You shouldn't lose all rights just because someone is paying you any amount of money. The company does not own you. You're not a soulless resource that can be used and tossed whenever your boss pleases.
Once healthcare is tied to employment, that is exactly what people are.
Yep, and this marvelous US productivity hack by employers and lawmakers (/s) - of making affordable healthcare conditional to employment - is unfortunately growing around the world. Parallel to this move is the continued commodification of most other resources and relationships.
Employers do pay a portion (usual 50% or more) of the health insurance premiums, but these days it is just another form of compensation, worth somewhere around $200 to $1,200 per family member per month (pretax).
Before ACA, it was true there were cases you simply could not get health insurance without an employer, as you could be denied for a multitude of reasons.
I am.
Just thinking everything's great doesn't actually change reality lol
Don't accept that bullshit. Especially if you're a software engineer and have a million opportunities.
I resigned from a big tech company because I refuse to build any weapons, period. I'll always refuse to build them as long as I live. I can easily get hired somewhere else.
Have some self respect and demand to be treated with dignity. To hell with the bosses' intimidation
However, that requires some savings and some political perspective. I understand why someone who just struggles to pay their bills every month "thanks to" their corporate overlord (i.e. "wage slavery" as that is/was called) would not consider it a viable option.
Organize with your fellow workers. Sabotage the company. Make your managers' lives miserable, but do it collectively ;)
Re: theft - they didn't mention theft in their comment (unless they edited it out; why not version control on HN?) but the problem I have with theft is that it allows thieves to gain resources that they didn't develop to earn themselves, that they don't yet deserve - giving them power they don't deserve nor have learned how to wield adequately.
Indeed yes, sabotage is worse than theft.
If the alternatives suck (being poor or a social outcast) or are hard (entrepreneurship) or not that different (another soulless corporate job), how much freedom is there really?
I have no stake in the question, live in France where guns are an exotic thing - just genuinely curious about the limits.
A person can recognize reality while knowing it should be different. Recognizing the need for something to be different is the first step in it becoming different.
Learn to read the OP's sentence as "A person should not be a soulless resource..." - that is often what is meant.
Reading about this topic, it seems this is also not legal, especially when limited personal internet usage is allowed as well in the contract.
What's the right way to approach this issue? I guess if someone brings this up, they'll just update contracts and say that personal internet usage is forbidden? It still feels like someone is watching you.
It's clear that, in their super-capitalistic view, if they pay you a salary they own you for 8 hours a day. Property doesn't have rights, so neither do you.
This has been clear for quite some time, but it's reaching exaggerated extremes in recent years.
It's worrying how US companies are expanding so intensely into the EU as well.
Hahaha. We Americans have this little term called "Human Capital"
Human Capital Management.
Another scale up (down) from where you're moving to.
Next step might be rolling HCM into a function of the Finance Department. (moreso).
At first. After a few months, though, he proved himself to be classical politicking a---hole and a horrible bully if you got on his bad side. I take that as a lesson to trust my instincts more.
Though I must admit that design resource is hardcore :) I must try that at the office and look at the reactions.
"Resources" can surely mean "assets" (note that the relevant resources are selected...), which is not at all diminishing or ghastly, and also honestly means "what is available to fulfil a need". Implication of «expoitation» (or, even farther, "expendability") is not necessary, though "being used" is surely there - but that is the job itself.
"Capital" implies "investment" - what you invest is the principal, "capital", while the additional returns are the secondary part -, not necessarily that «ownership» that implies a loss of freedom: contractually, you allow your employer to make your work part of an investment. Again, it is the job itself. The capital is what you have invested and returns after having brought fruit: again, they are assets.
Terms have broad semantics, it is never a good idea to interpret with partiality. :)
Edit: I am not denying that some employers may de facto as if interpret "resources" and "capital" dishumanly: I am stating that the fault is not in the jargon.
Which goes to show how correct Marx was, at least from a sociological perspective.
«Wo is der Azubi?! Sie meinen der Primary Business Solutions Executive Assistant. ...Der is grad kacken.»
I think the trend comes from the globalization of business and trade, so that when parts meet there is no translation of titles but a sort of spontaneous international convention. This avoids questions like "So, what is exactly your job as /Azubi/?".
(Of course, still tongue-in-cheek, it may remain a justified question to ask "What is exactly your job as PBSEA".)
Interesting.
When it arose there must not have historically been anything similar commonly seen.
Could be all previous German engineering success has been best accomplished without anything resembling an American-style HR approach.
After all, today's HR designation took root during the belt-tightening of the '80's under Ronald Reagan, and as we have seen has declined in usefulness from there continuously over the decades.
No translation was given back then either, and that was in the USA :)
> If machines produce everything we need, the outcome will depend on how things are distributed. Everyone can enjoy a life of luxurious leisure if the machine-produced wealth is shared, or most people can end up miserably poor if the machine-owners successfully lobby against wealth redistribution. So far, the trend seems to be toward the second option, with technology driving ever-increasing inequality.
-- Stephen Hawking, https://www.reddit.com/r/science/comments/3nyn5i/science_ama...
Rough at the time for sure. But few would wish to go back.
Do they?
Back in the day when everything was manual I think you could reasonably make a living farming your own land. It was hard work but it was possible.
Nowadays everything is so optimized that margins are razor-thin and the remaining farmers are being squeezed from every side, both from the demand side for their produce (supermarket chains driving prices down) and from the equipment side (John Deere & co intentionally making equipment that's impossible to repair unless you pay them exorbitant prices).
> But few would wish to go back.
What does that even mean? I would love to "go back" and deal with things by not just letting the masses starve while people in costumes play god and smell their own farts, which is exactly what they do today. I would LOVE to see see that space exploration and awesome inter-species music festivals we might have in 2021 if the last few millenia hadn't been such pathetic ass.
I worked in call center management and saw this play out real time. They made clients wear fitbits and hit metrics to qualify for the cheaper health insurance plan. Workers put the fitbits on drill bits and ran drills to whirl around the fitbit to beat the metrics. Then there was a mass group chat about how to beat the system. Then peoples personal cell phones had to be banned and kept in lockers outside the offices. And around and around and on and on it went. It was literally like Tom and Jerry and everyone was miserable and meanwhile the company wasn't doing well because nobody was focused on getting any high quality work done because of all the distractions and drama over the tracking.
I don't believe this can be represented by KPIs, and therefore doesn't factor into (bad) managements' view of the world.
” According to the guidelines, if the use of the Internet and email services is only permitted for business purposes, the employer can check the Internet use of the employees randomly, to make sure that they use it for business purposes only.”
https://www.mondaq.com/germany/privacy-protection/496710/ger...
The employer can look at work emails if it's the last resort (no other means to get the information), they have a reason (like if employee is sick and a customer emailed them directly with important contract data), a member of the work council is present, and it's been cleared by the GDPR person (whatever they're called in English).
Labor laws have been shaped by courts so it's quite confusing, even to Germans. Rulings are often decided by minuscule details that don't appear to be big but often are, so generalizing is hard.
If a customer phone the support directly, are they going to hold the phone for hour waiting for approval? Only after the approval, the support can start reading the work email and decided the next step.
Co worker and manager need to aware of the work progress, just in case the employee is sick or something.
Employee should do their private work on their own devices.
What make email different from phone call?
The company can simply require all customer communication to go through a proper CRM. This way there is no need to look into an employee's personal inbox.
I'm not a huge fan of this monitoring, but why be so dramatic? You aren't losing any rights here, let alone all rights. You do not have a right to use your employer's computer without your employer's permission.
If you want to do something that isn't monitored, just use your own computer instead of your employer's computer. You should be doing this anyway, keystroke monitoring or not.
Thankfully not true in sane countries
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.lci.fr/amp/societe/video-en...
In short, you definitely have a right to send e.g. personal emails from your work computer and your employer definitely does not have the right to go look into them for instance
I'm not so sure about that. Do large-enough French companies supply their own Certificate Authority to all company computers (like all large corporations)? If so, then they're free to browse/search/store all https communications from any company machine, right?
The assumption is that employers and IT departments will always "follow the rules", but it's impossible to verify something like that. The way corporations would be "caught" would be from huge numbers of whistle-blowers but that's a risky career move for most IT workers.
The good news is IT departments and individuals generally don't care to spy unless there's something really high-value at stake and only then towards very specific "targets". With few exceptions, the vast majority of workplaces tolerate ordinary personal use of corporate computer resources.
These are the same laws that also allow surveillance cameras not only within company properties, but even in public.
You do not have the right to privacy when you are not in a private space. This applies to company computers just the same.
In Europe you generally have a graded expectation of privacy that does not disappear the moment you enter the workspace.
We recognise that people have needs that are not met if you treat them as automatons.
To your surveillance camera point, I live in the UK which is renowned for the number of cameras. If I point a surveillance camera at the sidewalk in front of my house, I'd break the law.
Is this true? So your camera is only allowed to point at your property and nothing else? I don't see how this could possibly be true when you're allowed to take photos in public. Or does the fact the surveillance camera is fixed make a difference?