Google staff walk out over women's treatment • Hacker News Board

Re: Google staff walk out over women's treatment

#41

Post by maaaats » Thu, Nov 01, 2018, 10:59 AM UTC

ChrisRR wrote: post #10

So the first demand is "A commitment to end pay and opportunity inequality" I'd like to see the actual data behind this constant inequality claim. I would be genuinely interested to see what kind of difference there is between the sexes when comparing like-for-like jobs. I've heard speculation that women don't argue for higher salaries as much as men, I've also heard that the data is never accurate because it doesn't…

> to see what kind of difference there is between the sexes when comparing like-for-like jobs.

What if the pay is equal for like-for-like jobs, but for the higher paying jobs one sex is vastly underrepresented? Not saying it is, just that discrimination and bias often runs deeper than some simple comparison.

Re: Google staff walk out over women's treatment

#42

Post by steve_g » Thu, Nov 01, 2018, 10:59 AM UTC

anon1252 wrote: post #32

rwmj wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Shouldn't employees have the right to collectively strike to get better conditions at work? There's a lot more at stake here than "drama for the company".

> Shouldn't employees have the right to collectively strike to get better conditions at work? There's a lot more at stake here than "drama for the company". Doesn't the employer have the right to fire them for any reason in any "at will job"?

They can be fired for any lawful reason. It would be unlawful to fire employees for striking - with some exceptions.

Striking employees can be replaced in order to get the work done, but that doesn't make sense for a one-day walkout.

Re: Google staff walk out over women's treatment

#43

Post by pjc50 » Thu, Nov 01, 2018, 10:59 AM UTC

YorkshireSeason wrote: post #23

slivym wrote: post #5

All of their demands seem pretty reasonable. It looks like the big gripe is that basically there's no real process in place for situations of misconduct in the office. To draw an analogy, this would be like Google not having a process to investigate and resolve site outages - it would be unthinkable, so why aren't they treating their organisation with the same rigor they treat their website.

The salient difference is that outages are measurable. In contrast, "harassment" is an extremely controversial subject that nobody agrees upon, for example, in some legislations, calling a person with XY chromosomes "him" rather than "her" is considered a hate crime, a dramatic change from labelling conventions of just a few years ago. Indeed what constitutes harassment is a major point of contention between differen…

> what downsides are there for false harassment claims

There are major downsides to making true harassment claims: you get denounced as a liar and a slut. This is the main reason why so many claims went unreported, and the #metoo movement is one of solidarity which makes it possible for people to actually report true claims without ruining their career. Actually deliberately making a false harassment claim is potentially career suicide.

(Jacob Wohl thought it would be easy to bribe people into making false harassment claims, and this blew up in his face: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/robert-mue... )

Re: Google staff walk out over women's treatment

#44

Post by ngcazz » Thu, Nov 01, 2018, 10:59 AM UTC

pjc50 wrote: post #17

mike22223333 wrote: post #8

Google should just fire all of the employee protesters. This is getting out of hand. There are plenty of other people who are in the line and wont make a drama for the company.

Well, that's a way of being remembered forever while also having other employees quit in solidarity. (Edit into this dying thread: reports of the walkout in Google Dublin: https://twitter.com/evelyn_orourke/status/105795687016449228... )

Some people really are unwilling to see the value of self-sacrifice for the greater good.

Re: Google staff walk out over women's treatment

#45

Post by sheepmullet » Thu, Nov 01, 2018, 11:01 AM UTC

cimmanom wrote: post #33

YorkshireSeason wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The salient difference is that outages are measurable. In contrast, "harassment" is an extremely controversial subject that nobody agrees upon, for example, in some legislations, calling a person with XY chromosomes "him" rather than "her" is considered a hate crime, a dramatic change from labelling conventions of just a few years ago. Indeed what constitutes harassment is a major point of contention between differen…

Even if you believe that, why shouldn’t there be a process to investigate the claims? You think all harassment claims should be automatically dismissed as false instead?

> Even if you believe that, why shouldn’t there be a process to investigate the claims?

Because it quickly becomes a witch-hunt.

It is hard enough to have a fair investigation within a proper court system and legal framework - it’s far more likely any Google process will end up as a kangaroo court than the process leading to any justice.

Re: Google staff walk out over women's treatment

#46

Post by maaaats » Thu, Nov 01, 2018, 11:02 AM UTC

ryanmercer wrote: post #27

These people should be fired, not because they want equal pay but because they refuse to do the job they were hired to do. Different genders deserve equal pay, people of different races deserve equal pay, people with various disabilities deserve equal pay. HOWEVER, you want to walk out of work? You should be terminated. If I walked out of work, I would be fired. If I organized several people to walk out of work with…

You are lucky that someone else risked their jobs to put you in a position where you can spout this. If it weren't for unions and strikes, the common worker would have been much worse off.

Re: Google staff walk out over women's treatment

#47

Post by YorkshireSeason » Thu, Nov 01, 2018, 11:02 AM UTC

cimmanom wrote: post #33

YorkshireSeason wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The salient difference is that outages are measurable. In contrast, "harassment" is an extremely controversial subject that nobody agrees upon, for example, in some legislations, calling a person with XY chromosomes "him" rather than "her" is considered a hate crime, a dramatic change from labelling conventions of just a few years ago. Indeed what constitutes harassment is a major point of contention between differen…

Even if you believe that, why shouldn’t there be a process to investigate the claims? You think all harassment claims should be automatically dismissed as false instead?

   all harassment claims should be

No, of course not. Symmetrically, the should also not automatically accepted as true.

There should be an objective, measurable process. Given the cul-de-sac that organisations like Google have been strong-armed into, I think the obvious next step is

(1) to record all work-time interaction of all employees and store them for a long time, e.g. at least 10 years.

(2) Give a absolutely clear-cut criteria as to what counts as acceptable behaviour and what doesn't.

Re: Google staff walk out over women's treatment

#48

Post by pjc50 » Thu, Nov 01, 2018, 11:03 AM UTC

ryanmercer wrote: post #27

These people should be fired, not because they want equal pay but because they refuse to do the job they were hired to do. Different genders deserve equal pay, people of different races deserve equal pay, people with various disabilities deserve equal pay. HOWEVER, you want to walk out of work? You should be terminated. If I walked out of work, I would be fired. If I organized several people to walk out of work with…

> You don't change things by striking,

Traditionally union action including strikes has been the only way to make changes in big employers.

Re: Google staff walk out over women's treatment

#49

Post by pbhjpbhj » Thu, Nov 01, 2018, 11:04 AM UTC

ChrisRR wrote: post #10

So the first demand is "A commitment to end pay and opportunity inequality" I'd like to see the actual data behind this constant inequality claim. I would be genuinely interested to see what kind of difference there is between the sexes when comparing like-for-like jobs. I've heard speculation that women don't argue for higher salaries as much as men, I've also heard that the data is never accurate because it doesn't…

UK Office for National Statistics publish good data for the UK.

My impression (based on 2016 stats [0]) is that as most C-suiters are men, and they can get 100s or 1000s of times the money that ordinary employees get, that in the UK this likely accounts for most of the effect that's not accounted for by career breaks (childcare, for example). To reiterate, this is my _impression_ when looking at the data.

Men who work part-time get lower wages; no one cares, it seems.

0 - https://www.ons.gov.uk/employmentandlabourmarket/peopleinwor...

1 - https://www.ons.gov.uk/employmentandlabourmarket/peopleinwor...

Re: Google staff walk out over women's treatment

#50

Post by ChrisRR » Thu, Nov 01, 2018, 11:04 AM UTC

maaaats wrote: post #41

ChrisRR wrote: post #10

So the first demand is "A commitment to end pay and opportunity inequality" I'd like to see the actual data behind this constant inequality claim. I would be genuinely interested to see what kind of difference there is between the sexes when comparing like-for-like jobs. I've heard speculation that women don't argue for higher salaries as much as men, I've also heard that the data is never accurate because it doesn't…

> to see what kind of difference there is between the sexes when comparing like-for-like jobs. What if the pay is equal for like-for-like jobs, but for the higher paying jobs one sex is vastly underrepresented? Not saying it is, just that discrimination and bias often runs deeper than some simple comparison.

Then that would be the point of the data. At the moment people are acting on claims of differences in pay across a number of sectors and roles and it's way too vague to pinpoint what the actual issue is.

If the data found an actual issue like this, the it would need to be addressed, but at the moment simply claiming that women are paid less doesn't offer any solution apart from paying women an extra 20% across every single job.