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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

#361

Post by satyrnein »

airza wrote: post #277
satyrnein wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Why is it suddenly coercion if your employees make this kind of negotiation using their collective bargaining ability? Employers are constantly able to dictate almost endless terms of employment, but if employees want the ability to exact more leverage using that power suddenly the supreme court and every supposed free-market guru shits their pants.

I mean coercion like threats of violence against strike breakers or non-union members, that sort of thing.

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

#362

Post by ponker »

necrotic_comp wrote: post #79
ponker wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, I just think the conversation right now is, "Why would you pay me less if I move from SF to Alabama, I'm the same guy doing the same work." The conversation in the future will be "Why would I hire you in SF and pay you three times what I'm paying in Alabama? You're equivalent guys doing the same work." The concept of the "standard" will shift from the highest-paid locale to the lowest, and "Cost of Living Adjus…

This is why there needs to be teeth to the laws that limit pay inequality within a firm ; if the CEO of the firm can only make X amount the median or mean (whichever is lower) salary of any person who does work for a firm (including contractors!) then we can hopefully push back on this cost of living BS. Basically, the work is worth something and if we do the work, we should be paid a reasonable amount, regardless of…

Why does an (American who earns $100K)'s right to earn $200K take precedence over a (Libyan who earns $20K)'s right to earn $40K?

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

#363

Post by whoknew1122 »

renewiltord wrote: post #342
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?

Companies can't stop you from unionizing. They can choose not to accept the collective agreement and they can hire permanent replacement for strikers. As for whether anyone should have a problem, you're welcome to have a problem. It's a free country. Whether that will lead to an outcome you desire is independent, though.

> "Companies can't stop you from unionizing."

de jure != de facto

Companies are legally prohibited from stopping unionization in the US. But that's not how it works in reality.

Most people work in an 'at-will' states. This means a company can terminate employees at any time. Want to unionize? Have at it.

All an employer needs to do is find is some company policy a person is violating (and trust me, EVERYONE is violates their company's policies from time-to-time, if only because company policies are so verbose and onerous). Your work badge isn't immediately visible? That's a policy violation. Go over your lunch a few minutes? That's a policy violation.

The company fires the unionizer. Now the onous is on the fired employee to prove that they were fired for unionizing. As long as the company doesn't say "I fired you because you were unionizing" (which they would never do), you got a lengthy legal battle on your hands.

Now where do you take your battle? To the NLRB. Now you have to fight against regulatory capture and political appointees who are hostile to the very idea of organized labor. Even if you do win, it will cost untold sums of time and money. It will be years before everything is adjudicated. At that point, what does it matter? The unionizer has been forced to move onto another job in the interim (and hope that the other company doesn't avoid hiring the person because of the labor complaint. And if the potential employer does? Another legal battle that the unionizer has to enter and prove).

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

#364

Post by satyrnein »

TheCoelacanth wrote: post #326
satyrnein wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

That's no different than any other exclusivity agreement a company might make with a supplier. I would potentially be on board with outlawing such agreements altogether, but it's not fair to restrict unions to be unable to make exclusivity agreements when every other type of organization can.

The issue is not voluntary exclusivity agreements, but if the union is able to force the company to employ only union members through threats of violence or similar.

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

#365

Post by rednerrus »

coward8675309 wrote: post #311
disgruntledphd2 wrote: post #296

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The loss of institutional knowledge caused by a mass exodus at the same time would cripple them (and pretty much any company that doesn't have incredibly rigorous standards for documentation).

I've been at startups where we experienced 90% engineering turnover over 12 mo. due to M&A or change of leadership. We got by. I'm sure Fb could cope.

I've been involved in these and it's a nightmare.

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

#366

Post by NationalPark »

baron_harkonnen wrote: post #140

This will happen but people will should not be surprised that we all get paid Topeka KS salaries not San Francisco CA salaries. The long term strategy of location pay differentials may seem like punishing people for leaving SF, but it's the opposite. I've been paid 80% of SF rate to live in the middle of nowhere and anyone else who has done this will realize it's an amazing deal. When a 3000 sq ft house costs conside…

Speak for yourself, but you'd have to pay me even more to live in the middle of nowhere than in a city, and this doesn't seem to be an uncommon preference. Especially if you're young, single, have disposable income, and lean left politically, which is probably most of the remote tech workers who have these options.

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

#367

Post by fishtoaster »

eloisant wrote: post #88

The reality behind "cost of living" is actually "market price". Companies having this policy don't actually try to figure out how much it costs to live in a city in an other, they just look how much people are paid for a similar job in the area. In other words, companies with this policy pay you as low as the market allows them, without you being poached by a local competitor.

This is why I strongly suspect this is a self-correcting problem.

A company decides to pay based on COL. Their engineers in rural areas are much cheaper and they now have a strong incentive to hire more people in Des Moines than in SF. They do so, thus driving up the demand for (and thus, price of) engineers in Des Moines. Likewise, by hiring fewer SF engineers, they're driving down the demand for (and thus, price of) engineers in SF. Give it a while and the national price for a given engineer converges.

I don't know exactly what the timeline here is - probably longer than a couple years, but less than 20. As an SF engineer, this'll probably pull my salary down, but the salary of engineers throughout the country up.

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

#368

Post by femtoparsec »

csense wrote: post #333

Say you have a startup in California and are thinking about hiring me remotely. It's completely ridiculous that you say "Okay I'll give you $100k if you live in NYC, but only $60k for the same work if you live in the Rust Belt." If it makes economic sense for you to pay me $100k, making that conditional on where I live is just a jerk move. As someone who actually does live in the Rust Belt, it feels like these tech c…

As the employer, it often works differently. You interview a number of people as final candidates you find good fits for different reasons. Each person presents some extra benefits and some shortcomings. You then balance it off against the costs of hiring each person, and you make a final decision on that basis. At that stage, someone who'd be an appropriate "right next step" for the company at $80K may not be the right next step if they were at $100K, so you may pass if the person isn't willing to accept $80K.

If you truly run into cases where the hiring decision has already been made, so you're sure you're hiring the person independent of where they live, and then decide you'll pay them less if they live elsewhere - then one of 2 things is happening. Reality #1 - you're being subjected to some kind of corporate level accommodation where the business has decided that "we'll just take the hit and up-adjust salaries based on cost of living". If they don't apply this approach universally, the only alternative would be to either pay everyone $100k and therefore not have the ability to hire as many people, or simply not hire from $100K markets and only hire from $80k. Reality #2 - there's some real corporate corruption happening at the company where they're doing this for the sake of some central policy, but it's not a real constraint. That'd be unfortunate.

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

#369

Post by paridhi7 »

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…

>A company's goal is to "extract" from each employee more value than his/her/their salary. If a company manages to save on a salary because the employee doesn't have much negotiating power, good for the company.

So, according to you, companies should have kept exploiting women and kept discriminating against under-represented groups by paying them less, because they didn't have "much negotiating power" and because it was "good for the company"? Equal pay shouldn't just work in an ideal, utopian world. It should work in all worlds because that is what is fair!

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

#370

Post by [deleted] »

bumby wrote: post #351
aeternum wrote: post #312

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the marketplace failed to provide both affordable milk and the ability for dairy farmers to make a living. So the price is both two low and too high? This is not a failure of the marketplace (aka price discovery), this is the U.S. deciding that cheap milk and overproduction is in the nation's best interest and we should socialize some of the production costs. There are logical (milk as a staple product and avoidanc…

Aren't there cases where the market fails when considered in broader context? E.g., the market decides to off-shore manufacturing. This is good short-term as it leads to lower prices for consumers. But it's also potentially a failure at a national long-term level as it has reduced our manufacturing capacity. The short-term bias of the market can adversely affect long lead-time strategic interests. See: the inability…

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