Hacker News Reader

Comment by DangitBobby | Hacker News Reader

I think it's a difficult claim to make that there's no demand when they specifically state that unpaid overtime is the norm. Why would they need overtime work if there were enough workers?

View on HN

Because it's technically cheaper to have less workers and to work them for longer hours than to have more workers working for less time. Especially when you're not paying them for overtime.

>Because it's technically cheaper to have less workers and to work them for longer hours

That depends on whether fixed costs of hiring another developer (and coordination costs) outweigh the variable costs of the current developers working more. The variable costs could be lesser quality of work when the developer is overworked or overtime laws.

Overtime laws are supposed to act as a penalty on companies for not hiring enough labour for the required task.

They don't need it. They do it because it's more profitable. If you don't want those conditions they can easily find someone else willing to accept them due to the huge hiring pool available.

Edit: you're far less likely to risk burning out your employees if they are hard to replace.

I think the fact that they can get unpaid work, means they don't need to pay for it. Why pay for 10 people when you can get 5 to do it? No matter how little you pay for labor, free (i.e. unpaid overtime) is cheaper.

Which is why, in this case, unionization isn't just (to paraphrase) ignoring that there's not enough demand.

One intended result is that it would forcibly remove the option of externalizing the consequences of intentionally under-utilizing the labor pool. It prevents bad behavior (behavior that should already be illegal IMO). Freely exploiting your workers because they have no bargaining power should always discouraged.

While I certainly agree, the historical record suggests that unionization often requires a certain amount of labor scarcity in order to happen in the first place. Of course, enough scarcity and the workers won't see the need, perhaps because there isn't any, but in cases of superabundance of labor it is extraordinarily difficult (usually impossible) to successfully unionize.

I certainly agree that unions can make a big difference in the intermediate case.

You might be right here. In an ideal world, limitations on unpaid overtime would already protect these workers, and then there would be little or no perceived benefit for the unions they are talking about.

You answered your own question. The fact that people will put up with all that overtime pretty much sums it up.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com