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

Re: Interview with Deliveroo couriers appealing bargaining-rights decision

#41

Post by rhizome » Thu, May 24, 2018, 4:04 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…

Turning poor people against immigrants is a time-tested strategy to keep the heat off of employers. The old, "I think he's going to steal your cookie," joke.[1]

1. https://metro.co.uk/2016/08/21/a-banker-a-worker-and-an-immi...

Re: Interview with Deliveroo couriers appealing bargaining-rights decision

#42

Post by rhizome » Thu, May 24, 2018, 4:05 PM UTC

sykh wrote: post #40

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?

Get ready for $12 lettuce.

Re: Interview with Deliveroo couriers appealing bargaining-rights decision

#43

Post by lhorie » Thu, May 24, 2018, 4:07 PM UTC

kennydude wrote: post #35

labourcurious wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Anecdata, but I have seen it happen many times. My cousin came to Toronto for a few months and wanted some under the table income. I was buying some pastries in a bakery I liked around that time, and noticed they had a hiring sign. I told her about it and she was working there a couple days later.

A former coworker had a similar story. He got into a fight with his wife because she was spending all day in facebook instead of finding a job, so out of frustration and spite he went out to pretty much the first pizza joint he could find and talked to the manager. 30 mins later she now had a job.

Heck, I have another cousin with schizophrenia who managed to land a security job (he didn't last unfortunately due to his condition worsening), but it goes to show finding a low pay job isn't some insurmountable task.

Re: Interview with Deliveroo couriers appealing bargaining-rights decision

#44

Post by turc1656 » Thu, May 24, 2018, 4:07 PM UTC

mlthoughts2018 wrote: post #22

darkerside wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I posit that, in that case, a new "normal" baseline would be established by social consensus (perhaps, owning a home, smart phone, access to media, high quality medical care, and organic food) that is above what is afforded by the UBI. Falling below that threshold would then be deemed just as unacceptable as the poverty line today. And people won't solve it by taking on these undesirable jobs, they'll rail against an…

If we imagine that "life goodness" can be measured by a single real number, and we model it with a normal distribution with a mean somewhere on the positive axis, then one way to say what you describe is that we create a threshold somewhere along the left-hand tail of that distribution, and we declare anything below the threshold as morally unacceptable, in need of social constraints that prevent the permissibility o…

"Essentially the wealthy would be deciding at which threshold upward human progress gets to stop..."

No, that's not what that would mean. It means the producers of society get to determine at what point they wish to stop providing government mandated subsidies through either taxation or deficit spending to the non-producers or those who produce far less value.

There should be absolutely nothing wrong with people deciding that they do not wish to handover any more of their wealth. If your opinion is that the "system" is the culprit and these people are being squashed by bad laws, policies, etc., the proper recourse is not to legally rob others to help those people - the solution is to fix the bad laws and policies that may benefit the rich unfairly.

Underlying your claim appears to be some baseline assumption that the poor have some sort of legitimate claim on the productivity of other citizens. I strongly disagree with this assumption. I personally do not believe that anyone has a right to the fruits of my labor. The government, however, says otherwise and demands that I fork over non-trivial amounts of money to other people - individuals, to be clear, not public goods. I'm fine with the idea of taxation to provide for public goods like roads, military, etc.

The modern poor in developed nations (and especially the US) have a standard of living that exceeds what the average family experienced in most of the 20th century. This concept of poor is obviously relative and it is the Keeping Up With The Jones' mentality that drives this nonsense of ever-increasing handouts.

There was a great video I saw once by a guy who used to be homeless and on welfare. He said that when he was on welfare he was never grateful for anything he received because he was just mad others had more. He gave the analogy of imagining that your boss came over and said you did such a fantastic job you are getting 100k for a bonus. You're ecstatic and grateful. Then you find out that everyone else in your office got 200k bonuses. You immediately turn to anger and resentment, despite the fact that you are now 100k wealthier.

Helping thy neighbor is great. But legally mandating it is a terrible idea and has been terrible in practice.

Re: Interview with Deliveroo couriers appealing bargaining-rights decision

#45

Post by rorykoehler » Thu, May 24, 2018, 4:10 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…

For me personally riding my bike around delivering food would be far preferable to working in a restaurant or bar. Depends on your personality I guess.

Re: Interview with Deliveroo couriers appealing bargaining-rights decision

#46

Post by [deleted] » Thu, May 24, 2018, 4:10 PM UTC

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.).

[deleted]

Re: Interview with Deliveroo couriers appealing bargaining-rights decision

#47

Post by tinbucket » Thu, May 24, 2018, 4:19 PM UTC

menacingly wrote: post #24

noelwelsh wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I very much do not like the argument you are making, as the implication is that no employer, or indeed anyone with power, should be criticised. Society should work for the benefit of society, not just those in a position of power. We are seeing a change in how employment works, and we (i.e. society) need to work out how to handle this change. This article is part of the debate. You should not try to shut down the deb…

I regret that I came across that way, because the debate is great. Criticism is important. I just think before you fight for something, you should be certain that what you're after is worth winning.

In scenarios #2 and #3 very few people are winning. I think you'd be hard-pressed to get majority support against #1, which would be more generally beneficial for society than the other two.

Re: Interview with Deliveroo couriers appealing bargaining-rights decision

#48

Post by mlthoughts2018 » Thu, May 24, 2018, 4:21 PM UTC

turc1656 wrote: post #44

mlthoughts2018 wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If we imagine that "life goodness" can be measured by a single real number, and we model it with a normal distribution with a mean somewhere on the positive axis, then one way to say what you describe is that we create a threshold somewhere along the left-hand tail of that distribution, and we declare anything below the threshold as morally unacceptable, in need of social constraints that prevent the permissibility o…

"Essentially the wealthy would be deciding at which threshold upward human progress gets to stop..." No, that's not what that would mean. It means the producers of society get to determine at what point they wish to stop providing government mandated subsidies through either taxation or deficit spending to the non-producers or those who produce far less value. There should be absolutely nothing wrong with people deci…

I think you're misusing the word "producers" when you mean "people who disingenuously accumulated wealth on the backs of the labor product of others they exploited."

Re: Interview with Deliveroo couriers appealing bargaining-rights decision

#49

Post by dsfyu404ed » Thu, May 24, 2018, 4:24 PM UTC

sykh wrote: post #40

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?

>Shouldn’t the decrease in available labor as a result of decreased immigration lead to wage increases?

It works this way if you consider a terrible work environment to be negative wage.

For jobs that hover around minimum wage because of low margins labor shortages mean better working conditions.

For example, if you toss a "must be able to piss clean" requirement on any job that doesn't require the employee to have the sunk cost of years of training and it adds about 50% to the effective hourly wage.

Another example would be university wages. Many departments can only afford work-study student workers. When you need work-study student workers with more than just a pulse you have to treat them better because most students would rather work for dining services and do an equally terrible job with free food.

The problem is that at a state/national level there's so much feedback delay, immigration is not evenly distributed, etc, etc that you can't extrapolate

Re: Interview with Deliveroo couriers appealing bargaining-rights decision

#50

Post by michaelt » Thu, May 24, 2018, 4:29 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…

  I know many people in London who get by on
  the minimum wage (~16K).

What sort of rent are they paying?