Swiss to vote on linking bosses' pay to wage of office cleaner | Hacker News Reader

Swiss to vote on linking bosses' pay to wage of office cleaner

reuters.com

18 pointsdamncabbage21 comments

Not only will this NOT raise wages for workers (for obvious reasons – you can't pay janitors, low skilled employees, nor replaceable employees half a million per year, if you want to stay in business), it will also create a system that ends up either automating or outsourcing the work force (and in turn hurting those same people that want this to happen).

This is totally self-destructive and counter-productive, and an example of a group of people with no real experience + absolute bad judgment attempting to force their ill conceived notions on anyone they think is preventing them from reaching the happiness they are entitled to (all without doing the hard work).

If you want to get paid well, take the chance and start your own business, or buy shares in an existing enterprise. Or have the ability to be skillful and in high demand.

> Schwan was paid 261 times as much as Roche's lowest paid worker in 2012, according to a study by employee group Travail.Suisse.

Perhaps Schwan created 261 times more value for the company than the lowest paid employee.

all without doing the hard work

Sorry, I didn't read that correctly. I got the impression somewhere along the way that the people in companies that are are doing the hard work and adding real value are the same ones who are paid insufficiently to start families and get ahead in their lives. It is middle and upper management that can be trimmed without worrying too much about a company's bottom line.

If that was even remotely true, than those poor, overworked, and abused family men could just get management jobs... Do less work and get paid more! Problem solved.

It is more than remotely true; it's manifestly true. As Reagan should have said, management is not the solution; it's often the problem.

> Perhaps Schwan created 261 times more value for the company than the lowest paid employee.

Or perhaps people who decide how much Schwan was offered have incentives other than how much money he'd provide for the company.

Oh come on! Like if we had the ability to automate this sort of jobs we wouldn't have done it already. And outsourcing it's already done almost everywhere by now. Please, get a grip.

What's the chance this will be quickly be skirted by corporate restructuring/outsourcing? Just put all the execs in a parent company.

I think this is a good point. But the proper response in such cases, it seems to me, is to try to close the loopholes, rather than give up on the experiment.

It will be like playing whack-a-mole. Or the talented executives will just leave the country and go where they can earn more.

Or the talented executives will just leave the country and go where they can earn more.

The whack-a-mole game is undoubtedly true. About the most talented execs leaving, this may be true, and it is certainly what well-compensated execs will argue.

Also possible is that it will be primarily the most self-serving execs, rather than the most talented, that will leave. It would be a delightful irony if Swiss companies began performing better after an exodus of executives. And we should remember that there is no limit on executive pay, specifically.

"talented executives"

Oximoron at its best. But don't worry about those talented executives, you probably will find ten or more when they leave the country. Switzerland wouldn't have any problem attracting talented workers.

Exactly. I have quite a few clients where management and executive shareholding staff actually work for a different company than the rest of the company.

Typically, this is called something like CompanyName Management Ltd. which sources all its products from CompanyName Ltd. The management company owns the other company, but they are two separate legal structures.

There seems to be one of two possible outcomes if a bill like this passes: Either swiss companies drastically raise worker salaries, or they just move their businesses out of the country.

Is anyone here familiar enough with how Switzerland's economy is structured to know which way it would lean?

Could be some rather well paid cleaners in Switzerland.

It seems to be linked to the lowest paid workers' pay, rather than the cleaners' pay specifically.

So for an exec to take home $1 million, their lowest paid employee would have to be on $83,333

Seems like a nice incentive for companies to raise workers' wages, provided the 1:12 law is written in a way that is difficult to get around.

So it's either:

A) Double, triple, 10x existing wages - and go out of business before the year is out.

B) Dictate to privately run and owned businesses that they are subjects of their employees (rather than the other way around) - creating resentment, socialism, and speeding up automation and outsourcing.

I don't see a win here for anyone.

I see what you did there. :) There are many other ways it could go.

Is Hacker News turning into Reddit? What does this article have to do with startups, tech or anything else HN is about?

Don't get me wrong, it's an interesting article but, frankly, there are plenty of other websites I can go to for this kind of content.

I almost think that you are intentionally trolling, but I will link to and quote from the HN guidelines in response to your comment:

http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

> On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity.

> If your account is less than a year old, please don't submit comments saying that HN is turning into Reddit. (It's a common semi-noob illusion.)

Was just kidding. Sorry...

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