Interview with Deliveroo couriers appealing bargaining-rights decision • Hacker News Board

Re: Interview with Deliveroo couriers appealing bargaining-rights decision

#31

Post by labourcurious » Thu, May 24, 2018, 3:12 PM UTC

mlthoughts2018 wrote: post #18

My brother works as an inventory clerk in a small-town factory in the midwest that makes small batches of custom metal parts sold to other factories. He has been there several years and is one of the more skilled employees, and makes just under $18,000 per year. No retirement or profit sharing benefits. The work conditions are unsafe, with lax enforcement of safety policies for forklifts, stacks of containers, cleani…

This is very well put and the way you describe the intra-company blue-collar / white-collar divide is on the money. You are right, this sucks.

I'm more skeptical about not being in a free labor market. I know many people in London who get by on the minimum wage (~16K). I doubt the cost of living in a small-town factory in the Midwest is comparable to the cost of living in London.

It's a shitty situation, sure, but it sounds like a far cry from not being able to change jobs because a single day without any income would lead to insolvency.

Re: Interview with Deliveroo couriers appealing bargaining-rights decision

#32

Post by miketery » Thu, May 24, 2018, 3:14 PM UTC

kome wrote: post #17

kop316 wrote: post #2

Serious question: If the conditions are just that bad, why even bother to work for them? There seems to be some sort of equilibrium to me where if it gets bad enough, no one will simply want to do this job, and choose to take some other low paying job (e.g. retail, fast food, etc.).

> why even bother to work for them? Do you really need an answer? Sorry if I seem too aggressive, but I am quite frustrated by your (fake? real?) cluelessness.

People come from all sorts of backgrounds and don't have the same perspective as others. OP is asking a genuine question as they think they might lack a certain perspective (e.g. they are in a location with low wealth inequality, high class mobility, and no gig economy jobs to reference).

Try and communicate to them what your perspective is instead of dismissing someone who is open to learning something new and hearing from others.

Re: Interview with Deliveroo couriers appealing bargaining-rights decision

#33

Post by mlthoughts2018 » Thu, May 24, 2018, 3:24 PM UTC

labourcurious wrote: post #31

mlthoughts2018 wrote: post #18

My brother works as an inventory clerk in a small-town factory in the midwest that makes small batches of custom metal parts sold to other factories. He has been there several years and is one of the more skilled employees, and makes just under $18,000 per year. No retirement or profit sharing benefits. The work conditions are unsafe, with lax enforcement of safety policies for forklifts, stacks of containers, cleani…

This is very well put and the way you describe the intra-company blue-collar / white-collar divide is on the money. You are right, this sucks. I'm more skeptical about not being in a free labor market. I know many people in London who get by on the minimum wage (~16K). I doubt the cost of living in a small-town factory in the Midwest is comparable to the cost of living in London. It's a shitty situation, sure, but it…

Keep in mind that in my brother's state in the Midwest, there is nothing comparable to the social safety net options offered in Britain.

I'm not saying those people have it easy on £16K, but e.g. consider the insane costs for treating depression that my brother faces, with few assistance options, which he has to balance out of such a low salary already. This kind of thing can also vary greatly state to state, with some states practicing much worse forms of social austerity than others -- and my brother happens to live in a particularly bad state for this.

Many of his coworkers, earning the same or slightly less, also are the sole providers for their family and have dependents they have to support out of this wage too. It's a situation where your car breaking down can be an unmitigated life emergency, and people avoid getting serious medical conditions treated because they can't even afford a copay or afford to fill a prescription.

So you might be surprised that the real cost of living after accounting for this kind of thing translates into a pretty dire situation for someone earning $18K in the US.

Re: Interview with Deliveroo couriers appealing bargaining-rights decision

#34

Post by n4r9 » Thu, May 24, 2018, 3:29 PM UTC

labourcurious wrote: post #28

roel_v wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's true to a certain extent, but experience (19th century beginning-of-industrialization) has taught us that the floor (i.e., the equilibrium) is bad enough that we don't want that sort of circumstances. In other words, it turns out that people want to work to eat so badly that they'll put up with working 14-hour days and letting their 10 year old children work in factories that literally kill 10's of them per ye…

Concretely though, in London, it takes under a day to find a "real" job in a restaurant or a bar just by walking around and handing out CVs, even if your English is very bad. Deliveroo bikers have chosen Deliveroo over those, and there must be a reason for that, which the article fails to mention. I'm also not taking sides, I just want to point out it's flat out wrong to say "if they're doing this in these conditions…

> in London, it takes under a day to find a "real" job in a restaurant or a bar just by walking around and handing out CVs

That's a lot faster than I would predict. What are you basing that on?

Re: Interview with Deliveroo couriers appealing bargaining-rights decision

#35

Post by kennydude » Thu, May 24, 2018, 3:32 PM UTC

labourcurious wrote: post #28

roel_v wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's true to a certain extent, but experience (19th century beginning-of-industrialization) has taught us that the floor (i.e., the equilibrium) is bad enough that we don't want that sort of circumstances. In other words, it turns out that people want to work to eat so badly that they'll put up with working 14-hour days and letting their 10 year old children work in factories that literally kill 10's of them per ye…

Concretely though, in London, it takes under a day to find a "real" job in a restaurant or a bar just by walking around and handing out CVs, even if your English is very bad. Deliveroo bikers have chosen Deliveroo over those, and there must be a reason for that, which the article fails to mention. I'm also not taking sides, I just want to point out it's flat out wrong to say "if they're doing this in these conditions…

> it takes under a day to find a "real" job in a restaurant or a bar just by walking around and handing out CVs

Have you done this?

Re: Interview with Deliveroo couriers appealing bargaining-rights decision

#36

Post by amelius » Thu, May 24, 2018, 3:34 PM UTC

crankylinuxuser wrote: post #15

On a different reading and assessment: Many jobs, no, most jobs are combinations of small individual parts of a whole action. And this shows that piecemeal work by dozens of different people not only works, but bypasses the whole level of employee/employer level controls. Take a lawyer's job for example.. The research can be farmed off crowdsourced style. Nobody has to know what the case is about, only the search par…

Except lawyers and doctors are highly protective of their employment and status. There's often a numerus clausus in universities, limiting the number of doctors that enter the field. And there's the FDA which controls medical practices, and since they consist of medically trained people, they are probably also highly protective of the status quo.

Re: Interview with Deliveroo couriers appealing bargaining-rights decision

#37

Post by kome » Thu, May 24, 2018, 3:38 PM UTC

miketery wrote: post #32

kome wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> why even bother to work for them? Do you really need an answer? Sorry if I seem too aggressive, but I am quite frustrated by your (fake? real?) cluelessness.

People come from all sorts of backgrounds and don't have the same perspective as others. OP is asking a genuine question as they think they might lack a certain perspective (e.g. they are in a location with low wealth inequality, high class mobility, and no gig economy jobs to reference). Try and communicate to them what your perspective is instead of dismissing someone who is open to learning something new and heari…

From what kind of background do you need to come to understand that 40% of Americans can't cover a $400 emergency expense [1] and most of the people in this world need to work all kinds of unpleasant jobs in order to survive? Is he living in an ivory tower isolated from the rest of humanity?

But I guess, good for him, he may have leaned something really new: a sizable number of people have a hard time, even in first world countries.

[1] http://money.cnn.com/2018/05/22/pf/emergency-expenses-househ...

Re: Interview with Deliveroo couriers appealing bargaining-rights decision

#38

Post by bb101 » Thu, May 24, 2018, 3:59 PM UTC

kome wrote: post #37

miketery wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People come from all sorts of backgrounds and don't have the same perspective as others. OP is asking a genuine question as they think they might lack a certain perspective (e.g. they are in a location with low wealth inequality, high class mobility, and no gig economy jobs to reference). Try and communicate to them what your perspective is instead of dismissing someone who is open to learning something new and heari…

From what kind of background do you need to come to understand that 40% of Americans can't cover a $400 emergency expense [1] and most of the people in this world need to work all kinds of unpleasant jobs in order to survive? Is he living in an ivory tower isolated from the rest of humanity? But I guess, good for him, he may have leaned something really new: a sizable number of people have a hard time, even in first…

In many parts of the western world, things aren't nearly as bad for the average worker as they are in the US. Remember that Hacker News is a global forum, so don't take for granted others' knowledge of the US or developing nations.

Re: Interview with Deliveroo couriers appealing bargaining-rights decision

#39

Post by moe98ntuin34 » Thu, May 24, 2018, 4:01 PM UTC

To me, the real takeaway is this:

> unlike, say, immigration law, there is weak enforcement of employment law.

For me in the US, this is the crux of the current wave of anti-immigrant sentiment. The problem isn't "immigrants stealing our jobs." It's shitty jobs that don't cover basic costs and have inhumane working conditions. But the people in power have done a great job of misdirecting people's attention to immigrants. Boy are they going to be disappointed when all the immigrants are gone and they still can't make a living.

Re: Interview with Deliveroo couriers appealing bargaining-rights decision

#40

Post by sykh » Thu, May 24, 2018, 4:03 PM UTC

moe98ntuin34 wrote: post #39

To me, the real takeaway is this: > unlike, say, immigration law, there is weak enforcement of employment law. For me in the US, this is the crux of the current wave of anti-immigrant sentiment. The problem isn't "immigrants stealing our jobs." It's shitty jobs that don't cover basic costs and have inhumane working conditions. But the people in power have done a great job of misdirecting people's attention to immigra…

Shouldn’t the decrease in available labor as a result of decreased immigration lead to wage increases? Particularly for jobs that aren’t going to be shipped overseas (construction, manual labor..).

EDIT: I know the topic of immigration can evoke strong emotions. I’m just pointing out that a decrease in labor pool ought to increase wages. Isn’t this just law of supply/demand?