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Comment by WalterBright | Hacker News Reader

> The 40 hour work week, weekends off, healthcare, and banning child labor wouldn't have resulted from your characterization.

Healthcare benefits came about in WW2 because Roosevelt instituted a wage freeze. Companies could not offer higher wages to get the best workers, so they found a workaround by offering health care benefits. It turned out to be a big win for workers because the cost of those benefits was pre-tax, rather than post-tax. So it stuck.

Children are not freely consenting adults, which is why they get special legal protection. That's irrelevant to what we're discussing here.

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You're disingenuously leaving out the massive role unions played in the 1940s and 1950s in negotiating far better healthcare benefits.

Please explain how you would negotiate as an individual to get better healthcare benefits from Amazon when the benefits are provided as the same exact package to all employees. You can't. It never happens. Give even one example of an employee at a large company that has an individualized healthcare benefits package.

> Children are not freely consenting adults, which is why they get special legal protection. That's irrelevant to what we're discussing here.

And yet many businesses used child labor. These are the business you are claiming negotiate in good faith and fairly.

> And yet many businesses used child labor. These are the business you are claiming negotiate in good faith and fairly.

Allow me to repeat: Children are not freely consenting adults, which is why they get special legal protection.

> unions played in the 1940s and 1950s in negotiating far better healthcare benefits

And yet Starbucks and Amazon have had generous health care benefits without unions.

> Allow me to repeat: Children are not freely consenting adults, which is why they get special legal protection.

You avoided the question about why businesses were fine using child labor before the laws. Your claim seems to be that businesses are nice and negotiate fairly. Why is the special legal protection needed if businesses are nice?

You also failed to explain how you as an individual would negotiate a better healthcare package with Amazon than what is offered now.

> And yet Starbucks and Amazon have had generous health care benefits without unions.

Allow me to repeat: unions negotiated that in the 1950s and now everyone benefits. Without what already happened in the 1950s you can't claim those benefits would somehow magically appear.

And Amazon and Starbucks don't exactly have "generous" healthcare benefits. They have average benefits compared to other US companies. And that aren't nearly as good as what folks in the EU get.

You avoided this question: What tactics do businesses use? Can you name any that you are against?

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