Just call it what it is, greed. Why is it greedy if company owners want to make money, but "good and social" if workers want to make money?
I don't think the "earnings per employee" metric entitles employees to anything.
I don't think the "earnings per employee" metric entitles employees to anything.
This is simply about improving the power differential between management and labor. If that means more money, so be it. It may well not. It might be more about working conditions or projects.
I guess my question to you is why do you demand democracy in government, but accept authoritarianism at work no questions asked?
For example, if we take this to it's logical conclusion and look a work culture where your co-workers decide how much you get paid, go look at Valve and see how that works out for them: https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.wired.com/2013/07/wireduk-v...
There's really no great solution to this problem as everyone wants more money. Either it's workers vs. management or workers vs. each other.
I am not OP, but I’d say the reason authority is acceptable in a managed organization (not necessarily for profit - any managed organization whether the military, or NGO, or business, or charity) is because it ultimately has a narrow function: either fulfilling a mission, or increasing the wealth producing capacity of the organization.
Democracy at that granularity is somewhat irrelevant: either you’re doing the things (objectively measured), or you are not. Voting doesn’t lead to better policy decisions, just freer ones.
Of course the best performing companies aren’t managed in an “authoritarian” manner in the usual sense of strongman rule, because one person (or even a small group) doesn’t have all the answers. Labor/management collaboration and recognition of the importance of human capital is essential. This is why management doesn’t have as much power as it used to in modern industry: it is dependent on human capital retention in its labor force, which is very expensive to replace (far more than just skilled labor).
Collective bargaining becomes less about power disparity (when labor can make as much money elsewhere and management needs labor more) and more about pressure on systematic policies that are difficult to change without sustained external pressure: pay disparity, bonuses to sexual harassers, etc.)
At the bigger picture, life is a lot bigger than missions or profit, and democracy is essential. (Unless one’s mission is to own the libs, then I guess democracy isn’t so important)
Replacing your workforce is much harder than you make it out to be. All the institutional knowledge, the entire stack, how things fit together, how the tools are built, run, used. All that leaves with you.
You are likely right that this union, at this juncture doesn't have much say. I'm speaking more about unions in general, and this does feel like the thin edge.
IMO this isn't the highest value proposition place to unionize, that would be video games.
Absolutely correct.
This is an IS/OUGHT distinction. Who cares what labor "should" do under the employer's ideology. Not too surprising they want us to think of ourselves as equal players making fair contracts with each other, while one side holds the entire world in their hands.
Since we're not out in the streets starving we're supposed to shut up and be thankful, no matter what, because the ruling ideology says they've given us enough (money as a wage, though little other power). All the crying about "contracts," "greed," "entitlement," etc is just pure ideological smokescreen trying to get you not to notice the obvious, fundamental conflict between worker and owner. They want us to look at a long running historic power struggle and see something other than a power struggle so we won't fight for ourselves. Ridiculous.
Personally I think the category "employee" should be forbidden. It is a pure social construct. Why is anybody entitled to be an "employee" and bitch about "authoritarians"?
Everybody is an entrepreneur. If you have nothing, you sell your body and work hours. But that's just a contract like every other contract.
In any case, if those workers don't like the authoritarians, they are free to start their own companies. Then they get to call the shots.
Yup, and I don't think it's a bad thing, necessarily.
Of course they're authoritarians, you do what your boss says or you get out. That's authoritarianism. That doesn't mean it's wrong or bad or ill suited to the task, necessarily.
Singapore is authoritarian, and I'd say things are working pretty well there.
Don't know where you are, but in the US, the category of employee has different tax implications for both the individual and the employer. In addition, depending on the industry and role, employee status is often correlated with significantly better benefits.
So? Social constructs have a lot of teeth in the real world, and always have. Wishing them away won't have any effect.
> I'm saying there should be no special benefits for employees
So are you arguing that those benefits (i.e. health insurance) should be universal? Or are you making the argument that only those in a position to pay should have access to those things?
Laws and social constructs can be changed.
As for health insurance (as an example), how do you justify giving health insurance to employees, but not to other people, like self-employed people?
However, to address your question more directly, contractors are employees as well. It's not the job site's responsibility to provide health insurance, it's their employers. Contractors still have employers, you know.
This is true for vendors, but direct 1099 contractors are self employed.
In your terms then, just let everybody be self-employed and contract them, rather than employ them. That's the same result I want, that people are responsible for themselves and making a contract with somebody to do some work for you doesn't come with any additional baggage. Just plain money for work.
This is a fake world. In the real world there is history, capital and labor, and politics which is an expression of the unavoidable, built-in antagonism between the two. We don't all own an equal share of the means of production and just sit around issuing contracts to each other all day.
Do you understand that the econ 101 libertarian world of homo economicus rational agents is fake and we live instead in the real world with its institutions and conflicts?
Property that you can use to produce value beyond itself through workers' labor is capital.
Suppose you had a robot. Would that robot be labor or capital? Assume the robot has the same capability for work as you.
At the end of the day it is a machine, so "capital". Likewise you own your body, it is your capital.
Employees can also vote with their feet, if they don't like their bosses, they can leave.
That's an absurd take because your boss suffers no consequences and you do.
It's not about fair, it's about exercising the power you have.
Besides, each part of the country is someone's property, but government gives you a say anyways. I would counter that the equivalent would be saying "why should anyone vote? why bother changing things? if you don't like your country why don't you go find a different one." We don't tend to accept that argument in government, why accept it in private enterprise?
Exercising one's power - sure, employees can do that, and I support that. I just don't think they should deserve special protections and rights for doing that.
If I had an employee and they would tell me "I think your management is shit and I want to make the rules now", I would like to be allowed to fire them.
Did you consider your management may be shit and maybe the person should make the rules now, not you? If you were harassing them, for instance, or bullying them, they may have a point and your single point of control over the enterprise may be harmful not just to the worker but to the company.
Just because you would like to fire them doesn't mean you should, as after all, the fiduciary duty is to the company and not to you personally.
That is specifically the value that the union would provide in this case.
If I had a company, I would like to have the right to make bad decisions. And who defines good and bad decisions.
With unions, in the end you have courts decide on economic decisions. That's bullshit.
Unilateral control over a business's destiny can doom it if the leadership is making poor decisions even when the rank-and-file oppose them. It's all easy to say the company should simply go to ruins but why should it? What if the good or service is solid, should the customers and the market suffer because the failing company has deprived them of it? Should the workers be punished because they had insufficient leverage to oppose those decisions? Should a ton of money and effort be wasted for an apparently pointless enterprise? If we live in a society that seeks to maximize life expectancy, and if corporations are people, why should we not seek also to prevent avoidable business failures, at least for those enterprises that are building useful products?
> If I had a company, I would like to have the right to make bad decisions. And who defines good and bad decisions.
Feel free to do that in a company of 1. As soon as your company exceeds 1 person, you lose the absolute right. You lose the right when your decisions impact the livelihood of those around you. It doesn't drop to zero instantly but it is attenuated as the company grows.
If you work for a company and you feel they are making bad decisions and perhaps your job is in peril (because the company may go down), it is high time to look for a new job.
And again, who then decides what is or is not a bad decision? Courts will get to decide on economic decisions. But lawyers have studied law, not economics. How does that make sense?
Someone you hire to redo your kitchen isn't employed by you, they're employed by their employer, where everything we talked about makes sense. That's why there's a distinction between an employer-employee relationship and a contracting relationship.
They of course get a say in how your kitchen is done: if it's not up to code, or dangerous, they absolutely have a say. And frequently. When I redid my kitchen my GC pointed out all these things to me and modified I my plans.
> If you work for a company and you feel they are making bad decisions and perhaps your job is in peril (because the company may go down), it is high time to look for a new job.
You're re-stating how it is today, but there's no reason it need to be this way, and it fails to meet the fiduciary duty to the company and its shareholders.
> And again, who then decides what is or is not a bad decision? Courts will get to decide on economic decisions. But lawyers have studied law, not economics. How does that make sense?
You don't need a law degree to know harassment is wrong. In fact mandatory training is part of your, wait for it, fiduciary duty. You don't need a degree to recognize bad management.
Of course they can have opinions or refuse to do things in certain ways. But they can't force you to have a pink wall color, or other things. At most, perhaps if the see something dangerous or illegal in your kitchen, they may have a duty to do something about it.
Likewise, an employee can refuse to do things by simply quitting the job.
Harassment: again, quit your job, apart from that, general laws about harassment should apply, independent from you being an employee or not.
"fiduciary duty" - where does that come from? Why does somebody suddenly have a duty to take care of you? I am self employed. Why do you get people to have the duty to take care of you, but I don't? Who should have the duty to take care of me?
Suppose you pay me to renovate your kitchen.
Now what is your duty towards me? Is it now your duty to see that I earn a living wage and have job security forever? All just because you simply wanted a new wall color in your kitchen?
> Of course they can have opinions or refuse to do things in certain ways. But they can't force you to have a pink wall color, or other things. At most, perhaps if the see something dangerous or illegal in your kitchen, they may have a duty to do something about it.
You're not their employer, you're contracting their employer.
> Harassment: again, quit your job, apart from that, general laws about harassment should apply, independent from you being an employee or not.
No thanks, that's an objectively worse world.
> Why do you get people to have the duty to take care of you, but I don't? Who should have the duty to take care of me?
Because that's what running a business is. Since you're self employed you have that responsibility to look after yourself.
> Now what is your duty towards me? Is it now your duty to see that I earn a living wage and have job security forever? All just because you simply wanted a new wall color in your kitchen?
Nope, that's their employers duty.
Because employment is a freely associated business relationship. I don’t demand democracy in my business relationship with in-n-out when I order a burger nor do I demand democracy when a company pays me for some software development.
I do demand democracy from a government that makes laws I cannot opt out of and controls the courts which enforce all disputes in my life.
Even the largest companies in the world can be avoided by someone who doesn’t want to do business with them. The same is not true of the government.
> Even the largest companies in the world can be avoided by someone who doesn’t want to do business with them. The same is not true of the government.
There's still the right of exit, as the libertarians call it. One can switch citizenships, or choose to relocate themselves to the few remaining frontiers where governance is minimal. Changing one's residence can be very difficult, but how is changing employment any less so?
I have no say in what’s on their menu. Contractors negotiate but I can’t force them to do anything with a vote like I can in a democracy.
> One can switch citizenships, or choose to relocate themselves to the few remaining frontiers where governance is minimal.
Not without moving and significant impact to life. In all but company towns (which are basically non existent now), it’s trivial to not have any meaningful relationship with a particular business.
Unions are to protect the interests of employees that have no bargaining power. Big tech employees don’t need this. I can, however, see tech employees using their shares and influence to bargain for a board seat. I think Germany does this.
Ultimately it comes down to the relationship white-collar employees have with their employer. I work at a Big Tech co. I see myself as a hired-gun who is full-time because the taxes and benefits are easier to manage. I don’t care one bit about the company’s mission or values or whatever. I write code, they give me money. Either one of us can dissolve this contract anytime.
It's hard to square that kind of return only benefitting shareholders. You'd be hard pressed as an employee to get a 3% raise or whatnot to keep up with inflation, or you'd have the call center people making pennies, or micromanaged down to the second, but over a milkion per employee was earned.
There is a certain point where one has to stop and reevaluate the nature of the value transfer going on. That same business ate years of my life keeping it afloat, but at the first opportunity for equity holders, dropped the floor out by sellout. Not that I'd want to go back given the business model but it does lead to somber reflection and a heartfelt contemplation of tge advantaged position held by the middle-man.
Presumably you were paid for your services. If you were unhappy with the pay, you should have renegotiated or changed jobs.
I hope you didn't intend it, but the comment comes across as critical and judgmental. The comment doesn't show that you are curious about the broader context.
Would you consider thinking about this from a different perspective? For example, try thinking and asking about what history and experience underlies this. In my view, someone who writes "That same business ate years of my life keeping it afloat" has a story to tell.
Think about this possibilities: comments are with real people, not abstractions. Every comment brings the opportunity to get to know someone's situation and experience.
I think unions exist specifically to help employees in their struggle to be greedy against a greedy boss or shareholders.
Do you work harder in a partnership where you get 50% or as an employee making 1% of your value?
Has corporate greed harmed its own profits and innovation by failing to adequately pay its employees?
I think greed is good to a point, then it becomes detrimental to self and society.
I mean it is possible that shareholders will work harder. But that is not an argument for unions.
Also, some employees are people like cooks or janitors. Will they really work harder, and what would that even mean? What if they just do their jobs? Does a janitor at Google really deserve more money than a janitor somewhere else? What makes them the "chosen ones"? Just lucky to work for a successful company?
Google makes a ton of money off of each employee, and could probably afford it.
https://csimarket.com/stocks/GOOG-Revenue-per-Employee.html
Google, like much of Silicon Valley, regularly puts forth the messaging that it represents the future, not only in terms of technology but in terms of society. ("Making the world a better place." "Don't be evil.") Forward-thinking often lends itself towards democratization, and of personal empowerment. So if Google wants to portray itself as futuristic, and its employees so lucky to be working for such a futuristic organization, then it would follow based on their own company line that janitors at Google might be entitled to more money at more traditional, hierarchical, less worker-empowering companies.
If Google didn't want their employees to set fires, then maybe they shouldn't taught them them the Promethean secret. Perhaps tech companies should cease pretending to be so much nobler than every other traditional form of business. The people running Google created this culture.
True about Google creating that culture themselves, I don't pity them. I just reject the sentiment in general.
Together they can get more of it.
Simple as that.
There is a point of view framed in things being equitable too. The motivations are more broad, balance of society, etc...
Then again, the members may simply need more too.
Costs and risks relative to income can change, or are not well balanced. This is a standard of living, needs argument.
What differentiates it from greed is the fact than an answer can come from either side of the equation. Lower costs and risks can work the same as more compensation does.
None of this, nor my earlier comment speaks to whether greed is good or bad. It can be, or not and context matters.
The problems with it become apparent when you realize that the standard isn't applied everywhere and is really impossible to evaluate fairly, so the conclusions are derived from personal ethics and concepts of "fairness" instead.
As an example, "they can afford it" is often used as an argument in favor of higher taxes on "the wealthy" (whatever that means), yet nobody says "you can afford to pay starbucks more for your coffee". You could have certainly afforded to pay more for your car or house or macbook, so why didn't you if "you can afford it" is the bar? Likewise many SV tech workers could "afford" to take pay cuts, but nobody's arguing that - why not, if "you can afford it" is the measure?
Depends on how you measure the profit. "Profit per employee" is an abstract measurement and for most people has little bearing to what they themselves do daily. Just because a company's profit per employee happens to be $x doesn't mean you personally generated $x - you could have generated a lot more, or perhaps been a net cost instead (projects fail and get cancelled all the time). You could make an argument that if you build a wildly successful feature you should get a big share of the profit, but only if you take a pay cut when things go poorly. Who wants that? This already happens to an extent in big companies btw, people on successful projects get promoted and more cash & stock so in a way they are sharing in the success.
> And since we're talking about immensely wealthy corporations, some of which have nice margins and billions of dollars of cash in reserve, it's a bit of an intuitive step.
This is just another way of saying "they can afford it", which I discussed previously.
Ultimately, capitalism drives greedy behaviors in everyone either by choice or by necessity. At some point if you don’t adopt similar behaviors to the greedy, you will be taken advantage of, guaranteed. One of the flaws of this system is that competition is what props it up and gives it stability, so everyone has to play the optimization game as much as the most optimal are optimizing, otherwise they're 'losing' in our economic system, relatively speaking.
So yes, it's the same optimization like behaviors Google and other giant businesses in the capital ownership class are utilizing. Are the motives different (greed, survival, sense of 'fair' compensation)? Maybe, maybe not, but if you don't play the game it doesn't matter because you're being taken advantage of and the state will only decline.
I for one applaud Google employees pushing this and hope they can set a precedent for the entire industry. There is widespread rampant abuse in tech no one talks about or just ingore and it's often waved away because '...but money' and employment mobility. None of these fix the underlying problems and are often merely excuses made to allow abuse to grow and fester.
If a person is happy with their salary, are they really being taken advantage of? Just because they could perhaps get a better salary, doesn't mean they are forced to go for it. I suspect such cases are also rarer than one might think. I would expect most people to occasionally check their market value.
"greed" is just a negative way to frame it. Ultimately, striving for optimal outcomes is what stabilizes systems and makes them healthier and more efficient. Competition is the only known way to ensure fair prices. Every other approach can and will be gamed (corruption), but you can not fake prices.
It's also all nice to talk about being social, but I think many employees are less happy in reality when they find they have to compensate for their unproductive colleagues and even get less pay. That gets people riled up quickly in the real world.
Who cares what you think they're "entitled" to?
If workers simply choose to monopolize, of course they can do that. Of course laws against monopolies in general should then also be abolished, though.
You can not be in favor of unions, but opposed to monopolies, as unions are also monopolies.
In that sense, no, I don't care what they feel entitled to - there should just be no obligation to give them what they feel they are entitled to.
I'd wager that most unionization supporters at Google also support high taxes, a social safety net, and widespread unionization so other laborers can capture more of their own output.