Comment by rayiner | Hacker News Reader

Comment by rayiner | Hacker News Reader

> After waiting twenty minutes, we are ushered into a room upstairs. A woman from the agency hands each of us a time sheet. For the sign-in, she tells us to write 8:30. “I know you were told to be here at 8:15,” she says, anticipating a protest that never comes, “but that was just to make sure you got here early.” And, like that, fifteen minutes are lopped from our paycheck. It’s a small but important lesson in what it means to be a “flexible” worker.

> But there are significant challenges to organizing the industry. “Because of the temp nature of work, it’s very easy for a worker who speaks out to be retaliated against,” says Palma. “They might not be called back to work the following day, or have their hours decreased.” That’s exactly what happened to Rodriguez, according to the WWU. After he spoke to the media and participated in strikes over unsafe workplace conditions—leading Cal/OSHA to fine the warehouse nearly $30,000—he was fired earlier this year. Federal charges have been filed against the company, alleging retaliation, and an investigation is under way.

I'm not a fan of labor unions, but I'm not sure what else can be done about this sort of thing. Litigation can only tackle small parts of the problem, and class action settlements leave the lawyers as the only winners. Fines are never high enough to disincentivize the activity. There's a high chance of not getting caught, and even when you do get caught the fine is barely higher than the cost of complying in the first place. Maybe a punishment of public floggings for executives at companies who violate labor laws?[1]

[1] There's a lot of Singapore worship among certain circles, so they shouldn't mind adopting some of their customs: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caning_in_Singapore.

Labour unions are a lot like everything else that works in our society. (Hold your vituperation!)

Labour unions, like democracy and capitalism, are the worst things we've ever tried, except for everything else that failed. We simply don't have a better way to appoint leaders except democracy. It's obviously broken in many ways, but the alternatives are worse. Economically, capitalism is deeply broken, but everything else we've tried is worse.

And labour unions as we see them today are just plain wrong.But less wrong than unfettered capitalism. You either need labour unions or you need overregulation, with inspectors everywhere in a business.

Just My Two Cents, of course.

The power of labor unions for low-paid workers is not as strong as you think. Where I went to school (U Chicago), there was a very active mostly student-organized university workers' labor union, but workplace violations were still routine. The power to strike is no help when you depend on your paycheck to survive, and the union's legal clout was no help when the laws were hard to enforce and deep-pocketed employers were your adversary. If you look around at lower-class unions, you see a broad pattern of ineffectiveness. For example farm workers have the UFW but being a farm worker remains one of the most intensely miserable jobs in the US, with constant rule-breaking by the employers, and a lot of unrepresented workers.

We already have a nearly flawless way to increase the welfare of low-paid workers, and that is to redistribute wealth to them through things like the negative income tax. Having enough money to live is the best negotiating position, union or no union. (For example, I think this is why middle-class unions have been so much more effective than lower-class ones.)

The power to strike is no help when you depend on your paycheck to survive

Well managed unions maintain a strike fund so that their members can survive the economic hardship of a strike.

After googling a little I think you are talking about Graduate Students United - their dues are only $5/year, which means they aren't even in the same league as the serious blue collar labor unions.

http://uchicagogsu.org/faq/

Actually I was talking about the organization that represents low-paid university workers, like janitors and cafeteria workers. I reworded my post to clarify.

Graduate students are a whole 'nother basket of beans.

farm workers have the UFW but being a farm worker remains one of the most intensely miserable jobs in the US, with constant rule-breaking by the employers, and a lot of unrepresented workers.

I don't think it is fair to blame the large number of unrepresented workers on the union itself. I'm sure the UFW wants to increase their membership past the paltry ~5,000 it has.

>Well managed unions maintain a strike fund so that their members can survive the economic hardship of a strike.

Recent grocery store workers voted to strike and the pay was going to be $100/week for picketing 15-20 hours a week. Great.

In these situations, the main weapon is knowledge. If the law says you have to give people X number of minutes as break, a union rep's job could be to collect records of when that rule was broken. Then you can hold that knowledge over the head of the employers, who often rely on information asymmetry to get away with shit.

It's not ideal, and certainly no UAW, but it's much better than unchecked abuses. You can use funds to buy appropriate equipment like gloves for workers and for their replacement when they fall apart.

> The power of labor unions for low-paid workers is not as strong as you think.

It's exactly as strong as I think. I just think that all the alternative ways to protect them are even weaker.

I honestly don't know why we try to go after executives at all. It's proven ineffective since you can never mount enough evidence to get a real case and the fines are just seen as a cost of doing business for the company. Instead you need to create labor laws that are enforced in much the same was as moving violations are enforced for driving.

For example, if you are hired as a driver for a delivery company, you, the driver, are responsible for speeding or running stop signs and red lights, not your employer. You never here about a manager telling their employers to speed and retaliating against those that don't speed to make a delivery. On the surface, similar laws may appear to victimize the people at the bottom, but it instead does something very very important. It's places a firm barrier across which almost all workers will push back from since they are the ones that will be left holding the bag when law enforcement shows up and starts handing out fines.

So in the original article, they could create a law that fines the manager some multiple of the amount that every one of those laborers lost. Let's say it is 15 minutes work times 30 employees at $12/hour. That's $90 dollars in lost pay. Now make the fine 10x that value plus court costs and lawyer fees and now every single manager is going to think twice before willingly victimizing these temp workers, and will question their bosses when asked to do things like this.

Laws that make illegal these unethical actions with very real victims would empower workers to stand up for their rights better than anything else. No one would ever have to stick his or her neck out, they can just call the cops anonymously and tip them off to unethical business practices. The enforcement of violations would be handled right there on the spot without ever involving the legal department of the corporation responsible for the abuse.

Not so! I used to drive a 911 ambulance. We we're told to drive safe and not break various rules, but were punished when we didn't arrive in the allotted timeframe of 9min. The punishment was that workers on 24-hour shifts (who normally had a house to sleep in) were forced to post on street corners and not allowed into their quarters. This made the shift miserable and the lack of sleep was a real safety problem.

Ok, however I would imagine that ambulance driver's are in a class very different than most other types of drivers (take out food, FedEx/UPS, taxi, limo, etc.)

I see it as a yin-yang situation. Corporations are a way to organize capital for the benefit of the capital owners, unions are a way to organize labor for the benefit of the labor "owners." In a healthy capitalist system, both are necessary in order to maintain balance.

That's the ideal. In the real world, both types of organizations will seek ways to exploit any advantage in their favor. But that's life.

Corporations and labor unions are not really equivalent.

If you view them purely from the point of view of market power, then yes, they are the same thing. Both create an oligopoly in the market for buying/selling labor.

But corporations also are the way that both capital and labor are organized to produce an actual product. There is no analogous role for unions, except some special unions that play a large role in management.

What, livable working conditions don't matter compared to the prouct?

I'm not sure what you mean by "livable working conditions"

If you are referring to total compensation and hours, this comes under what I referred to as "oligopoly". That is, labor unions can create market power on the side of labor, in order to raise pay.

However, this doesn't benefit society as a whole, and so it is only reasonable when there is market power on the other side. In my industry, there did seem to be an attempt to form a cartel of employer, but Mark Zuckerberg seems to have broken that cartel.

If you are referring to actual working conditions, like workplace safety, I already mentioned that when I talked about special unions that are involved with management. E.g. in very dangerous professions, unions might be part of the "deal" where management and workers agree on how to, as you say, organize labor and capital.

In general, however, and especially in IT, there is no need for unions because the market for labor is competitive, and working conditions can be negotiated between the worker and the corporation.

I agree IT unions aren't very necessary. We have it easy; we're well paid, we're fairly flexible, and if one employer sucks, we can easily can a better job elsewhere.

But plenty of industries don't have that advantage. Many workers are very dependent on a single employer. This is especially the case with workers that have highly specific training and experience that doesn't translate well to other jobs. If they're exploited or otherwise unhappy, they can't simply quit and get a similar job elsewhere, whereas the employer can afford to lose a single employee and train a new one, which makes the employer-employee relationship an unequal one. There, unions can provide a lot of value to keep employers honest.

Unfortunately, the power is in the hands of the temp workers.... if they all stick together. If they all collectively demanded better working conditions and better pay, they could succeed. After all, the work won't get done if they don't do it. Management certainly isn't going to dirty their hands in this kind of job.

And after all what we see, it really is have-nots (proletariat) versus the haves(capitalists/managers).

Or be replaced by robots. All I could think of reading that is why they haven't figured out how to fold and tape a cardboard box with a robot yet.

They should get on that, and then those people won't have to be subjected to those conditions anymore.

And then those people won't have jobs anymore.

Unemployed, but more importantly, unexploited.

They're going to be replaced by robots either way. That doesn't mean they shouldn't be treated decently in the meantime.

So we can give them a living wage, which will accelerate the development of a robotic replacement, so that they can earn a bit more in the meantime, before their inevitable unemployment?

The earlier mass unemployment comes the better. Only that will necessitate some major rethinking of classical employment and welfare ideas, and very likely, finally have us implement basic income.

As opposed to what? Deliberately staggering progress in an effort to maintain a society of contrived busywork so people can slave away for pennies? You might as well just give away the pennies rather than deliberately embrace inefficiency in an effort to keep these jobs in existence.

Does being unexploited pay the heating bill? That's all minimum wage workers really care about. Not some nebulous ivory tower view on economics.

No, but as soon as there's enough permanently unemployed workers, the sooner we get our precious guaranteed income, right?

This is similar to the logic people use with the War on Drugs. As soon as there are enough dead Mexicans and gangsters in the street, eventually they HAVE to lift prohibition, right?

The government can remain irrational for longer than we can remain alive.

Look at countries like India or even China. Countries can survive hundreds of years with high level of poverty.

The key thing is if the situation in the US will get worse faster or slower than the slow mentality shift that is required to considered poor people as disposable.

I believe he's being satirical. Obviously a bad job is (usually) better than no job, that's the point. The whole concept of "exploitation" makes no sense. The businesses that do hire are benefiting people way more than those that don't hire any at all or have replaced workers with automation.

Something like a basic income could distribute money from all those industries at the same time to those who need it. It would solve the unemployment problem, or at least make it more bearable, and improve working conditions for these workers.

Totally agree. As productivity continually improves, I see no way to move forward without a basic income. And this is coming from a person with libertarian-leaning ideals.

Every luddite fights technological improvement.

The hoe displaced farm workers. Machines replaces lots of farm workers.

Shipping containers destroyed the massive labor requirement and theft of the shipping industry. Several orders of magnitude of jobs destroyed.

People don't just wither and die; the efficiencies offered by technological change turn into new industries and higher quality of life for everyone. Would you really be better off if everyone had to farm or hunt their own food?

But hey, at least everyone would be employed.

I actually agree with you; my point was more driving towards the need for a basic income as productivity continues to improve.

They have. It's called Kiva Systems and Amazon acquired them in 2012.

According to https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6KRjuuEVEZs, you still need people to do the boxing/packing even with a Kiva system.

Agreed. The automobile manufacturers were very successful in improving quality and efficiency via robotics, and were also encouraged to do so by enormous drags from labor unions. Warehouses have also increased automation, but clearly they can improve more. Beyond the warehouse, I'm eager to see their deployment in retail stores and fast-food. Consumers will benefit from efficiencies, and the unhappy workers will be free to find jobs more to their liking.

> and the unhappy workers will be free to find jobs more to their liking.

At that level, it's not about find a job you like, it's about making enough money to survive.

Keep in mind, a negative income tax/minimum basic income plan only has problems passing until a majority of the population can't find work. History has taught us the results of "Let them eat cake".

While I understand the sympathy here, I'm not sure I agree.

In 5(?) years these jobs will be replaced by robots. They will be safer, more efficient, and cheaper for companies. These workers will not be forced to work under these "horrible" conditions any longer. They will simply be discarded.

Question: Would you rather have this job, fully knowing its negatives, or have no job?

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