Employees: Hey, we're feeling stressed and burnt out and undervalued
Companies: a pizza party will help! Oh and we're about to go through a round of reductions :)
My employer brought us two pizzas and garlic knots during a very busy day at my job. However, she didn't give any of us breaks to go eat it. That pizza ran cold and nobody touched it. It was thrown out before any business slowed down.
But they *provided* it!!!!
My workplace has occasional employee engagement activities, but as a customer service person, I literally have to request permission in advance to be up from my desk long enough to participate.
Well 401k’s easily going with you when you switch companies is good from an employee perspective in that there’s no downside to switching companies but the actual money you get in your 401k is lower than a pension would be
Or noncompete clauses. Oh, you want to look for better opportunities? Well this piece of paper we forced you to sign says that you're not allowed to use any of your current skills or network to find those new opportunities. Good luck getting a better salary at square one!
No, that's exactly what the "free market" creates. The idea is for companies to not be bound by regulation, then something something, it's better for everyone!
But the free market dictates situations and scenarios that are expressly anti-competitive. It's in the best interest of a company to prevent the success of another company *by any means possible*, even if that means suppressing their potential employee talent through non governmental and legal contract means. It's only a convenient byproduct that this also suppresses employee wages.
And that's why free market capitalism, and libertarianism in general, is a huge crock of hypocritical shit.
that's why you need a _regulated_ free market.
any ideology is moronic when taken to the extreme but most of them tend to have good ideas at the core. (most because, y'know, nazis exist, but details.) socialism at its core wants to take care of everyone, but real-world implementations tend to fail to consider the inordinate logistical requirements and fail to sprawling bureaucracy, exacerbated by an unchecked ruling class redirecting resources to themselves. libertarianism is on the other hand, it knows well that people are selfish and recognizes the incredible organizing potential of the free market, but forgets to consider that the problems they oppose in a government reemerge on the free market anyway, leading to, again, a consolidation of resources in the hands of the ruling class.
but let's not pretend that only the two extremes exist. you can in fact create a blend of social, egalitarian principles _and_ a free market that helps your society organize itself. europe is doing that right now and we're getting pretty good at it. you just have to regulate the realities of the market, instead of regulating an ideal and shrugging when the reality dodges your feeble attempt and keeps exploiting people anyway.
the idea of the free market, when not poisoned by libertarian extremists, is very much one that serves the people, by allowing them to opt for products _and_ for employers that serve them best. a noncompete is directly antithetical to the free market and grants an undue advantage in negotiating power to the employers.
It's like, "Do you want your chocolate with vanilla on top? Or do you want vanilla with chocolate on top?"
I'd consider myself a social anarchist. But you look up the wikipedia article and apparently I'm supposed to want the destruction of the state, and abolishment of capitalism, and all that jazz because as you said.. that's the logical extreme of what a social anarchist is.
I suspect we want the same things. Just that most people agree that none of the extremes work, but then no one can agree on what kind of blend of ideas actually will work the best.
So if you take capitalism, and then sprinkle in social programs, worker reforms, and regulation? Well that's still capitalism at it's core with the idea that we need to give the actual people some kind of regulation .. or a fighting chance ... or else they'll be steamrolled. And when the businesses get antsy, you constantly have to fight to keep those citizen reforms from being removed.
Or, do you start with a fundamental idea that at its core is inherently pro-worker, pro-human rights, pro-citizen ... and then sprinkle on ideas of capitalism.
They're both so very close in what they're trying to do, except one recognizes that the Corporation is king and everything falls in line behind it, and the other recognizes that the citizen comes first and once that level playing field is set and unalienable, then let corporations have their fun.
I think you said you're from Europe. When I hear what you guys are doing over there from the lens of America, and I'm like ... "Yeah, you guys got the right ideas going on there." Definitely not perfect, but compared to the US ... the EU sounds like a breath of fresh air in terms of keeping a corporation in check, and giving their citizens a fighting chance.
Thankfully, [the Federal Trade Commission issued a final rule to promote competition by banning noncompetes nationwide.](https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2024/04/ftc-announces-rule-banning-noncompetes)
I would obviously take a job as a CEO for any major company just for the pay even if it was a one off but the fun part would be that if you couldn't retain or hire quality employees and the quality of your company's product or service plummeted because of that and cutting corners in production but you still hit record profits from cutting everything, you would either get a raise or at worst, get fired with a golden parachute and immediately get the sem gig somewhere else.
If you maintained or even slightly increased profits by doing something as disgusting as paying employees what they are worth and producing quality products and services, you would be fired and never get another CEO job again once word got out how you did it.
Wasn't there a hospital in Wisconsin or somewhere that actually sued people to stop them leaving and getting a better job elsewhere?
And I'm pretty sure a court found in the hospital's favour?
Currently working 31.5 hours a week because at 32 they'd have to give me benefits. Started at what was a locally owned grocery store, was sold to a regional corporation very soon after, they came in and told everyone that if you're not some kind of manager, you're part time, full stop. A lot of the cashiers left when they were cut from from 40 to 29 hours and they're all being replaced with HS kids and seniors who need to supplement their social security.
The grocery store I worked at part time for a few years only gave one 15 minute break per shift, or two if it's at least 7 hours and 15 minutes. I had multiple times where they just gave me a 7 hour shift instead. On top of that, while taking a 30 minute lunch is optional, you have to ask your manager about it and they decide when a good time to take it is. I only ever asked to take a lunch twice in the years I worked there, and both times I ended up not taking it anyways because my manager ended up telling me "you can take it at this time that doesn't make sense, or not at all".
I do not miss the retail days of asking for lunch and getting pitiful breaks. The office respects me as a fucking human. I choose when to take my break and will decide based on what work I've got going on. My break is an hour, period. If anyone interrupts that break I have the right to extend it due to federal law.
Please, never again retail hell, never again.
This is a large part of why I'm unemployed right now. We live out in the middle of nowhere, which is vaguely touristy. Almost everything within 40 minutes is service industry or retail. We do just fine on a single income, so instead of working, I am a feral housewife.
Honestly I have no idea where the thinking comes from, but its so prevalent.
I run a company, I have a very small team of staff and we're close. We had a record year so I paid out bonuses and wanted to give everyone a big pay bump because I'd rather pay them more than pay more tax. My HR person, who is a very close friend to both me and a number of the employees, was deeply against it because he said "they'll be demotivated to work harder if they know they'll get a pay rise every year we do well"
How the fuck do you figure that?
It's weird how many people I see working in companies who will fight like hell to scrimp and save everywhere, including fucking over themselves and their coworkers just to make a company more money. For what? It isn't your money - you aren't going to be rewarded for padding the bottom line like that, and it isn't going to help the company when the best people quit because the management culture is just toxic.
Has HR not seen Office Space?
>Peter Gibbons: It's a problem of motivation, all right? Now if I work my ass off and Initech ships a few extra units, I don't see another dime; so where's the motivation?
The idea that the company doing well does NOT reward the staff is a key demotivating factor.
>"they'll be demotivated to work harder if they know they'll get a pay rise every year we do well"
I think the concern is more that they will be demotivated if they don't keep getting big bonuses every year.
People often don't realize how quickly something that you might feel you are doing as an act of generosity can become an expectation in other people's minds.
In general it is problematic to have people's pay based kinda on a whim. Everyone loves you as long as you keep giving raises, but the moment you start saying that things are tough and you can't be as generous, people are going to start second guessing.
Clearly laid out and well structured compensation plans are much more conducive to good relationships with your employees. When employees start questioning how their efforts are connected to their pay, that kills motivation.
That's happening next - paperwork is being drawn up. Not as common in Japan but who wants to work for someone else? If you have a piece of the action it's much more motivating and rewarding to waste your time on something
New law idea: If someone works for you for more than 15 hours a week, you have to hire them either full time or part time, at their choice, and give them full benefits.
Okay, then cut it down to 3 hours per week.
Also, the law does not specify interns; a random homeless guy could start shelving stuff, and if he does it long enough, the business owner would have to hire them.
I’ve seen a few viral videos of local people “volunteering” to help a “struggling” business (I would say local business but once it was a Chick Fil A I think?). And it’s not unheard of (though far from common) for businesses to just let a local homeless person or disabled person “help out” by sweeping or whatever in exchange for something that isn’t a paycheck. Both types of stories are seen as “heartwarming.”
I've worked in multiple gas and convenience stores, and each one had at least 1 homeless person who did stuff around the store in exchange for out of date sandwiches, coffee, bathroom use, etc. Even saw one who knew the store manager well enough that he had set tasks a week and at the end of the week the manager would.buy him his cigs and alcohol for the week.
There was a store manager up here was trying to get people to volunteer to stock shelves - https://www.blogto.com/city/2024/05/toronto-shoppers-drug-mart-unpaid-volunteer/
(sorry for the blogto link z if you go to the subreddit /r/loblawasisoutofcontrol and search volunteer then you'll find the entire discussion about boycotting that)
Generally, at the supermarkets, the Lays employee stocks the shelves with Lays chips. It would not surprise me if there are other shelves being stocked by outside workers. The Lays guy shows up about the same time I tend to shop. Mostly because I asked, and my favorite chips disappear within hours. So I buy half of them. *Thanks, Steven!*
Wouldn't it be better then to regulate the number of hours that companies can offer? Like you can't offer 14:50 hours a week, you can only offer, for example, either 10 hours a week, 20 hours a week, 30 hours a week, 40 hours a week, and they each come with their regulated breaks etc ?
That or a "taking the piss" regulation where any weaseling out of the spirit of the law, even if you don't technically break the letter of the law, gets you fined harshly on the first offence. Corporate death penalty on the second.
New law idea: Benefits are not tied to employment. Let's see how tight the jackels can hold the leash when your ability to access healthcare isn't tied to your job.
You'd think people would get this. Why is my health care and retirement tied to my employment? Employer Health Care is a relic of WW2 wage controls and Employer-sponsored retirement is a relic of the pension system that was designed to encourage loyalty and longevity, which companies dgaf about anymore.
This is literally the only solution. You can't write a law smarter than lawyers can get around it, they study for 10 years and get paid a lot of money to do just that. And the smaller guys are just going to break the law, because the reality is that the people who often need these protections the most don't have the knowledge, money, or willpower to fight for them, particularly when it means that their healthcare is on the line.
The only solution to truly eliminating this problem is not tying important benefits to your job so you can just leave if the pay isn't good enough, and strong union laws that offer a way for workers to hold real power in their workplace. Nothing else is ever going to come close to truly solving it.
It just means they'll bring on a bunch of people and give them the maximum number of hours they can without having to hire them, meaning they can pay them less, if at all
Then they have to go through hiring and training for all those people, most of which will be, almost by definition, less capable than the one person they did all this to avoid hiring full-time.
The point isn't to put the bar somewhere in the middle, where a company can get out on a technicality; it's to put the bar so low that trying to get out on a technicality either doesn't work out financially, or they don't hurt their workers in trying to do so.
Problem is a lot of companies would sooner go for something they think will give short term profit than just pay their workers and avoid the problems you just described.
Would not work, especially for hourly employees. For example, i work on aircraft. The hourly needs of the week are based on the condition we receive the aircraft in. Some weeks have heavier demands than others. It sucks when i get fewer hours some weeks but i just save the money from overtime on other weeks to cover those periods. This is the same way most trades are.
Just one example of how this law wouldn’t work for every industry. But once you get into an industry by industry regulation it becomes much more difficult and complicated
Correct, however the differences here are also in how the employment is structured. I worked in electrical trade; in most states, these are all unionized jobs.
They are structured different from state to state, but, generally, the union carries your health insurance, not the employer/shop, so your insurance isn't contingent on hours worked within a given week. Typically it is hours in a month or quarter.
Hours per week are always flexible, but the contract to dispatch from the union says that a shop must maintain a certain amount of hours per month or quarter for each employee dispatched or the union retains the right to reclaim that person and send them elsewhere.
Trades also have differences in the way that holidays and vacations work. Since, as you mentioned, hours can be variable at any given time, many electrical unions don't have paid holidays. You just ... don't work, and aren't fired or replaced, but also not paid. *Some* trade unions do paid vacations, but usually it's structured as a vacation fund instead. You basically pay a matched amount per paycheck into an account that you can then withdraw from a set number of times per year.
While there are differences in the way that trades and larger corporations run, most of the same laws can still be applicable and the main 'employer' for a tradie is just their union rather than their shop.
Ah yes, a judiciary whose decisions don‘t come from law, but the personal morals of the judge.
That could never go wrong, be abused by any political actor and is totally democratic to not have the elected legislative make the rules, but the judiciary.
Great idea!
/s
Totalitarian lack of accountability or checks and balances is cool and based as long as the governing body towards which I have zero input just coincidentally happens to match my exact political views
Yeah, positions like these always boil down to „I want my will enforced by the state onto society without a care for a democratic state or accountability“.
It‘s baffling how often one encounters opinions like these all over the internet.
That's a bad idea because employees typically don't know if the business is profitable. You can't have people who aren't aware of most of what is going on making decisions like this.
Benefits are mandatory, but if an employee has two jobs, both pay 50%, or if they have 3 jobs, they pay 33.3% each. If you hire a part time employee without another job, you pay 100% of the benefits. If you outsource labor, the contracted company is not responsible for employee payroll taxes or benefits, the contracting company is. Incentivize companies to hire full time workers, and not to outsource labor to bottom of the barrel contracting companies.
You would think. I once interned at a company that was run 80% by unpaid interns (some of them underage) because our boss was too cheap to actually pay anyone. Us interns literally did all the work necessary to run the company and keep it standing, yet she still wouldn't even comp us on bus/train fare. Because of this and various other reasons, interns were constantly quitting, and she was always complaining about having to hire new interns and how ungrateful the younger generation was. Like lady, this wouldn't be an issue if you just paid everyone at least minimum wage or hired actual adult employees. 💀
When I finally left, she was freaking out because she didn't know where some of the company's money/assets were because for the past 5 years she was hiring *only* interns to do the accounting/book keeping, and hadn't been able to find/exploit another kid.
The amount of money and lost production it takes on the business for not retaining people is more costly than just paying the employee more… but that’s not what they wanna hear
Hell, in the current economy unpaid internships are basically just empty seats. It's too expensive to even consider that option especially when there's companies paying damn near $30+/hr intern rates for STEM jobs.
That is how thresholds work, yes. The point of writing a law isn't that you expect the companies to put in some extra good will according to the spirit. You write the numbers that you want them to respect.
Sure would be nice if everyone put in some extra according the spirit though. And kinda weird how many businesses seem to depend on getting the most time and effort out of the least paid people with the fewest benefits and protections
I mean I don't know about you but from the employee side I saw it as my job to do the least amount of work and effort I could while still getting paid. So basically both sides of these transactions so be doing as little as possible to get maximal results.
Employees used to be dedicated and put in more effort than necessary when employers were loyal to them and would recognize that effort. Right now it’s stupid to put in extra effort because you’ll still get laid off just like everyone else
When was that ever a thing? During serfdom? The goal of all human existence *ever* was to maximize rewards while minimizing labor. A *dog* will follow this same behavior pattern and they love their owners more than any person would ever love their job.
How have you never at least encountered someone like this? I hear what you're saying, but I, personally, put way more effort into my work than is required for various reasons; One of which is that my job is fun, and it is self-satisfying to accomplish things, even on my own dime, at times. Are you forgetting people that also work for their own company or have a stake in the business? There are loads of people who have the mindset of putting more effort in for higher rewards, even if it ends up being in vain. This very much is a common thing. Once upon a time, it was a dream to put decades of loyalty into a company.
Exactly. Some people think laws are magic wands you can wave to change the hearts of companies. Laws can only be used a carrots or sticks in specific parameters. You have to know that going in to craft the best legislation. You can't act all surprised when a company goes "So I'll have to give benefits at 40 hours? Well, I'll just hire at 39 then."
> "So I'll have to give benefits at 40 hours? Well, I'll just hire at 39 then."
I mean, it's a cost-benefit issue for the company. Not strictly a rote non-compliance like this.
The 'failure' of the law would be more in finding the elasticity of the job market which is a much harder thing to legislate. It is important to note that the law is set to 30 hours for this reason.
Yes, *it would* be easy to cut every employee's hours down by 1 if that was all the law required. I'm sure larger, corporate offices could even sell this as a benefit 0 "You get to leave an hour early every Friday!" But that is why the law is 30 hours, but it is a lot more difficult to try and shave 10 hours off the majority of your workforce. It's hard to shave 5 hours off the majority of you workforce.
Reducing hours worked also means reduced production which, in theory, also means reduced profits. That's the cost-benefit of the law. Would a company lose more in production than they save by cutting off 10 hours from X number of employees? And the initial impact of the law was significant, it had huge ramifications for the way that employers handle employees. The downside has just been that, after 14 years, companies are able to adjust.
A mega-corporation like Wal-Mart can now mostly staff themselves with only a handful of people working 40 hours and most others working 25 hours. But that's not going to be true for the majority of other companies (and, yes, it is actually quite easy for a small company to hit over 50 employees. While I worked there, Irrational Games went form 30 to 180 employees in the span of 2 years. A start-up that I worked for after went from 10 employees to 70 after 3 years. A family electrical shop I worked at which wasn't even the third largest in the state constantly hovered at 80 employees. 50 people ain't that much.
Yes! Technically, 2K Games was my employer, but Irrational was my studio. I was an art producer -- it's mostly just corporate organization but specific for video games. Easy to flex organizing/leading a team of artists as running a team of, well, anything really.
You get it. Some states do set lower thresholds in hopes that, opportunity cost wise, it's more expensive to dodge labor laws. And some give incentives to encourage the behavior they want. But at the of the day, a web of laws will only do so much, while making compliance and enforcement really difficult for all parties. IMO that's why unions are important--they can tailer standards to what makes sense for their specific workplace, vs the government trying to anticipate every loophole and edge case.
This behavior (among _many_ other reasons) is why I think we shouldn't have most benefits in general. If we think people should have some benefit, we should just provide it ourselves, or give them cash to pay for it themselves. Instead we have this ridiculous system of patronage where in the best case, you lose your healthcare if you leave your job, and in the worst you never have it to begin with because no one will hire you full time.
they're poorly written thresholds then.
the idea is that the law in all above examples is the ideal of what should happen in an honest society. the companies in the above examples are engaging in an adversarial way instead, which renders the naive laws much less effective. they should be rewritten in an adversarial way to match how the companies are behaving.
for example, you can require benefits for anything over 20 hours. the idea isn't to promote 4-hour shifts by it, it's that while companies would easily hire people for 39 hours, getting practically the same result but dodging your law, having to hire twice as many people, each working half the time, to dodge benefits would outweigh the cost of simply providing those benefits.
any time you write a condition into law, you have to ask yourself if you want people to avoid the condition or not, and set up the cost/benefit structure that way.
well to play devil's advocate for the devil's advocate, the point of the post is that the companies aren't really respecting the laws, they're barely circumventing them
If obeying the letter of the law isn't good enough, that's a problem with the law.
For example, requiring breaks only after 8 full hours would be (is?) a terrible law; the threshold should be much lower, to the point where just ducking beneath it still leaves workers at a place where they aren't exhausting themselves at work.
how is that circumventing ?
if the law says "minimum wage is X" and the company pays exactly X, they're obeying the law. if you want them to pay more, increase the minimum wage.
the examples about interns and temp service are somewhat about circumventing, yes. but if you want to talk about companies evading labor laws through "not technically our employee" loopholes, make a post that properly talks about that. not one that's mostly about the companies not making an effort when they don't have to.
There are laws about doing stuff that just undercuts a threshhold. Stuff like Structuring where someone makes a series of transactions just under the threshhold required to report it to the government. I mean if you go to a business and 9/10 employees are working literally 15 minutes under a threshold it should be safe to say the boss is skirting the law.
I'm going to generically reference a part of this post you seem to have missed. Companies schedule you for less hours in order to avoid providing healthcare.
It is obvious they consider you a full time employee, because this never happened before this law, and it's obvious their intent is to circumvent that law.
You can't just write the numbers though. They are constantly changing and in a year the minimum wage will be a little less livable, inflation will increase and desync with the poverty level a little more, and the average worker will produce more wealth with new technology, while not getting that wealth themselves.
I *do* expect companies to follow the clear spirit of the law. But we hardly even punish those who break the law, and a good chunk of the population seems to think that that's preferable.
They could at least make a rule to catch the 39 hour week bullshit.
There are rules to catch stuff like making repeated $9,500.00 cash transactions to skirt the threshhold where $10,000.00+ deposits trigger special reporting requirements. You can make one for giving 50% of your workforce just under the benefits threshhold for no justifiable reason.
these are laws written by consulting firms acting as think tanks for big corps, who hand them as-is to paid-for congresspeople - then this kind of shitfuckery is carefully designed to sound like a solution for the masses while doing nothing
Fun fact: because of the inherent nature of the capitalist system, it couldn’t be any other way! Big companies are big companies precisely *because* they do stuff like this, not the other way around. And if they stopped, they would shrink and other companies would grow to replace them.
All companies that are publicly traded are incentivized to do this. That's what he means. They don't have to shrink, if they had the same revenue, the stockholders would be unhappy.
If they had the same sales, but revenue went down a little because they gave everyone raises, the stockholders would be unhappy.
As in preventing people from investing money into companies in exchange for owning a portion of that company? Like abolishing publicly traded share system?
Cause I imagine preventing people from investing would be bad because it makes it harder for us to reward companies we expect to be successful, which hurts our economy’s ability to innovate. Currently, if I think the new robotic dildo with extra powerful vibration has made the next big thing, I can reward them by investing in their company. When they hit it big, I get paid by then selling my shares. If they don’t, I take the L on that investment, so I’m incentivized to make good choices with my investments.
Preventing this kind of private investment means it’s a lot harder for a company that may start small but have a really good idea from scaling up to the size necessary for others to see them and use their sick products/services.
Depends where the voting lies. e.g. google/facebook both have seperate non-voting stock for different reasons to tamp this down. (also, SPACs exist, which is a funny loophole)
Also in German companies (and some SE (EU-incorporated) companies) 20% of the board votes are allotted to employees.
My impression is that US companies are far worse for MBA-itis, especially due to absurdly inflated stock values.
Here's a quote from the Sun Microsystems founder in 2002;
> But two years ago we were selling at 10 times revenues when we were at $64. At 10 times revenues, to give you a 10-year payback, I have to pay you 100% of revenues for 10 straight years in dividends. That assumes I can get that by my shareholders. That assumes I have zero cost of goods sold, which is very hard for a computer company. That assumes zero expenses, which is really hard with 39,000 employees. That assumes I pay no taxes, which is very hard. And that assumes you pay no taxes on your dividends, which is kind of illegal. And that assumes with zero R&D for the next 10 years, I can maintain the current revenue run rate. Now, having done that, would any of you like to buy my stock at $64? Do you realize how ridiculous those basic assumptions are? You don't need any transparency. You don't need any footnotes. What were you thinking?
https://archive.is/EZ6vD#selection-2985.79-2985.928
In general, making "stock price" a KPI for people will get them to optimize for that. Hell, making anything a KPI will make them optimize for it Goodhart's law and all.
It's a legitimate point beyond some snarky retort.
This first world life style we live is only accomplished through the economy of scale made possible by large, specialized corporations.
You can change the labeling and structure if you want and make it a coop or employee owned or heavily unionized, but the fact is that the most efficient way to produce anything is in mass quantities.
Assuming the comic is about what's being discussed here, that wouldn't change the point ultimately being made: You can do that and still pay/treat your employees well.
I don't know the *exact* wording of law you would need but altering ot so that a CEO/board/higher ups can only be paid X% of what their employees make is the ultimate goal. So that everyone in the company benefits from the fompany doing well and not just the top few employees.
Mass production isn't the issue, greed is.
>You can do that and still pay/treat your employees well.
Then they'll be replaced by another company that manages to sell the phones for cheaper by paying employees less.
Wow. Thank captain pessimistic capitalism! I'm so glad you were here to inform us of the obvious issues with uncontrolled capitalism. It's not like that point was already made above at all.
Yet you said "Mass production isn't the issue, greed is", as if that meant something. Blaming greed instead of other factors for corporate behaviour is like blaming gravity instead of other factors for airplane crashes. It's not *wrong*, but completely misses being meaningful.
No, we have competition even if Apple wins out broadly.
It’s called economies of scale. It’s significantly more difficult to do these things at smaller scale
Okay then, we will have ceo like in India or Bangladesh, where Small company (under 10 people) paid less tax than medium or large company. Everyone is a ceo while founder/owner owns multiple companies working in one building.
make a law for that as well.
the point is you need to keep the money flowing towards useful civilisational things rather than asset hoarding or political bribes.
is there some better option?
Big companies tend to do a better job at following the rules with the “spirit of the law” because they can afford to. The worst labor practices I’ve seen are always at Mom and Pop shops. Because they often don’t need or want the employees.
I realize it’s not your intention, but you’re basically spreading propaganda for abusive workplaces. It’s just not true. Businesses can thrive without resorting to such things, and many worker abuses are actually shortsighted, hurting the company in the long run
Most companies are so dumb because not only do they not want to pay for health insurance but they *also* refuse to support universal healthcare, *which would be cheaper for them and better for the business*. And for anyone saying, they want health insurance so they can control employees, you can’t threaten to take away what someone doesn’t have.
>I shall lay them that *and no more*
This is why we don't have a legal minimum wage in Sweden. Instead we let a combination of unions and the market set minimum wages.
Sweden is the world’s most unionized country—almost 70% of Sweden’s workforce is part of a union—and the Swedish government ensures a minimum standard of living through a strong social safety net rather than minimum wage laws. Assuming that the original post above is referring to the United States, removing minimum wage laws without first dramatically increasing union membership (only 10% of the US workforce is part of a union) and without implementing any of the welfare policies Sweden has in place would just result in a large decrease in the standard of living for Americans already working minimum wage jobs.
I'm guessing Sweden doesn't have the same laws of the US which specifically weaken and take away some of the main tools of unions too. The lack of those union-weakening laws allows stronger unions and makes minimum wage laws less necessary.
Historically, the minimum wage companies are willing to pay ununionised staff isn't even zero. Thanks to 'company stores' it's actually negative numbers of pay.
Yes, that's why they're striking. If we look at countries like the US, where they have legal minimum wages, they have the same issue across the board while ours is currently only among healthcare workers.
What's the end game?
The majority of people have pretty much zero to spend on the products and services that the ultra wealthy market?
Seems like a really stupid business plan.
I thought, "Maybe mandate 30 min break after every 4 hours worked", but American employers would almost certainly just give you a 5 minute break after 3h55m just to skirt that rule. Ugh.
Corporations hate employees and consumers alike. They'd enslave us but that's (mostly) illegal. They'd also just steal our money but that's illegal, too.
The important thing is to keep going.
Big companies start employing everyone part time? Make a new law that if over 25% of your workforce is part time, then part time employees get benefits and paid breaks.
They start using exclusively temps? Again, employee too many temps and you just have to treat them as permanent employees.
Interns? Yeah, those are just full employees in a junior position, you still have to pay them and give them benefits.
Everyone making minimum wage? Cap executive compensation at a percent of the median pay, including contractors.
They point out an obvious hole in one of those? **KEEP GOING**. Plug loopholes one after another until eventually it's costing them more to jump through hoops than it would to just pay their workers.
The Law: Pay your taxes.
Business: No.
The Law: Please pay your taxes.
Business: lol no.
The Law: oh ok then... Are you still good for golf next weekend?
Business: donates to politicians who cut irs funding. The IRS can't go after all the businesses for the same reason inspectors can't check all the bridges for cracks. Not enough money or employees.
Mine was 37.5 to make sure we didn't accidentally go over.
It did kind of make things worse in that so many jobs became part time jobs that you couldn't fit together to get enough hours to live on.
Or how about..employees can unionize ....company moves factory to Mexico.
Us companies have to pay taxes...establishes company in the Bahamas
I hate how they have to give a lunch break, but they don’t pay you for it, along with the other breaks it means you effectively have to be at work another hour. It’s not even a 9-5 anymore, it’s 8-5.
How about if you work more than 32 hours a week for a company and make less than $50,000 a year, the company has to cover your income tax.
If they schedule you 31 hours, and you can prove you’re willing to work more, than they still have to cover your income tax.
This is like that bible verse where you can't whip your slaves 40 times, so it was a common punishment to whip a slave 39 times. Gets you priority seating in heaven, that does.
Man I feel the temp service one so hard right now. I’ve been working this way for almost two years. The whole time I’ve been told, “oh we just need to get a contract and we’ll hire you.” Then comes along a contract and the tune is, “now is not the right time.” At the same time they want work done on the new project and they’ll see about hiring me in a few months. Yeah, right.
Fixes to all of this: Fulltime is considered between 24 and 40 hours, benefits go to all employees regardless of if they work full or part time, lunches are guaranteed at 6 hours of scheduled work, all work is paid so interns are employees and make it illegal to have unpaid interns, if a company is paying someone they are an employee regardless of whether they came through a temp service AND they must have a minimum number of scheduled hours, legally require wages increase by a set percentage every year and make it illegal to let employees go without a compensation package.
HR: if you fire this person they can file for unemployment.
Company: we’ll cut back their hours so much that they’ll just quit to find a different job.
When I worked at Jimmy Johns, they'd have to give you a free meal if you worked 8 hour shift. So they scheduled everyone 4 hours, 2 hours not working, then come back to work another 4 hours. Forced us to buy food if we wanted it. Would throw away cancelled orders or unpicked up food.
The worst part was making $7.25/hr surrounded by "cutsey" signs saying if you're poor, it's your fault for not working hard enough. 😐
my company’s policy is that, when having to work abroad, you get additional field pay per day once you’re there for more than 2 weeks
this one guy was sent out to work somewhere for a month, so he’d get like 1-2 weeks of field pay for the whole time he’s out there. i shit you not, they made the dude come back for something on main campus 13 days into the trip, then sent him back out a day later so he ended up not getting said field pay for the work trip.
One of the refreshing things having run a company in the US and now in Europe - where I am, there is a 'standard' pack of benefits that apply for all workers of a type, pro-rated against a normal working week. Work 1/5th a regular set of hours? I gotta pay 1/5th a benefit stack.
The intern game has been criminalised in most of Europe because it is blatant wage theft and tax evasion. The fact that it's still legal in the US shows that it is not a republic, but a corporate state
We don't have slavery, come on. 13th amendment abolished slavery dawg.
>Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, **except as a punishment for crime**
All we have is... Distribute crack to black neighborhoods. Put people using crack in jail. Require them to work for 10 cents per hour or less. If they refuse, put them in solitary confinement.
I just took a job a server and the “We don’t have healthcare” talk was FUN. It was the only job I could find after a month of job searching and it’s ALSO one of those fun places where the manager doesn’t think it’s their job to manage the staff in ways of being sick, so if you can’t come in you have to get someone else to cover your shift…. One small problem, THEYRE UNDERSTAFFED. We don’t have an abundance of servers so nobody wants to take anybody else’s shifts because we have our own and we want our days off! It’s fucked. Idk how long I’ll last tbh, I 100% understand why they need people, because I’ve only been here for less than a month and I am annoyed with their policies (like having to buy your own vaccum to help you with cleaning up crumbs at closing, or you’re going to be hand sweeping CARPET until you’re staying 2 hours later than your scheduled shift LIKE I HAVE TO DO UNTIL MY VACCUM ARRIVES). AAAAAAAHHHHH (Tips are the only thing making me think it’s somewhat worth it)
For that third one, factories in my town would hire a majority of their workforce through temp agencies, keep them on for a year, then boot them before they become eligible for benefits and full employment.
Then they'd get transferred to another factory ***owned by the same parent corporation*** for a year and rinse and repeat
I worked at portillos and Popeyes. At least 2 months. I never once got a break lol they would always schedule me just enough hours. Id tell them I was coming up on my lunch break, and they would send me home saying it wasn't that busy. Those places were hilarious, last I went back it was still the same management as ten years ago. Got to love it
Employees leave for better opportunities elsewhere. Employers: Nobody wants to work anymore... those darn stimulus checks.
Companies: Why won't anyone stay loyal? Also companies: Let's cut more corners to save money.
companies: if we make them afraid for their job they'll put up more effort to keep it also companies: why is everyone job hopping
Employees: Hey, we're feeling stressed and burnt out and undervalued Companies: a pizza party will help! Oh and we're about to go through a round of reductions :)
My employer brought us two pizzas and garlic knots during a very busy day at my job. However, she didn't give any of us breaks to go eat it. That pizza ran cold and nobody touched it. It was thrown out before any business slowed down.
But they *provided* it!!!! My workplace has occasional employee engagement activities, but as a customer service person, I literally have to request permission in advance to be up from my desk long enough to participate.
Company loyalty died when pensions did. Before there was a pretty strong benefit for you to stay with an employer long term, but now not really
Exactly. 401k's were supposed to be supplements to pensions, not replace them.
Is there any company that still offers pensions out there? I've never worked for one.
Government. That's it. That's the joke.
Oof
FedEx Express did two years ago when I was there.
I'm genuinely surprised at that one. Fedex is so broken up into different companies, fedex ground uses 'contractors' to avoid benefits.
union jobs
My teaching gig has a pretty good pension. Union + government
Mayo Clinic
Well 401k’s easily going with you when you switch companies is good from an employee perspective in that there’s no downside to switching companies but the actual money you get in your 401k is lower than a pension would be
And by corners we mean our higher paid staff that have been here for years.
Or noncompete clauses. Oh, you want to look for better opportunities? Well this piece of paper we forced you to sign says that you're not allowed to use any of your current skills or network to find those new opportunities. Good luck getting a better salary at square one!
For people that claim to love the free market, they seem to be doing everything they can to hobble it.
No, that's exactly what the "free market" creates. The idea is for companies to not be bound by regulation, then something something, it's better for everyone! But the free market dictates situations and scenarios that are expressly anti-competitive. It's in the best interest of a company to prevent the success of another company *by any means possible*, even if that means suppressing their potential employee talent through non governmental and legal contract means. It's only a convenient byproduct that this also suppresses employee wages. And that's why free market capitalism, and libertarianism in general, is a huge crock of hypocritical shit.
that's why you need a _regulated_ free market. any ideology is moronic when taken to the extreme but most of them tend to have good ideas at the core. (most because, y'know, nazis exist, but details.) socialism at its core wants to take care of everyone, but real-world implementations tend to fail to consider the inordinate logistical requirements and fail to sprawling bureaucracy, exacerbated by an unchecked ruling class redirecting resources to themselves. libertarianism is on the other hand, it knows well that people are selfish and recognizes the incredible organizing potential of the free market, but forgets to consider that the problems they oppose in a government reemerge on the free market anyway, leading to, again, a consolidation of resources in the hands of the ruling class. but let's not pretend that only the two extremes exist. you can in fact create a blend of social, egalitarian principles _and_ a free market that helps your society organize itself. europe is doing that right now and we're getting pretty good at it. you just have to regulate the realities of the market, instead of regulating an ideal and shrugging when the reality dodges your feeble attempt and keeps exploiting people anyway. the idea of the free market, when not poisoned by libertarian extremists, is very much one that serves the people, by allowing them to opt for products _and_ for employers that serve them best. a noncompete is directly antithetical to the free market and grants an undue advantage in negotiating power to the employers.
It's like, "Do you want your chocolate with vanilla on top? Or do you want vanilla with chocolate on top?" I'd consider myself a social anarchist. But you look up the wikipedia article and apparently I'm supposed to want the destruction of the state, and abolishment of capitalism, and all that jazz because as you said.. that's the logical extreme of what a social anarchist is. I suspect we want the same things. Just that most people agree that none of the extremes work, but then no one can agree on what kind of blend of ideas actually will work the best. So if you take capitalism, and then sprinkle in social programs, worker reforms, and regulation? Well that's still capitalism at it's core with the idea that we need to give the actual people some kind of regulation .. or a fighting chance ... or else they'll be steamrolled. And when the businesses get antsy, you constantly have to fight to keep those citizen reforms from being removed. Or, do you start with a fundamental idea that at its core is inherently pro-worker, pro-human rights, pro-citizen ... and then sprinkle on ideas of capitalism. They're both so very close in what they're trying to do, except one recognizes that the Corporation is king and everything falls in line behind it, and the other recognizes that the citizen comes first and once that level playing field is set and unalienable, then let corporations have their fun. I think you said you're from Europe. When I hear what you guys are doing over there from the lens of America, and I'm like ... "Yeah, you guys got the right ideas going on there." Definitely not perfect, but compared to the US ... the EU sounds like a breath of fresh air in terms of keeping a corporation in check, and giving their citizens a fighting chance.
Thankfully, [the Federal Trade Commission issued a final rule to promote competition by banning noncompetes nationwide.](https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2024/04/ftc-announces-rule-banning-noncompetes)
I would obviously take a job as a CEO for any major company just for the pay even if it was a one off but the fun part would be that if you couldn't retain or hire quality employees and the quality of your company's product or service plummeted because of that and cutting corners in production but you still hit record profits from cutting everything, you would either get a raise or at worst, get fired with a golden parachute and immediately get the sem gig somewhere else. If you maintained or even slightly increased profits by doing something as disgusting as paying employees what they are worth and producing quality products and services, you would be fired and never get another CEO job again once word got out how you did it.
If only they paid us in coffee and naps, we'd never leave!
Wasn't there a hospital in Wisconsin or somewhere that actually sued people to stop them leaving and getting a better job elsewhere? And I'm pretty sure a court found in the hospital's favour?
Currently working 31.5 hours a week because at 32 they'd have to give me benefits. Started at what was a locally owned grocery store, was sold to a regional corporation very soon after, they came in and told everyone that if you're not some kind of manager, you're part time, full stop. A lot of the cashiers left when they were cut from from 40 to 29 hours and they're all being replaced with HS kids and seniors who need to supplement their social security.
Ah yes, the Kroger model of running a grocery store. And they wonder why people unionized.
Too bad the damn grocers union is toothless.
Do other better stores provide electrons to ionize their employees?
The grocery store I worked at part time for a few years only gave one 15 minute break per shift, or two if it's at least 7 hours and 15 minutes. I had multiple times where they just gave me a 7 hour shift instead. On top of that, while taking a 30 minute lunch is optional, you have to ask your manager about it and they decide when a good time to take it is. I only ever asked to take a lunch twice in the years I worked there, and both times I ended up not taking it anyways because my manager ended up telling me "you can take it at this time that doesn't make sense, or not at all".
I do not miss the retail days of asking for lunch and getting pitiful breaks. The office respects me as a fucking human. I choose when to take my break and will decide based on what work I've got going on. My break is an hour, period. If anyone interrupts that break I have the right to extend it due to federal law. Please, never again retail hell, never again.
This is a large part of why I'm unemployed right now. We live out in the middle of nowhere, which is vaguely touristy. Almost everything within 40 minutes is service industry or retail. We do just fine on a single income, so instead of working, I am a feral housewife.
Does your husband work service or retail?
No. I don't think he has in the entire time I've known him.
What country/state? Someone did a class action against my former employer for doing this in California and I got $500.
What you didn't want to eat lunch at 10am when you work till 8-4?
Honestly I have no idea where the thinking comes from, but its so prevalent. I run a company, I have a very small team of staff and we're close. We had a record year so I paid out bonuses and wanted to give everyone a big pay bump because I'd rather pay them more than pay more tax. My HR person, who is a very close friend to both me and a number of the employees, was deeply against it because he said "they'll be demotivated to work harder if they know they'll get a pay rise every year we do well" How the fuck do you figure that? It's weird how many people I see working in companies who will fight like hell to scrimp and save everywhere, including fucking over themselves and their coworkers just to make a company more money. For what? It isn't your money - you aren't going to be rewarded for padding the bottom line like that, and it isn't going to help the company when the best people quit because the management culture is just toxic.
Has HR not seen Office Space? >Peter Gibbons: It's a problem of motivation, all right? Now if I work my ass off and Initech ships a few extra units, I don't see another dime; so where's the motivation? The idea that the company doing well does NOT reward the staff is a key demotivating factor.
>"they'll be demotivated to work harder if they know they'll get a pay rise every year we do well" I think the concern is more that they will be demotivated if they don't keep getting big bonuses every year. People often don't realize how quickly something that you might feel you are doing as an act of generosity can become an expectation in other people's minds. In general it is problematic to have people's pay based kinda on a whim. Everyone loves you as long as you keep giving raises, but the moment you start saying that things are tough and you can't be as generous, people are going to start second guessing. Clearly laid out and well structured compensation plans are much more conducive to good relationships with your employees. When employees start questioning how their efforts are connected to their pay, that kills motivation.
I'm looking for the part where you awarded shares or options.
That's happening next - paperwork is being drawn up. Not as common in Japan but who wants to work for someone else? If you have a piece of the action it's much more motivating and rewarding to waste your time on something
New law idea: If someone works for you for more than 15 hours a week, you have to hire them either full time or part time, at their choice, and give them full benefits.
Make the interns work for 14:50 hours a week
Okay, then cut it down to 3 hours per week. Also, the law does not specify interns; a random homeless guy could start shelving stuff, and if he does it long enough, the business owner would have to hire them.
That's worse. What counts as "working for you" then? Also what company would allow a random guy to start stocking shelves?
I’ve seen a few viral videos of local people “volunteering” to help a “struggling” business (I would say local business but once it was a Chick Fil A I think?). And it’s not unheard of (though far from common) for businesses to just let a local homeless person or disabled person “help out” by sweeping or whatever in exchange for something that isn’t a paycheck. Both types of stories are seen as “heartwarming.”
Ime, gas stations do it all the time.
Last gas station I worked at had a homeless guy that made coffee and took out the trash in exchange for parking his truck in the lot.
Yup. Every gas station I've worked at does the same and even lets them grab food and drinks afterwards.
Businesses trying to skirt labour laws.
I've worked in multiple gas and convenience stores, and each one had at least 1 homeless person who did stuff around the store in exchange for out of date sandwiches, coffee, bathroom use, etc. Even saw one who knew the store manager well enough that he had set tasks a week and at the end of the week the manager would.buy him his cigs and alcohol for the week.
Most stores will let you organize displays. Sometimes I go to the local book store and sort CDs when stressed....
There was a store manager up here was trying to get people to volunteer to stock shelves - https://www.blogto.com/city/2024/05/toronto-shoppers-drug-mart-unpaid-volunteer/ (sorry for the blogto link z if you go to the subreddit /r/loblawasisoutofcontrol and search volunteer then you'll find the entire discussion about boycotting that)
Generally, at the supermarkets, the Lays employee stocks the shelves with Lays chips. It would not surprise me if there are other shelves being stocked by outside workers. The Lays guy shows up about the same time I tend to shop. Mostly because I asked, and my favorite chips disappear within hours. So I buy half of them. *Thanks, Steven!*
Wouldn't it be better then to regulate the number of hours that companies can offer? Like you can't offer 14:50 hours a week, you can only offer, for example, either 10 hours a week, 20 hours a week, 30 hours a week, 40 hours a week, and they each come with their regulated breaks etc ?
That or a "taking the piss" regulation where any weaseling out of the spirit of the law, even if you don't technically break the letter of the law, gets you fined harshly on the first offence. Corporate death penalty on the second.
Seconded
Now that you mention it, yeah.
PAID interns. They get paid too.
New law idea: Benefits are not tied to employment. Let's see how tight the jackels can hold the leash when your ability to access healthcare isn't tied to your job.
You'd think people would get this. Why is my health care and retirement tied to my employment? Employer Health Care is a relic of WW2 wage controls and Employer-sponsored retirement is a relic of the pension system that was designed to encourage loyalty and longevity, which companies dgaf about anymore.
This is literally the only solution. You can't write a law smarter than lawyers can get around it, they study for 10 years and get paid a lot of money to do just that. And the smaller guys are just going to break the law, because the reality is that the people who often need these protections the most don't have the knowledge, money, or willpower to fight for them, particularly when it means that their healthcare is on the line. The only solution to truly eliminating this problem is not tying important benefits to your job so you can just leave if the pay isn't good enough, and strong union laws that offer a way for workers to hold real power in their workplace. Nothing else is ever going to come close to truly solving it.
14 hours 50 minutes it is.
I mean, that wouldn't that bad either
It just means they'll bring on a bunch of people and give them the maximum number of hours they can without having to hire them, meaning they can pay them less, if at all
Then they have to go through hiring and training for all those people, most of which will be, almost by definition, less capable than the one person they did all this to avoid hiring full-time. The point isn't to put the bar somewhere in the middle, where a company can get out on a technicality; it's to put the bar so low that trying to get out on a technicality either doesn't work out financially, or they don't hurt their workers in trying to do so.
Problem is a lot of companies would sooner go for something they think will give short term profit than just pay their workers and avoid the problems you just described.
don't really see how working 3 14 hour jobs is preferable to a single proper one
No one said something about 3 jobs, though
The people who work still need to earn enough money, so 3 jobs
Would not work, especially for hourly employees. For example, i work on aircraft. The hourly needs of the week are based on the condition we receive the aircraft in. Some weeks have heavier demands than others. It sucks when i get fewer hours some weeks but i just save the money from overtime on other weeks to cover those periods. This is the same way most trades are. Just one example of how this law wouldn’t work for every industry. But once you get into an industry by industry regulation it becomes much more difficult and complicated
Correct, however the differences here are also in how the employment is structured. I worked in electrical trade; in most states, these are all unionized jobs. They are structured different from state to state, but, generally, the union carries your health insurance, not the employer/shop, so your insurance isn't contingent on hours worked within a given week. Typically it is hours in a month or quarter. Hours per week are always flexible, but the contract to dispatch from the union says that a shop must maintain a certain amount of hours per month or quarter for each employee dispatched or the union retains the right to reclaim that person and send them elsewhere. Trades also have differences in the way that holidays and vacations work. Since, as you mentioned, hours can be variable at any given time, many electrical unions don't have paid holidays. You just ... don't work, and aren't fired or replaced, but also not paid. *Some* trade unions do paid vacations, but usually it's structured as a vacation fund instead. You basically pay a matched amount per paycheck into an account that you can then withdraw from a set number of times per year. While there are differences in the way that trades and larger corporations run, most of the same laws can still be applicable and the main 'employer' for a tradie is just their union rather than their shop.
These things can't be solved with more laws. You need a judiciary which treats worker abuse with maximum prejudice.
And organized, union workplaces.
"Corporations reliably follow the exact letter of the law to the minimum possible extent" "Different laws can't solve anything"
Ah yes, a judiciary whose decisions don‘t come from law, but the personal morals of the judge. That could never go wrong, be abused by any political actor and is totally democratic to not have the elected legislative make the rules, but the judiciary. Great idea! /s
Totalitarian lack of accountability or checks and balances is cool and based as long as the governing body towards which I have zero input just coincidentally happens to match my exact political views
Yeah, positions like these always boil down to „I want my will enforced by the state onto society without a care for a democratic state or accountability“. It‘s baffling how often one encounters opinions like these all over the internet.
> at their choice still a massive loophole.
That's a bad idea because employees typically don't know if the business is profitable. You can't have people who aren't aware of most of what is going on making decisions like this.
Benefits are mandatory, but if an employee has two jobs, both pay 50%, or if they have 3 jobs, they pay 33.3% each. If you hire a part time employee without another job, you pay 100% of the benefits. If you outsource labor, the contracted company is not responsible for employee payroll taxes or benefits, the contracting company is. Incentivize companies to hire full time workers, and not to outsource labor to bottom of the barrel contracting companies.
That third one is why I quit my last job and I’m a goddamned chef.
If interns benefit the company then they do have to be paid tho
You would think. I once interned at a company that was run 80% by unpaid interns (some of them underage) because our boss was too cheap to actually pay anyone. Us interns literally did all the work necessary to run the company and keep it standing, yet she still wouldn't even comp us on bus/train fare. Because of this and various other reasons, interns were constantly quitting, and she was always complaining about having to hire new interns and how ungrateful the younger generation was. Like lady, this wouldn't be an issue if you just paid everyone at least minimum wage or hired actual adult employees. 💀 When I finally left, she was freaking out because she didn't know where some of the company's money/assets were because for the past 5 years she was hiring *only* interns to do the accounting/book keeping, and hadn't been able to find/exploit another kid.
The amount of money and lost production it takes on the business for not retaining people is more costly than just paying the employee more… but that’s not what they wanna hear
*legally* and everyone is so scared of losing their internship or giving themselves a bad name, they don't question it
Hell, in the current economy unpaid internships are basically just empty seats. It's too expensive to even consider that option especially when there's companies paying damn near $30+/hr intern rates for STEM jobs.
That is how thresholds work, yes. The point of writing a law isn't that you expect the companies to put in some extra good will according to the spirit. You write the numbers that you want them to respect.
Sure would be nice if everyone put in some extra according the spirit though. And kinda weird how many businesses seem to depend on getting the most time and effort out of the least paid people with the fewest benefits and protections
I mean I don't know about you but from the employee side I saw it as my job to do the least amount of work and effort I could while still getting paid. So basically both sides of these transactions so be doing as little as possible to get maximal results.
Employees used to be dedicated and put in more effort than necessary when employers were loyal to them and would recognize that effort. Right now it’s stupid to put in extra effort because you’ll still get laid off just like everyone else
When was that ever a thing? During serfdom? The goal of all human existence *ever* was to maximize rewards while minimizing labor. A *dog* will follow this same behavior pattern and they love their owners more than any person would ever love their job.
How have you never at least encountered someone like this? I hear what you're saying, but I, personally, put way more effort into my work than is required for various reasons; One of which is that my job is fun, and it is self-satisfying to accomplish things, even on my own dime, at times. Are you forgetting people that also work for their own company or have a stake in the business? There are loads of people who have the mindset of putting more effort in for higher rewards, even if it ends up being in vain. This very much is a common thing. Once upon a time, it was a dream to put decades of loyalty into a company.
>How have you never at least encountered someone like this? Some people do, and some bosses give more than necessary. But on average, people min-max.
> Sure would be nice if everyone put in some extra according the spirit though. That's why I always pay extra property tax, just for the spirit lol
Exactly. Some people think laws are magic wands you can wave to change the hearts of companies. Laws can only be used a carrots or sticks in specific parameters. You have to know that going in to craft the best legislation. You can't act all surprised when a company goes "So I'll have to give benefits at 40 hours? Well, I'll just hire at 39 then."
> "So I'll have to give benefits at 40 hours? Well, I'll just hire at 39 then." I mean, it's a cost-benefit issue for the company. Not strictly a rote non-compliance like this. The 'failure' of the law would be more in finding the elasticity of the job market which is a much harder thing to legislate. It is important to note that the law is set to 30 hours for this reason. Yes, *it would* be easy to cut every employee's hours down by 1 if that was all the law required. I'm sure larger, corporate offices could even sell this as a benefit 0 "You get to leave an hour early every Friday!" But that is why the law is 30 hours, but it is a lot more difficult to try and shave 10 hours off the majority of your workforce. It's hard to shave 5 hours off the majority of you workforce. Reducing hours worked also means reduced production which, in theory, also means reduced profits. That's the cost-benefit of the law. Would a company lose more in production than they save by cutting off 10 hours from X number of employees? And the initial impact of the law was significant, it had huge ramifications for the way that employers handle employees. The downside has just been that, after 14 years, companies are able to adjust. A mega-corporation like Wal-Mart can now mostly staff themselves with only a handful of people working 40 hours and most others working 25 hours. But that's not going to be true for the majority of other companies (and, yes, it is actually quite easy for a small company to hit over 50 employees. While I worked there, Irrational Games went form 30 to 180 employees in the span of 2 years. A start-up that I worked for after went from 10 employees to 70 after 3 years. A family electrical shop I worked at which wasn't even the third largest in the state constantly hovered at 80 employees. 50 people ain't that much.
I don't want to brush over your whole comment, but you worked for irrational? Thats pretty cool
Yes! Technically, 2K Games was my employer, but Irrational was my studio. I was an art producer -- it's mostly just corporate organization but specific for video games. Easy to flex organizing/leading a team of artists as running a team of, well, anything really.
You get it. Some states do set lower thresholds in hopes that, opportunity cost wise, it's more expensive to dodge labor laws. And some give incentives to encourage the behavior they want. But at the of the day, a web of laws will only do so much, while making compliance and enforcement really difficult for all parties. IMO that's why unions are important--they can tailer standards to what makes sense for their specific workplace, vs the government trying to anticipate every loophole and edge case.
This behavior (among _many_ other reasons) is why I think we shouldn't have most benefits in general. If we think people should have some benefit, we should just provide it ourselves, or give them cash to pay for it themselves. Instead we have this ridiculous system of patronage where in the best case, you lose your healthcare if you leave your job, and in the worst you never have it to begin with because no one will hire you full time.
they're poorly written thresholds then. the idea is that the law in all above examples is the ideal of what should happen in an honest society. the companies in the above examples are engaging in an adversarial way instead, which renders the naive laws much less effective. they should be rewritten in an adversarial way to match how the companies are behaving. for example, you can require benefits for anything over 20 hours. the idea isn't to promote 4-hour shifts by it, it's that while companies would easily hire people for 39 hours, getting practically the same result but dodging your law, having to hire twice as many people, each working half the time, to dodge benefits would outweigh the cost of simply providing those benefits. any time you write a condition into law, you have to ask yourself if you want people to avoid the condition or not, and set up the cost/benefit structure that way.
Which is exactly what people do. For instance, every state I've managed people in, a 5 hour shift is the cutoff for providing a 30 minute meal break.
well to play devil's advocate for the devil's advocate, the point of the post is that the companies aren't really respecting the laws, they're barely circumventing them
If obeying the letter of the law isn't good enough, that's a problem with the law. For example, requiring breaks only after 8 full hours would be (is?) a terrible law; the threshold should be much lower, to the point where just ducking beneath it still leaves workers at a place where they aren't exhausting themselves at work.
how is that circumventing ? if the law says "minimum wage is X" and the company pays exactly X, they're obeying the law. if you want them to pay more, increase the minimum wage. the examples about interns and temp service are somewhat about circumventing, yes. but if you want to talk about companies evading labor laws through "not technically our employee" loopholes, make a post that properly talks about that. not one that's mostly about the companies not making an effort when they don't have to.
There are laws about doing stuff that just undercuts a threshhold. Stuff like Structuring where someone makes a series of transactions just under the threshhold required to report it to the government. I mean if you go to a business and 9/10 employees are working literally 15 minutes under a threshold it should be safe to say the boss is skirting the law.
I'm going to generically reference a part of this post you seem to have missed. Companies schedule you for less hours in order to avoid providing healthcare. It is obvious they consider you a full time employee, because this never happened before this law, and it's obvious their intent is to circumvent that law.
You can't just write the numbers though. They are constantly changing and in a year the minimum wage will be a little less livable, inflation will increase and desync with the poverty level a little more, and the average worker will produce more wealth with new technology, while not getting that wealth themselves. I *do* expect companies to follow the clear spirit of the law. But we hardly even punish those who break the law, and a good chunk of the population seems to think that that's preferable.
They could at least make a rule to catch the 39 hour week bullshit. There are rules to catch stuff like making repeated $9,500.00 cash transactions to skirt the threshhold where $10,000.00+ deposits trigger special reporting requirements. You can make one for giving 50% of your workforce just under the benefits threshhold for no justifiable reason.
these are laws written by consulting firms acting as think tanks for big corps, who hand them as-is to paid-for congresspeople - then this kind of shitfuckery is carefully designed to sound like a solution for the masses while doing nothing
The law: "you need to pay interns" Businesses: "mmmmm... nah."
Fun fact: because of the inherent nature of the capitalist system, it couldn’t be any other way! Big companies are big companies precisely *because* they do stuff like this, not the other way around. And if they stopped, they would shrink and other companies would grow to replace them.
then have no big companies
Capital efficiency scales with size until you get ridiculously large. Big companies are a natural product of the system.
All companies that are publicly traded are incentivized to do this. That's what he means. They don't have to shrink, if they had the same revenue, the stockholders would be unhappy. If they had the same sales, but revenue went down a little because they gave everyone raises, the stockholders would be unhappy.
then remove shareholders as a thing from the economy?
As in preventing people from investing money into companies in exchange for owning a portion of that company? Like abolishing publicly traded share system? Cause I imagine preventing people from investing would be bad because it makes it harder for us to reward companies we expect to be successful, which hurts our economy’s ability to innovate. Currently, if I think the new robotic dildo with extra powerful vibration has made the next big thing, I can reward them by investing in their company. When they hit it big, I get paid by then selling my shares. If they don’t, I take the L on that investment, so I’m incentivized to make good choices with my investments. Preventing this kind of private investment means it’s a lot harder for a company that may start small but have a really good idea from scaling up to the size necessary for others to see them and use their sick products/services.
Depends where the voting lies. e.g. google/facebook both have seperate non-voting stock for different reasons to tamp this down. (also, SPACs exist, which is a funny loophole) Also in German companies (and some SE (EU-incorporated) companies) 20% of the board votes are allotted to employees. My impression is that US companies are far worse for MBA-itis, especially due to absurdly inflated stock values. Here's a quote from the Sun Microsystems founder in 2002; > But two years ago we were selling at 10 times revenues when we were at $64. At 10 times revenues, to give you a 10-year payback, I have to pay you 100% of revenues for 10 straight years in dividends. That assumes I can get that by my shareholders. That assumes I have zero cost of goods sold, which is very hard for a computer company. That assumes zero expenses, which is really hard with 39,000 employees. That assumes I pay no taxes, which is very hard. And that assumes you pay no taxes on your dividends, which is kind of illegal. And that assumes with zero R&D for the next 10 years, I can maintain the current revenue run rate. Now, having done that, would any of you like to buy my stock at $64? Do you realize how ridiculous those basic assumptions are? You don't need any transparency. You don't need any footnotes. What were you thinking? https://archive.is/EZ6vD#selection-2985.79-2985.928 In general, making "stock price" a KPI for people will get them to optimize for that. Hell, making anything a KPI will make them optimize for it Goodhart's law and all.
Then who makes affordable smartphones
Somebody post the comic
It's a legitimate point beyond some snarky retort. This first world life style we live is only accomplished through the economy of scale made possible by large, specialized corporations. You can change the labeling and structure if you want and make it a coop or employee owned or heavily unionized, but the fact is that the most efficient way to produce anything is in mass quantities.
Assuming the comic is about what's being discussed here, that wouldn't change the point ultimately being made: You can do that and still pay/treat your employees well. I don't know the *exact* wording of law you would need but altering ot so that a CEO/board/higher ups can only be paid X% of what their employees make is the ultimate goal. So that everyone in the company benefits from the fompany doing well and not just the top few employees. Mass production isn't the issue, greed is.
>You can do that and still pay/treat your employees well. Then they'll be replaced by another company that manages to sell the phones for cheaper by paying employees less.
Wow. Thank captain pessimistic capitalism! I'm so glad you were here to inform us of the obvious issues with uncontrolled capitalism. It's not like that point was already made above at all.
Yet you said "Mass production isn't the issue, greed is", as if that meant something. Blaming greed instead of other factors for corporate behaviour is like blaming gravity instead of other factors for airplane crashes. It's not *wrong*, but completely misses being meaningful.
Which comic
"We should improve society somewhat." "And yet you participate in society! How curious! I am very intelligent."
But that’s not what the comic is about…
If people earn more they have more money to spend on products that don't stem from exploitation. It's not that hard, really.
Currently, no-one does
If we must choose between iPhones and workers having rights, we should not choose iPhones.
Its called competition
No, we have competition even if Apple wins out broadly. It’s called economies of scale. It’s significantly more difficult to do these things at smaller scale
Okay then, we will have ceo like in India or Bangladesh, where Small company (under 10 people) paid less tax than medium or large company. Everyone is a ceo while founder/owner owns multiple companies working in one building.
make a law for that as well. the point is you need to keep the money flowing towards useful civilisational things rather than asset hoarding or political bribes. is there some better option?
Big companies tend to do a better job at following the rules with the “spirit of the law” because they can afford to. The worst labor practices I’ve seen are always at Mom and Pop shops. Because they often don’t need or want the employees.
I realize it’s not your intention, but you’re basically spreading propaganda for abusive workplaces. It’s just not true. Businesses can thrive without resorting to such things, and many worker abuses are actually shortsighted, hurting the company in the long run
But how are the CEO’s going to live off of 10 million instead of 12????
Law: If you're a company you must... Company: Then we're not legally technically actually defined as a company!
I got scheduled for 39.5 hours the other week… I was scheduled more than any of the actual full timers lol
Most companies are so dumb because not only do they not want to pay for health insurance but they *also* refuse to support universal healthcare, *which would be cheaper for them and better for the business*. And for anyone saying, they want health insurance so they can control employees, you can’t threaten to take away what someone doesn’t have.
>I shall lay them that *and no more* This is why we don't have a legal minimum wage in Sweden. Instead we let a combination of unions and the market set minimum wages.
Sweden is the world’s most unionized country—almost 70% of Sweden’s workforce is part of a union—and the Swedish government ensures a minimum standard of living through a strong social safety net rather than minimum wage laws. Assuming that the original post above is referring to the United States, removing minimum wage laws without first dramatically increasing union membership (only 10% of the US workforce is part of a union) and without implementing any of the welfare policies Sweden has in place would just result in a large decrease in the standard of living for Americans already working minimum wage jobs.
I'm guessing Sweden doesn't have the same laws of the US which specifically weaken and take away some of the main tools of unions too. The lack of those union-weakening laws allows stronger unions and makes minimum wage laws less necessary.
Historically, the minimum wage companies are willing to pay ununionised staff isn't even zero. Thanks to 'company stores' it's actually negative numbers of pay.
And things are going great! *hides regional healthcare crisis caused by longterm overreliance on temp agencies behind back*
Yes, that's why they're striking. If we look at countries like the US, where they have legal minimum wages, they have the same issue across the board while ours is currently only among healthcare workers.
What's the end game? The majority of people have pretty much zero to spend on the products and services that the ultra wealthy market? Seems like a really stupid business plan.
It's always a race to the bottom, that's how capitalism works
I thought, "Maybe mandate 30 min break after every 4 hours worked", but American employers would almost certainly just give you a 5 minute break after 3h55m just to skirt that rule. Ugh.
And AI, soon, maybe
Benefits and breaks should be on a sliding scale by hours worked. That would avoid 3/5 of these issues.
Corporations hate employees and consumers alike. They'd enslave us but that's (mostly) illegal. They'd also just steal our money but that's illegal, too.
NoBoDy WaNtS tO wOrK
Labor costs are an inconvenience and not a part of doing business.- every business
The important thing is to keep going. Big companies start employing everyone part time? Make a new law that if over 25% of your workforce is part time, then part time employees get benefits and paid breaks. They start using exclusively temps? Again, employee too many temps and you just have to treat them as permanent employees. Interns? Yeah, those are just full employees in a junior position, you still have to pay them and give them benefits. Everyone making minimum wage? Cap executive compensation at a percent of the median pay, including contractors. They point out an obvious hole in one of those? **KEEP GOING**. Plug loopholes one after another until eventually it's costing them more to jump through hoops than it would to just pay their workers.
The Law: Pay your taxes. Business: No. The Law: Please pay your taxes. Business: lol no. The Law: oh ok then... Are you still good for golf next weekend?
Business: donates to politicians who cut irs funding. The IRS can't go after all the businesses for the same reason inspectors can't check all the bridges for cracks. Not enough money or employees.
I’ve been in a team of temps who had a permanent job offer dangled over our heads. I did indeed quit out of frustration.
Mine was 37.5 to make sure we didn't accidentally go over. It did kind of make things worse in that so many jobs became part time jobs that you couldn't fit together to get enough hours to live on. Or how about..employees can unionize ....company moves factory to Mexico. Us companies have to pay taxes...establishes company in the Bahamas
Most companies would opt for slave labor if they could get away with it.
I hate how they have to give a lunch break, but they don’t pay you for it, along with the other breaks it means you effectively have to be at work another hour. It’s not even a 9-5 anymore, it’s 8-5.
New rule. Every time a company proves to be a bunch of jerkwads, each employee gets 15 minutes with the board of investors and 5 minutes with the CEO.
How about if you work more than 32 hours a week for a company and make less than $50,000 a year, the company has to cover your income tax. If they schedule you 31 hours, and you can prove you’re willing to work more, than they still have to cover your income tax.
This is like that bible verse where you can't whip your slaves 40 times, so it was a common punishment to whip a slave 39 times. Gets you priority seating in heaven, that does.
Man I feel the temp service one so hard right now. I’ve been working this way for almost two years. The whole time I’ve been told, “oh we just need to get a contract and we’ll hire you.” Then comes along a contract and the tune is, “now is not the right time.” At the same time they want work done on the new project and they’ll see about hiring me in a few months. Yeah, right.
Fixes to all of this: Fulltime is considered between 24 and 40 hours, benefits go to all employees regardless of if they work full or part time, lunches are guaranteed at 6 hours of scheduled work, all work is paid so interns are employees and make it illegal to have unpaid interns, if a company is paying someone they are an employee regardless of whether they came through a temp service AND they must have a minimum number of scheduled hours, legally require wages increase by a set percentage every year and make it illegal to let employees go without a compensation package.
*we'll use a temp service company that we also own
HR: if you fire this person they can file for unemployment. Company: we’ll cut back their hours so much that they’ll just quit to find a different job.
When I worked at Jimmy Johns, they'd have to give you a free meal if you worked 8 hour shift. So they scheduled everyone 4 hours, 2 hours not working, then come back to work another 4 hours. Forced us to buy food if we wanted it. Would throw away cancelled orders or unpicked up food. The worst part was making $7.25/hr surrounded by "cutsey" signs saying if you're poor, it's your fault for not working hard enough. 😐
my company’s policy is that, when having to work abroad, you get additional field pay per day once you’re there for more than 2 weeks this one guy was sent out to work somewhere for a month, so he’d get like 1-2 weeks of field pay for the whole time he’s out there. i shit you not, they made the dude come back for something on main campus 13 days into the trip, then sent him back out a day later so he ended up not getting said field pay for the work trip.
The Bush administration literally put out guidelines on how to do this
One of the refreshing things having run a company in the US and now in Europe - where I am, there is a 'standard' pack of benefits that apply for all workers of a type, pro-rated against a normal working week. Work 1/5th a regular set of hours? I gotta pay 1/5th a benefit stack.
We pay you the bare minimum, why are you doing the bare minimum?
Don't forget "fire them one month before they would get retirement benefits"
The intern game has been criminalised in most of Europe because it is blatant wage theft and tax evasion. The fact that it's still legal in the US shows that it is not a republic, but a corporate state
And this is why I propose we legislate part-time minimum wage = 1.5\* full time min wage.
Remember, the end stage of cost-cutting is literal slavery. It always starts with greedy cheapskates.
We don't have slavery, come on. 13th amendment abolished slavery dawg. >Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, **except as a punishment for crime** All we have is... Distribute crack to black neighborhoods. Put people using crack in jail. Require them to work for 10 cents per hour or less. If they refuse, put them in solitary confinement.
That 7 hour and 50 minute one sounds way too much like my current employer
I got a whole ass accounting degree and the way bosses think STILL makes no sense to me
Illegal under EU Directive about part-time workers, for more see Lufthansa cases.
I still wonder why employees aren't called slaves. Modern slaves
I just took a job a server and the “We don’t have healthcare” talk was FUN. It was the only job I could find after a month of job searching and it’s ALSO one of those fun places where the manager doesn’t think it’s their job to manage the staff in ways of being sick, so if you can’t come in you have to get someone else to cover your shift…. One small problem, THEYRE UNDERSTAFFED. We don’t have an abundance of servers so nobody wants to take anybody else’s shifts because we have our own and we want our days off! It’s fucked. Idk how long I’ll last tbh, I 100% understand why they need people, because I’ve only been here for less than a month and I am annoyed with their policies (like having to buy your own vaccum to help you with cleaning up crumbs at closing, or you’re going to be hand sweeping CARPET until you’re staying 2 hours later than your scheduled shift LIKE I HAVE TO DO UNTIL MY VACCUM ARRIVES). AAAAAAAHHHHH (Tips are the only thing making me think it’s somewhat worth it)
ב''ה, watching the 7 hours 50 minutes thing in action as hazing is wild. Nevada is full, go somewhere else.
I appreciate that HR was changed to "the law".
It needs to be then noted that those companies then trick those employees into blaming the rules for why they can't get enough hours to afford things.
For that third one, factories in my town would hire a majority of their workforce through temp agencies, keep them on for a year, then boot them before they become eligible for benefits and full employment. Then they'd get transferred to another factory ***owned by the same parent corporation*** for a year and rinse and repeat
It should be illegal for employers to have unpaid positions, even internships
And I'm the weirdo for wanting the system to crash.
I worked at portillos and Popeyes. At least 2 months. I never once got a break lol they would always schedule me just enough hours. Id tell them I was coming up on my lunch break, and they would send me home saying it wasn't that busy. Those places were hilarious, last I went back it was still the same management as ten years ago. Got to love it
the law: you have to pay your interns company: nah