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>On top of that, Mercedes Benz has a corporate Supervisory Board with 1/2 of the members representing the employees. Absolutely love that, and stuff like that

>On top of that, Mercedes Benz has a corporate Supervisory Board with 1/2 of the members representing the employees. Absolutely love that, and stuff like that would never be allowed to form here in the US. Labor having an equal seat at the table should be seen as a good thing for the purposes of long-term sustainability, not a bad thing. Can it have drawbacks? Sure. However, the flipside is that currently in most places, such as the US, Capital has all the seats at the table, or sometimes Labor will given a symbolic place at the proverbial kid's table, with no real ability to enact change or make their voices heard. I applaud what Mercedes-Benz is doing here.

qikInNdOutReply 4y ago
They are not very standing out, all big german companys have that model? Also that model swings both ways. Employees will usually remain loyal to the bitter end.
- moooo99 4y ago
  > They are not very standing out, all big german companys have that model? Its pretty much mandatory for many big German companies
missedthecue 4y ago
That makes about as much sense to me as putting CEOs on the board of unions.
- greenn 4y ago
  The difference might be that workers have an interest in maintaining the business so they still have well paid jobs while CEOs do not necessarily have an interest in unions' well-being.
  - flohofwoe 4y ago
    Many CEOs don't even have an interest in the company's well being (in the long run at at least)
- Agingcoder 4y ago
  It creates trust. Basically, instead of having unions/employees explain in conspiratorial tones why management is evil, they see what's happening for real. It's a lot harder to say 'evil board' when you have a seat there and are (for example) facing massive losses - your job then becomes to build a collective, satisfactory solution rather than just stay in the opposition and complain. Because employees trust the board, they will also accept changes, sometimes hard ones.
- nickbauman 4y ago
  The big German companies invite the unions in because they are a source of innovation too. And managing the connection between the people who actually build the cars and the people who design/plan them is important.
  - nasmorn 4y ago
    The designers are also unionized
  - LegitShady 4y ago
    big german companies do it because they are required to by law. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Worker_representation_on_corporate_boards_of_directors https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Worker_representation_on_corpo...
    - nickbauman 4y ago
      This is interesting. I sat next to a German manager of DaimlerChrysler (which really dates me, I know) on a flight. He agreed with the idea of worker unions being inside the company and having a seat at the table. He also disliked the practice of building cars "offshore" because, he said "the knowledge of building the car leaves the country".
      - LegitShady 4y ago
        Nonetheless, they don't let them on the board out of any self interest aside from following the law.
- NickC25 4y ago
  I actually see no problem with that. If the employees have a mechanism to keep management in check, there should be a way of management keeping employees in check. As long as there's a way to make sure everyone is on the same page, and there's harmony on and also between every level of the company, that's fine in my book.
  - leshow 4y ago
    > there should be a way of management keeping employees in check You mean like the power to hire and fire them, tell them what to do, and how much they get paid?
- littlestymaar 4y ago
  CEOs and upper management aren't actually forbidden to unionize ;)
zackmorris 4y ago
Allowed? We can choose not to work for companies that ban workers from their boards. Which is pretty much all of the big companies in the US. It's funny that we have a dozen different open source software licenses that are all some version of "how can we give this to you even freer" but we have no notion of what an equitable work contract looks like. Until that changes, things will never, ever, get better for workers.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- guerrilla 4y ago
  > Allowed? We can choose not to work for companies that ban workers from their boards. Which is pretty much all of the big companies in the US. No you can't. You're not thinking this through. As soon as enough people quit in order to start pressuring companies to allow this, it becomes more difficult for the growing pool of quitters to get new jobs and it becomes a buyers market, putting you in an even weaker position than you already were in. On top of that, capital always has more of an ability to hold out far longer. You need to eat and pay rent right now while they can scale down production until you come back with terms favorable to them. This is why unions save money ahead of time so that they can strike.
  - ericd 4y ago
    So go start a worker-friendly company?
    - zackmorris 4y ago
      Ya that's what I'm wondering. The central problem seems to be wealth inequality (that capital has been separated from labor). So there's no money available for laid-off workers to start a business, maybe by design. As far as I can tell, there is simply no place where a group of workers can borrow money. We have no concept of loans co-signed by a large number of people in the US. For example, there should be a floor at which a loan is deemed risk-free because a typical person has that much money. Any of us can donate $5 to someone living on the street at any time. So 100 people should be able to borrow $500 together, no questions asked. Now, how high can that go? Certainly $20 each. Maybe $100? $300? It's going to be an amount similar to what payday loan shops offer to strangers. To me, this is like customer acquisition cost (CAC). In the 90s, CAC was under $1 before advertising got saturated. Today it's between $25 and $50, which has eliminated nearly all indie websites selling handmade goods for less than that. And driven the rise of influencers, and incentivized taking over making. I know we have Kickstarter etc. But for something like this to work, it would need to be available everywhere immediately with no nonsense, no exorbitant interest or fees and no wait time. The government could offer group loans like this with a $100 per person limit today and bootstrap the economy to where it was 25 years ago and make a huge return. Maybe this is what drove crypto and NFTs, just in a way that was obviously going to implode because workers were expected to pony up the cash. So I'd be curious to hear if investors know of any places to take out group loans like this.
andsoitis 4y ago
What holds workers back from starting companies with the culture they want?
- dnrvs 4y ago
  money
  - dffdsa432 4y ago
    [flagged]
- LambdaComplex 4y ago
  You say that like starting your own automotive company from the ground up is as easy as pouring a bowl of cereal for breakfast.
  - ericd 4y ago
    Then try a less capital-intensive industry? If you don’t have capital, and you want to use a lot of it from other people, then maybe you don’t get to dictate how that capital is used?
    - sangnoir 4y ago
      s/capital/labor/ No? Why is it capital can dictate what labor does, but the reverse isn't true? Is it some law of nature, or a cultural victory by capital.
      - ericd 4y ago
        Because in that industry, you need a lot of capital, which usually means you need to convince people to lend you theirs. If you’re in an industry that doesn’t, and labor is the limiting factor (tech is more in this vein), then labor tends to get its way. This has been a bit mixed up by super loose monetary policy, but that’s not historically the norm.
dffdsa432 4y ago
[flagged]
Aunche 4y ago
For well developed industries, I agree that employee representation is a good thing. On the other hand, America's friendliness to capital has lead to funding companies that end up competing for software engineers. This is part of the reason why developer jobs in the US tend to pay twice as well as those in Europe.
- virtualritz 4y ago
  Do they? And what does that money buy you? I was on a wedding in NYC last summer. One of the guests I talked to was a junior dev. He was making 120k/y. He had to flat share. With 120k? With 60k/y you do not have to flat share in Berlin. And this goes the other way around too. When I worked for a multinational in Berlin a few years ago we had lots of Ukrainians that we hired at externals through a subcontracting company in that country. Quite a few of the better developers applied directly and we happily took them on. The main reason was that they would make twice as much in Berlin. But that was on paper. After paying taxes in Germany their net salary was less than what they had made net in Ukraine. Most of them went back. Just saying.
  - Aunche 4y ago
    >One of the guests I talked to was a junior dev. He was making 120k/y. He had to flat share. With 120k? For one, every city with a lot of career options for young professionals is actively hostile towards housing development, except maybe Seattle. $120k should be enough to live in apartment anywhere in the US though. However, with how high rents are, it makes much more sense to spend that somewhere else like an early retirement in a much cheaper city.
    - ender341341 4y ago
      Seattle is pretty actively hostile to housing development (it seems to be swinging a bit more friendly but it's also a "I'll believe it when I see it.").
  - AlgorithmicTime 4y ago
    >I was on a wedding in NYC last summer. One of the guests I talked to was a junior dev. He was making 120k/y. He had to flat share. With 120k? Ok well the problem there is he's living in the most expensive place he possibly could. Live in the suburbs and you won't have to share a flat on $120k.
mchanson 4y ago
Bernie Sanders has plans on making that kind of stuff law of the land. (Not that it is likely to happen). At https://berniesanders.com/issues/corporate-accountability-and-democracy/ https://berniesanders.com/issues/corporate-accountability-an... the section labeled: "Democratize Corporate Boards". Worth reading to think about nuts and bolts of something like this being normal and required.
jahewson 4y ago
OTOH US big tech workers are making large multiples of that bonus every year from RSUs.
xerxesaa 4y ago
Supervisory boards are super common in Germany. I am not sure if there is some legal requirement that makes this the case, but you see it at many large companies.
- apexalpha 4y ago
  It's a legal requirement. I think for any company with >100 employees. But don't quote me on the number. :)

qikInNdOutReply 4y ago

They are not very standing out, all big german companys have that model? Also that model swings both ways. Employees will usually remain loyal to the bitter end.

moooo99 4y ago
> They are not very standing out, all big german companys have that model? Its pretty much mandatory for many big German companies

missedthecue 4y ago

That makes about as much sense to me as putting CEOs on the board of unions.

greenn 4y ago
The difference might be that workers have an interest in maintaining the business so they still have well paid jobs while CEOs do not necessarily have an interest in unions' well-being.
- flohofwoe 4y ago
  Many CEOs don't even have an interest in the company's well being (in the long run at at least)
Agingcoder 4y ago
It creates trust. Basically, instead of having unions/employees explain in conspiratorial tones why management is evil, they see what's happening for real. It's a lot harder to say 'evil board' when you have a seat there and are (for example) facing massive losses - your job then becomes to build a collective, satisfactory solution rather than just stay in the opposition and complain. Because employees trust the board, they will also accept changes, sometimes hard ones.
nickbauman 4y ago
The big German companies invite the unions in because they are a source of innovation too. And managing the connection between the people who actually build the cars and the people who design/plan them is important.
- nasmorn 4y ago
  The designers are also unionized
- LegitShady 4y ago
  big german companies do it because they are required to by law. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Worker_representation_on_corporate_boards_of_directors https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Worker_representation_on_corpo...
  - nickbauman 4y ago
    This is interesting. I sat next to a German manager of DaimlerChrysler (which really dates me, I know) on a flight. He agreed with the idea of worker unions being inside the company and having a seat at the table. He also disliked the practice of building cars "offshore" because, he said "the knowledge of building the car leaves the country".
    - LegitShady 4y ago
      Nonetheless, they don't let them on the board out of any self interest aside from following the law.
NickC25 4y ago
I actually see no problem with that. If the employees have a mechanism to keep management in check, there should be a way of management keeping employees in check. As long as there's a way to make sure everyone is on the same page, and there's harmony on and also between every level of the company, that's fine in my book.
- leshow 4y ago
  > there should be a way of management keeping employees in check You mean like the power to hire and fire them, tell them what to do, and how much they get paid?
littlestymaar 4y ago
CEOs and upper management aren't actually forbidden to unionize ;)

zackmorris 4y ago

Allowed? We can choose not to work for companies that ban workers from their boards. Which is pretty much all of the big companies in the US. It's funny that we have a dozen different open source software licenses that are all some version of "how can we give this to you even freer" but we have no notion of what an equitable work contract looks like. Until that changes, things will never, ever, get better for workers.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
guerrilla 4y ago
> Allowed? We can choose not to work for companies that ban workers from their boards. Which is pretty much all of the big companies in the US. No you can't. You're not thinking this through. As soon as enough people quit in order to start pressuring companies to allow this, it becomes more difficult for the growing pool of quitters to get new jobs and it becomes a buyers market, putting you in an even weaker position than you already were in. On top of that, capital always has more of an ability to hold out far longer. You need to eat and pay rent right now while they can scale down production until you come back with terms favorable to them. This is why unions save money ahead of time so that they can strike.
- ericd 4y ago
  So go start a worker-friendly company?
  - zackmorris 4y ago
    Ya that's what I'm wondering. The central problem seems to be wealth inequality (that capital has been separated from labor). So there's no money available for laid-off workers to start a business, maybe by design. As far as I can tell, there is simply no place where a group of workers can borrow money. We have no concept of loans co-signed by a large number of people in the US. For example, there should be a floor at which a loan is deemed risk-free because a typical person has that much money. Any of us can donate $5 to someone living on the street at any time. So 100 people should be able to borrow $500 together, no questions asked. Now, how high can that go? Certainly $20 each. Maybe $100? $300? It's going to be an amount similar to what payday loan shops offer to strangers. To me, this is like customer acquisition cost (CAC). In the 90s, CAC was under $1 before advertising got saturated. Today it's between $25 and $50, which has eliminated nearly all indie websites selling handmade goods for less than that. And driven the rise of influencers, and incentivized taking over making. I know we have Kickstarter etc. But for something like this to work, it would need to be available everywhere immediately with no nonsense, no exorbitant interest or fees and no wait time. The government could offer group loans like this with a $100 per person limit today and bootstrap the economy to where it was 25 years ago and make a huge return. Maybe this is what drove crypto and NFTs, just in a way that was obviously going to implode because workers were expected to pony up the cash. So I'd be curious to hear if investors know of any places to take out group loans like this.

andsoitis 4y ago

What holds workers back from starting companies with the culture they want?

dnrvs 4y ago
money
- dffdsa432 4y ago
  [flagged]
LambdaComplex 4y ago
You say that like starting your own automotive company from the ground up is as easy as pouring a bowl of cereal for breakfast.
- ericd 4y ago
  Then try a less capital-intensive industry? If you don’t have capital, and you want to use a lot of it from other people, then maybe you don’t get to dictate how that capital is used?
  - sangnoir 4y ago
    s/capital/labor/ No? Why is it capital can dictate what labor does, but the reverse isn't true? Is it some law of nature, or a cultural victory by capital.
    - ericd 4y ago
      Because in that industry, you need a lot of capital, which usually means you need to convince people to lend you theirs. If you’re in an industry that doesn’t, and labor is the limiting factor (tech is more in this vein), then labor tends to get its way. This has been a bit mixed up by super loose monetary policy, but that’s not historically the norm.

dffdsa432 4y ago

[flagged]

Aunche 4y ago

For well developed industries, I agree that employee representation is a good thing. On the other hand, America's friendliness to capital has lead to funding companies that end up competing for software engineers. This is part of the reason why developer jobs in the US tend to pay twice as well as those in Europe.

virtualritz 4y ago
Do they? And what does that money buy you? I was on a wedding in NYC last summer. One of the guests I talked to was a junior dev. He was making 120k/y. He had to flat share. With 120k? With 60k/y you do not have to flat share in Berlin. And this goes the other way around too. When I worked for a multinational in Berlin a few years ago we had lots of Ukrainians that we hired at externals through a subcontracting company in that country. Quite a few of the better developers applied directly and we happily took them on. The main reason was that they would make twice as much in Berlin. But that was on paper. After paying taxes in Germany their net salary was less than what they had made net in Ukraine. Most of them went back. Just saying.
- Aunche 4y ago
  >One of the guests I talked to was a junior dev. He was making 120k/y. He had to flat share. With 120k? For one, every city with a lot of career options for young professionals is actively hostile towards housing development, except maybe Seattle. $120k should be enough to live in apartment anywhere in the US though. However, with how high rents are, it makes much more sense to spend that somewhere else like an early retirement in a much cheaper city.
  - ender341341 4y ago
    Seattle is pretty actively hostile to housing development (it seems to be swinging a bit more friendly but it's also a "I'll believe it when I see it.").
- AlgorithmicTime 4y ago
  >I was on a wedding in NYC last summer. One of the guests I talked to was a junior dev. He was making 120k/y. He had to flat share. With 120k? Ok well the problem there is he's living in the most expensive place he possibly could. Live in the suburbs and you won't have to share a flat on $120k.

mchanson 4y ago

Bernie Sanders has plans on making that kind of stuff law of the land. (Not that it is likely to happen). At https://berniesanders.com/issues/corporate-accountability-and-democracy/ https://berniesanders.com/issues/corporate-accountability-an... the section labeled: "Democratize Corporate Boards". Worth reading to think about nuts and bolts of something like this being normal and required.

jahewson 4y ago

OTOH US big tech workers are making large multiples of that bonus every year from RSUs.

xerxesaa 4y ago

Supervisory boards are super common in Germany. I am not sure if there is some legal requirement that makes this the case, but you see it at many large companies.

apexalpha 4y ago
It's a legal requirement. I think for any company with >100 employees. But don't quote me on the number. :)