi and not unions?

Avicebron 6y ago
UBI seems less risky than a union because of a long history of anti-union action, hostility towards employees, and lack of mobility once one is bound to a union. UBI provides flexible minimum support and someone could transform their life from one place to another by being sure they could at least maintain a minimum standard of living.
- pasquinelli 6y ago
  If they won't let you have a union then the ubi they give you won't put you on a stronger footing. Ubi could help create a minimum standard of living, that's what that tool is for, but that's separate from getting negotiating power for workers. For that, they need to negotiate together.
  - Avicebron 6y ago
    See jedberg. We have systematically destroyed the concept of growing with a company for it's duration in the US. Without the concept of mutual company-employee loyalty then something needs to protect inter-company transition/bargaining power.
    - pasquinelli 6y ago
      Labor unions don't have to be tied to a single employer, or even a single country.
jedberg 6y ago
Unions only protect you in one job. A UBI protects you in all jobs.
- 6y ago

101404 6y ago

You don't need UBI for that, just a healthy social welfare system, and a health insurance system that doesn't depend on the job.

WalterBright 6y ago

> For far too long has this negotiation been highly in favour of the employer. Henry Ford had to double the pay to lower employee turnover.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]