If I buy a sewing machine and hire someone to operate it, outside of basic safety rights why should the employee have any say in what I decide should be created with it?
I’m being a bit hyperbolic here, but it’s funny that the circumstances you cite (sewing, basic safety) actually drove unionization in the early 20th century.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triangle_Shirtwaist_Factory_...
Turns out that if you don’t change the relations of power in your workplace, hold your bosses to account, they have a tendency to not be too concerned about your well-being.
Why do you insist in throwing the word "dictatorship" around?
Owning a sewing machine and paying someone to use it on your behalf should absolutely bestow you the power to choose what that person makes for you, while being paid by you, and while using your machine. How can this be controversial?
Let's take a look at this. Your contributions to the end product are:
- Owning a sewing machine
- Paying someone to use it
Their contributions are:
- Making the thing (say, sewing a shirt)
I think there is an inherent tension between thinking about which of these is more valuable. Of course the sewing machine owners and payers are all going “Hey, the sewing machine belongs to us. You got compensated for your work, that should end your involvement with it. You can't tell us kind of clothes we should be making!”; whereas the people who sew the shirts are going “Without our collective work, you're going to be able to sew maybe one shirt a day, and you don't even know how to sew. So listen to us!”.
The increasing interest in unions (FAANG is hardly a good representative of jobs across the software industry, let alone the entire US) seems to indicate that the needle of society in general has moved more too far in advancing interests of the sewing machine, and the people who sew don't have enough of a say in how things are done.
When one gets more money, the other gets less. There is no way out of this, as long as owner of the machine and whoever makes the thing are different people.
You're conveniently ignoring the part in which I'm also paying the other person to do something, after the other person freely agreed to do said thing in exchange for being paid. Would you mind replying to what I'm actually saying?
I disagree. It is not historically controversial for the owner of property to decide what is done with it.
With what, the slaves? /s
But when someone comes into my house I have some control over what they are allowed to do within my house and I can ask them to leave with the support of the law if they don't obey my wishes.
When I enter a voluntary employment agreement and give an employee access to my equipment the same thing applies.
From a third party perspective, this is just weird. Society sees two people associating, one providing labor, that other capital, no matter how money is flowing within the association. Weirdly enough our system only allows capital owners to have any say in the running of the system (via shares and the board). Within this system, unions are one way in which the owners of labor get a say in the running of the corporation.
Yes, generally there is a contract that stipulated what can and can't be done with the sewing machine so that the machine is not completely destroyed.
Generally employment contracts do not give employees the right to do whatever they want with the sewing machine.
Why do you mind if they have a say? If you don't plan on abusing and exploiting them, there's no harm, right?
EDIT: to put it into words I would think someone like you might understand better (power and money instead of empathy and solidarity) - because if you don't let them have a say, and exploit them, you might end up in a gulag, on guillotine or in wherever mass grave Mao put landlords.