I just don't know, all these points sound so weirdly out of touch with reality, it feels like we live in a world of children and there are no parents anymore.
Point 1: Only getting fired for a good reason? Who decides what a good reason is? The boss right? So what are we even doing here, what's the hidden implication? They want a foot in the door to be able to argue that X wasn't really a good reason and they'll strike over it. If I were a company owner/boss I would want to be able to fire people who are terrible to be around, argumentative for no good reason. Is that a good reason? They would think no because it's a personal fit issue. And yet it's totally legitimate, people don't get hired all the time over "fit" but then you can't fire over "fit". Everytime I have to deal with such colleagues I always think "man if I were a boss, I'd just fire such people, it's so obviously poison for the work environment". Arguing effectively is important but because it's so important it's a great duty to not use it as a tool for personal benefits.
Point 2: Pay discrepancies for "women or people of color" could easily have real world reasons, maybe they really are just worse at their job, less engaged, less ambitious, whatever it is that causes less pay. It's not impossible for this to be the case, no matter how uncomfortable that may be for everyone. Yes really. Yes really really. It can absolutely be true. You might even have a situation where every worker from Russia is just worse at their job. Or the majority of workers that are e.g hindu are just worse for whatever reason that a company can't fathom. It may even be the case that everyone who is white is worse for whatever reason, maybe they are too comfortable, who knows, none of this is impossible and none of this is the job of the company to figure out. I need to have the legal power to pay worse people less money or we are in a situation where you just levied a massive hidden tax on my company. You want me to subsidize worse performers in some strange hope that this is going to help the country as a whole to be nicer. Well having a nicer country would be fantastic, I just want you to be clear that you are issuing massive, gigantic new taxes with these so called anti-racist, anti-sexist rules and it's not just a tax on the company, it also hurts the psychology of all the better workers, so you are hurting society in general. Who is going to count the cost at the end? Why work harder after all if you can just have a certain genetic profile or protected political class and then you'll get free money. What such people who push for this are always implying is that the company is hurting itself in sexist, racist confusion, the implication is that these people are underpaid for the value they provide and the company is too incompetent to see it. The union or government in their infinite wisdom is going to force the company's racists/sexists/homophobes to finally pay according to the real value of these workers and the only metric that they will use to determine the real value is genetics and political class. Absurd isn't even a strong enough word to describe it. Even in the theoretical best case scenario for such a rule where you truly have identical value from two different people, why reward the person that doesn't want to negotiate for more pay? What we should actually do is maybe look at workers' family situation and give people who can't negotiate effectively due to raising kids that they get a government tax bonus. But wait, that is already the case! People who have kids can already get a tax bonus.
Point 3: Yes it would be nice if we could all work how we want but how is that a legitimate negotiable thing for the union to involve itself in? If the company thinks that home office doesn't work for them then who is the union to say otherwise?!
The entire mindset here is so utterly divorced from reality, it's like a luxury daycare where the kids complain that some other kid got a slightly better piece of the pie.
> Only getting fired for a good reason? Who decides what a good reason is?
There are these things that exist called courts and independent arbitrators...
> Pay discrepancies for "women or people of color" could easily have real world reasons, maybe they really are just worse at their job, less engaged, less ambitious, whatever it is that causes less pay.
> ...
> I need to have the legal power to pay worse people less money or we are in a situation where you just levied a massive hidden tax on my company.
Ok, then. We have these things called protected categories. If your contention is one of those categories actually consists of "worse people" that you need to be able to "pay less money," then you need to prove that each of those individuals is in fact "worse." A giant wall-o-text consisting of a bunch of coulds, maybes, and I-want-to-be-able-to-do-this's ain't gonna cut it.
> Yes it would be nice if we could all work how we want but how is that a legitimate negotiable thing for the union to involve itself in?
The short answer: yes. The long answer is: yes, and why is that news to you?
> The entire mindset here is so utterly divorced from reality...
Honestly, I could say the same about your comment.
We can just take this exchange as an example, maybe that helps to clarify my actual position. Imagine if I had to contact an independent committee before I could "fire"(=ignore) your comment with several snide insults. I'd get bogged down, my work day would be slower. Imagine if somebody could drag me to court over every comment decision because hey, maybe I just ignored it for no good reason, or because you are black or white or have a certain religion. You could file an appeal at HN that I have to give you more attention. So in your desired reality we will have to find out during the court proceedings and in the meantime I am forced to pay you 15% more attention *by default* in an irrational attempt of fairness to all the other comments if they received 15% higher attention.
Having certain protections against discrimination is a good thing but they should be very carefully applied. We can already see that the New York Times Tech Guild does not seem to want careful application of these rules if their website doesn't even mention any evaluation of worker productivity or value, all their study apparently did was to look at pay difference without looking at work difference. A perfect example of a total failure to care about the correct things, a total failure to care about what the company needs to achieve (=actual value) and just looking at pay with no connection to possible reasons I enumerated. https://www.nyguild.org/post/pay-inequity-at-the-new-york-ti...
> Imagine if I had to contact an independent committee before I could... ignore your comment...
I can imagine an orange when we're talking apples, sure.
> We can already see that the New York Times Tech Guild does not seem to want careful application of these rules if their website doesn't even mention any evaluation of worker productivity or value, all their study apparently did was to look at pay difference without looking at work difference.
Come on, it's an adversarial negotiation. You seem to really want to argue the side of the employer, and for some strange reason seem also want everyone to argue that side as well.
Point 1: The hidden implication is obviously the continued problem of large firms over-hiring when labor or money is cheap and then performing mass layoffs when it's not. If you are hiring someone or a group with plans of firing them later then the contract wasn't established in good faith. Many of these workers can make more hourly if they are independent, they are paying for stability.
No company should be able to double dip by hiring a large team to build a system and then firing most of them to maintain it on a shoe-string budget, if they want to do that they can pay top dollar to have a 3rd party build it
Point 2: No matter how it shakes out, if you structure your company in a way that white men or asian men are incentivized to do more or women and blacks are incentivized to do less, then your company has a racist incentive structure and it should be rebuilt. They aren't flying in 15-year-old Hadje from Chad, the people they hire are all similarly qualified so there shouldn't be such a large gap, as we know cause if we restrict it to just white men then there isn't this large pay gap. Besides, it's a complete myth that people are "payed what they are worth" if that were the case a 100xer would make 100x more than a 1xer after firing 99 people and keeping the 100xer. In reality they might double or tripple their pay and the rest just becomes (record) profits for the company and 99 people are out of work.
Point 3: Does the company have any evidence that it doesn't work or should we just take their word? Doesn't work in what sense? That profits for the company aren't maximized? If that's the only metric then why should the employees be payed at all? Just have them as slaves and use the government to beat or kill them if they disagree.
I'd also point out the irony that if the NYT had hired staff with balanced and diverse perspectives, it might not have put itself in this ouroboros trap.
Point 1: Only getting fired for a good reason? Who decides what a good reason is? The boss right? So what are we even doing here, what's the hidden implication? They want a foot in the door to be able to argue that X wasn't really a good reason and they'll strike over it. If I were a company owner/boss I would want to be able to fire people who are terrible to be around, argumentative for no good reason. Is that a good reason? They would think no because it's a personal fit issue. And yet it's totally legitimate, people don't get hired all the time over "fit" but then you can't fire over "fit". Everytime I have to deal with such colleagues I always think "man if I were a boss, I'd just fire such people, it's so obviously poison for the work environment". Arguing effectively is important but because it's so important it's a great duty to not use it as a tool for personal benefits.
Point 2: Pay discrepancies for "women or people of color" could easily have real world reasons, maybe they really are just worse at their job, less engaged, less ambitious, whatever it is that causes less pay. It's not impossible for this to be the case, no matter how uncomfortable that may be for everyone. Yes really. Yes really really. It can absolutely be true. You might even have a situation where every worker from Russia is just worse at their job. Or the majority of workers that are e.g hindu are just worse for whatever reason that a company can't fathom. It may even be the case that everyone who is white is worse for whatever reason, maybe they are too comfortable, who knows, none of this is impossible and none of this is the job of the company to figure out. I need to have the legal power to pay worse people less money or we are in a situation where you just levied a massive hidden tax on my company. You want me to subsidize worse performers in some strange hope that this is going to help the country as a whole to be nicer. Well having a nicer country would be fantastic, I just want you to be clear that you are issuing massive, gigantic new taxes with these so called anti-racist, anti-sexist rules and it's not just a tax on the company, it also hurts the psychology of all the better workers, so you are hurting society in general. Who is going to count the cost at the end? Why work harder after all if you can just have a certain genetic profile or protected political class and then you'll get free money. What such people who push for this are always implying is that the company is hurting itself in sexist, racist confusion, the implication is that these people are underpaid for the value they provide and the company is too incompetent to see it. The union or government in their infinite wisdom is going to force the company's racists/sexists/homophobes to finally pay according to the real value of these workers and the only metric that they will use to determine the real value is genetics and political class. Absurd isn't even a strong enough word to describe it. Even in the theoretical best case scenario for such a rule where you truly have identical value from two different people, why reward the person that doesn't want to negotiate for more pay? What we should actually do is maybe look at workers' family situation and give people who can't negotiate effectively due to raising kids that they get a government tax bonus. But wait, that is already the case! People who have kids can already get a tax bonus.
Point 3: Yes it would be nice if we could all work how we want but how is that a legitimate negotiable thing for the union to involve itself in? If the company thinks that home office doesn't work for them then who is the union to say otherwise?!
The entire mindset here is so utterly divorced from reality, it's like a luxury daycare where the kids complain that some other kid got a slightly better piece of the pie.