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Worker-owned businesses: 'We get paid the same regardless of role'

theguardian.com

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Re: Worker-owned businesses: 'We get paid the same regardless of role'

#31

Post by closeparen »

vedloseper wrote: post #16
golergka wrote: post #3

> We all get paid the same hourly rate regardless of the roles we do. Good luck retaining any skilled professionals then. One of the most repulsing stories that I got from Soviet Union from my grandparents was about excellent engineers being on the same pay scale with manual labour workers. No matter how much do you put into your skills, the system had standard pay scale that you couldn't break out from. I'm happy th…

Skillfulness to me implies giving a crap about the world you share with others. Skilled, in comparison, is a consolation price. > One of the most repulsing stories that I got from Soviet Union from my grandparents was about excellent engineers being on the same pay scale with manual labour workers. That's the most repulsing? Nothing about children and old people being murdered en masse? See above, more skillful grand…

If you care about the world you live in, you should want the people in it to be good at things. If you’ve studied the world you live in, you’ve likely discovered that this is more readily achieved with material incentives than with propaganda about one’s duty to the state.

Re: Worker-owned businesses: 'We get paid the same regardless of role'

#33

Post by blorsh »

vedloseper wrote: post #16
golergka wrote: post #3

> We all get paid the same hourly rate regardless of the roles we do. Good luck retaining any skilled professionals then. One of the most repulsing stories that I got from Soviet Union from my grandparents was about excellent engineers being on the same pay scale with manual labour workers. No matter how much do you put into your skills, the system had standard pay scale that you couldn't break out from. I'm happy th…

Skillfulness to me implies giving a crap about the world you share with others. Skilled, in comparison, is a consolation price. > One of the most repulsing stories that I got from Soviet Union from my grandparents was about excellent engineers being on the same pay scale with manual labour workers. That's the most repulsing? Nothing about children and old people being murdered en masse? See above, more skillful grand…

Ah, but why were there children and old people being murdered en masse?

It's because humans naturally resist what was being imposed upon them. The smart and able-bodied are going to get more, and they will resist any effort to prevent this. Corruption and workplace theft were rampant in the Soviet Union.

Suppression of this resistance requires violence.

Re: Worker-owned businesses: 'We get paid the same regardless of role'

#34

Post by lugg »

downrightmike wrote: post #5
golergka wrote: post #3

> We all get paid the same hourly rate regardless of the roles we do. Good luck retaining any skilled professionals then. One of the most repulsing stories that I got from Soviet Union from my grandparents was about excellent engineers being on the same pay scale with manual labour workers. No matter how much do you put into your skills, the system had standard pay scale that you couldn't break out from. I'm happy th…

All sounds good in a free market, you know unless the major players are working together to lower pay intentionally: http://fortune.com/2015/09/03/koh-anti-poach-order/

Let's not forget that it is culturally considered taboo to talk about money and compensation.

Employers hate it when employees talk about what they get paid.

If people were turly getting paid what they are worth nobody should feel like they need to hide their paycheck from their colleagues.

Yet I'd bet most of the people here complaining about how this wouldn't work for x, y, and z reasons don't actively discuss what they are paid with their peers. Some "free" market alright.

Re: Worker-owned businesses: 'We get paid the same regardless of role'

#35

Post by closeparen »

rayiner wrote: post #26
morgante wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seriously. Can you imagine trying to hire a skilled professional who has put years of effort into acquiring a skill when you won't pay them any more than a retail cashier?

In a world where that was the expectation for everyone, sure. Professional jobs are a hell of a lot more interesting/rewarding than being a cashier. I don’t think you’d have programmers quitting to do service work if they weren’t making more money.

If I were going to live like a starving artist regardless of career choice, I would become an actual artist.

There’s a reason this strategy was coupled with central-planning assignment of graduates to jobs.

Re: Worker-owned businesses: 'We get paid the same regardless of role'

#36

Post by jessriedel »

Cyph0n wrote: post #25
jacobkg wrote: post #21

There is an excellent book called 'Maverick' about a Brazilian manufacturing company that, while not owned by the workers, gets much closer than almost any other business. I highly recommend that all founders read it https://www.amazon.com/Maverick-Success-Behind-Unusual-Workp...

Very interesting. The first successful non-hierarchial company that comes to my mind is Valve. I recall reading that Valve has a higher revenue per employee than any company in the world... Edit : profit, not revenue

Seems to me the causality works the other way. Industries where companies are formed from a small number of employee who are individualy quasi-millionaries (elite SV talent) are more likely to function well without a heirarchy than industries built on coordinated entry-level manual labor (Walmart).

Also, I don't really get this claim. Valve has ~360 employees with annual revenue under a billion dollars,

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valve_Corporation

whereas there are ten companies in the S&P 500 with over $3M in annual revenue per employee.

https://priceonomics.com/which-companies-have-the-highest-re...

Perhaps the comparison is only supposed to be to other tech giants like Apple, which are roughly $1-2M per employee.

Re: Worker-owned businesses: 'We get paid the same regardless of role'

#38

Post by Animats »

lugg wrote: post #34
downrightmike wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All sounds good in a free market, you know unless the major players are working together to lower pay intentionally: http://fortune.com/2015/09/03/koh-anti-poach-order/

Let's not forget that it is culturally considered taboo to talk about money and compensation. Employers hate it when employees talk about what they get paid. If people were turly getting paid what they are worth nobody should feel like they need to hide their paycheck from their colleagues. Yet I'd bet most of the people here complaining about how this wouldn't work for x, y, and z reasons don't actively discuss what…

Employers hate it when employees talk about what they get paid.

In the US, most employees have a legal right to talk to each other about pay.[1] Supervisory employees may not, but rank and file employees do. State laws go further in some states; in California, non-disclosure terms involving pay are prohibited for all employees.

[1] https://www.dol.gov/wb/media/pay_secrecy.pdf

Re: Worker-owned businesses: 'We get paid the same regardless of role'

#39

Post by maksimum »

fancyfish wrote: post #23
golergka wrote: post #3

> We all get paid the same hourly rate regardless of the roles we do. Good luck retaining any skilled professionals then. One of the most repulsing stories that I got from Soviet Union from my grandparents was about excellent engineers being on the same pay scale with manual labour workers. No matter how much do you put into your skills, the system had standard pay scale that you couldn't break out from. I'm happy th…

Equal payment is definitely not the norm for co-ops worldwide. Workers realize they should be paid for their contribution. For example at Mondragón, a network of cooperatives in Spain which employs 75,000 people, workers established a scheme that distributes profits in line with contributions. The difference between this co-op and other businesses is that workers decided to collectively absorb the impact of the Reces…

> make a more sensible amount which still attracts and sustains the best talent in the enterprise.

Who should be in charge of how 'sensible' is defined? And how can you argue that it attracts the best talent? Most people outside Spain probably have never heard of Mondragón, but they've almost certainly heard of Google, Facebook, Amazon, AliBaba or Baidu.

Re: Worker-owned businesses: 'We get paid the same regardless of role'

#40

Post by icebraining »

wyager wrote: post #29
rayiner wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In a world where that was the expectation for everyone, sure. Professional jobs are a hell of a lot more interesting/rewarding than being a cashier. I don’t think you’d have programmers quitting to do service work if they weren’t making more money.

If I didn’t get paid more to do programming than to do a mindless low-effort job like cashiering, I would absolutely switch to being a cashier and use my mental energy on my own time for my own goals. Salaries already price in the “interestingness” of jobs.

If I didn’t get paid more to do programming than to do a mindless low-effort job like cashiering, I would absolutely switch to being a cashier and use my mental energy on my own time for my own goals.

Well, I wouldn't. Dealing with the general public would drain way more of my mental energy than programming. Which leaves us with two anecdotes.

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