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Google Urged the U.S. to Limit Protection for Activist Workers

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Re: Google Urged the U.S. to Limit Protection for Activist Workers

#421

Post by skookumchuck »

Apocryphon wrote: post #418
skookumchuck wrote: post #416

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can't make water 100% pure, either. That doesn't mean you're not drinking water. Your claim that it must be perfect to be considered a free market is argumentative, not substantive.

Ha-Joong Chang might disagree[0], but okay I’ll dodge the No True Scotsman accusation. What’s your definition of free market, then? [0] https://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/comment/ha-joon-...

It consists of transactions among freely consenting adults that do not use force or fraud.

Re: Google Urged the U.S. to Limit Protection for Activist Workers

#422

Post by Apocryphon »

skookumchuck wrote: post #421
Apocryphon wrote: post #418

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ha-Joong Chang might disagree[0], but okay I’ll dodge the No True Scotsman accusation. What’s your definition of free market, then? [0] https://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/comment/ha-joon-...

It consists of transactions among freely consenting adults that do not use force or fraud.

Sounds like that's compatible with the German social market, or Nordic social democracy. Or even the protectionist Asian Tiger states.

Re: Google Urged the U.S. to Limit Protection for Activist Workers

#423

Post by jtolmar »

dominotw wrote: post #303
hoaw wrote: post #287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No one could really say what the absolute position of a union would be in that question. Unions are membership organizations that work in the interest of current, and to some extent future, members. The rest is politics. A union would have incentive for foreigners to e.g. come to the US, so the US get a larger slice of the market. On the other hand they don't have an interest in those workers e.g. having lesser right…

Do you have an example of such pro immigration labor union?

The IWW.

Re: Google Urged the U.S. to Limit Protection for Activist Workers

#424

Post by xg15 »

skookumchuck wrote: post #421
Apocryphon wrote: post #418

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ha-Joong Chang might disagree[0], but okay I’ll dodge the No True Scotsman accusation. What’s your definition of free market, then? [0] https://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/comment/ha-joon-...

It consists of transactions among freely consenting adults that do not use force or fraud.

Power imbalance is ok though.

Re: Google Urged the U.S. to Limit Protection for Activist Workers

#425

Post by xg15 »

skookumchuck wrote: post #400
xg15 wrote: post #384

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well yeah. Not being able to make ends meet while working is more morally justifyable than not being to make ends meet while unemployed, I guess.

Making ends meet isn't really the issue. Mentally disabled people are usually taken care of by relatives. They can't live on their own. But they want to feel valued and do worthwhile things. By pricing them out of a job, they are denied that opportunity.

This is a strange logic. Your description of a job is more that of a glorified hobby.

Meanwhile, are you expecting that the relatives (if they exist at all) shoulder all the burden and costs of caring themselves?

Only because someone does not live alone doesn't mean they don't have a cost of living. Indeed, a disabled person's cost of living is likely higher than an able-bodied one. Nevertheless, they should be expected to compensate this with a lower income than everyone else?

Re: Google Urged the U.S. to Limit Protection for Activist Workers

#426

Post by austincheney »

Itaxpica wrote: post #324
Aunche wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The difference is that software engineers, especially those at Google, have high social mobility and are well educated. I think that unions are inefficient, but I'm sympathetic towards or even support most of them because those workers don't have a better option. Googlers just come off as entitled. They should be intelligent enough to acknowledge when they're making clickbaity populist arguments that misrepresent com…

Funny how people only ever use "entitled" to describe labor demanding better treatment from management, but never to describe management demanding that labor do more for less.

Have you ever lived or worked in a third world country and seen people struggle to make ends meet? I mean really struggle. I have. It makes me wish I could drop my kids off in Afghanistan or a Syrian refugee camp for two weeks so that they can see just how good they actually have it when they curiously find things to bitch about.

I have worked immediately next to a former South African military officer that now works as a senior software engineer at one of the most profitable companies in the world. This person has also seen and experienced unimaginable poverty first hand and its amazing how quickly these experiences bring people into a common understanding or appreciation.

I think the world entitled is completely appropriate in this context. To reaffirm that when employees walk out of Google for a protest it isn't the contractors or employees in the various support jobs who walk out. It is the entitled software engineers whose jobs are more mobile and face less income insecurity. Ask any Googler that walked out about that stratification.

Re: Google Urged the U.S. to Limit Protection for Activist Workers

#427

Post by lsc »

gcb0 wrote: post #309
Aunche wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The difference is that software engineers, especially those at Google, have high social mobility and are well educated. I think that unions are inefficient, but I'm sympathetic towards or even support most of them because those workers don't have a better option. Googlers just come off as entitled. They should be intelligent enough to acknowledge when they're making clickbaity populist arguments that misrepresent com…

let me try to help you fill the data you assumed with concrete examples. search H1b applications for google and other companies. you will see google hires with 60-100k salaries. being stuck for 10yrs on the lowest end of our category pay is very far from "high social mobility"

$60-100K sounds really unlikely for engineering positions. A poster a bit down claims $127K, which sounds low but not unbelievably low for base salary.

I can only really talk about my own experience, but I think the paysa total comp numbers are close enough to throw rocks at the truth.

Re: Google Urged the U.S. to Limit Protection for Activist Workers

#428

Post by simion314 »

scrumbledober wrote: post #362
fixermark wrote: post #307

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Videogames, in particular, should be a fascinating case study in lack of unionization. I assume it's because there's always another batch of fresh-out-of-college young people willing to throw their bodies onto that grindstone that we haven't yet seen successful unionization in that space?

I think video game developers are a subset of developers and that subset is almost entirely passionate about video games. Very few people end up working in game development if they are not passionate about it. I think any time you have a workforce who are passionate about their field you can get people to work for less than if they held the same job in a different field that wasn't full of passionate fans.

Do you think the passion keeps them working more then 80 hours a week or there is some pressure?

I worked 16 hours a day for a week, it was horrible, I don't think I can do 2 times more in 16 hours then in 8 and I gave up the money and just worked the 8 hours(now I am doing 4 hours a day , screw the money)

Re: Google Urged the U.S. to Limit Protection for Activist Workers

#429

Post by stale2002 »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #271
stale2002 wrote: post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is not about "making a proposal to make sure these tradoffs don't exist". Instead it is about morally judging someone for making a morally reprehensible argument. If there is some country in the world where black people don't have equal rights, and a company uses this as a legal defense for it's behavior, then I am going to judge the company as being full of horrible horrible human beings. One does not get a free…

Someone is a horrible person if they are falsely accused of something and use the argument that most effectively allows them to avoid being falsely convicted of it? It seems to me if you have a country where some people don't have equal rights, the problem is the law, not any individual defendant. That's the easy one to fix, in the sense of knowing what should be done. Much easier than trading false positives against…

I am saying that if you make an argument in court that says "This law should be overturned!" as google literally did, then I am going to assume that this means that you think the law should be overturned.

And I will judge you morally if I believe overturning this law is a bad thing.

A company is responsible for it's actions. And if it's actions in court cause a good law to be overturned, as is their stated argument, then I will judge them very poorly for this.

Re: Google Urged the U.S. to Limit Protection for Activist Workers

#430

Post by ionised »

skookumchuck wrote: post #421
Apocryphon wrote: post #418

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ha-Joong Chang might disagree[0], but okay I’ll dodge the No True Scotsman accusation. What’s your definition of free market, then? [0] https://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/comment/ha-joon-...

It consists of transactions among freely consenting adults that do not use force or fraud.

That's just trade.
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