31–40 of 304 posts
People who use Uber, AirBnB, Deliveroo and similar companies are only fuelling this race to the bottom. Maybe one day it will catch up to them, and then it will be too late. Use your leverage while you still have it, Comrades.
It's not a race to the bottom. It's a correction. Why should your health care be determined by your employer? It's a ludicrous system that should have died decades ago.
Employer "benefits" are things that are all freely available a la carte. There's no reason contractors can't buy health insurance from a marketplace or contribute to an IRA and wind up with the same end result. You as a contractor just have to factor those additional costs in to your decision-making process when evaluating compensation packages.
And then when they laugh in your face, try it with another company. And another. And another. And let me know how it goes.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's historically the way it has been but it's absurd in general. Would you argue the same thing about housing, food, and water (they should all be provided by the employer)? Really what we need is an expectation of being able to buy healthcare on our own with regular incomes.
No, the american approach is beyond absurd. Of course my employer should pay into(government ran) healthcare on my behalf. Of course they should pay into a pension plan. And yes, currently, if I stay beyond my mandated 7.5 hours, my employer has to provide food during that time. My employer also has to provide water during working hours. If my employer asks me to go somewhere on company business, they have to provide…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's historically the way it has been but it's absurd in general. Would you argue the same thing about housing, food, and water (they should all be provided by the employer)? Really what we need is an expectation of being able to buy healthcare on our own with regular incomes.
No, the american approach is beyond absurd. Of course my employer should pay into(government ran) healthcare on my behalf. Of course they should pay into a pension plan. And yes, currently, if I stay beyond my mandated 7.5 hours, my employer has to provide food during that time. My employer also has to provide water during working hours. If my employer asks me to go somewhere on company business, they have to provide…
Look, I can't claim to have been a contractor for any significant length of time, so maybe I'm talking out my ass and every freelancer here can tell me so. But the fact is the american people have let employers have too much power for far too long, and encouraging people to take contract work seems to me like just another step in the wrong direction of giving these companies even more power, and then everyone is worse off for it.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Ideally they would be coupled to our government, but since they aren't providing that, our employers should be obligated to ensure they are providing us with the means to keep ourselves healthy.
We should be able to get health insurance and bargain based on community groups or individually tax-free rather than by employer. If the entire Mormon church could collective bargain for health insurance for its members it would be WAY cheaper than any employer (because they don't drink alcohol or smoke).
Good (edit: in the long run). The services they list, like health insurance, retirement, or pensions, should be decoupled from your employer.
The American worker is getting squeezed on both sides, private employers are offering less and less and government is not picking up the slack. The void will be filled, either by a private corporation or government, but if it's not you can say bye to the middle class.
Being on your own in the workforce often means you don't have the safety net of benefits and other forms of support that traditional workers do. Even the first sentence is kinda stupid. Benefits are a form of salary. Independent have the freedom to buy the benefits they want and spend their income as they please. What's wrong with that ? The best antidote to fear, she says, is to create a new social safety net where…
Unfortunately cash is not as efficient in procuring the sorts of services that are normally provided by benefits, due to the advantages of structured negotiation. You are unlikely to get as good a deal from health insurance providers as your employer.
Having insurance negotiated by individuals is a huge impediment for entrepreneurship.
Being on your own in the workforce often means you don't have the safety net of benefits and other forms of support that traditional workers do. Even the first sentence is kinda stupid. Benefits are a form of salary. Independent have the freedom to buy the benefits they want and spend their income as they please. What's wrong with that ? The best antidote to fear, she says, is to create a new social safety net where…
Employers can provide benefits for cheaper due to economies of scale buying a lot of them from big insurance orgs. Individual contractors, even if they weren’t already being pushed into possibly-exploitative relationships with companies like Uber et al., don’t get those discounts. Life on the other side of the API layer ain’t so rosy.
I'm sure I'll get some flak for saying this on HN, but I would encourage everyone not to take a contracting gig unless you're absolutely desperate for work. I don't believe most people are cut out to properly negotiate the pay for a contracting position (in that they do not know how to properly account for all of the benefits they are not getting). And by taking a contracting position you are basically encouraging th…