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"Equal pay for equal work" in remote jobs

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Re: "Equal pay for equal work" in remote jobs

#251

Post by kolbe »

plutonorm wrote: post #158
helen___keller wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> then they should not stop that? The whole point of having negotiating power is they can't just "stop" it. Because you, as a union, collectively have enough power to force them to the table to negotiate. Whether or not the company has a problem with unions is basically irrelevant.

It is irrelevant. But somehow companies have convinced most that unions are a bad thing. They have leveraged their greater influence to further their power. They are now in an essentially unassailable position. For the great majority of the workforce they have no bargaining power. This toxic modern world should pop like the noxious little bubble it is. We need a new 60s only this time we need to win.

It all depends on what your goal is. Unions take money from R&D and shareholders, and put it in their own pockets. That's totally fine, but it is a tradeoff. The negative side is it creates opportunities for other companies that aren't unionized to innovate with that capital. Or sometimes it just results in returning capital to shareholders. Tesla is a good example of where paying union members instead of investing in R&D offered Musk an amazing opportunity to outcompete some of the most entrenched and subsidized companies in the US. We are actually quite fortunate that this even happened in the US, because the opportunity was there for any company in any country to seize.

As an aside, I don't get why deng tolerates comments like yours, but will mod an equivalent comment that even moderately right wing. If we want real discussion here, it doesn't start with a reshashed Eugene Debs speech.

Re: "Equal pay for equal work" in remote jobs

#252

Post by 6gvONxR4sf7o »

simonebrunozzi wrote: post #112

> You should expect "equal pay for equal work" at your new remote job So naive. In an ideal, utopian world? Maybe it would work this way. Maybe. In reality, your compensation is a function of your negotiating power. Some people, in fact, manage to get the same pay even when working remote, because they're "highly employable". Others don't. And let me add: I almost agree that remote work shouldn't necessarily command…

> > You should expect "equal pay for equal work" ...

> So naive.

> In an ideal, utopian world? Maybe it would work this way. Maybe.

> In reality, your compensation is a function of your negotiating power.

> ...if you accept that you live in a market-enabled society, your salary is at stake, too.

This logic horrifies me because it applies equally well to wage disparities based on protected classes. We have collectively decided as a society that this argument is faulty and unethical.

That doesn’t mean remote work should get equal pay. It just means that your argument doesn’t hold.

Re: "Equal pay for equal work" in remote jobs

#253

Post by returningfory2 »

diehunde wrote: post #233

People who complain about this don't understand how fiat money works. They are blinded by the numbers they see in other's people's checks. Instead, if companies give coupons to pay for rent and food, nobody would complain because they wouldn't see the real value of different cities' coupons. IMO, the effort should be focused on improving the conversion formulas. Although from what I've seen, people living in cheaper…

> Instead, if companies give coupons to pay for rent and food, nobody would complain because they wouldn't see the real value of different cities' coupons.

This is an awesome observation, but I think it needs the qualification that not all of your salary is spent on COL and that people in high COL areas have an advantage in this regard. If you're saving X% of your salary for vacation, say, it's better to be saving in a high COL area because X will be around the same, but the absolute number will be bigger - and this is money you will not be spending in your area.

When I was a PhD student in NYC I was able to travel for more than a month every summer using money I had saved from teaching in NYC. If I had been doing my PhD in a small mid-western college town, I couldn't have done that.

Re: "Equal pay for equal work" in remote jobs

#254

Post by KittenInABox »

bumby wrote: post #212
plutonorm wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is irrelevant. But somehow companies have convinced most that unions are a bad thing. They have leveraged their greater influence to further their power. They are now in an essentially unassailable position. For the great majority of the workforce they have no bargaining power. This toxic modern world should pop like the noxious little bubble it is. We need a new 60s only this time we need to win.

Unfortunately, I think unions are culpable as well. When they protect bad employees, act to extend their power for it's own sake, refuse to concede despite potentially ruining the company etc. Ironically, they can end up displaying the same qualities they originated to prevent.

They can but they don't always. Ascribing all unions to the flaws of the most culpable ones is something we don't do for corporations or even governments, and if we did do this we wouldn't get anywhere as a society. People used to beat each other physically over their votes in the village square, but this doesn't mean democracy is culpable for violence.

Re: "Equal pay for equal work" in remote jobs

#255

Post by a_imho »

refurb wrote: post #41

I think calling it a COL adjustment is the problem. It’s not. It’s a supply and demand issue. There are a limited pool of people willing to move to the Bay Area (I’ve had this discussion with my HR before - great candidate, great package, they look at rent and say “nah”). If your pool of potential employees goes from X in the Bay Area to 10 * X across all 50 states, that increase in supply will impact wages. That guy…

The number of remote companies championing COL adjustments offering relocation is close to zero though.

Re: "Equal pay for equal work" in remote jobs

#256

Post by toomuchtodo »

satyrnein wrote: post #199
jasonjayr wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then companies should have no problems whatsoever with Unions? I mean, if a group of employees want to get together to amplify their negotiating power, then they should not stop that?

Does this include coercing the employer to only employ union members? What does the union say if the company wants to hire someone for cheap in another country, who wants the job?

I would hope my union would support legislation and lobby to protect wages over employer profits (with employers attempting to optimize for profits by employing cheaper offshore labor). Otherwise, the first world's standard of living is going to quickly race to the median of the world.

If, as an employer, you would prefer not to adhere to strong labor protection laws in the market you desire to operate in, you are free to find markets more to your liking.

Re: "Equal pay for equal work" in remote jobs

#257

Post by KittenInABox »

yeetman21 wrote: post #180
plutonorm wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is irrelevant. But somehow companies have convinced most that unions are a bad thing. They have leveraged their greater influence to further their power. They are now in an essentially unassailable position. For the great majority of the workforce they have no bargaining power. This toxic modern world should pop like the noxious little bubble it is. We need a new 60s only this time we need to win.

I am only qualified to speak about the tech sector in which I work. All of my coworkers make above six figures. We have every sort of benefit that we could want. Why would we want a union? Our company has convinced us that unions are a bad thing by giving us basically anything that a union could have, and more. Why would we want to agitate for more when we already have so much, and risk what we currently have (which…

I'm also a tech worker and I know plenty of things we can agitate for:

* Better treatment against the rampant ageism in our industry (eg. access to lawyers when IBM decides to do mass layoffs of people above a certain age...)

* Guaranteeing reimbursement for self-education materials, time off for self-education purposes like conventions and hacker spaces

* Better treatment for H1B visa holders, a political push to stop the abuse of workers who cannot leave employers or risk losing immigration status

* Support for and communal funding for OSS

* A group pushback against flagrantly unethical, insecure, or straight up illegal behavior on the part of companies (eg. that non-poaching agreement back in the day that kept people's wages from being as high as they should've been)

* Standard establishment of making sure remote workers are paid for the value they bring to the company and aren't stiffed purely because of where they are geographically located at the time.

Re: "Equal pay for equal work" in remote jobs

#258

Post by IggleSniggle »

forest_dweller wrote: post #95
rwmj wrote: post #36

Pay is a power relationship. No one is asking company directors to take a pay cut based on cost of living calculations, because company directors have power over their companies. Similarly cleaners are paid peanuts even if they have to live/commute to high cost of living cities to do the job, because cleaners have no power in the relationship. This is also why workers who unionise can be paid more - the union has pow…

No it isn't about power. Labour is a market and is governed by the laws of supply and demand (typically). A cleaner gets paid less because it is unskilled work and almost any able bodied person can be a cleaner. Same someone that stacks shelves in a super market. The same happens in our industry. VB.NET developers aren't in demand, the contract rates are sometimes £200-300 a day less than a React JS / C# .NET Core de…

Saying it’s a power relationship is another way of saying the same thing that you are saying here. The amount of power that employer and employee have is based in large part on supply/demand. However, power includes a little bit more: an employer who has a better knowledge of the market may be able to extract lower pay from an employee who doesn’t know their market rate, and an employee who is exceptionally well suited for a given job has more power to negotiate a better rate.

Of course, this can also be reframed as a supply/demand scenario taking into account imperfect information for a given scenario, but that’s largely my point. They aren’t equivalent concepts, but they are closely related.

Re: "Equal pay for equal work" in remote jobs

#259

Post by zerr »

simonebrunozzi wrote: post #112

> You should expect "equal pay for equal work" at your new remote job So naive. In an ideal, utopian world? Maybe it would work this way. Maybe. In reality, your compensation is a function of your negotiating power. Some people, in fact, manage to get the same pay even when working remote, because they're "highly employable". Others don't. And let me add: I almost agree that remote work shouldn't necessarily command…

Yes, that is the theory, but in practice - the word always gets out, teammates find out each others' salaries and that's it... If there is a disparity, consider that team is broken - many would fly away, most of them will hate the employer.

Re: "Equal pay for equal work" in remote jobs

#260

Post by shadow28 »

michaelscott wrote: post #225
ma2rten wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This comes down to a philosophical question: what would be the ideal way to give access to opportunities? Should only smart and hard working people people get them? Both of those things are in large part determined by genes. If you take this to the extreme we could give every child a gene and IQ test and determine based on that if they should live in a slum or in luxury. I don’t think that there is a good answer.

> what would be the ideal way to give access to opportunities? Should only smart and hard working people people get them? As opposed to just getting access by virtue of where you were lucky enough to be born or how wealthy your parents are?

But one could argue even intelligence is based purely on luck.
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