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Cafeteria workers at Facebook struggle to make ends meet

theguardian.com

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Re: Cafeteria workers at Facebook struggle to make ends meet

#491

Post by tptacek »

chii wrote: post #484
kjksf wrote: post #467

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because the more you treat contractors as employees (including giving them the same benefits), the more likely it is that they'll sue you claiming they really are full-time employees and therefore deserve more. Exactly that happened to Microsoft ( https://www.reuters.com/article/businesspropicks-us-findlaw-... ). Microsoft lost and, as part of preventing such lawsuits in the future, they limited things that are avail…

Ianal, but I thought that contractors normally get paid more than FTE, for the risk contacting implies. Seems to me that a company is justified in treating them differently.

The market pays some contractors more than full-time employees, but no regulation forces it to, and there are classes of contractors that make less, especially when taxes and benefits are accounted for, than FTEs.

Re: Cafeteria workers at Facebook struggle to make ends meet

#492

Post by tptacek »

nbclark wrote: post #423
jimmywanger wrote: post #399

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you give too many benefits to contractors, they become de-facto full time employees, and you have to pay for benefits and health insurance and all that stuff. That happened back in the day with engineers at Google also. They hired a lot of contractors, but you could really only work 6 months out of the year, or else they'd have to classify you as full time with all the attendant benefits. The food and fitness cent…

I was at Microsoft years ago and there was a transition away from providing similar perks to contractors due to a lawsuit. https://www.reuters.com/article/businesspropicks-us-findlaw-...

Microsoft got burned badly on misclassification, but amenities had nothing to do with it: their contractors effectively were employees, with no material difference between FTEs and contractors in terms of how was work delivered and what expectations were. (I've done a very little bit of contracting work for MSFT, FWIW).

I'm not surprised if MSFT overcorrected after that shitstorm.

But for what it's worth, my understanding is that v-badges at MSFT still get access to facilities!

Re: Cafeteria workers at Facebook struggle to make ends meet

#493

Post by humanrebar »

vkou wrote: post #452
humanrebar wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

...because non-capitalist systems like totalitarianism and communism are known for their humanity?

Totalitarianism and capitalism aren't at all mutually exclusive. Likewise, there exist other isms. Democratic socialism, for one. (Although it can be argued that it's capitalism in sheep's clothing.)

> totalitarianism and capitalism aren't at all mutually exclusive

Well, too much further discussion along these lines will turn into a semantic quagmire. However, you can draw a spectrum where "individuals decide for themselves" is on one end and "a central power decides for everyone" is at the other. In that viewpoint, capitalism and totalitarianism are at odds, regardless of whether the central authority is an officer of a government bureau or a corporate one.

Re: Cafeteria workers at Facebook struggle to make ends meet

#494

Post by chii »

civilian wrote: post #379
morugin wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's how human morality works unfortunately. capitalism: "an economic and political system in which a country's trade and industry are controlled by private owners for profit, rather than by the state." meritocracy: "government or the holding of power by people selected on the basis of their ability." morality: "principles concerning the distinction between right and wrong or good and bad behavior." Here's how I th…

Your definition for capitalism is correct, but might be missing the key point: > Capitalism is the use of markets as the primary method of resource allocation within a society. http://www.americanteeth.org/2015/06/21/why-i-m-a-capitalist... I lost a game of Go to the guy who wrote this. He's a total socialist, but he _gets it_. Capitalism is just using markets, and when he and I use that word we just mean that. But w…

The issue is that there will always be injustices and evil (born of greed). Until the day humans transcend bring humans (i.e., acquire unlimited resource and immortality).

Re: Cafeteria workers at Facebook struggle to make ends meet

#495

Post by estebank »

taysic wrote: post #359
rm_-rf_slash wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It has been attempted, and the only thing to show for it is perhaps America's most over-hyped ghost town[0]. Few Californians or transplants to California want to live anywhere but near the coastline. California's climate is not as pleasant once you go further inland. Also, the coastline is seismically active, and does not pose as a great location for Manhattan-style skyscrapers. (For that reason, I have always found…

>Few Californians or transplants to California want to live anywhere but near the coastline. California's climate is not as pleasant once you go further inland. That's so untrue. If some of the large open areas in the South Bay or east bay were turned into suburbs people would happily move in

More suburbs is probably a bad solution to lengthy commutes.

Re: Cafeteria workers at Facebook struggle to make ends meet

#496

Post by jimmywanger »

tptacek wrote: post #480
jimmywanger wrote: post #415

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure. If you take a look at https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-utl/x-26-07.pdf , points 6, 13 and 14 are the most important. If you give too many benefits to contractors, they could make a plausible case that they're full time employees and will be able to sue for back pay, benefits, and punitive damages. For instance, for point 13, you could argue that a free shuttle would be paying for your travel expenses. It's definitel…

I'm familiar with this list but unfamiliar with the mapping you're making to contractors getting access to facilities and amenities. The specific items you're pointing out apply far more to the normal course of the work contractors do than they do to cafeteria access. I'm going to push a little further back on this point, because the contractors we're talking about don't work for Facebook . They work for body shop fi…

I think we're talking at cross purposes here.

Microsoft got burned badly in a comment on this thread, because some contractors effectively wanted to upgrade their contractual status after working there for a while. That led them to update their HR policies to make sure there was no such confusion.

For what it's worth, I am pretty sure that Google still provides cafeteria access for food to the cafeteria work, obviously after service hours.

Another thing to bear in mind is that this is an HR policy for Facebook (I can't speak to Facebook and the actual policy).

They don't really have to make sense, HR policies are there to shield the company from any possible liability and/or the possibility of the body shop's company getting their contract terminated. The spectre of the Microsoft lawsuit is probably likely to forbid certain practices for contractors, direct or through a hiring agency.

Also, for most restaurants, you're not allowed to take food home from the serving line after your shift. If you can take food home from the serving line, that (in the company's perspective) tends to create a perverse incentive for making more food and driving up supply costs for no benefit to the company.

There are many different perspectives for different companies. Simply saying that you've not encountered anything like this is not an indicative of general industry practices. Also, you were contracting directly with the company. You were probably paid better than the food service workers. If you're making under 20 an hour, the incentives for you to sue are far greater than if you were extremely well paid and should not rock the boat.

Finally, if you're spending all your time onsite working for just one employer for extended hours and periods of times, even if you have a contracting company between you and the company, if you do it for long enough and get enough benefits, you can claim that you were actually an employee of the parent company. Sort of like a common law wife. It makes sense that you would want to put up an even higher wall between you and third party contractors.

Re: Cafeteria workers at Facebook struggle to make ends meet

#497

Post by humanrebar »

bantunes wrote: post #80
frgtpsswrdlame wrote: post #53

Everybody here is focusing on real estate. (because young wealthy programmers and older poorer workers have a shared interest in cheap real estate) But I'm really interested in how HN feels about this section: “I felt more secure at my other job. You didn’t have people looking down at you,” Nicole said. Now she works at cafeterias with names like “Epic” and “Living the Dream”, and the distance between the two classes…

You must be new here. You'll get 20 comments on how government and real estate and the market not being free enough are the problem before someone goes into this aspect of the article.

I think employers should be more accountable for how the people that work for them (directly or indirectly) are paid and treated. I also think making them legally accountable is the wrong way to go about fixing the problem.

I don't think you can legislate individuals and groups enough to make them decent. You have to go about it another way.

I also don't think it's reasonable to imply that people who think free markets are more efficient and humane are also somehow less compassionate.

Re: Cafeteria workers at Facebook struggle to make ends meet

#498

Post by literallycancer »

rlanday wrote: post #395
literallycancer wrote: post #386

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds like a management issue. This is like designing public benches so that people can't sleep there - a passive-aggressive "solution" that really just avoids the problem. Why not let people buy the "waste" food at the purchase cost? Or just you know, fire the people who waste it on purpose for misconduct?

People respond to incentives. If you make it easy for homeless people to sleep on benches, that's what they'll do. If you make it difficult, they'll go somewhere else. It absolutely is solving the problem as far as keeping them from sleeping on the benches.

Yes. To me, the problem is that there are homeless people in the first place. I suppose if it's just a problem that you have to see them in your park, then it's as good a solution as any.

I'm not homeless, though, and it's pretty annoying that one can't take a nap in the afternoon because of this.

Re: Cafeteria workers at Facebook struggle to make ends meet

#499

Post by chii »

tpallarino wrote: post #400
Dude2018 wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Meritocratic enough for unequal income between skilled and unskilled labour?

The funniest part of this is that Facebook provides almost no value to society, while the food service workers do.

Facebook is providing value. They aren't providing it for free here, which is to say, they are extracting the price for said value.

Wikipedia, on the other hand, is providing value, and isn't extracting the price. Therefore they rely on donations. If Wikipedia extracted their price for the amount of value they provide, I'd say they'll be one of the biggest companies in the world.

Re: Cafeteria workers at Facebook struggle to make ends meet

#500

Post by estebank »

godelski wrote: post #469
Aloha wrote: post #434

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Moving costs money. If you're scraping by as tightly as they are - how would one expect them to afford to move? You need money to rent a u-haul to haul your stuff, some cash to rent an apartment, and then enough cash to provide a runway to find a job (which in a service industry role shouldn't take more than 6-8 weeks) - that still adds up to about 10k to relocate to a cheaper part of the country.

Having moved across the country a few years back for my job, the idea that it costs near $10k is ridiculous. I didn't even have half that to my name when I moved. Checking U-Haul, you can geta 15' for 10 days and go from SF to NYC for under 3k. And you're probably going to be going half that distance and in less time. So let's say you go more central. Estimate U-Haul at 2k, gas at 1k, rent of new place as $500/mo (so…

You're not considering that these people are living month-to-month so they don't have 5K lying around and that the time between jobs when they are moving is time they're not getting paid. That means that you need >5K, otherwise you just erased all your savings to move to a place with a lower job prospects.
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