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Comment by whinvik | Hacker News Reader

> In particular, the companies purchase financial information from a data broker before offering a nurse a shift; if the nurse is carrying a lot of credit-card debt, especially if some of that is delinquent, the amount offered is reduced. "Because, the more desperate you are, the less you'll accept to come into work and do that grunt work of caring for the sick, the elderly, and the dying."

I think this should be made illegal.

But I also think judging from how bad people are at making laws, what we will get is something that will make it worse for everyone.

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It's really funny to me that with both the AI act and GDPR, you will see swathes of threads of people on HN bashing the law only to then later discover the purpose of this legislation from first principles.

The same could come to Europe (lowballing broke people), because you can just make employees give their consent by baking it into all employment contracts. Just like the working time directive opt-out (HR say "take it or leave it" to 99.9% of people).

It probably already happens where it's already acceptable to request financial checks such as the finance industry.

You could try, but that would most likely be illegal and also fought tooth and nail by unions, which aren't as neutered as American unions. In Europe, sympathy strikes aren't Verboten like in the US.

It depends on the territory, there's no pan-Europe regulation on it.

Even when the UK was in the EU sympathy strikes were illegal (to a much greater extent than the US).

Many countries in Europe have weak unions (eg Estonia, Lithuania, Latvia, Poland, Hungary, Bulgaria, Portugal, Czech Republic, Greece).

And there is no real EU (did you mean EU by "Europe"?) wide labour law

That would violate privacy laws. They could put it into the contract but they would be void

I don't agree. Which laws? Putting it in the contract is giving your permission. You're allowed to give your permission under GDPR.

A similar thing happened with the Working Time Directive - almost all contracts in my country make you agree to opt-out and that's been like that for over 15 years

> Putting it in the contract is giving your permission. You're allowed to give your permission under GDPR.

AFAIK the company must make it opt-in, non-mandatory and provide a way to change your mind at any moment.

Yes, as I said, by putting it in the employment contract when applying for a job.

Honestly it's hilarious how some people view GDPR. They think CEOs lose sleep at night worrying about it, that they might go to jail for it, or have to pay 100M Euro fine for a breach of it. It's simply not the case.

The reality of EU directives and regulations are very different to how they are sold. Many people fall prey to the marketing

There are many much older privacy laws then just GDPR.

> Many people fall prey to the marketing

It seems you did fall prey to the anti-GDPR marketing. It's being actually enforced [0] and doesn't allow "all or nothing" pseudo-consent [1].

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39813801

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39272861; (upd:) an even better link: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40974361

I'm not implying or stating no fines are issued, so linking that some fines are issued is not a rebuttal. Also note that site does not track payments made.

The big headline fines serve as a nice bit of PR for the EU

> It seems you did fall prey to the anti-GDPR marketing.

Nice retort but I have not. Being critical of EU regulations and not an EU sycophant is not falling prey to "anti-GDPR" marketing.

I'm actually generally pro EU; I'm just tired of people (especially non-Europeans) implying we have absolute privacy, zero privacy issues, total wins against corporations etc.

> Being critical of EU regulations and not an EU sycophant is not falling prey to "anti-GDPR" marketing.

This is not "being critical":

>> Yes, as I said, by putting it in the employment contract when applying for a job.

It's a plain wrong interpretation of GDPR, as my links explain.

> I'm just tired of people (especially non-Europeans) implying we have absolute privacy, zero privacy issues, total wins against corporations etc.

Where did I (or somebody else) imply that?

That's not how European courts have been interpreting it. When they say "free consent" they do mean free as in beer, so a "consent or loose your job" provisions would almost certainly be thrown out.

What job is being lost when you are applying for a new job?

> That's not how European courts have been interpreting it

Any particular relevant cases I can lookup?

Firstly, the WTD makes mandatory a number of things that cannot be opted out from. The only thing opt-outable is the maximum of 48 hours work per week on average, and it is left to member states to legislate how that opt-out works (should they choose to have the opt-out at all).

In the UK, to pick a specific example, it is a combination of some workers not being allowed a choice of opt-out (e.g. healthcare workers, self-employed, "gig workers"), some union workers derogating that right to their unions collective bargaining... but for every other worker, the 48 hours is the law. You cannot mandate it in a contract. You can't advertise a job where you set the hours and those hours are on average over 48 hours per week. It's not a valid job and you are immediately in breach of statutory law.

https://www.acas.org.uk/working-time-rules/the-48-hour-weekl...

https://www.acas.org.uk/working-time-rules/jobs-with-differe...

> Any particular relevant cases I can lookup?

You'll have to look at member states cases, it's on them to define how the opt-out works.

One example: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/61123e81e90e0... "In respect of the 48 hour week the claimant had not signed an opt out and as such if the claimant was working in excess of 48 hours average across the week then her right was being infringed. It is not in dispute that this is a statutory right capable of protection."

UK's Employment Rights Act 1996 section 101A: https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1996/18/section/101A

> the WTD makes mandatory a number of things that cannot be opted out from

Let's stop cherry picking. These CAN be altered by an employment contract:

> the 20-minute rest break for those who expect to work more than 6 hours in a day

> the daily rest of 11 hours in 24 hours

> the weekly rest of 24 hours in every 7 days or 48 hours in every 14 days

> the 17-week reference period for night work

> the average hours for night workers working with special hazards

> The reference period for working out the 48-hour average maximum working week can be changed from 17 weeks to 52 weeks

This is exactly my issue with these big EU directives and regulations. The EU gets massive press about the headline issue, and the nuance, opt-outs etc get swept under the rug

> These CAN be altered by an employment contract:

They CANNOT in a regular employment contract UNLESS it can be justified that the job specifically needs it. Even when employer is justified, the rest entitlement still exists and must be compensated for, and the employer requires appropriate justification if they cannot give that compensatory rest. And if they put themselves in this situation (where employees go beyond normal working time limits), they need to keep good records of time they did make their employees work, so they can confirm they haven't broken the law to the HSE when it comes knocking.

>>You can't advertise a job where you set the hours and those hours are on average over 48 hours per week. It's not a valid job and you are immediately in breach of statutory law.

https://www.acas.org.uk/working-time-rules/the-48-hour-weekl...

Every UK job I have ever seen has the opt out clause in the contract. And they always say "well you can just tell us and we'll remove it" but it's there by default, and they make it clear that they have 800 other applicants for every position so do you really want to risk it?

Exactly. Many CAN opt out of the 48 hour limit (and are forced to do so due to the employer-employee power imbalance)

> Every UK job I have ever seen has the opt out clause in the contract

Ditto.

https://www.edpb.europa.eu/system/files/2024-12/edpb_opinion...

Is an example where GDPR consent is not considered free if the alternative is paying money.

If you do not get a job, this seems fairly analogous.

The problem is the party selling that data actually. The nurses would need to consent that whomever the data broker got that data from to share their data with the broker and for the broker to share that data with the nursing service.

15 years back, I was subscribed to EU official blog which presents their side of tabloid headlines like "Overpaid French suits want to ban blue stickers on only freckled apples". Did they publish ones for AI Act and GDPR, especially as more countries elect manly commonsense billionaire sympathizers?

They stopped in 2017, sadly. https://web.archive.org/web/20200131192225/https://blogs.ec....

Edit: their very last entry was on GDPR: https://wayback.archive-it.org/11980/20200131184218/https://...

Well, you wanted a "free enterprise" society, why do you complain now? Isn't that freedom? Of expression, of commerce, of association...

...Oh, you are worried about power asymmetry? What are you, a communist?

> Oh, you are worried about power asymmetry? What are you, a communist?

If you were in a communist country you are definitely worried about the power asymmetry, and rushing to go to West Germany or just out of the USSR, or to the USA from Cuba or out of pre-capitalist China if you could.

I should have gone with "socialist" to avoid all you "ackchually" people who try to educate me on the evils of Soviet Communism while the discourse in the USA is that anything slightly to the left of Pinochet is "COMMUNISM"

> I should have gone with "socialist" to avoid all you "ackchually" people who try to educate me on the evils of Soviet Communism

Socialist the same in practice. Still state-controlled economy in the name of fairness and starvation soon following.

In communist countries, labor unions are controlled by the party and serve the interests of the state, not the workers. Strikes are illegal and any pretense of collective bargaining is a farce.

Worker rights only exist in free societies.

Why should it be illegal?

Seems to me that the illegal part would be the cartel of the 3 apps that cornered the whole market.

An app that doesn’t do this could eat their lunch.

Nurses work at hospitals, the supply of which is constrained artificially by the state, so once you sell all of the ones in a region on your app, you have a monopoly. It is a type of regulatory capture.

To clarify, what I think should be made illegal is to take advantage of people by using information about how much debt that they have to lowball them.

Yes, why? This is the market working as it should. Market participants should be free to use all available information.

The lowballing should be counteracted by competition. There isn’t any competition because the number of hospitals is artificially constrained by the state and a cartel can go to all of them in a region (usually a single digit number) and capture all of them, cornering the market for purchasing labor in that field.

The problem is not that the bidders have the information. The problem is that there is effectively only one bidder: the cartel.

An app that doesn’t do this (and thus pays more) would quickly have access to the entire labor pool by offering higher wages. It doesn’t exist because of illegal activity. That’s not caused by the cartel having access to, or using, information.

You are addressing the symptoms of the cartel, not the root cause.

IMO cartels are inevitable. Almost all sectors end up with 1 or 2 players.

However, I am curious to know how you think we can avoid the problem of cartels.

Exploitation of the indebted is a symptom that should be addressed regardless.

Plus I think your diagnosis is simplistic.

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