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

Re: Interview with Deliveroo couriers appealing bargaining-rights decision

#51

Post by sykh » Thu, May 24, 2018, 4:29 PM UTC

rhizome wrote: post #42

sykh wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That may be a result of decreased immigration. I’m only pointing out that if illegal immigration were wiped out then wages would increase.

Re: Interview with Deliveroo couriers appealing bargaining-rights decision

#52

Post by menacingly » Thu, May 24, 2018, 4:33 PM UTC

tinbucket wrote: post #47

menacingly wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Except that it almost by definition employs fewer people, so the people hypothetically employed by #2 may prefer it to the unemployment of #1

Re: Interview with Deliveroo couriers appealing bargaining-rights decision

#53

Post by sykh » Thu, May 24, 2018, 4:34 PM UTC

dsfyu404ed wrote: post #49

sykh wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 t…

There are low wage industries that overwhelmingly employ illegal immigrants and legal immigrants. Those industries would need to raise wages and improve working conditions if immigration were curtailed.

I’m not advocating a position on immigration itself. Just stating one possible consequence of curtailing immigration.

Re: Interview with Deliveroo couriers appealing bargaining-rights decision

#54

Post by turc1656 » Thu, May 24, 2018, 4:42 PM UTC

mlthoughts2018 wrote: post #48

turc1656 wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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."

No. I definitely don't mean that. The vast majority of producers (myself included, and most likely you as well) create value for society. I know that I don't disingenuously accumulate wealth or exploit anyone. But I am a producer. This is the case for most people. There's only a small minority of very wealthy people who exploit the labor of others. And as I mentioned in my prior comment, the appropriate solution is to fix the law to prevent the exploitation, not to take from all of the producers to pay for those exploited. And that is also assuming that exploitation is the only reason someone would find themselves poor. And it is definitely not the only reason.

Re: Interview with Deliveroo couriers appealing bargaining-rights decision

#55

Post by parliament32 » Thu, May 24, 2018, 4:45 PM UTC

rorykoehler wrote: post #45

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…

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.

"Far preferable" enough that you'd settle for under minimum wage and a variable paycheque? If so, you are exactly the reason companies like Deliveroo exist. They appeal to the whole "but you'll be so free cruising around on your bike delivering food at your own pace!" mentality.

Re: Interview with Deliveroo couriers appealing bargaining-rights decision

#56

Post by kome » Thu, May 24, 2018, 4:47 PM UTC

bb101 wrote: post #38

kome wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I never lived in the US...

Re: Interview with Deliveroo couriers appealing bargaining-rights decision

#57

Post by shabble » Thu, May 24, 2018, 4:50 PM UTC

menacingly wrote: post #3

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.).

Agreed. I can swallow these "the company owes us something" arguments for businesses so large they make up the entire employment for a city, but not cases like this. It's unsettling that now every business has a big moral obligation to make sure employees make the best choices for themselves.

Alternatively, every business (or rather, the people who operate and control that business) have a moral obligation not to unreasonably exploit their employees.

I would expect that to be a fairly common sentiment/belief (though I might be wrong).

It comes down to the particular definition of 'unreasonably' that is being used, which different groups can and do disagree about.

Re: Interview with Deliveroo couriers appealing bargaining-rights decision

#58

Post by moe98ntuin34 » Thu, May 24, 2018, 4:54 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?

You would think that. The problem is they still can't find people to fill the jobs. (Or maybe more accurately, people believe they are above doing those types of jobs.) Take for example this Planet Money piece [1]:

>Tom Deardorff has had to compete for workers. He's raised their pay by actually quite a lot. Back in 2006, working the celery field paid about $8.70 an hour. Now it pays more than $21 an hour. [...] Tom says his workers all are documented and that even doubling wages hasn't solved the labor problem.

[1]: https://www.npr.org/2018/05/03/607996811/worker-shortage-hur...

Re: Interview with Deliveroo couriers appealing bargaining-rights decision

#59

Post by andrewingram » Thu, May 24, 2018, 4:58 PM UTC

One thing to note, whilst article claims that nobody would utilise the substitution clause, this is false. It's unusual, but it does happen. I work for a business with Deliveroo couriers as customers, and it's occasionally asked by some of them whether we support substitute drivers.

Re: Interview with Deliveroo couriers appealing bargaining-rights decision

#60

Post by mlthoughts2018 » Thu, May 24, 2018, 4:58 PM UTC

turc1656 wrote: post #54

mlthoughts2018 wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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."

No. I definitely don't mean that. The vast majority of producers (myself included, and most likely you as well) create value for society. I know that I don't disingenuously accumulate wealth or exploit anyone. But I am a producer. This is the case for most people. There's only a small minority of very wealthy people who exploit the labor of others. And as I mentioned in my prior comment, the appropriate solution is t…

As a first-world software developer, I definitely do disingenuously accumulate wealth as a side effect of all sorts of world-wide labor exploits, particularly if I work at a large US corp with far-reaching political influence. For example, the value of that equity bonus I think I "earned" might only have been as high as it was because my company found some loophole to avoid taxes that it sincerely should have been paying for the sake of unequivocal civic responsibility.

Just because good-natured "regular" people participate in the broader system of exploitation does not mean that they are earning what they get, not at all, myself included.

I benefit from huge luck. Luck about when and where I was born, luck about education opportunities, luck of genetics. In addition I benefit from direct effects and side effects of government spending, publicly funded university research, basic infrastructure, and all manner of support staff.

The cumulative "product" I make is not my own. It's a function mostly of just how lucky I am, and also significantly a function of the whole Lorentzian field of infrastructure/productivity/opportunity/civility that I'm enveloped in because of a whole bunch of people doing jobs that they are deeply underpaid for.