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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

#531

Post by kstrauser »

inglor_cz wrote: post #482
NationalPark wrote: post #366

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Fun story. A former chairman of the Czech Green Party, a young and progressive gay guy moved to a rural area, bought an older ruin of some former baron's chatelet and started putting it into order. With his husband. In a year or so, his Tweets started shifting noticeably to the center and sometimes to the right, to a great consternation of his former Green co-partisans. There is something about life out there that ch…

So much this. To people living in cities, guns are dangerous things that only make local life more dangerous. To people in rural areas, guns are tools just like hammers and chainsaws. Similarly, to urban residents it makes total sense to raise taxes for public transport, but in small towns everyone owns a car anyway so why bother?

I think people greatly overestimate how similar their lifestyles are to those of their countrymen. Having lived many years in both of those environments, they have some significant, fundamental differences.

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

#532

Post by JAlexoid »

whoknew1122 wrote: post #462
pc86 wrote: post #386

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So what is your suggestion then

We could start with: 1.) Getting rid of at-will employment 2.) Have a NLRB that is functional and actually protects labor 3.) Lower the legal threshold for proving illicit anti-union activities 4.) Give teeth to laws protect that unionization and uniformly enforce those laws no matter the political party in power 5.) Staff the upper levels of the NLRB with career civil servants, not political appointees

If you terminate at-will employment, then as a service provider I demand that we terminate at-will purchasing.

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

#533

Post by JAlexoid »

xav0989 wrote: post #372
renewiltord wrote: post #342

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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, but as Walmart has shown time and again, they will straight up close a store and lay-off every employee there if there are rumours of unionization. They would rather not have a store at all than have a store where the employees are unionized.

Ok... Is there a law somewhere that says that you have a right to have a Walmart?

As an anarchist - why are people not willing to start a co-op?

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

#534

Post by JAlexoid »

whimsicalism wrote: post #418
renewiltord wrote: post #342

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

People love to paint this world of voluntary transactions and consensual agreements, but then corporations turn around and push for right-to-work laws which infringe freedom of association and contract by making it illegal for companies to sign security clause contracts with Unions. Why should a voluntary, consensual signing of a contract be made illegal?

Mandated unions, union bans and laws undermining union contracts - are all infringements on freedom of association.

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

#535

Post by ironmagma »

joelbluminator wrote: post #448
ironmagma wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We do expect each other to be reasonably moral. It’s understood though that everyone has limits and is fundamentally flawed, so at the end of the day a few things have to be written off. Exactly how many things you write off, interestingly, contributes to your own moral standing.

I don't think we expect everyone to be reasonably moral, at least I don't live with that expectation - that's just setting yourself up for disappointment. Yes, most people don't murder or rape, but we're still quite a selfish and survivalist creature. Although we know perfectly well the amount of suffering the meat industry causes, most of us are fine with consuming meat and dairy, as long as we don't need to see the…

Food science findings (which tend to be unreliable) aside, eating food is something that’s hard to fault someone else for doing. The fact that most people eat meat alone is something that makes it more of a reasonable thing to do, even more so that we typically don’t find out about the conditions of cows, chickens, etc. until we are already mostly grown and hooked on the stuff.

Morality is a complicated thing to define[citation needed] but I would posit we actually generally have a high moral standard for each other in the west. We expect each other to not lie pathologically, push others away when they take advantage of those around them (e.g. scammers, con artists) enforce the rules of monogamous relationships (for the vast majority), return lost belongings to each other, encourage food safety, and so on.

And you can find secular explanations for all of those, but most people are just taught that those are the right things and stick to it. Sure, some of the integrity of those areas are eroding over time, but generally speaking society is still held together with morals.

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

#536

Post by JAlexoid »

jasonjayr wrote: post #359
renewiltord wrote: post #342

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You're right; but all too often companies turn to government to pass laws weakening unions, rather than continue to negotiate in good faith.

That's a great argument for reducing government's power.

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

#537

Post by 908B64B197 »

x87678r wrote: post #168
klodolph wrote: post #91

Often overlooked in the discussions about privilege and equality is the discussion about how citizens of different countries are given different levels of access to the same jobs. Like, I’m a US citizen and have basic programming skills. Not long after college I landed a software engineering job and I immediately have access to markets like SF or NYC, all I have to do is pack up and move (and it turns out I don’t eve…

Forget Syria, Canada is a better example. Canadians earn a fraction of US salaries despite some expensive COL in Vancouver and Toronto.

There's also a skill gap here.

Pretty sure most SV-based devs would qualify to immigrate to Canada, but the opposite is far from true.

Out of control immigration quotas, an extremely lax oversight of what constitutes reasonable qualifications to get a Canadian GC and the government itself pitching the country as cheap offshoring [0] are all things Canadian devs should fix instead of whining about lower wages.

[0] https://globalnews.ca/news/4178326/amazon-vancouver-tech-wor...

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

#538

Post by JAlexoid »

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?

If a company enters into a contract - they cannot break it without facing consequences.

Yes - union contracts may include a ban on non-union workers. As long as that's not mandated by law - it's really none of our business.

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

#539

Post by marakv2 »

claudiulodro wrote: post #287
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 want to pay $2 dollars for milk, instead of $20? That's thanks to competition between companies. It's not though. "The support granted to U.S dairy producers represented approximately [...] 73% of the farmers' marketplace revenue. USDA data also reveals that US dairy farmers operate at a loss, and have a cost of production that is higher than what they earn from the marketplace."[1] We're subsidizing the low co…

Or is it because wages havnt risen with inflation, reducing buying power for every day goods?

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

#540

Post by JAlexoid »

Dirlewanger wrote: post #291
yeetman21 wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 in the same boat as you, but think about this: these cushy developer jobs in the Western world are on borrowed time. FAANG companies are investing billions to teach people how to code and brand it as if it's some noble humanitarian effort when it's really just to further lower wages. When the time of FAANG companies actually offshoring key development teams comes (and it is coming), I have 0 faith the federal gov…

Wealth isn't a single pie. When new engineers are trained - we bake a new cake, instead of slicing a thinner slice for your privileged position.
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