5 ms·

Heh, I saw this AFTER I posted this link: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29164111 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29164111 Basically John Deere mad

Heh, I saw this AFTER I posted this link: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29164111 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29164111 Basically John Deere made their tractors impossible to repair without official parts, and we have now a harvest season + inflation, thus John Deere employees now hold all the cards, if they stop working people will literally starve without tractors to do the harvest, since repairing the tractors without their help is now impossible, thus they are strinking.

beckman466 5y ago
> John Deere employees now hold all the cards, if they stop working people will literally starve without tractors to do the harvest or, you know, maybe John Deere owners/execs have the power? maybe if they paid their employees a living wage employees wouldn't need to go on strike?
- speeder 5y ago
  What I mean is: if they DIDN'T had DRM they could ignore the strike more easily, but they DRM made sure a lot of people will have serious issues if they don't raise wages, thus the DRM shifted power from execs hands to the employees.
- BenjiWiebe 5y ago
  I am curious if they are actually getting less than a living wage. Quick googling suggests that they were making $20-$30 per hour before the strike. Another quick Google suggests that the average assembly line hourly rate is $19/hr (another source says only $14/hr). It looks like the wages aren't out of line as far as livability, but it is understandably infuriating to see the company as a whole making tremendous profits while only paying slightly above average. Is that pretty much the situation or did I miss something?
  - beckman466 5y ago
    > It looks like the wages aren't out of line as far as livability i appreciate the data, though 1.) this is America - so workers have to deal with a lack of basic social services like in Europe, 2.) from my understanding the concessions made by John Deere were pitiful so far. an account from someone on the ground: https://twitter.com/JonahFurman/status/1456457606583758871 https://twitter.com/JonahFurman/status/1456457606583758871 > but it is understandably infuriating to see the company as a whole making tremendous profits while only paying slightly above average. yes exactly, that's the superior argument here. although the best argument is the one about climate change, and how viable solutions are not profitable enough to capitalism in the short term. we need open source, modular tech like the Science for the People article argues. "The current political economy is based on a false idea of “immaterial scarcity.” It believes that an exaggerated set of intellectual property monopolies – for [trade secrets], copyrights, trademarks and patents – should restrain the sharing of scientific, social and economic innovations. Hence the system discourages human cooperation, excludes many people from benefiting from innovation and slows the collective learning of humanity. In an age of grave global challenges, the political economy keeps many practical alternatives sequestered behind private firewalls or unfunded if they cannot generate adequate profits." http://wealthofthecommons.org/essay/peer-peer-economy-and-new-civilization-centered-around-sustenance-commons http://wealthofthecommons.org/essay/peer-peer-economy-and-ne...
  - DavidPeiffer 5y ago
    I live near one of their facilities on strike, though don't know any direct John Deere employees closely. From discussions I've read, a major component of the frustration is forced overtime. I imagine John Deere probably ran similar to a company I used to work for. The order book was full, there was money to be made. 9-10 hour days Monday-Friday. Most Saturdays was mandatory overtime. The only way to guarantee you can do something over the weekend with your family is by taking PTO on Friday, which would get you out of overtime on Saturday. Pair in that the last couple negotiations have been during downturns in farming, it's pretty reasonable that they're trying to make up ground after taking concessionary contracts.
  - throwaway55421 5y ago
    "Living wage" is essentially complete bollocks. It has no well defined meaning, that is to say - it has no meaning with anything approaching large scale agreement. A living wage to a migrant might have been one that allows them a bed in an 8-bunk dorm, a bus ticket, and thirty quid a week for food. A living wage to most of HN is probably enough to get a mortgage. To me the concept is essentially nonsensical - if you're in the proletarian class then you're not living at all.
- lukifer 5y ago
  Not that I don't favor a universal living wage, but price discovery for labor lives along a separate axis; the ability to withhold value (or the credible deterrent of doing so) is a bargaining chip that can be used in negotiation. This is true of every firm, be it an overseas sweatshop, an Amazon warehouse, or high-paid engineers in a tech giant. Even if every John Deere employee made 3x of a "living wage" (relative to local costs), they'd still have every right to collectively bargain by withholding labor (to say nothing of non-monetary demands: autonomy, safety standards, flexible scheduling, etc).
josephcsible 5y ago
If it's okay for John Deere to do this, then why do people get arrested for scalping toilet paper?
- klipt 5y ago
  Because politicians get more good PR from quick hacks on the current hot button issue, than they would from crafting good, general policy.
- bialpio 5y ago
  Channeling my inner cynic: because government only tolerates scalpers that are publicly traded on the stock market.
  - blowski 5y ago
    To be even more cynical, they only tolerate scalpers if they personally stand to profit from the scalping.
- 0des 5y ago
  People get arrested, not corporations.
  - Aachen 5y ago
    So if you provide a service you get to dictate a lot more about it than if you try to make use of someone else's sevice? That's the difference in this context between an evil corp and a humble poor soul, if I'm not mistaken.
- kmeisthax 5y ago
  Because twenty years and change ago we decided it should be illegal to crack software. Except we didn't say that, we said that any code that controls access to a copyrighted work has special legal protection. Specifically... 1. You can't legally break such code, unless it's for a handful of statutorily or administratively selected purposes 2. You can't legally tell people how to break such code for any purpose This provision is part of the DMCA, section 1201. It was policy-laundered through the WTO into US law against the objection of the tech community, so basically every country has the same rules. The problem with this law is that it's scope dramatically extends past it's intent - hell, half the original law is just exceptions intended to control the extremely broad scope of "no breaking digital locks". What people realized was that they could put DRM on anything, regardless of if copyright actually protected it or not, and it would still have the same effect because DMCA 1201 has horrific chilling effects. Even if SCOTUS says you can't use DMCA 1201 to protect, say, printer cartridge DRM; that decision still took 10 years and millions of dollars in legal fees to reach. No company wants to spend that amount of time and money just to gain access to repair aftermarkets. On the other hand, the law regarding price gouging is very old and well-established; because it's a very long-running problem. Serial-locked parts were basically unheard of outside of videogame consoles up until this decade. The assumption with DMCA 1201 was that it was going to keep people from copying DVDs, not from repairing tractors. It's one of the few cases in which the law actually needs to catch up to technology (as opposed to someone trying to get away with something and parroting a thought-terminating cliche).
no_wizard 5y ago
You always run the risk of John Deere just transitioning manufacturing to elsewhere, unless there are some sort of incentives at play here that prevent that, no? Not saying I don't support the strike, or what the strike is trying to achieve, just trying to understand the nuance of whats going on here.
- curiousllama 5y ago
  Long term, sure, but this isn't a long term situation. Can't move overseas before the harvest. Besides, what kind of company looks at the supply chain situation right now and says "yea, now is a good time to move all of our business-critical infrastructure overseas." And all that sets aside operational & regulatory challenges moving heavy manufacturing overseas. It's pretty safe to assume that, after 30+ years of offshoring, old companies who haven't yet offshored have good reason not to do so.
- michaelmrose 5y ago
  We could just tell them they can't sell their wares here and Europe can do the same and they can see if they can try their hand at making a living elsewhere.

beckman466 5y ago

> John Deere employees now hold all the cards, if they stop working people will literally starve without tractors to do the harvest or, you know, maybe John Deere owners/execs have the power? maybe if they paid their employees a living wage employees wouldn't need to go on strike?

speeder 5y ago
What I mean is: if they DIDN'T had DRM they could ignore the strike more easily, but they DRM made sure a lot of people will have serious issues if they don't raise wages, thus the DRM shifted power from execs hands to the employees.
BenjiWiebe 5y ago
I am curious if they are actually getting less than a living wage. Quick googling suggests that they were making $20-$30 per hour before the strike. Another quick Google suggests that the average assembly line hourly rate is $19/hr (another source says only $14/hr). It looks like the wages aren't out of line as far as livability, but it is understandably infuriating to see the company as a whole making tremendous profits while only paying slightly above average. Is that pretty much the situation or did I miss something?
- beckman466 5y ago
  > It looks like the wages aren't out of line as far as livability i appreciate the data, though 1.) this is America - so workers have to deal with a lack of basic social services like in Europe, 2.) from my understanding the concessions made by John Deere were pitiful so far. an account from someone on the ground: https://twitter.com/JonahFurman/status/1456457606583758871 https://twitter.com/JonahFurman/status/1456457606583758871 > but it is understandably infuriating to see the company as a whole making tremendous profits while only paying slightly above average. yes exactly, that's the superior argument here. although the best argument is the one about climate change, and how viable solutions are not profitable enough to capitalism in the short term. we need open source, modular tech like the Science for the People article argues. "The current political economy is based on a false idea of “immaterial scarcity.” It believes that an exaggerated set of intellectual property monopolies – for [trade secrets], copyrights, trademarks and patents – should restrain the sharing of scientific, social and economic innovations. Hence the system discourages human cooperation, excludes many people from benefiting from innovation and slows the collective learning of humanity. In an age of grave global challenges, the political economy keeps many practical alternatives sequestered behind private firewalls or unfunded if they cannot generate adequate profits." http://wealthofthecommons.org/essay/peer-peer-economy-and-new-civilization-centered-around-sustenance-commons http://wealthofthecommons.org/essay/peer-peer-economy-and-ne...
- DavidPeiffer 5y ago
  I live near one of their facilities on strike, though don't know any direct John Deere employees closely. From discussions I've read, a major component of the frustration is forced overtime. I imagine John Deere probably ran similar to a company I used to work for. The order book was full, there was money to be made. 9-10 hour days Monday-Friday. Most Saturdays was mandatory overtime. The only way to guarantee you can do something over the weekend with your family is by taking PTO on Friday, which would get you out of overtime on Saturday. Pair in that the last couple negotiations have been during downturns in farming, it's pretty reasonable that they're trying to make up ground after taking concessionary contracts.
- throwaway55421 5y ago
  "Living wage" is essentially complete bollocks. It has no well defined meaning, that is to say - it has no meaning with anything approaching large scale agreement. A living wage to a migrant might have been one that allows them a bed in an 8-bunk dorm, a bus ticket, and thirty quid a week for food. A living wage to most of HN is probably enough to get a mortgage. To me the concept is essentially nonsensical - if you're in the proletarian class then you're not living at all.
lukifer 5y ago
Not that I don't favor a universal living wage, but price discovery for labor lives along a separate axis; the ability to withhold value (or the credible deterrent of doing so) is a bargaining chip that can be used in negotiation. This is true of every firm, be it an overseas sweatshop, an Amazon warehouse, or high-paid engineers in a tech giant. Even if every John Deere employee made 3x of a "living wage" (relative to local costs), they'd still have every right to collectively bargain by withholding labor (to say nothing of non-monetary demands: autonomy, safety standards, flexible scheduling, etc).

josephcsible 5y ago

If it's okay for John Deere to do this, then why do people get arrested for scalping toilet paper?

klipt 5y ago
Because politicians get more good PR from quick hacks on the current hot button issue, than they would from crafting good, general policy.
bialpio 5y ago
Channeling my inner cynic: because government only tolerates scalpers that are publicly traded on the stock market.
- blowski 5y ago
  To be even more cynical, they only tolerate scalpers if they personally stand to profit from the scalping.
0des 5y ago
People get arrested, not corporations.
- Aachen 5y ago
  So if you provide a service you get to dictate a lot more about it than if you try to make use of someone else's sevice? That's the difference in this context between an evil corp and a humble poor soul, if I'm not mistaken.
kmeisthax 5y ago
Because twenty years and change ago we decided it should be illegal to crack software. Except we didn't say that, we said that any code that controls access to a copyrighted work has special legal protection. Specifically... 1. You can't legally break such code, unless it's for a handful of statutorily or administratively selected purposes 2. You can't legally tell people how to break such code for any purpose This provision is part of the DMCA, section 1201. It was policy-laundered through the WTO into US law against the objection of the tech community, so basically every country has the same rules. The problem with this law is that it's scope dramatically extends past it's intent - hell, half the original law is just exceptions intended to control the extremely broad scope of "no breaking digital locks". What people realized was that they could put DRM on anything, regardless of if copyright actually protected it or not, and it would still have the same effect because DMCA 1201 has horrific chilling effects. Even if SCOTUS says you can't use DMCA 1201 to protect, say, printer cartridge DRM; that decision still took 10 years and millions of dollars in legal fees to reach. No company wants to spend that amount of time and money just to gain access to repair aftermarkets. On the other hand, the law regarding price gouging is very old and well-established; because it's a very long-running problem. Serial-locked parts were basically unheard of outside of videogame consoles up until this decade. The assumption with DMCA 1201 was that it was going to keep people from copying DVDs, not from repairing tractors. It's one of the few cases in which the law actually needs to catch up to technology (as opposed to someone trying to get away with something and parroting a thought-terminating cliche).

no_wizard 5y ago

You always run the risk of John Deere just transitioning manufacturing to elsewhere, unless there are some sort of incentives at play here that prevent that, no? Not saying I don't support the strike, or what the strike is trying to achieve, just trying to understand the nuance of whats going on here.

curiousllama 5y ago
Long term, sure, but this isn't a long term situation. Can't move overseas before the harvest. Besides, what kind of company looks at the supply chain situation right now and says "yea, now is a good time to move all of our business-critical infrastructure overseas." And all that sets aside operational & regulatory challenges moving heavy manufacturing overseas. It's pretty safe to assume that, after 30+ years of offshoring, old companies who haven't yet offshored have good reason not to do so.
michaelmrose 5y ago
We could just tell them they can't sell their wares here and Europe can do the same and they can see if they can try their hand at making a living elsewhere.