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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'

#61

Post by gremlinsinc »

icebraining wrote: post #40
wyager wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

yeah fuck that... I'm a developer because I'm an introvert, and overweight and want to sit on my ass and NOT talk to anyone all day... anyone who'd rather stand on their feet and do mindless drudgery because they can is insane...

My idea of the perfect worker co-op is where cashiers/programmers earn the same but that 'same' is above market value for the top level employee... so say devs go for 100k, cashiers also get 100k. Since there's no CEO/board/etc demanding 10 million/yr+ each then there's plenty to split.

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

#62

Post by dragonwriter »

slavik81 wrote: post #50
remir wrote: post #19

I find worker-owned businesses very interesting. Obviously getting paid the same regardless of role may be an obstacle to attracting highly skilled people, but if salaries are competitive and established in function of role and experience, in a transparent way, that could be great.

Worker cooperatives tend have the problem that it's hard to compare contributions of labour. The coop model tends to work best when most or all the workers are of a similar sort. More cohesion and less resentment that way. That's probably why the company has everyone do every job. Specialists are hard to employ like that, but the trick is that you don't need to hire them. Rather than keeping an accountant in house, y…

> Worker cooperatives tend have the problem that it's hard to compare contributions of labour.

Insofar as that's a problem, it's a problem for any firm compensating labor, not just labor cooperatives.

Labor cooperatives are perhaps less prone to adopt ad hoc wage differences through mechanisms which permit personal bias to manifest without a good metric with the excuse that it's necessary to reflect differences in contribution.

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

#63

Post by DougN7 »

gremlinsinc wrote: post #60
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?

If retail cashiers and engineers at company A earn more than an Engineer at company B, then why not?

Question: why don’t all companies pay the guy in the mailroom the same as their top scientists and sales people? I’ll give you a hint: it’s not greed at the top (most of the time)

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

#64

Post by gremlinsinc »

icebraining wrote: post #46
wutbrodo wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yea, i wondered the same thing. I like the idea of a worker owned Co-op in general, but it's subject to them actually being functional. I don't see how that could be the case with industries with large productivity/talent gaps, like software. Most of the co-ops I've come into contact with are smallish restaurants or grocery stores, which makes sense: most tasks can be handled by anyone and those that aren't can be ju…

I don't see how that could be the case with industries with large productivity/talent gaps, like software. And yet: https://github.com/hng/tech-coops#coops The gaps problem seems self-correcting; anyone who thinks they are underpaid will leave, and conversely the team will probably push out those badly underperforming. You'll still have gaps, but only among people who don't mind getting paid the same despite them.

Thanks for that link.. lots of good resources...

I want to start an MSP (Computer Repair / Maintenance as a Service) + Hosting + Development Business as a worker co-op someday, when I get the free-time and money to do so.

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

#65

Post by icebraining »

gremlinsinc wrote: post #61
icebraining wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

yeah fuck that... I'm a developer because I'm an introvert, and overweight and want to sit on my ass and NOT talk to anyone all day... anyone who'd rather stand on their feet and do mindless drudgery because they can is insane... My idea of the perfect worker co-op is where cashiers/programmers earn the same but that 'same' is above market value for the top level employee... so say devs go for 100k, cashiers also get…

Since there's no CEO/board/etc demanding 10 million/yr+ each then there's plenty to split.

Not really; the thing with the rich is that there aren't that many of them. Take the top 1% - their average income (including the people making billions) is $1.15M. Let's redistribute $1.1M of those. ($1.1M * (1% of population)) / population = 1% of $1.1M = $11k. So each person only gets $11k extra.

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

#66

Post by wolco »

morgante wrote: post #4
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…

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?

Have you ever been on upwork?

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

#67

Post by wolco »

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.

I would continue to program and stop worrying about the sprints, timelines and company goals.

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

#68

Post by wolco »

remir wrote: post #19

I find worker-owned businesses very interesting. Obviously getting paid the same regardless of role may be an obstacle to attracting highly skilled people, but if salaries are competitive and established in function of role and experience, in a transparent way, that could be great.

I was part of a worker owned company as a contractor. I believe it started with a lack of funds to pay employees so they had to trade pay for debt. In the end the Indian division bought out the parent company and closed down the north american offices.

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

#69

Post by nine_k »

maksimum wrote: post #42
wyager wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> we can see the heirs who drain off so much profit each year from the labor of those who work If successful people couldn’t pass ownership onto their heirs, the value of ownership itself would drop dramatically. If Bud and Sam Walton knew they couldn’t pass on their business to their kids, they would either have never done it in the first place or they would structure the business to close out well before they died.…

> If Bud and Sam Walton knew they couldn’t pass on their business to their kids, they would either have never done it in the first place or they would structure the business to close out well before they died How confident are you in those conclusions? There are plenty of very rich people who claim that they don't intend to leave much for their heirs.

They still can command what happens to their capitals after their death.

Remove this ability, and incentives change dramatically.

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

#70

Post by wutbrodo »

dragonwriter wrote: post #51
wutbrodo wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yea, i wondered the same thing. I like the idea of a worker owned Co-op in general, but it's subject to them actually being functional. I don't see how that could be the case with industries with large productivity/talent gaps, like software. Most of the co-ops I've come into contact with are smallish restaurants or grocery stores, which makes sense: most tasks can be handled by anyone and those that aren't can be ju…

> I don't see how that could be the case with industries with large productivity/talent gaps, like software. There are a number of large coops in industries where the firms require everything from professionals to manual labor; equal pay isn't common in those kind of coops, though the pay ranges are probably flatter than conventional firms. A co-op, ultimately, can be very much like a conventional firm, where the vot…

Right, I was being imprecise. I didn't mean to refer to coops in general, but rather equal-pay xoops
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