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Comment by joshgermon | Hacker News Reader

If you rely on exploiting the fact that your employee does not have the right to ignore your call outside of hours, your business shouldn't exist. What kind of take is this? It says it gives them the right to ignore, not to sue the business if they do call.

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> your business shouldn't exist. What kind of take is this?

Your take was worse

Employees benefit from calls out of hours. How? The employer is able to offer better service to customers, and make more money, and the employee can negotiate a higher salary from the more profitable business. Employees who are inflexible cannot offer the same level of service to their employer and its customers; they'll on-average be paid less and measures like this increase production costs, making goods and services slightly more expensive.

This law reduces the extent to which flexible employees can add (and extract, via hight salary!) value, and the extent to which customers receive timely service.

Yes, we know increased profits always go to the worker. Particularly when the business needs to rely on exploiting them to make those increased profits.

Let me try your logic here...

Employees benefit from no paid annual leave! How you ask? The employer is able to offer better service to customers, and make more money, and the employee can negotiate a higher salary from the more profitable business.

Am I doing this right? Workers give up more rights but in theory they can negotiate higher pay because the business is more profitable?

You forgot the part where individual workers are great at negotiating against a large entity.

Start with a theoretical employee who offers no value and gets paid zero. Dial up their usefulness and consider what happens. The greater the value an employee offers, the stronger their negotiation power in pay discussions. It's not more complicated than that.

Start with a theoretical employee who offers excellent usefulness and is paid accordingly. Dial down the legal protections and security and consider what happens. The weaker the security of the employee, the stronger the negotiating power of the employer in pay discussions. It's not more complicated than that.

this comment is a good example of why modern economics is seen as out of touch. you start with a theoretical model then try and apply it to the world vs starting with the lived expenses of workers and building off of that

> This law reduces the extent to which flexible employees can add (and extract, via hight salary!) value, and the extent to which customers receive timely service.

If you're paying someone to be on-call, this is not an issue.

This is about unpaid out-of-hours work.

> This law reduces the extent to which flexible employees can add (and extract, via hight salary!) value, and the extent to which customers receive timely service.

Not at all. It means that if they want employees to be on call they have to pay for it.

This is nearly always a myth.

On call has a huge precedent, it's not tech, it's the health sector.

"Paid" on call is already defined as the active portion where you're responding to a page, not the passive portion where you're carrying the pager.

Some countries have rules around time to respond within the definition of active vs passive, but most do not and the carrying the pager isn't compensated at all.

Even with the active part, time-in-lieu can be the definition of paid... still 40h per week (or whatever), but if you only responded to 1h of active on call in a week, finish work an hour earlier one day the next week.

People in tech like to imagine that their salary rises by some significant %, but it seldom does... nurses and A&E staff aren't paid far more for being on-call and carrying a pager, and that precedent travels far, countries aren't legislating in a way that makes their health services untenable.

Some countries do legislate hard in this area, i.e. France, but then... they have a much smaller tech sector as a lot of companies will avoid hiring there or setting up an office there (especially when neighbouring countries do not have such legislation).

To be clear I don't know what the exact text of the Australian law is, but I'm just clarifying that on call does not have to be paid, and as soon as one thinks about the health service and the impact of such legislation it's clear why. Sure one can also view this as wage theft in every industry, but in that case workers need to go make that case. Most large companies will likely continue to avoid such legislation by treating their workforce as fluid, and just withdrawing from some countries and only hiring in others.

Note: None of the above is reflective of where I currently work, but are things I've learned from prior places of employment.

Payment buys time that people can't be doing what they want to. If what they want is to be drinking 10 beers, then the options are either paying them not to (i.e. paying for passive on-call time), or accepting that if there is a call they might not be able to handle it since they could be half in the bag.

This practice will only continue as long as people accept it.

Nice in theory, but I've generated a tremendous amount of value for some of the places I've worked at, and it's rare to see any of it flow back the other way. Secondly, this is a right. An employee can waive that right if they choose, but they have the power. They can't be punished for exercising it, which is the important part.

> Employees benefit from calls out of hours. How? The employer is able to offer better service to customers, and make more money, and the employee can negotiate a higher salary from the more profitable business. Employees who are inflexible cannot offer the same level of service to their employer and its customers; they'll on-average be paid less and measures like this increase production costs, making goods and services slightly more expensive.

The business can put that into their contract so that a prospective employee can make a conscious decision:

For example, I have two offers, one for x% higher salary but the contract stipulates a requirement for me to be available after-hours between Xpm-Ypm on x days of the week, I can then make the decision whether the x% more money is worth the stress and the free time I have to give up.

That's how our business introduced on-call: it's opt-in and there is specific remuneration for being on call and for responding to an issue.

What you are describing is called wage theft.

But, but, if the employer doesn't steal wages from employees, where will they get the money to pay them higher salaries?

If overnight service is that critical and profitable, hire a night shift.

But who really pays? The employer? Yes, at first, but the cost is passed straight on to consumers. Prices are sky high in Australia for this reason, businesses have many laws that each increase prices by a fraction of a percent - almost imperceptible - but cumulatively very noticeable.

Typical whinging Aussie business owner. You lot won't be happy until you turn us into another America, with at-will employment and healthcare tied to employment like a yoke around an ox.

You are neglecting to mention the power imbalance that exists between employees and employers. Like economists who view all actors as fully informed and rational market participants, your viewpoint is fantastic on paper, but in real life there are centuries of examples of ordinary workers getting exploited if regulations like these are not in place.

And hey, you might be one of the good bosses who will shrug and say "sure, no problem" if an employee wants to prioritise their life over their job. There are plenty who won't, and this law will help reign them in.

So, paying for a night shift will increase the cost to customers, but higher salaries negotiated by on-call employees won't?

Or did you leave out the part where those employees discover how little negotiating power they really have

But you know what helps ?

More money in wages ! Instead of business owners getting more money? If that went instead to workers (aka consumers) then everyone would have more to spend!

Then you know who would have more money ?

Good business owners !!

——-

Demand side / supply side economics rhetoric is fun, but it’s rhetorical.

Success depends entirely on what is appropriate for the market at that given moment.

So your argument is that instead of consumers paying, employees should pay?

This is preposterous and basically kills startups completely.

You genuinely think a seed stage startup should hire a complete "night shift" to ensure no engineers ever get paged "after hours?" This simply kills startups completely.

I’m sorry, this insults quite a few startups and firms that don’t believe in wage theft.

Getting equity is not wage theft.

If the principle behind your equity pay out scheme is wage theft with extra steps, you’ve got a huge problem, and an unsustainable business.

Asking employees to participate in a reasonable on-call rotation is not "wage theft." Your antagonistic/adversarial relationship is exactly what destroys cultures.

If you attitude to an outage on a weekend is to ignore it and say that's the company's problem you should simply never join a small startup. You don't deserve equity if you refuse to share in responsibility.

If you do offer equity then that's a slightly different thing. That can be considered payment by those who are willing to take the risk. However, a lot of "startups" in EU do not offer such thing. They do standard employment with unpaid on-call. And those can f right off.

Yeah I agree those so-called startups deserve your scorn.

Those are NOT the same things. It seems we will have to get into the weeds to be clear.

Firstly - the conversation here is about startups - however its not specified if its what stage of maturity the startup is at.

Assuming it’s an early stage startup, which is typically what “startup” evokes; the risk and return profile is different, and should be captured in the contract. The equity payout early stage employees get is different from what a regular work contract entails.

This is how risk and reward are priced - (and risk and reward is the heart of pricing, which is what this conversation is really about.)

If you want regular employees to do startup hours, or be on call for those times - then the pricing for that time must be commensurate.

That’s it.

Nothing more, nothing less. Frankly, I think you would vehemently agree with this.

Suppose, Shit happens. You have some emergency, you need staff to respond. Guess what though? The wording of the regulation seem to cover this scenario!

However, you are in a bad spot, you need to make numbers, so you decide to make people work hours they aren’t paid for?

Well come on. That’s crap, and I REALLY doubt you are advocating for this, because that’s a corrosive attitude that only shields bad management and managers.

That is why these laws exist. Not because of the golden situations where you can have a justifiable ask.

It’s because there’s more people willing to use power over fairness. To cover up their deficiencies by saying “work harder”, instead of fixing issues to actually be sustainable.

Absolute nonsense - if you need on-call support from your engineers, put it in the contract and pay them the extra for the time when they're on-call, you're literally complaining that you can't rely on unpaid overtime for something you should be paying for!

Employees != customers.

Surely you are joking

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