9 ms·

> not only would they fire you but they'd call up all their industry buddies and you'd basically be on every other restaurants no-hire list. So like a much-dre

> not only would they fire you but they'd call up all their industry buddies and you'd basically be on every other restaurants no-hire list. So like a much-dreaded union for employers except it’s underhanded and illegal.

Lalabadie 3y ago
But with enough lobbying, it _could_ be legal! (This to point out that most lobbies are to employers what unions are to employees)
- avgcorrection 3y ago
  They’re just voting with their (fat) wallets!
ncallaway 3y ago
Yes, exactly. And it’s underhanded and illegal when employers do it, because there’s an imbalance of power between employee and employee. Unions exist to even out that balance of power. When employers engage in that kind of activity it further increases the imbalance of power. For example, in this case, they were using that tactic to support their ability to steal from employees.
- mjburgess 3y ago
  To clarify this further: The employer is already a collective, "A business", and the hiring manager is operating with the full power of that collective in hiring/firing negotations. A union is a collective to balance power against the business (collective). A cartel is a collective of collectives (ie., a group of businesses) operating to defeat free market competition regulation, in this sense the cartel is balancing power against the state -- which is the only permitted "collective of collectives". Cartels challenge states (power to create free markets), whereas unions challenge businesses (power to hire/fire). This is why unions are permissible and cartels are not.
  - BurningFrog 3y ago
    Unions are cartels of sellers of labor. If they're good or bad is another matter.
    - mjburgess 3y ago
      Yeah, they can be, so its more vauge than i've made it out to be. The underlying problem is that employee-employer is individual-collective; so in some sense, there "has" to be a union option if this becomes too one sided. But a cartel is never required, since businesses competing with each other is the goal of a free market. I would agree that if unions become more powerful than businesses, so it ends up single-business vs "union-of-unions" you can get the same effects. Hopefully the asymmetry is clear though. Cartels are never permissible in a free market, but unions often are because of the need for labour to compete "on the same terms" as business. ie., the mere existence of a union isnt a sign the market is non-free; whereas the mere existence of a cartel is.
    - avgcorrection 3y ago
      > If they're good or bad is another matter. It’s pretty clear what you think though.
  - phpisthebest 3y ago
    This is very simplistic, and somewhat wrong First and foremost, states do not, and cannot "create free markets" the existence of a state to regulation a market makes is de-facto non-free This is also a very rose colored look at unions, while simultaneously demonizing businesses. In reality it is completely possible to have an exploitive union. At the end of the day, power corrupts, and the more power a person or group has over another person or group the more corrupting that power is. Thus in a very large union you will likely see just as much employee abuse, as in a very large company. The sweet spot has always as well always been in Medium sized organizations, or unions, above 300 employees, under 3000 employees. Anything larger or smaller and the risk of abuse and poor conditions go up considerably even if you are represented by a large union
    - 3y ago
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
joncrocks 3y ago
I think the word is Cartel.
ToucanLoucan 3y ago
If you want to demonstrate to someone why the legal system is designed for the wealthy and not the common people, I don't think you can do better than the entire subject of wage theft. Wage theft utterly eclipses every other form of larceny in the United States at least, and it is practically legal in every way apart from the letter of the law. Few companies ever see any consequences at all, and the few that do, it's fines here and there. No criminal liability. Certainly no SWAT teams raiding gated communities daily to haul off white collar criminals the way they'll roll out and obliterate an entire home (sometimes even the correct one) to catch someone selling weed. The societal impact of this crime cannot be overstated. Billions of dollars stolen from workers, practically free of consequence.
- hasty_pudding 3y ago
  Most companies dont pay many taxes either.
  - billy99k 3y ago
    any proof of this? Every company I've worked for pays lots in taxes.
    - hasty_pudding 3y ago
      1$ is lots of taxes. Most companies use countless loopholes.
- TheCleric 3y ago
  Exactly. How many hand wringing articles have we seen in the past few years about roving bands of shoplifters vs how many about wage theft?
- Jensson 3y ago
  > Wage theft utterly eclipses every other form of larceny in the United States at least If you define being late with payments as theft, then I'd bet that rent theft is way larger than wage theft. I don't see why you would say that it is theft when you are late with payments to a worker but not theft when you are late with payments to a company. If being late with payments isn't theft, then "wage theft" isn't theft, just like you missing to pay your rent one month isn't theft.
madsbuch 3y ago
> > not only would they fire you but they'd call up all their industry buddies and you'd basically be on every other restaurants no-hire list. An interjection: Under GDPR this is illegal. (Just a reminder that "tech" legislation sometimes also improve on broader levels)
- dheera 3y ago
  The US isn't subject to GDPR. I see a lot of US websites with annoying GDPR popups and they really don't need to do that over here.
  - autoexec 3y ago
    They don't need to do that over there either, unless they're doing something with cookies they don't need to be doing in the first place.
Aurornis 3y ago
The idea of industry-wide "no-hire lists" is a bogeyman that bad employers use to control young employees who don't yet know any better. At worst, you won't get a positive recommendation from an employer like this if somebody calls and asks. The idea that employers are busy maintaining "no-hire lists" and collecting names from all of their industry peers doesn't hold up, at least not outside of maybe weird small-town social bubbles.
- hobotime 3y ago
  Can confirm. There's no "no-hire lists" in the heavy construction, restaurant, and IT companies that I've seen. However, in a small town, business owners may warn each other, and in a small bubble of companies, they may talk to each other. And if you need a reference, better pick a fellow employee. Other than that, ignore the boogeyman!
  - asadotzler 3y ago
    Austin TX was not a small town in the 90s and my company and two others who used the same kind of employees (call center workers) that were in slightly different industries (surveys, sales, political) regularly shared a list of workers we'd fired and we believed should not be hired. For my part, the fired workers that were added to the list had been escorted out by police or wheeled out by EMTs after causing property damage and physical harm to other employees. I didn't think much about it at the time. I was young and foolish and happy to have been promoted off the call center floor into management. I think the list had started a decade earlier for sharing across sister companies. My local company had been acquired by a larger foreign company which had several US subsidiaries in similar businesses, one of which was just the other side of the river from us. I think they first shared the list amongst themselves which despite them being different companies, is almost "internal", but eventually they started sharing it with another Austin business with a large call center over on Mopac that shared a bunch of workers across different shifts. They'd work for us during the day calling businesses and work theirs at night calling residential. Then a third company joined and I wouldn't be surprised if they shared it even more broadly after I left, but by then I suspect most of the phone workers in Austin were covered at that point.

Lalabadie 3y ago

But with enough lobbying, it _could_ be legal! (This to point out that most lobbies are to employers what unions are to employees)

avgcorrection 3y ago
They’re just voting with their (fat) wallets!

ncallaway 3y ago

Yes, exactly. And it’s underhanded and illegal when employers do it, because there’s an imbalance of power between employee and employee. Unions exist to even out that balance of power. When employers engage in that kind of activity it further increases the imbalance of power. For example, in this case, they were using that tactic to support their ability to steal from employees.

mjburgess 3y ago
To clarify this further: The employer is already a collective, "A business", and the hiring manager is operating with the full power of that collective in hiring/firing negotations. A union is a collective to balance power against the business (collective). A cartel is a collective of collectives (ie., a group of businesses) operating to defeat free market competition regulation, in this sense the cartel is balancing power against the state -- which is the only permitted "collective of collectives". Cartels challenge states (power to create free markets), whereas unions challenge businesses (power to hire/fire). This is why unions are permissible and cartels are not.
- BurningFrog 3y ago
  Unions are cartels of sellers of labor. If they're good or bad is another matter.
  - mjburgess 3y ago
    Yeah, they can be, so its more vauge than i've made it out to be. The underlying problem is that employee-employer is individual-collective; so in some sense, there "has" to be a union option if this becomes too one sided. But a cartel is never required, since businesses competing with each other is the goal of a free market. I would agree that if unions become more powerful than businesses, so it ends up single-business vs "union-of-unions" you can get the same effects. Hopefully the asymmetry is clear though. Cartels are never permissible in a free market, but unions often are because of the need for labour to compete "on the same terms" as business. ie., the mere existence of a union isnt a sign the market is non-free; whereas the mere existence of a cartel is.
  - avgcorrection 3y ago
    > If they're good or bad is another matter. It’s pretty clear what you think though.
- phpisthebest 3y ago
  This is very simplistic, and somewhat wrong First and foremost, states do not, and cannot "create free markets" the existence of a state to regulation a market makes is de-facto non-free This is also a very rose colored look at unions, while simultaneously demonizing businesses. In reality it is completely possible to have an exploitive union. At the end of the day, power corrupts, and the more power a person or group has over another person or group the more corrupting that power is. Thus in a very large union you will likely see just as much employee abuse, as in a very large company. The sweet spot has always as well always been in Medium sized organizations, or unions, above 300 employees, under 3000 employees. Anything larger or smaller and the risk of abuse and poor conditions go up considerably even if you are represented by a large union
  - 3y ago
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

joncrocks 3y ago

I think the word is Cartel.

ToucanLoucan 3y ago

If you want to demonstrate to someone why the legal system is designed for the wealthy and not the common people, I don't think you can do better than the entire subject of wage theft. Wage theft utterly eclipses every other form of larceny in the United States at least, and it is practically legal in every way apart from the letter of the law. Few companies ever see any consequences at all, and the few that do, it's fines here and there. No criminal liability. Certainly no SWAT teams raiding gated communities daily to haul off white collar criminals the way they'll roll out and obliterate an entire home (sometimes even the correct one) to catch someone selling weed. The societal impact of this crime cannot be overstated. Billions of dollars stolen from workers, practically free of consequence.

hasty_pudding 3y ago
Most companies dont pay many taxes either.
- billy99k 3y ago
  any proof of this? Every company I've worked for pays lots in taxes.
  - hasty_pudding 3y ago
    1$ is lots of taxes. Most companies use countless loopholes.
TheCleric 3y ago
Exactly. How many hand wringing articles have we seen in the past few years about roving bands of shoplifters vs how many about wage theft?
Jensson 3y ago
> Wage theft utterly eclipses every other form of larceny in the United States at least If you define being late with payments as theft, then I'd bet that rent theft is way larger than wage theft. I don't see why you would say that it is theft when you are late with payments to a worker but not theft when you are late with payments to a company. If being late with payments isn't theft, then "wage theft" isn't theft, just like you missing to pay your rent one month isn't theft.

madsbuch 3y ago

> > not only would they fire you but they'd call up all their industry buddies and you'd basically be on every other restaurants no-hire list. An interjection: Under GDPR this is illegal. (Just a reminder that "tech" legislation sometimes also improve on broader levels)

dheera 3y ago
The US isn't subject to GDPR. I see a lot of US websites with annoying GDPR popups and they really don't need to do that over here.
- autoexec 3y ago
  They don't need to do that over there either, unless they're doing something with cookies they don't need to be doing in the first place.

Aurornis 3y ago

The idea of industry-wide "no-hire lists" is a bogeyman that bad employers use to control young employees who don't yet know any better. At worst, you won't get a positive recommendation from an employer like this if somebody calls and asks. The idea that employers are busy maintaining "no-hire lists" and collecting names from all of their industry peers doesn't hold up, at least not outside of maybe weird small-town social bubbles.

hobotime 3y ago
Can confirm. There's no "no-hire lists" in the heavy construction, restaurant, and IT companies that I've seen. However, in a small town, business owners may warn each other, and in a small bubble of companies, they may talk to each other. And if you need a reference, better pick a fellow employee. Other than that, ignore the boogeyman!
- asadotzler 3y ago
  Austin TX was not a small town in the 90s and my company and two others who used the same kind of employees (call center workers) that were in slightly different industries (surveys, sales, political) regularly shared a list of workers we'd fired and we believed should not be hired. For my part, the fired workers that were added to the list had been escorted out by police or wheeled out by EMTs after causing property damage and physical harm to other employees. I didn't think much about it at the time. I was young and foolish and happy to have been promoted off the call center floor into management. I think the list had started a decade earlier for sharing across sister companies. My local company had been acquired by a larger foreign company which had several US subsidiaries in similar businesses, one of which was just the other side of the river from us. I think they first shared the list amongst themselves which despite them being different companies, is almost "internal", but eventually they started sharing it with another Austin business with a large call center over on Mopac that shared a bunch of workers across different shifts. They'd work for us during the day calling businesses and work theirs at night calling residential. Then a third company joined and I wouldn't be surprised if they shared it even more broadly after I left, but by then I suspect most of the phone workers in Austin were covered at that point.