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Interview with Deliveroo couriers appealing bargaining-rights decision

theguardian.com

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Re: Interview with Deliveroo couriers appealing bargaining-rights decision

#61

Post by grasshopperpurp »

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…

>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.

How do we fix bad laws when the wealthy are paying good money for those bad laws?

>Every piece of the pie picked up by the 0.1 percent, in relative terms, had to come from the people below. But not everyone in the 99.9 percent gave up a slice. Only those in the bottom 90 percent did. At their peak, in the mid-1980s, people in this group held 35 percent of the nation’s wealth. Three decades later that had fallen 12 points—exactly as much as the wealth of the 0.1 percent rose.

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2018/06/the-bir...

http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/politicsandpolicy/without-the-right-p...

https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2018/01/amazon-...

Re: Interview with Deliveroo couriers appealing bargaining-rights decision

#62

Post by jstanley »

parliament32 wrote: post #55
rorykoehler wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

And there's nothing wrong with that! If people find that "far preferable", that's up to them, not you.

Re: Interview with Deliveroo couriers appealing bargaining-rights decision

#63

Post by DanBC »

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.).

The UK system of benefit conditionality forces people into these shitty jobs. The don't have a choice. They need to take the work or lose their benefit. There's an assumption from the Department for Work and Pensions that any work offered in the UK is legal. That's a reasonable assumption, but they could do with being a bit more proactive at protecting workers at the scummier end of the market.

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2018/may/22/benefit-sanc...

> For those people interviewed for the study who did obtain work, the most common outcome was a series of short-term, insecure jobs, interspersed with periods of unemployment, rather than a shift into sustained, well-paid work.

Re: Interview with Deliveroo couriers appealing bargaining-rights decision

#64

Post by jstanley »

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…

TFA was about Brits, not Americans.

Re: Interview with Deliveroo couriers appealing bargaining-rights decision

#65

Post by Karrot_Kream »

lhorie wrote: post #43
kennydude wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 ins…

Opposing anecdata, my SO's sister had an ivy league degree and spent 3 months looking for jobs until she got the only job she could, front of house work at a bakery. Every other job, service jobs included, turned her down.

Another friend with a strong public school degree who floated around for months interviewing until she moved back with her parents, then finally got a job at the local library.

Re: Interview with Deliveroo couriers appealing bargaining-rights decision

#66

Post by eropple »

jstanley wrote: post #62
parliament32 wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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.

And there's nothing wrong with that! If people find that "far preferable", that's up to them, not you.

There's a lot wrong with that when society--us--have the duty and obligation, which we do, to help when that Deliveroo driver gets doored and can't pay a medical bill because the job is comedically penurious.

Employers have a duty to their employees and to the society and community that grants them the right to the fiction of their existence, and that is being shirked.

Re: Interview with Deliveroo couriers appealing bargaining-rights decision

#67

Post by magduf »

moe98ntuin34 wrote: post #58
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?

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 s…

If he paid $100 per hour, I think he'd probably find enough people to do the job.

If that causes celery prices to rise so high that no one wants to buy it, then maybe celery just isn't an economically viable crop.

Re: Interview with Deliveroo couriers appealing bargaining-rights decision

#68

Post by jeffreyrogers »

sykh wrote: post #53
dsfyu404ed wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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.

I can't believe you're getting so much flak for saying something so obvious. There are plenty of good arguments for immigration but that doesn't mean it doesn't have negative effects as well.

Re: Interview with Deliveroo couriers appealing bargaining-rights decision

#69

Post by jeffreyrogers »

pfortuny wrote: post #16
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.).

Read Dickens to get an idea of what human beings can “accept” to make a “living” for their families.

The world is quite different now than in Dickens's time. Even in less progressive countries like the US.

Re: Interview with Deliveroo couriers appealing bargaining-rights decision

#70

Post by evgen »

sykh wrote: post #53
dsfyu404ed wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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.

You have repeated this thesis several times without providing any support beyond a child-like belief in the invisible hand. Why not prove your point by showing that at times when illegal immigration dropped the nominal average wage for low-skill workers increased relative to the rest of the workforce, if you can.
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