Slashdot Mirror
Workers at Chile's ALMA Telescope Strike Over Working Conditions
An anonymous reader writes with this snippet from Deutsche Welle: "'Employees at the world's largest radio telescope have gone on strike after failing to reach agreement over pay and conditions. Workers say they are not sufficiently compensated for isolation and high altitude.' The strike started on Thursday, and the telescope is currently not operating. Although the project's budget is $1.1 billion, an ALMA technician earns less than $2,000 per month. How does this compare with people working at observatories in the U.S., Japan, or the European Union?"
These guys are earning $2,000 p/m more than ALMA workers who are working in US, Japan or the EU.
Lets get a comparison of wages earned by locals doing similar skilled jobs.
You have 5 Moderator Points!
Which Helpless Linux zealot/MS basher do you want to mod down today?
Although the project's budget is $1.1 billion, an ALMA technician earns less than $2.000 per month.
1) Project budget is $1.1 billion. Sure, but over how many years? 1, 5, 10? Comparing a large number over many years to a monthly rate is disingenuous.
2) $2.000. WTF? Only some few european countries still use "." as a thousands separator instead of ",". This is an english language website, use english locale settings because to everyone else, that reads as $2.00 a month, which obviously has to be wrong.
3) Where does the $2000 a month figure come from anyway? It isn't in tfa. Citation needed.
And yes, I'm grumpy, I'm working because I have a major deadline next week.
You can never know everything, and part of what you do know will always be wrong. Perhaps even the most important part.
So would you get minimum wage technicians to operate a state-of-the-art gear like are these telescopes?
What could go wrong?
If you were exposed in the Atacama, you would most likely be dead in less than 48 hours. TFA touches on this, but it is emphatically not a nice place to hang out.
Sometimes I, too, chafe under the terms of my peonage.
They feared that it could be used to suppress protest or support unpopular rule.
I hire a contractor for $2000 to fix my roof. He takes the job and begins work. Halfway through he says that $2000 is not enough for his isolation and high altitude. He stops the work, goes on strike demanding more money and prevents me from hiring another contractor. Someone care to explain how that is legal and not a breach of contract?
So they're making double what I do? In a country where that money is probably worth double than it is here in the U.S.? They need to STFU and get back to Jodie Fostering.
How is that cheating? I thought that is a simple demand and supply rule.
"cheat"
Not really. The only cheaters are those who lie that there is something immoral about organised labour.
All employees should unite and strike until paid enough to balance the distribution of wealth. And there's nothing employers would then be able to do about it, except turn employees into slaves.
And that's why there are so many lies told about unions.
The cost of living in Chile for american expats is under $1000 a month.
The average annual income is $11,039.
If the observatory workers are making $2000 a month, then they seem to be making the equivalent of about $90,000 in the U.S. for local goods and services- tho very little in terms of world products (like imported automobiles and air conditioners).
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
Dude, i invite you to work in ALMA for a month, a 16,000 ft, with temps as low as 14 F , and winds of 32m/s for $12.50 per our on 12 hour shift with out bathroom or a descent place to eat.... then we can talk
They're probably not working 40 hour work weeks. When you're in a remote site like that, you tend to work all the time. I would not be surprised if they're working 12 hour days, 7 days a week while they're on-site.
Let us forget that they're in Chile for a minute.
If you're going to do a comparison to American salaries, $12.50/hr buys you an assembler / fabricator, not a technician. The work "technician" does get mis-used; but, if we assume that the title is correctly applied... A technician will draw a salary 2x to 3x that amount, depending on their skill level. A really good, experienced RF technician should be pulling a salary that's well into the low end of the engineering salary scale. That's before any premium for working in a remote site like the one ALMA is situated on.
Now for the hard part -- scaling for cost of living. If they are technicians from South America, where the cost of living is lower, you might argue that the salaries should be lower. If a substantial number of the technicians are Japanese, Europeans or American, you can expect to have to pay a salary comparable to salaries in their native country; otherwise, they have no reason to come to Chile (other than for the experience of working at ALMA). If there is a mix, and there is no salary parity -- Chilean's are paid 1/3 of Japanese technician's pay -- then you end up with something like the current situation. To avoid that you might have to pay everyone on the same salary scale.
...with out bathroom or a descent place to eat.... then we can talk
Actually, they probably do have to make a descent to find a place to eat.
Although, why is there no bathroom up there?
If you think I voted for Trump because of this post, you're wrong. I voted for Dr. Jill Stein of the Green Party. Again.
So, you are saying you would prefer everyone to not have a job, than for most people to have a job but with some people making a lot more money than others.
There aren't as many lies told as you think. Some are valid critiques of viewpoints similar to yours.
If you think I voted for Trump because of this post, you're wrong. I voted for Dr. Jill Stein of the Green Party. Again.
I thought this is exactly the kind of thing grad students were for?
You're wearing the other teams colors. Boo! Boo!
We're all in this together (well, except maybe those at the very top of the heap), and there's plenty of idiocy in every faction, yours included. How does hurling random pointless insults at each other help further the discussion and promote good governance?
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
Techician jobs range from about $20,000 to $35,000
For example:
https://utdirect.utexas.edu/apps/hr/jobs/nlogon/120716015331
Its not cheating its call supply and demand and fundamental to capitalism. If there is not enough of something, it becomes more expensive. In this case its labor. Thats exactly what is going on here.
Except everyone has a different idea of a just distribution of wealth.
Why are jobs with the lowest skills that are already overpaid the most likely to unionize? Why has no union ever dissolved itself after achieving its objective?
Someone needs to take some logic courses. And then some courses on capitalism. BTW, you pay for your text messages? Really?
That's a classic non-argument. Try making a point.
Obviously there needs to be a bonus for working up there, freezing you ass off
There does? Last time I checked I didn't get a winter bonus up here in Canada where the temperatures hit -40C. -10C for a _high_ counts as heat wave in January. Even the schools will send the kids out for break times as long as the temperature is above -23C. Except for the altitude those conditions are mild compared to a typical Canadian winter and the Alberta minimum wage is only C$1,854/month with an undoubtedly higher cost of living.
As you point out more details are needed to do a fair comparison but, with the details available so far, it frankly looks like they are not being teated that shabbily.
That right there is one of the lies. So long as there is work to be done at even razor-thin profit margins there will be jobs available.
Basically for any business the gross income is distributed into two broad categories:
Operating costs
Overhead (rent, utilities, sunk costs, etc)
Input resources (incremental costs)
Cash reserves and forward-looking investments
Net profit distribution
Employee salaries and bonuses
Executive salaries and bonuses
Shareholder dividends
Let's assume we can't touch Costs without hurting the company. That still leaves everything in the Profit section open to negotiation - *nothing* there will directly impact the viability of the company.
- Cutting dividends would likely hurt stock prices, but would have no effect on operation of the company beyond reducing future capital that can be raised by selling more.
- Cutting executive salaries might drive off some executives, but there's only so many executive positions available in the world and it's unlikely an executive will leave that labor market to lay bricks unless the salaries get to be comparable, so that's a pretty weak argument.
So why exactly shouldn't employees, the ones actually doing the work that's generating the profit, be negotiating for a bigger piece of the profit?
In the 1950s the average situation was that the top executives in a US company were making 30x as much as the lowest-paid employee. Today that number is somewhere well above 300x (the top executives are making 300x the *median* employee salary) Why is that? Granted those executive salaries wouldn't go all that far when spread around a large company, but they're probably plenty to give everybody a 10-20% raise and still let the executives make 50x as much as the janitors. Why exactly would that be a bad thing?
Yes, some unions overreached themselves and started cutting in to operating costs. That's a bad thing and those unions deserve to crumble, and the company deserves to collapse if they can't find more reasonable employees. Far more though just fought for their piece of the profit, or even more important things like reasonably safe and non-hostile working conditions. Are you really going to argue against that?
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
Mighty touchy about a quip, aren't we.
with temps as low as 14 F
You must be from California or something. Some of us call those temps "winter".
So many people don't read literature and wouldn't understand that I was channelling Mark Twain.
Hail Eris, full of mischief...
E pluribus sanguinem
You should try an Alberta winter sometime. It can get down to -40C and I've seen -53C with windchill. They often put out warnings about frostbite warnings that exposed skin will freeze in seconds. In january we are lucky if we hit -10C for a _high_. Without the proper attire and equipment you would not survive 48 minutes let alone hours.
Quite honestly, I think you replied to the wrong post with this. Nothing you say goes against anything I said to Joining. Actually, all I really said was that people don't all think like he does. I said nothing about what I think about fair wages or corporation financing.
If you think I voted for Trump because of this post, you're wrong. I voted for Dr. Jill Stein of the Green Party. Again.
$2000 a month is about what the average non-PhD technician/junior scientist on a government funded basic research project makes in the United States. A junior PhD will make about twice that. Astronomy is not a particularly well funded branch of science (compared to molecular biology or nanotechnology, for example), I would expect their technicians to generally make less than average.
If you want to work in basic research (in any capacity other than PI), be prepared to live very frugally.
There is a bathroom. Its in this building. There is also a nice room in there where everyone can eat, with a microwave and hot drinks. Sack lunches are provided (free, as part of site food service), and sometimes hot food can be had. It is also common to eat a sack lunch in the cab of a car, or sometimes just the base of the antenna. Management is fine with leaving the car engine running and heater on, so heated in the car is best if you don't want to drive back to the building. Oxygen bottles with the noise tubes are provided - and strongly encouraged. Though many employees don't like using them.
Of course, you only hear SynFlood's side of things because all non-union employees are directed not comment on the ongoing strike, which is why I am posting as AC. Some of his points are valid and a real problem. The food is bad, and should be better. The 12 hour days are real, and stupid - it should be 10 for the same total pay, giving workers more time to relax, call friends/family, or take a shuttle into San Pedro. But some of his points are not valid, and misrepresenting the issue makes solving the real problems that much harder.
I was corrected by a collegue which says 'we have two bathrooms, one is broken, and the other is only for 'number 1', so if you have to 'number 2' , then you are ... well i think is clear
(sorry for the wrong use of 'without' i was corrected by a colleague a few moments ago)
No i'm from Chile,and probably you have a nice warm place to stay at 14F, fire,no wind blowing in your face make you nose chill :) I agree russia or the poles are worst condition than the ones I wrote, but mechanical or electrician that goes everyday at 5000mts don't have the right equipment, they have some , but is not the right one to work at that altitute, with those winds.
a simple example, sometime we have a lot of snow, and guess which color our tracks are....... white... so a few months ago we almost suffer the lost of a few colleagues due to 'white snow'
They have so your question makes no sense.
If you were exposed in the Atacama, you would most likely be dead in less than 48 hours.
I live in a major US city where the same is true for a few months out of the year. Yawn.
Please help metamoderate.
Given the propensity for both parties to fan the flames of tribalism in order to obscure how badly they're selling out even their core constituency? Absolutely. Bad enough they're doing it to us, to do it to each other is unconscionable.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
Huh, I don't remember Twain using that line with regard to politics, and it's irrelevant if he did anyway. The political landscape was not nearly so polarized in his day. Not the rhetoric, that was always vitriolic, but the actual level of conversational divisiveness between "members" of opposing parties
We live in a time when the political masterminds are leveraging the divisiveness in our society to neutralize the political power of the populace, leaving themselves free to act in their own interests without fear of retribution come election time. By fanning the flames of tribalism with your "humor" you are doing a disservice to both yourself and the nation. In the face of the substantial cross-party government excesses that are being exposed that is an unconscionable crime. For crying out loud, even the secret court charged with overseeing the NSA found it's actions unconstitutional, and yet they have continued unabated. Now is a time for national unity in the face of a threat worse than any this nation has ever faced, not petty divisiveness in the name of "humor"
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
You must be from New England or something. Some of us call those temperatures "BBQ weather."
I went back and re-read both posts several times to see if perhaps I misunderstood something, but I don't see it.
Joining > [name-calling of the anti-union folks] All employees should unite and strike until paid enough to balance the distribution of wealth. And there's nothing employers would then be able to do about it, except turn employees into slaves. [claim that many lies are told about unions]
You > So, you are saying you would prefer everyone to not have a job, than for most people to have a job but with some people making a lot more money than others. [claim that there are fewer lies, and some valid arguments]
Your response makes for a strong implied claim that unions by their nature will destroy the companies providing the jobs. Or perhaps that they would simply shut down rather than pay employees a fairer wage. That was the claim I responded to.
What do you see differently?
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
You're engaging in lazy thinking; to wit, false equivalence. If you think one side's as bad as the other you're not paying attention.
Hail Eris, full of mischief...
E pluribus sanguinem
No, I wasn't commenting on that. Sorry if it came across wrong. It was that you accidentally used the word "descent" in place of "decent". I thought it was funny considering the topic is working at a high elevation. That's why I said you would have to make a descent to find a decent place to eat.
If you think I voted for Trump because of this post, you're wrong. I voted for Dr. Jill Stein of the Green Party. Again.
How is that cheating? I thought that is a simple demand and supply rule.
No. The cheating part is the accepting the offer and then refusing to do the work; without advance notice. I am all well and good with interviewing with the employer, and then refusing the offer by telling the prospective employer that it's not enough -- and you'd love to work for them if they'd increase teh amount.
It's called blackmail. "I'm going to suddenly stop doing this thing that I promised to do"
Except that it's not really minimum wage work. Keeping a radio telescope working properly is very much skilled labor. In fact, each of those grad students necessarily already has a 4 year degree (hence the term 'graduate').
Their contention is that they have to deal with extreme isolation and altitude but get paid no more than an otherwise comparable job back on campus would pay.
You just told one (more likely repeated one told to you). What makes you think nobody would have a job if everyone demanded a fair share of the wealth? The work would still need doing and the raw materials would still be there. There would still be a profit to be made. You're not claiming that the wealthy investors would shrug their shoulders and go plow the lawn (themselves) with tools they forge (themselves) to grow food (themselves), are you?
All employees should unite and strike until paid enough to balance the distribution of wealth.
And logically speaking.... it's in Employer's best interests to fire any employee that agrees to do work, and then starts striking, and share a strike-history blacklist with other Empoloyers; so prospective hirers know who is likely to take a job, and then without notice, suddenly refuse to work the job until something is changed to greater benefit them.
Let's assume we can't touch Costs without hurting the company. That still leaves everything in the Profit section open to negotiation
ALMA is UN-funded. There is no profit. The closest thing to proft for a non-profit; is getting more donations or being a separate company paid to be a contracter for a non-profit due to close friendship or family ties with those in charge of the non-profit.
The only real profit for a company in the scientific fields, is if you get to patent something; and observatories don't really have any intellectual property associated with them, except perhaps copyright: but in general, the images taken are in the public domain.
Because they aren't paid enough to live? Why is it that jobs nobody wants to do pay less than glamorous jobs people fantasize about having pay?
Not at all. In fact I'm saying nothing whatsoever about the politicians except saying both sides are playing us for fools, and by picking fights among each other we play straight into their hands. Personally I believe the Ds are preferable, in a "both of us want to rape you, but I'll at least use lube" kind of way. But I'm prepared to admit that the Rs may look quite similar to their supporters. Personally I believe that the Rs are screwing over their supporters worse than the Ds are screwing over theirs, but that doesn't necessarily mean that even a completely rational conservative should prefer the Ds, they may legitimately find the pittance of consideration offered by the Ds to be a slap in the face rather than lube. There are after all some very real and anti-ethical differences in the social priorities of liberal and conservative individuals.
Regardless, the only way we have any hope of winning back any voice in our government is for the people voting for both parties to cooperate to throw out at least the worst of the treasonous bastards at the helm. So you tell me - is calling Republican-leaning citizens idiots likely to make them more or less willing to cooperate with Democrat-leaning citizens?
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
Except that it's not really minimum wage work. Keeping a radio telescope working properly is very much skilled labor. In fact, each of those grad students necessarily already has a 4 year degree
Well; I can think of a few reasons a grad student might want such a job -- there could be opportunities they want in the future that they have to take this job to get. In that case, they are getting value from the job besides the wage paid They are receiving Wage + Experience + Years of Resume history. As long as the sum of the 3 of these is better to them than other options, and exceeds the utility cost to them of Labor performed, then the worker is receiving a good deal.
If there are enough grad students who want to take that path, then from a market perspective: they are providing a supply surplus of labor. As a fact of the matter: a surplus of labor suppresses prices; the very people who are suddenly going back on their promises, and not providing the proper notice expected of preffesionals -- are the same people who caused the wage to be so low.
That is: they were willing to take the job on those terms, and the existence of prospective skilled hires willing to take the job at such low wages, is the reason they get paid that.
Arguably, they agreed to the job, because they felt the arrangement would be beneficial to them, but now their feelings have changed. They should do what any honest responsible employee should do in this situation: demand more money, and turn in their two weeks notice, when they don't get it.
What do you think they're doing?
Dude, i invite you to work in ALMA for a month, a 16,000 ft, with temps as low as 14 F , and winds of 32m/s for $12.50 per our on 12 hour shift with out bathroom or a descent place to eat.... then we can talk
Maybe. If you give me a brand new Macbook Pro, high-speed unmonitored internet access, free high-quality lodging on-site with private room private bathroom, electricity, etc, a company vehicle, with free fuel; 3 high-quality meals a day company paid for; a company paid steak dinner every night, and 12 weeks of paid vacation leave every year.
Obviously; we'd have to do an onsite inspection and further review of the conditions before we consider making an offer to actually work there.
I was corrected by a collegue which says 'we have two bathrooms, one is broken, and the other is only for 'number 1', so if you have to 'number 2' , then you are
Aww hell... why didn't they say that in the article?
If that's the case, then... that would be one of the few reasonable reasons for a strike.
An employer does have to provide reasonable facilities, so employees don't experience unreasonable risk or discomfort. Not providing a usable bathroom for #2 doesn't pass muster.
What do you think they're doing?
The article says they have gone on strike. Which means they banded together with their union buddies, and all agreed to suddenly stop working without notice.
Employees at the world's largest radio telescope have gone on strike after failing to reach agreement over pay and conditions.
In other words: their employer expected them to be working as agreed, but they stopped; without each person providing the proper warning.
Go find work elsewhere then.
Striking just shows at they can't. Otherwise they already would have.
I've worked in high-altitude mines in northern Chile and suggest that the working conditions are similar, but the pay is better in mining. There is a large pool of skilled and semi-skilled people who work in the high altitude mines (Collahuasi, Quebrada Blanca, Pascua Lama, Los Bronces, Andina, El Teniente just to name a few) that are the same labour pool that the telescopes are competing for.
The demand for skilled people in mining is driving up wages in Chile. Since these telescopes are competing for the same skilled people, they better pay competitive wages or else watch their people head elsewhere.
So you're saying they have no natural right to discuss the matter amongst themselves and freely choose to take joint action?
Elsewhere in this discussion we hear (from one of the striking workers) that conditions have in fact changed and that the employer is no longer living up to the bargain.
As for proper warning, you must have missed the part where we were told that the strike happened after negotiations broke down. It's not like one day without warning everyone woke up and decided to strike.
OK. Thanks for the explanation. I wasn't trying to say all unions are trying to shut down all business, but that Joining said he wishes they would.
This is one item I have seen/heard anti-unions commenters make, that unions would rather no one worked than have someone making too much money. Joining would call that a lie, but his statement says he would choose that outcome. (Maybe he didn't realize what he was actually writing, but I have to take his comment as he wrote it.) That's why I said not all the 'lies' he hears are actually lies.
As for your breakdown of business costs, I don't agree on each point, but my only problem is one I see generally. It applies to large corporations with recruited CEOs and other officers, but is not well suited to apply to smaller companies, or a larger company that is still under the control of the guy who stated it.
If you think I voted for Trump because of this post, you're wrong. I voted for Dr. Jill Stein of the Green Party. Again.
Eh, you might as well argue that a human has the right to anything he wants without having to succumb to the pressures of property law.
Freedom means the right to associate freely. And that includes the right *not* to associate with people who aren't prepared to cooperate. Otherwise you're just making slaves of men.
"What you've seen" is fantasy. Strong unionisation brings strong economy: see Germany.
The whole "unions are not perfect!" thing is a straw man. Nobody argues that all unions always act in the interests of their members, except the anti-union types who want an excuse to denigrate all unions. No great concept is always perfectly executed, but the concept is sound, and any deficiencies need to be tackled in each specific case.
Yeah, that's pretty much how it works. Ideally, a competent employee periodically goes to their boss, says "Look, I'm doing the job as agreed, but my expenses have inflated and so have our profits, so I need a bit more", and since the deal was agreeable and fair the first time around, it's still fair once adjusted for inflation, cost-of-living increases, and the employee's improved expertise. In other words, if you agreed to a fair deal when you started, you're expected to work under a fair deal until you retire*. If you didn't agree to a fair deal... you're either evil or stupid.
Striking is taking an agree deal and forcing it into something else. Once hired, the employer sank time and money into training and administration, and perhaps even some contracts they expect to fulfill. By striking, you're extorting them into agreeing to a new deal. Either they take the higher payroll or costlier benefits, or they have to take the loss of all that investment and start over.
* ...Or until it's just not possible to work out a fair deal. Perhaps you've gained more expertise than the company is willing to pay for, or perhaps your contributions toward the company's goals were less than agreed. Perhaps it was the ancillary benefits that made the original deal acceptably-fair, and those may have changed.
You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want.
Any congress of unions ought pretty much to agree as a matter of principle to strike immediately if it finds any company using an employee blacklist. It's as obnoxious as a union reacting merely because a specific person is put into management, regardless of their actual behaviour. Ad hominem is uncivilised from both sides of industry.
But, in fact, the policy is daft, as the best employees aren't necessarily the ones who are most apathetically servile. Noisy employees can often be the ones who care passionately about their work, and just want to be treated well.
Employment blacklists are illegal in many countries anyway, of course.
Your sig has inspired me. I'm not really going to argue, but merely raise some points.
So why exactly shouldn't employees, the ones actually doing the work that's generating the profit, be negotiating for a bigger piece of the profit?
What are they investing to deserve the profit? Usually, it's just time. In comparison, the executives face personal risk and effectively career-ending public shame if something bad happens on their watch. As an example, people expect Tesla to do well because Elon Musk is leading it. SpaceX was riskier, and PayPal was even riskier before that. Zip2 was rather scary. What makes executives' careers is their trail of successes more than their actual expertise, in a similar manner to how credit scores determine a credit card's limit. A major failure can end a career, and the fallout from that can ruin a once-millionaire's finances. Executives' salaries are not so much directly paying for skill, but rather the payout for gambling in a contest of skill.
they're probably plenty to give everybody a 10-20% raise and still let the executives make 50x as much as the janitors
I don't like "probably". Let me do some math. Say a janitor makes $10, so an executive makes $3000. Increase the janitor's salary 10% to $11, and cut the executive's salary to 50x that: $550. That leaves a surplus of $2450, to provide the $1 raise to 2450 employees..
some unions overreached themselves and started cutting in to operating costs. That's a bad thing and those unions deserve to crumble, and the company deserves to collapse if they can't find more reasonable employees
...but they can't hire any reasonable employees because they have exclusive contracts with the union. Even if the contract isn't fully exclusive, there are usually clauses that forbid non-union workers from having any benefit better than the union workers'. For example, employers can't offer lower pay with more vacation time, because their union contract would require both the current pay and the higher vacation time for the union workers.
Employers can't really even leave the unions, because the union members are effectively banned from holding non-union jobs. That means that if the company doesn't renew their contract, they have to convince their employees to leave the union entirely (and lose the much-loved seniority), or reinvest in a whole new workforce. Then there's the influence of the collaboration between unions. Stop working with the welders' union, and your truck drivers suddenly demand triple pay.
In my opinion, today's unions are an absolute mess of bureaucracies that have lost all capability of helping employees. They now help the unions first, and if employees benefit, that's sort-of okay, too.
You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want.
God damn this place went down hill once they started issuing six digit ID's.
Ain't it the truth!
The cost of that cleanup, of course, will be borne by taxpayers, not industry.
...or could just mean that you can't abide some asshole exploiting your fellow man, and you have the courage to stay and fight.
They feared that it could be used to suppress protest or support unpopular rule.
Ah, if it wasn't intended as an attack against Joining's position then it was a very poorly chosen example of a "non lie", because it sorely misrepresents reality by presenting two very unequal positions as comparable opposites. All the best lies are technically true.
On one hand it presents "unions would prefer no one work" - which is a representation of the extreme situation of a strike, the negotiating tactic of last resort, and they don't exactly have a lot of other weapons in their negotiating arsenal.
On the other it presents "than that some be paid too much" - which is frankly the position that pretty much everyone involved with the company would like to find themselves in. The difference being that executives and shareholders readily have the power to make it happen, while employees are unlikely to have anywhere near the power necessary to fight for even a fair share unless they have organized into a very strong union.
How do you see a different breakdown of business costs for small businesses? My parents ran their own business all through my childhood, and I don't see it. There are only a few stockholders in that case - the owners/partners/whatever, but everything else remains the same. What does it matter if the CEO is also the 80% shareholder who started the company? Honest question. Certainly there are some personal startup costs to recoup in that case, but that should all be reflected in the books. Conceptually the founder(s) bought 100% equity in a new startup, and expect (hope for) dividends to recoup those costs - it's a straight up capital investment just like buying shares in somebody else's business would be. In addition any owner who actually contributes labor to the business is drawing a paycheck. Hopefully. Usually a smart small business owner pays themselves last, with any unpaid time being a further investment, of labor this time rather than capital. All of that should be on your books. You do *not* want to get your personal and business finances intermingled. And frankly by the time you've grown large enough that your employees need a union to negotiate through that separation should probably be set in stone. In the case of an incorporated company I believe that's even required by law.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
Heh, always glad to inspire someone. Allow me to offer a few counterpoints
>What are they investing to deserve a profit?
Exactly the same thing the managers are - time and expertise. You think an engineer who designs faulty buildings won't find his career collapsing? Or a factory worker who can't follow directions? Do good work and talk a good line and you can get riskier/more difficult jobs. Overreach your ability and fail spectacularly and your career is over. Same for everybody. Well, except that there seem to be an awful lot of executives out there with a string of failures behind them, and a collection of golden parachutes to make them the envy of anyone who has to actually work for a paycheck.
In regards to Elon Musk you're also conflating two separate factions - he represents both capital and management, which is actually a rare case. As a capital investor he is investing in a company with the hope of an eventual payoff, just like any investor in any startup. The only difference is that he's gambling on his own performance rather than someone else's.
> they can't hire any reasonable employees because they have exclusive contracts with the union
Then that's a clear-cut management failure. The same as if they negotiated exclusive contracts with a materials supplier without having any escape clause in case of abuse. And the risk of incompetent management bringing down a company is an unavoidable fact of business - it's the shareholder board's job to guard against that.
Honestly though, I seriously doubt most unions would turn down an offer that came at the expense of management slashing their own obscene salaries. I doubt there's even been a case where that's been offered in a very long time.
Yes, unions are ripe for abuse - just like management (don't you hate playing on a level field?) As such it's management's job to keep them in check, just as it's their job to keep management in check. And both need to be looking out for the long term health of the company if they want to continue to exist.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
It's one of the things I hear people talking about as they debate unions and companies. An anti-union guy will say "All unions want (some situation), which will (have bad consequences)." Then a pro-union guy will say "No one wants that, you are making it up."
That is basically what Joining was talking about, and saying the anti-union guys are lying about what unions want. But he says he would rather no one work than someone make too much money. I can't help it if you think it's a bad example, it's the one he exemplified.
As to large or small businesses, it isn't the costs that I'm talking about, it is the fairness of distribution of profit. I don't know whether your parents had employees, or if they treated and paid them well. But I will assume they had several employees that were treated and paid fairly. The employees worked hard each week, and did a great job, which kept customers happy and made sure they returned. But the part of the business that keeps people up at night is worrying about the future.
If your parents' business had failed, who would be worse off? The now-former employees would get new jobs. Your parents would undoubtedly have been in debt, and would have had a problem getting a job commensurate with their experience and financial needs. They bore all the risk, the employees bore none, unless they were also investors, which is unlikely. So, at the end of the year, when a decent profit is on the books, did your parents put a piece of it in the bank for future business needs, then split the rest evenly among everyone? Or did they give themselves a larger piece, and give the employees a $100 Christmas bonus?
Large corporations like GM or Goldman Sachs don't have executives in that position, of facing personal ruin if the business fails. So I don't have a problem if their salary and compensation was limited somehow. But most companies in the country are not in that group. Most are small businesses that were started by the people running them, or their parents or grand-parents. They are companies that someone puts their blood, sweat, and tears into every day to keep it going, and those people want to enjoy their profits at the end. If they get the same profit as the guy they hire to sweep the floors, they might as well have gotten a job sweeping someone else's floor.
If you think I voted for Trump because of this post, you're wrong. I voted for Dr. Jill Stein of the Green Party. Again.
I really can't fathom how so many people don't understand what's going on. Thomas Jefferson explicitly warned against a two-party system because he knew what it would turn into. The idea is, you play "good cop, bad cop" and for maximum effectiveness, you swap roles every now and then. The result is that you play the voters in the middle. If you think that couldn't possibly be going on, it's because the parties understand strategy and you don't. Both parties benefit by doing this, just as all cell phone companies (competitors now) benefitted by overcharging for texting. It's an informal collusion that doesn't require a written arrangement. All it requires is that each entity promote their own self-interests.
It gives the illusion of choice because it de-emphasizes one critical fact of American politics: it is not a competition for the best ideas that puts a candidate into office. It is the campaign donors who do that. Now then, isn't it odd the way so many corporations donate to BOTH parties? It's as though they get their influence no matter who wins. Hmm.
Meanwhile the only differences between the parties are about useless (from the standpoint of sustaining a collapsing nation) issues like abortion and gay marriage. Both parties intend to grow the size and power and pervasiveness of the federal government. Both parties view the Bill of Rights as something to find clever ways around, usually in the name of safety or fighting terrorism. Both parties fight pointless overseas wars against foreign nations that are not a threat to the USA because the military-industrial interests demand it and because the economy would have collapsed long ago without it.
For your own sake, take a hard look at what's going on.
It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. - Einstein
The D's tend to attract immature people who use emotion (which is easily manipulated) when they should use reason, and believe that the intensity of the emotion makes this okay. The R's tend to attract materialist business interests (which are easily manipulated) and old people who think that leaving their children and grandchildren with more debt than they could ever hope to repay is excellent parenting.
Neither represents me and I would be shocked if either represented you.
It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. - Einstein
If you think that's cheating, how about this nice fact: for at least the last 50 years, worker productivity has steadily increased and continues to do so. Meanwhile, wages (when accounting for inflation etc) have remained stagnant.
That's a masterwork of negotiation and shrewdness on the part of corporations, to be sure. Yet if by "cheating" you mean "doing something unfair/inequitable/unethical" then you must admit this fits the description. Unless, of course, you wish to argue that someone who produces more should not also be compensated more, in which case I'd be interested to hear your reasoning. I suppose while you're at it you could explain why a luxury sports car should cost the same as a rusty jalopy.
It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. - Einstein
So why exactly shouldn't employees, the ones actually doing the work that's generating the profit, be negotiating for a bigger piece of the profit?
The part you don't understand is that "actual work" really isn't worth much. Any physically capable person can do manual labor. Businesses pay for decisions, they pay for a brain. The more skilled your position, the more important decisions you make are, and if you make good decisions, the more an employer will be willing to compensate you to keep you around.
But you're not associating with them. You're associating with the company, and they're independently associating with the company.
I always thought it was better to barbeque in the winter. Why stand around a fire in the summer?
You are still conflating two unrelated financial positions which is confusing the discussion: that of investor and manager. You allude to this difference when you speak of large corporations like GM, but don't seem to have fully integrated the awareness into your perspective. In small businesses there is often a lot of overlap - all the debt is being accrued by the same people that are managing the business. In their role as *investors* they are taking a large risk, but in their role as *managers* they are not - the worst that happens is they're working for a pittance to get through the rough spots.
To make this clearer consider a situation where you have a great idea for a business but no cash, and instead of going in to debt you line up some investors willing to fund you. They insist on a 100% ownership stake but will give you a nice nice long contract with profit sharing so long as you don't screw up. It's still the same basic situation: young business trying to get off the ground with a high risk of failure. Who deserves the high profits if it succeeds, the manager who's making it happen, or the investors taking the financial risk?
In fact that right there is the essence of the original capital-versus-labor discussion - one side is providing the capital, the other is doing the work. Both sides are providing significant value, and should reasonably be expected to come to some sort of mutually beneficial profit-sharing arrangement.
The management-versus-employees discussion is actually a wholly separate issue *within* the ranks of the labor part of the equation. Management has no significant capital stake in the company (or didn't used to), they're hired by the shareholders to manage the business and it's employees well. As the top ranks in the hierarchy there is a much tighter link between their decisions and the well-being of the company, hence a higher salary (that's a whole conversation there). But it's still a salary - they're being paid for their time and expertise, there is no more investment involved than for any other worker. The big difference between themselves and everyone else is that they get to decide their own salary, and "the shareholders" is a really unfocussed boss represented by a Board of Directors that are in the same boat as the CEOs. It's a recipe for abuse, and unlike Congress they haven't even pretended to reign themselves in. I mean come on - after a bad year HP's CEO took home $15 million sure her "official" salary was only $1, but any way you slice it one year of work translates into $15 million. The frelling US president only takes home $400 thousand! Are we really supposed to believe that the CEO of HP is 38x more important? Sure the president gets a sweet retirement package, but still.
But anyway, yes, small businesses are in a completely different group - but then I can't say I've heard of many small business where the "CEO" was making 300x more than most of their employees. Long before you get to that kind of disparity the business has generally incorporated, is racking up debts in its own name, and the owners are no longer taking on any additional risks do justify escalating profits beyond their return as shareholders, which has absolutely nothing to do with their salary as CEO.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
Thanks for the breakdown of all that. I guess I'm coming at it from the perspective of a small business owner, whose customers are mostly small businesses themselves.They don't have investors, they have debt. Even the ones that are fully incorporated have debt that either they carry personally, or it is paid by the business but comes out of the monthly profit, which is their monthly income. I'm speaking about dentists, a car repair shop, an appliance shop, a candy shop, real estate offices, and various home products specialists (windows, furniture, glass, ornaments, etc.).
These people are putting their own money into their business, just as I am. The owner is the investor and manager both. I'll admit that while I understand the situation you lay out, with investors owning someone's business, I don't get why someone like me would want to do that. I run my business the way I think it should be run, and I pay the price if I'm wrong. Besides that, I haven't seen a business established like that. Most of my customers aren't big enough to warrant that, I guess. The ones that are bigger are already big companies with a board of directors, I guess. I don't know their specifics. Sorry if this isn't as clear in words as it is in my head.
Anyway, it's late, and I'm sleepy, so I'll be going now. Thanks again for the explanation.
If you think I voted for Trump because of this post, you're wrong. I voted for Dr. Jill Stein of the Green Party. Again.
Well, it's tough when it's cold. Propane liquifies around -40 C and won't come out of the bottle. You can use charcoal, but it can be hard to light too. It's also hard to find good utensils to flip the burgers: any plastic gets pretty brittle, and metal handles have a nasty habit of sticking to skin. But agreed, -10 C is wonderful BBQ weather.
Overreach your ability and fail spectacularly and your career is over. Same for everybody
Until you move to a new market, don't mention the old failures, and try again. With that nice union vouching for your supposed competence, you can't not be hired.
Executives that make major failures can't hide in obscurity. A string of two or three failures is the end of their career as an executive, and they'll have to be coasting on that golden parachute through retirement... Working in finance, I've actually seen a few clients in exactly that situation. They're unemployable as executives because their last few ventures failed, and they're now working low-level management jobs trying to cover the ongoing expenses they have from their earlier lifestyle.
I'm not saying they deserve a 300x salary, or even 50x, but just that the higher the rank, the more the risk of failure becomes personal.
Then that's a clear-cut management failure. The same as if they negotiated exclusive contracts with a materials supplier without having any escape clause in case of abuse.
Exclusive contracts are par for the union course. Most unions forbid their members from working in non-union shops without special arrangement, so a company must either deal with the union or hire all non-union employees... but the non-union hiring pool is pretty shallow indeed, since most places are exclusive union shops. It's a chicken-or-egg problem, and once a particular labor market has joined exclusive unions, there's no course for return to a non-union market. So much for that level playing field.
This is the big issue behind the "right to work" laws that force separation between employment eligibility and union membership. Ideally, employees could get offers from employers, and perhaps have different (maybe better) offers if they're union members. The employee gets to pick what's best for their situation, so rather than an adversarial power struggle, the employers and unions compete to have control over the employees, inflating conditions steadily over time.
You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want.
Qantas went on strike in Australia a couple of years ago. As in, the company temporarily ceased to trade and banned their workers from entering the premises, because they weren't happy with how the employment negotiations were proceeding. Of course, all the conservative hacks and politicians applauded Qantas manglement for doing such a thing with absolutely no notice (to the point where passengers were stranded locally and overseas).
The same people try to make it illegal in the other direction of course.
As an ex-telescope operator (who left incidentally because I was pissed off with manglement) with friends at ALMA, I say ALMA and their member signatories may be getting what they deserve.
That logic is absolutely awful, and you should be highly embarrassed to have posted it on a geek site.
Unionisation may be *necessary* for long-term prosperity, but it's not *sufficient*. Ireland relied way too much on low corporation tax and other short term incentives dependent on its past developing status, and Italy is corrupt to the core. "Culture of Raw German Efficiency" is a label Anglo-Saxons like to use because they are too afraid to actually describe what it means: a culture in which worker and management are keen to cooperate on relevant education and sustainable production, maintained by an on-going dialogue between the two sides of industry.
Meanwhile, outside of the basement, employees have to associate with each other to get work done.
My pleasure.
It seems to me that many among the anti-union arguments like to try to use the specter of strong unions to scare small businesses and foster anti-union sentiment. And sure, it is a little scary, nobody wants to have to personally fight someone wielding that kind of power to run their business. But when you get right down to it most small business owners actually know their employees personally and don't try to screw them over, and their employees recognize that. As a species humans and other apes are wired to recognize and desire fairness. We get angry when somebody is treating us really unfairly, and all but the most larcenous among us don't *really* want to be the guy making a grossly unfair windfall at the expense of their associates.
Just for a last splash of perspective that I should have offered up yesterday - let's say you're a small business owner who's paying his employees an average of $10/hour, or $20,800/year. If you were making the sort of disproportionate profits that CEOs make today you would be putting over $3,000/hour in your own pocket, or over $6 million per year. I seriously doubt there's a small business out there where the owner is making anywhere near that kind of profit without sharing a bit more of it with their employees. Even pocketing $600,000/year in that situation would make most honest folks uncomfortable, and today's unions can only dream of getting the income disparity down to that level.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
nationalist much?
Mysida, it wasn't with further notice, Chilean law, union members as to vote if they accept the new offer from the company or go into strike, after the vote, if strike is the option the union members select, the empleyer is notified and 36 hours later the strike became efective, in our case, we have been negotiating with the employer for over a month, so is not 'suddenly stop working without notice' , employer know in advance that union was not happy with its offer.
Qantas went on strike in Australia a couple of years ago. As in, the company temporarily ceased to trade and banned their workers from entering the premises, because they weren't happy with how the employment negotiations were proceeding.
It's all the worse when a business does something like that; regulators should actively prevent it, in order to protect consumers. The company should pay fines and required to compensate passengers stranded by such an act in the amount 10x the damages with a minimum of AUD $ 2000 per passenger, in addition to a repayment of travel expenses; with regulators handling the prosection.
The fines should exceed any benefit hoped to be gained by the unannounced disruption.
Hmm, you do paint a rather bleak picture, but it seems to me that the problem is not unions per-se, but unions that control the labor pool. Those are perfectly reasonable in a situation where a single employer (or small handful) controls the job market, but even there it kind of sucks for everyone else in the area.
Seems like a potential solution would be to apply anti-monopoly laws to unions as well - no single union can represent more than X% of the regional workforce, where X% is roughly comparable to the workforce of the largest single employer, and unions can't prevent people being hired from other unions. If union A falsely vouches for the competency of it's members then stop hiring from them. Better yet don't ask them to vouch for their members at all, talk to their previous employers just like everyone else.
Or maybe restrict unions to a single company. The union doesn't represent the broader labor pool, it represents the employees of that specific company. Go work for someone else, you leave your union and join theirs(or not, as the case may be). Certainly there's going to be some cooperation between unions, but there's plenty of collusion between employers as well, so that should hopefully balance out okay. And it promotes an environment where small business owners don't have to deal with unions that are more powerful than they are.
The only problem I see with right to work laws is that it's pretty much guaranteed that non-union employees will be economically preferable to union employees. They have no power. Why would an employer hire *anyone* from the union if they have an option? Perhaps if they have to hire someone without any knowledge about whether they are going to join the union, and with no right to add a "you can't join the union" clause or retaliate against those who choose to do so... of course then how do you know what benefits to offer? Hmm.., perhaps the employer could offer each employees a certain base compensation package, and they can then choose either the union or non-union benefits package... nah that wouldn't really work either.
Okay, so it's a complicated question, no easy answers. That's okay, some things are just like that. I mean I've never worked for under in union in my life, but I sure as heck don't want them to go away - all you have to do is look at the robber-baron era to see how bad things can get without them. And as a nation we're already well on our way back to that very situation.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
So what you say is "standard procedure": you think there're reasons to strike and the ones that have to negotiate it make sure they have things they can spare to allow for negotiation to move forward.
Where did you take the "without notice" part?
A strike is the worker's last resort. You seem to forget that the worker doesn't collect his wages while on strike and that he hasn't a nice cushion to sustain his position.
In the US what we are doing is unsustainable. Trillion dollar annual deficits? The crash is coming but no one is trying to engineer a soft landing. I live in a rural area, have a supply of food and plenty of ammunition. You can't stop the inevitable, just prepare for it.
If you were lost in Manhattan, chances are fairly good that you could walk to shelter before succumbing to the elements. And the Atacama is just about all dry and cold every day of the year.
Tell that to the forty or so homeless people a year who die of exposure in NYC.
Please help metamoderate.