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That totally ignores the power imbalances between employers and employees. Like how an employee accounts for 1/n of an employer's work capacity (where n can of

That totally ignores the power imbalances between employers and employees. Like how an employee accounts for 1/n of an employer's work capacity (where n can often be large), but an employer typically accounts for 100% of an employee's income. Or how an employer can often delay completing whatever task a particular employee was doing with minimal consequences, but if an employee skips paying rent or other bills then they can get stuck with late fees that are a non-trivial fraction of the actual bills, which they already have trouble paying. And you can't skip buying food for a month and make it up next month. Or how the need to pay for food and rent means that even employers that are widely known to be terrible can often find new employees to take up the slack from somewhere no matter what their turnover rate, but employees who have any kind of negative reputation, or are seen to move jobs "too quickly", can find it hard to find employment again. I find "Work is a bilateral voluntary arrangement" where "No one is under duress" to be an overly-reductive-to-the-point-of-naiveté position.

robertlagrant 3y ago
This misses the context: the claim is that 100% of things your employer wants you to do you must do or you are fired, and therefore we should call these requests "duress". That's not true. There are laws protecting employees, and, more meaningfully, there are other employers. > Like how an employee accounts for 1/n of an employer's work capacity (where n can often be large), but an employer typically accounts for 100% of an employee's income. The employer needs 100% of that employee's work, or they wouldn't pay for it. Conversely to your point, the employer may very much struggle to replace an employee, and an employee may have various other employers to choose from. Of course there are jobs where this is less the case, and there are jobs where this is more the case. I'm not assuming that all jobs are like this, but I don't think we should be assuming zero (or vanishingly few) jobs are like this.
- Karellen 3y ago
  > The employer needs 100% of that employee's work, or they wouldn't pay for it. If that were the case, employers would go bankrupt, or at least descend into chaos, whenever anyone took a sick day. > the employer may very much struggle to replace an employee, and an employee may have various other employers to choose from. [...] but I don't think we should be assuming zero (or vanishingly few) jobs are like this. OK, then; if not vanishingly few, how many? Out of the roughly 130 million full-time jobs in America, do you want to give a ballpark figure for what percentage of those jobs you think an employer will struggle to cover or get by without in the immediate term, and replace within (say) four-to-six weeks, and would suffer significant effects on their business if that employee disappeared tomorrow?

robertlagrant 3y ago

This misses the context: the claim is that 100% of things your employer wants you to do you must do or you are fired, and therefore we should call these requests "duress". That's not true. There are laws protecting employees, and, more meaningfully, there are other employers. > Like how an employee accounts for 1/n of an employer's work capacity (where n can often be large), but an employer typically accounts for 100% of an employee's income. The employer needs 100% of that employee's work, or they wouldn't pay for it. Conversely to your point, the employer may very much struggle to replace an employee, and an employee may have various other employers to choose from. Of course there are jobs where this is less the case, and there are jobs where this is more the case. I'm not assuming that all jobs are like this, but I don't think we should be assuming zero (or vanishingly few) jobs are like this.

Karellen 3y ago
> The employer needs 100% of that employee's work, or they wouldn't pay for it. If that were the case, employers would go bankrupt, or at least descend into chaos, whenever anyone took a sick day. > the employer may very much struggle to replace an employee, and an employee may have various other employers to choose from. [...] but I don't think we should be assuming zero (or vanishingly few) jobs are like this. OK, then; if not vanishingly few, how many? Out of the roughly 130 million full-time jobs in America, do you want to give a ballpark figure for what percentage of those jobs you think an employer will struggle to cover or get by without in the immediate term, and replace within (say) four-to-six weeks, and would suffer significant effects on their business if that employee disappeared tomorrow?