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Why is it always surge pricing for consumers, but not employee compensation? (in a non-exploitative manner like the gig companies employee) Yes, there have been

by vgeek 3y ago

Why is it always surge pricing for consumers, but not employee compensation? (in a non-exploitative manner like the gig companies employee) Yes, there have been cash-flow improvements like daily payments, and maybe other improvements to scheduling apps-- why not a solution for surge pricing for employees? E.g., Wendy's is busy for the Tuesday afternoon shift, wages +30% for workers who want to come in for X hours (if order throughput is +300% from 11am-1pm, why wouldn't they want extra hands, even if the marginal cost is much higher, albeit more transient). Or Amazon/DHL/UPS sees an increase over a weekend and offers $X bonus per shift for standby/off shift employees, increasing the amount until enough people volunteer. Given that labor is viewed as fungible by most employers, why not enable more promiscuity by employees to help with wages and/or security? Things like background checks seem fairly transitive. Maybe do some sort of skill set certifications like food handling, warehousing, basic labor, etc.?

deprecative 3y ago
So many people seem to forget that we live under capitalism. Why is it always for customers and rarely employee compensation? The latter costs money and the former increases already obscene profits. It's capitalism. That's why.
- vgeek 3y ago
  Yes, you are stating the obvious assumptions that altruism is absent and there is an adversarial relationship between capital and labor with frequently diametric objectives. If companies are constantly complaining about "nobody wants to work" then they could move further up the labor supply curve by offering better wages-- but would it actually improve employer profits (via higher revenue) if they give up margin? If a McDonalds could serve 300 customers instead of 200 over a lunch rush, wouldn't it be beneficial to the employer? From the employee side, they would get paid more, could pick up shifts at varying businesses based on their schedules. Then maybe at scale, such a platform would be incredibly useful for organizing labor. This obviously would terrify employers. I'm not really debating, more of just sharing random ideas and complaining online, because this is basic game theory as to why employers wouldn't want such a tool (potentially higher labor costs short/long term, increased labor mobility, unionization risk, other issues like training/liability/insurance/taxes/etc.), but employees/labor could be greatly served by such a platform.
malfist 3y ago
Amazon actually does that, they're called flex workers. Shifts come with a pay rate and their are "surge" times where they need more workers and can't get enough
renewiltord 3y ago
It's lead time stuff for just-in-time. Ideally, employers would like to do that, yeah. But it's not easy to surge up on employees. But advanced shift calculation models try to optimize for that, yeah. And workers that are too transient will fuck up your pipeline. So they need to be from your pool.

by vgeek 3y ago

deprecative 3y ago

So many people seem to forget that we live under capitalism. Why is it always for customers and rarely employee compensation? The latter costs money and the former increases already obscene profits. It's capitalism. That's why.

vgeek 3y ago
Yes, you are stating the obvious assumptions that altruism is absent and there is an adversarial relationship between capital and labor with frequently diametric objectives. If companies are constantly complaining about "nobody wants to work" then they could move further up the labor supply curve by offering better wages-- but would it actually improve employer profits (via higher revenue) if they give up margin? If a McDonalds could serve 300 customers instead of 200 over a lunch rush, wouldn't it be beneficial to the employer? From the employee side, they would get paid more, could pick up shifts at varying businesses based on their schedules. Then maybe at scale, such a platform would be incredibly useful for organizing labor. This obviously would terrify employers. I'm not really debating, more of just sharing random ideas and complaining online, because this is basic game theory as to why employers wouldn't want such a tool (potentially higher labor costs short/long term, increased labor mobility, unionization risk, other issues like training/liability/insurance/taxes/etc.), but employees/labor could be greatly served by such a platform.

malfist 3y ago

Amazon actually does that, they're called flex workers. Shifts come with a pay rate and their are "surge" times where they need more workers and can't get enough

renewiltord 3y ago

It's lead time stuff for just-in-time. Ideally, employers would like to do that, yeah. But it's not easy to surge up on employees. But advanced shift calculation models try to optimize for that, yeah. And workers that are too transient will fuck up your pipeline. So they need to be from your pool.