Comment by Jormundir | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Jormundir | Hacker News Reader

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You don't know what taken advantage of means do you?

These days any given new graduate who didn't attend an ivy league is in a situation where it is extremely difficult to get a job.

The alternative to working as a contractor at Amazon is not working at all. This is the situation these contractors are in. When the alternative is being in extreme debt / homeless, a choice cannot be made freely. This is the situation that Amazon and Walmart are taking advantage of, employee these people as hourly, no benefits contractors.

Obviously there's the argument that Amazon and Walmart are being 'good' providing them with hourly pay when they would otherwise be paid nothing. This, however, doesn't mean they're not taking advantage of the people they hire as contractors. I would also not argue, but hold as a belief that it is extremely immoral to not pay the people who are struggling to help the company succeed, in order to pay people who are already wealthy more.

Before you explode with economic principles of how they are being paid what they're worth due to the harsh job market conditions, save your breath, I already know. The thinking is right from a market philosophy perspective, but these principles also weaken the company, and I would say are actually wrong from a perspective of building and growing a successful business.

> You don't know what taken advantage of means do you?

Yes, I do, and I'd appreciate you not starting off posts being invective in the future. I'd downvote you for that if I could, even though I acknowledge you make an otherwise neutral point.

I'm not suggesting that Amazon is being good or evil, but I don't see any advantage having been taken. As Nostromo stated in a higher-voted thread, the unemployment rate in Seattle is currently at 4%, which is pretty good.

> The alternative to working as a contractor at Amazon is not working at all.

I don't see that having been suggested in the article at all. Regardless, some temporary work on a real product right after college seems like exactly the kind of thing I wish had been around when I was younger.

What I'm not seeing is that there was anything exploitative going on. Amazon paid a fair market wage, or at least I didn't see anything in the article to suggest he was making Walmart level wages. I don't see that the working conditions were harsh, or otherwise problematic beyond the normal level of office politics.

If these principles weaken the company, then I again don't see how that is taking advantage of the article's author.

I'm not suggesting that these are amazing working conditions, or that it's doing Amazon any favors, but at the same time, I don't see that anybody was taken advantage of either.

Fun bit of trivia: in a Marxist framework, where the whole 'exploitation' thing came from, it's actually assumed that the worker gets paid a fair market wage. Exploitation doesn't actually rely on someone being paid less than their fair share.

I'm not saying that people here are using that term in it's technical way, but people have different opinions on what 'exploited' means, and it can cause friction.

Which is why I'm trying to figure out what, specifically, is being objected to. I'm getting the sense that there is a context beyond the article that I am not familiar with, which is fair enough, I suppose, but I don't see anything in the article to suggest that this employment was in any way unusual or exploitative, at least, not as I understand it.

Taking off my Marx hat, generally, people mean something along the lines of "an employer can take advantage of the fact that people will take any work rather than starve, and this drives wages down to a point that's unfair." In other words, an employer can exploit the fact that people are desperate.

So yes, it may have been a contract that they 'voluntarily' agreed to for a wage they 'voluntarily' agreed to, but that doesn't mean it's not a shitty position, and we should try to do better, as a society.

And that would be a fine argument, I suppose, if I'd seen anything in the article about the wages.

Like I said though, if that's the case, it's either outside the scope of this article, or I just missed it. Is that indeed the case, that Amazon is paying exploitative wages for these positions?

In this case, it's not the wages, it's the fact that they can't work for more than 11 months and that there's no chance of upward mobility. A person with no experience is given a 'real' job while a temp isn't even considered.

There is a recent book called "End of the Good Life" ... it has one too many stories in there but covers the problems faced by temporary workers (who are typically young workers). I was surprised to learn what a huge problem this is in Europe.

That of course assumes there's a price that is "fair" and you have a magic ability - personally or "as a society" - to figure it out while ignoring the markets (because the markets are "unfair"). I wonder how one does that and doesn't end somewhere in the vicinity of Detroit.

Please explain how the markets are unfair?

As for my 'personal' judgement on what is fair, I always defer to those entering the terms of the contract, so long as those contracts abide by law. If you offer me $10 an hour to do something I might ordinarily charge $100 for, and I accept that $10 an hour, and the $10 an hour does not break any law, then to me, that is fair. I am by no means authoritative on the subject though, so I appreciate any insight you may have.

I'm not saying the markets are unfair. I'm saying that's what exploitation theory assumes (which theory I am in no way supporting or endorsing) - the base for "exploitation" theory is that the market price diverges from the supposedly "fair" price, and the difference is the measure of "exploitation". This presupposes that a) "fair" price is known and b) it is different from market price.

Two points:

1) The general (non-Marxist) idea is not that 'the market price is unfair, so we should set different prices ourselves', but rather that the market isn't magic, and does not appear ex nihilo, but is impacted by many things. Some of those things (such as law about hiring, firing, welfare, safety, and so on) can materially affect the negotiation in a way that is patently not fair. For example, if unions had the kinds of powers some ascribe to them (ability to set wages however high they wanted with all staff being unfirable no matter what they did, with employers being powerless slaves) that would be obviously unfair. The power dynamic in many countries (including the US) is roughly that slanted at the moment, but in favour of employers rather than employees - in the US, for example, this is the effect of things like no cause firing, binding arbitration agreements, 'temp' positions and 'internships' being allowed to be offered in place of actual jobs, no real socialised healthcare, limited unemployment insurance in most states, low minimum wages, no 'union shops' in most states, anti union laws, limited occupational health and safetly laws in many states, and so on. So, to make things 'fair', these things have to be fixed - then the market will be 'fair'.

2) The general (Marxist) idea is not that 'the market price is unfair, so we should set different prices ourselves', but rather that capitalist-worker relationships are always unfair and exploitative due to the worker always having to sell their labour for wages, rather than capital, where the capitalist simply gains more money through the actions of capital - neatly setting up a coercive power structure. The (tl;dr version of the) Marxist response is not that this means that we have to set 'better' or 'fairer' levels for wages, but that we have to destroy capitalism and abolish wage slavery.

>>> can materially affect the negotiation in a way that is patently not fair.

Here you have to define what "fair" means. One of the definitions would be using extra-market coercion to influence the price - see unions example - is not fair, since it uses forceful coercion to benefit one side. However, unions often claim they need the coercion to reach "fair" prices since otherwise it is "unfair". So what is "fair" here? How you find out if voluntary agreement of two people is "fair" or not?

>>>> we have to destroy capitalism and abolish wage slavery.

Since the only other alternative that we've seen so far is non-wage slavery (at least until we find enough people that agree to work for free that we can create non-scarcity economy) this makes this definition of "fair" rather unappealing. The problem here is that voluntary structures tend to become markets, and calling non-voluntary arrangements "fair" has to rely on notion of fairness of those who apply coercion to support the non-voluntary nature, which very soon devolves into very peculiar understanding of "fairness".

I think you're looking for points to argue on and prove your superior understanding of economics and fair labor, and in the process brushing away important points and ignoring the insights of peoples' comments.

You've asked for more context, so here's what I have that is not talked about in the article.

Leading up to 2006-2007 and the financial crisis, these entry level jobs were salaried positions with standard benefits. Obviously this sounds expensive for a company, and there's plenty of arguing around whether this is worthwhile, but arguing won't help build the context.

During the financial crisis, as companies scrambled to cut costs as much as possible, a trend began to emerge. Companies realized that rather than give salaries and benefits for these entry level jobs, they could hire new grads and anyone else unable to find a job to be unpaid interns, doing the some level of work -- sometimes more depending on the person and position. I hope you would agree that not paying people for work is taking advantage of them. This is obviously more extreme than the contract practice talked about in the article. After it became clear companies were taken advantage of the job market to get free work out of desperate people, states began making legislation to make unpaid internships illegal. Here in California, it is illegal to not pay an intern if their work contributes to the business in any way.

Now that businesses can no longer get free work, they have reacted by filling these positions with hourly contractors who get no benefits whatsoever, no PTO, no sick days, nothing. Salaries for these contractors are often very low. 25-35k a year based on the hourly work. Salaries aren't being dictated by the value of the work the employee provides the company, but by the difficulty in getting (and really going through the process of finding a new job, possibly relocating, etc.) employment elsewhere.

The contrast between these positions 6-7 years ago and these positions now is why people say (feel) they are exploitative.

> I think you're looking for points to argue on and prove your superior understanding of economics and fair labor

False. I do not know why you seem intent on being invective and assuming bad faith. I have never once proclaimed any superior understanding of economics, and in fact, have specifically stated the contrary on more than one occasion here at HN.

I simply don't see anything exploitative in hiring people for a fixed amount of time, for a certain amount of money, so long as the terms of both are freely negotiated up front and do not violate the terms of the law, and are not broken through deceit.

Thank you for the background on the rest. The point you made about California law though, is actually federal. The US Department of Labor sets the terms on what constitutes a valid internship, and the last I checked, California has no specific provisions above or beyond that. If you're referring to the recently decided Searchlight case, that was decided that the specific behavior was exploitative, not that internships are in general, where they abide the terms of the Department of Labor.

We used to call these little economic downturns "corrections" and I think the term still applies here. 6-7 years ago, people with marginally skilled "entry level" office jobs were overpaid.

Old Soviet joke: in capitalist America, man exploits man. In the Soviet Union, it is the other way around!

I don't generally upvote jokes on HN, but I giggled like a schoolgirl at that one.

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