Proposed bill would shorten California workweek to 32 hours • Hacker News Board

Re: Proposed bill would shorten California workweek to 32 hours

#191

Post by rileymat2 » Sat, Apr 09, 2022, 11:10 PM UTC

josephcsible wrote: post #155

ZeroGravitas wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hey, if they don't like it, they can get a job somewhere else, no need for authoritarian governments preventing people freely entering contracts with groups with much more power than they do individually.... wait, this reminds me of something?

Unions having the power to force employees to join is what's authoritarian. If I want to work for a company, and the company wants to hire me, we should be free to enter into a contract. A third party shouldn't have the power to say "you can't unless you pay us dues". And before you say "well not if the company and union entered into a contract that said the company would only hire union workers", that's not how it w…

> The laws we have today give unions the power to unilaterally say that without the company agreeing, and this is what's bad and needs to go away.

Can you give examples? My impression was closed shop and union shop was negotiated, not dictated by law.

Re: Proposed bill would shorten California workweek to 32 hours

#192

Post by secabeen » Sat, Apr 09, 2022, 11:19 PM UTC

amf12 wrote: post #190

chaostheory wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

California had just had its net population change going negative for the first time recently. There is a threshold where more businesses leave that it’s starting to reach. The cost of living doesn’t help along with crime. Climate change will also make the situation worse in the coming years, where we eventually lose temperate weather in exchange for forest fires. We’re already experiencing failing infrastructure like…

> California had just had its net population change going negative for the first time recently How much was it because of the pandemic causing work from home, which led to new employees joining remotely and not relocating to California, young people who lived here to move somewhere cheaper. The net growth might possibly increase in the coming years.

That's a factor, as is significant reductions in immigration. I expect California's population growth will return once things return more to normal.

Re: Proposed bill would shorten California workweek to 32 hours

#193

Post by syshum » Sat, Apr 09, 2022, 11:42 PM UTC

dwaltrip wrote: post #187

syshum wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That would only explain remtoe workers, However non-remote jobs are having the same problems. Hell the MCD's in my area now has signs wanting people at up to $16/hr (min starting is $13 now) Government policies are never the correct way to solve societal problems, even taking the premise the the "evil profit motive" is the actual reason we have seen abuse in the past (which I disagree with), the resolution to that is…

How do negative externalities fit into your picture?

And you believed these are resolved with government policies?

Which ones? Point to some examples of government resolving these to the detriment of corporations?

The examples I could provide would be government shielding corporations from these negative externalities, limiting their liability, and socializing the costs to the tax payers of that government....

I can point to no examples of govermment resolving the problem of externalities

Re: Proposed bill would shorten California workweek to 32 hours

#194

Post by josephcsible » Sat, Apr 09, 2022, 11:44 PM UTC

rileymat2 wrote: post #191

josephcsible wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unions having the power to force employees to join is what's authoritarian. If I want to work for a company, and the company wants to hire me, we should be free to enter into a contract. A third party shouldn't have the power to say "you can't unless you pay us dues". And before you say "well not if the company and union entered into a contract that said the company would only hire union workers", that's not how it w…

> The laws we have today give unions the power to unilaterally say that without the company agreeing, and this is what's bad and needs to go away. Can you give examples? My impression was closed shop and union shop was negotiated, not dictated by law.

The issue isn't that there's no contract at all. The issue is that the contract isn't freely agreed to, since once 51% of workers decide they want a union, the company isn't allowed to walk away from the negotiating table.

Re: Proposed bill would shorten California workweek to 32 hours

#195

Post by forbiddenvoid » Sat, Apr 09, 2022, 11:56 PM UTC

ZeroGravitas wrote: post #151

forbiddenvoid wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's probably more nuanced than that. If 100% of people wanted a 32-hour work week, a law wouldn't be necessary - we would just have a 32-hour work week. The fact that the number is less than 100% is the reason we need a law, because the incentives aren't aligned between those who want it and those who don't.

The prisoner's dilemma is a toy example where everyone wants the same thing, but they can't achieve it without some external mechanism. Many regulations in the real world fall into this category, ensuring your competitors can't do things you don't want to do and thereby force you to do it to compete (and they in turn don't want to do it, but if their competitors do it...).

This is not a good example, and is part of the problem with these types of discussions.

Not everyone wants the same thing in the prisoner's dilemma. The prisoners all want one thing and the prosecutors want something different. If everyone wanted the same thing here, there would be no dilemma.

That's the case with 32 hour work weeks. Employees want them - but employers don't. So there is a misalignment of incentives. And employers specifically have much more power in the situation because there is a significant imbalance in risk between the two. The external mechanism is needed here in order to accommodate and mitigate that power balance.

The mechanism could be legislation, it could be collective action in the form of a union, etc. But it's specifically because not everyone agrees, and the disagreement comes with a power imbalance that the law is necessary.

Re: Proposed bill would shorten California workweek to 32 hours

#196

Post by hedora » Sun, Apr 10, 2022, 12:20 AM UTC

syshum wrote: post #186

medvezhenok wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If someone thinks the Government doesn't solve problems, they can just look at the 1929-1934 and how problems got "solved" under free market capitalism (before the massive government interventions starting in 1934). (we now consider that period to be a giant mistake specifically because the government did not do enough and left free markets to their own accord)

No "we" do not, some people do, some people do not There is LOTS of scholarly economics works that shows government intervention in the markets not only lets to the crash, completely extended the length the crash. Specifically the fed actions in 1929 lead to prolonged pain not seen in other nations that recovered faster because their central bank did not try to "solvable the problem" To state that is a forgone conclu…

I suggest checking to see what policies changed in 1934, and who was in power before and after (and why).

Re: Proposed bill would shorten California workweek to 32 hours

#197

Post by hedora » Sun, Apr 10, 2022, 12:33 AM UTC

rileymat2 wrote: post #191

josephcsible wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unions having the power to force employees to join is what's authoritarian. If I want to work for a company, and the company wants to hire me, we should be free to enter into a contract. A third party shouldn't have the power to say "you can't unless you pay us dues". And before you say "well not if the company and union entered into a contract that said the company would only hire union workers", that's not how it w…

> The laws we have today give unions the power to unilaterally say that without the company agreeing, and this is what's bad and needs to go away. Can you give examples? My impression was closed shop and union shop was negotiated, not dictated by law.

The US is closed shop. If a subset of employees don't like their union, they are not allowed to form their own union.

Put another way, if employees disagree with something the union does, they have no recourse other than founding their own union and trying to get all their coworkers to vote to force every one to switch to the new union.

In particular, employees are not able to call strikes in the US. In some sense, unions solved the "problem" of employee walk outs by redirecting grievances away from employers and to large unions that are (in practice) unresponsive to employee requests.

When they do get things done, it's unclear what constituency they are serving, or who made the decision.

For example, the California statewide teachers union managed to block vaccine mandates for teachers. All the teachers I've talked to in Silicon Valley are vaccinated and support mandates.

Those teachers have no hope of joining a union that's not controlled by anti-vaxxers.

Re: Proposed bill would shorten California workweek to 32 hours

#198

Post by imtringued » Sun, Apr 10, 2022, 1:07 AM UTC

artificialLimbs wrote: post #68

nostromo95 wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Eh whether government should have the right to do this takes a backseat to the fact that the government is the only way we can do this. The government is the only coordinating mechanism we have to enforce something like this, otherwise everyone is playing the prisoner’s dilemma.

By prisoners dilemma, do you mean that people are free to negotiate amongst themselves as they see fit? Oh the horror…

They are free to negotiate their freedoms away.

What I have never understood so far, is that all the advocates of markets simply declare them free, as if reducing government involvement is going to solve inherent imbalances in power. The end result is branded "free market" when it is anything but.

Re: Proposed bill would shorten California workweek to 32 hours

#199

Post by michaelmrose » Sun, Apr 10, 2022, 1:11 AM UTC

pc86 wrote: post #188

michaelmrose wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are assuming that wages represent 100% of costs when its more apt to be 30%. You are assuming that all employees are full time when in fact the minority often are. Lastly you are assuming that people will be paid 20% more for working 20% less. They would be making 25% more 5/4 not 4/5. For example 100 for working 5 hours is 20 100 for working 4 hours is 25. Those errors corrected lets blow through a hypothetical.…

By focusing on the numbers specifically you're missing my entire point, which is that there are always businesses on the edge. This will put some businesses out, causing those employees to lose jobs and those owners to either try to open another business (expensive) or find work elsewhere (and most of the time if you own a business and it goes under you're not eligible for unemployment). Whether that's okay, or even…

People have a need say dinner. Many people will compete to provide dinner and those who are only marginally successful will fall off the game board under absolutely any set of ground rules to be replaced by others who are either better suited, better capitalized, or luckier.

Any change in the ground rules that makes life more expensive be it implementing health inspects, fire codes, minimum wage, over time, child labor will boot someone from barely functional to defunct to be replaced by someone smarter and better.

Such failures are disruptive but unemployment shields the employees to some degree from mischance and ultimately they don't long term care if bob's eatery goes out of business. Instead they care if there is someone they can cook serve or deliver dinner for. On average someone will be interested in serving that need and statistically the survivor will be a better business than bobs.

It's unfortunate if Bob goes under but statistically Bob as the owner of a business with 500+ employees he is well inside of the 1% and his financial well being is the last thing we ought to optimize for.

Re: Proposed bill would shorten California workweek to 32 hours

#200

Post by imtringued » Sun, Apr 10, 2022, 1:17 AM UTC

artificialLimbs wrote: post #69

Animats wrote: post #35

What we need is more enforcement of existing labor laws. A 40-hour work week with teeth. No "unpaid overtime". No "time shaving". Out of hours phone calls count as work time, with a minimum time for a call. (3 hours in the movie industry).

What I’d like to see is less government power, which means they stay out of my life, which means more freedom and less coercion, which means I can negotiate my life as I see fit like a grown up who is responsible for himself.

The government isn't the only source of coercion. In fact, it usually is the weakest one and it bows down to bigger sources of coercion like the wealthy, foreign/domestic investors and landowners.

Since those are deemed untouchable they will keep doing whatever they want.