US Politics - The Conceit of Not Conceding

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

25 minutes ago, Chataya de Fleury said:

Please don’t. Last time I got rehired as a contractor, I made $125/hr. On top of the salary I was making at my day job.

I nearly had a nervous breakdown, but 2013 was a VERY good year for me

Sorry, but I'm not really concerned about someone who can make $125/hr. Half of working adults in this country say they would be devastated by an unexpected $500 bill. What's best for them should be the priority.

[DanteGabriel]

Georgia Secretary of State says that Trump probably would have won his state if he hadn't sown so much distrust of mail in voting. Tweet is first of a thread.

 

 

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

16 minutes ago, Chataya de Fleury said:

I’m just saying it shouldn’t be illegal to make paying contractors no benefits to be illegal. Make there be a threshold. Obviously. Or if they are already getting benefits (from a spouse’s job, let’s say) then there can also be an exemption.

I'm against companies using loopholes to underpay and avoid providing benefits to workers. First thing that needs to go are unpaid internships. 

[OldGimletEye]

10 hours ago, Tywin et al. said:

As layoffs are going on left and right?

This is rather a confused point. Surely, you know, that I know that the state of the business cycle will affect the level of employment and wages.

If employer sponsored healthcare goes away, and then on the next day there is a financial crises, that leads to a depression, then yeah were not going to see a rise in cash wages. But no matter how compensation is structured, and economic downturn is likely to have a negative effect on it. But, eventually economies do recover (of course the exact policies enacted will determine how long it takes).

A number of factors can affect economic outcomes, this why I kept writing "ceteris paribus", or "all things being equal". And its the reason, why when running a regression, a number of control variables go into a model.

Its a point worth of the Republican Party.

Its akin to trying to determine what the fiscal multiplier is, without taking into account the general business cycle. If you don't account for it, you would likely end up with a misleading conclusion.

[Kalbear]

11 hours ago, OldGimletEye said:

Huh? The only reason firms want to keep people is to pay them healthcare benefits? Why exactly does the firm care if it pays healthcare benefits, other then the fact that employees will tend to take lower compensation because of the tax benefits to employer sponsored healthcare?

Sorry, ill try again. 

Right now firms have monopoly power via providing great affordable Healthcare benefits, but they can only use that power by hiring full time salaried staff. This power is very useful for being able to differentiate on and hire more skilled or desirable workers. 

If they lose that ability to use that power, there is less incentive for them to offer FTE positions. They would instead likely attempt to differentiate more on compensation, and one of the easiest ways for them to do that is by doing only contracting. 

An example in my field - Microsoft is considered a very good place to work if you have a family because of the benefits and relatively good work life balance it can offer. If it can't offer those benefits, and has to compete with other firms on compensation or on work life balance, I would bet they'd go for more contractors (which in general offers both of those things in greater amounts).

[OldGimletEye]

50 minutes ago, Kalbear Total Landscaping said:

Sorry, ill try again. 

Right now firms have monopoly power via providing great affordable Healthcare benefits, but they can only use that power by hiring full time salaried staff. This power is very useful for being able to differentiate on and hire more skilled or desirable workers. 

If they lose that ability to use that power, there is less incentive for them to offer FTE positions. They would instead likely attempt to differentiate more on compensation, and one of the easiest ways for them to do that is by doing only contracting. 

An example in my field - Microsoft is considered a very good place to work if you have a family because of the benefits and relatively good work life balance it can offer. If it can't offer those benefits, and has to compete with other firms on compensation or on work life balance, I would bet they'd go for more contractors (which in general offers both of those things in greater amounts).

Employers being able to offer healthcare might make it easier for them to get full time employees, but its not clear to me how that makes having full time employees any less desirable from a firm's point of view.

There are potentially a number of reasons, why companies prefer long term arrangements with employees, rather than going to the "spot market" to hire labor when needed. One is the potential variability in employee ability or skills. Another is those many jobs have specific skills to that job that a employee has to learn and becomes more proficient at as he does his job. Another reason is the fixed cost of finding a suitable employee for a particular position.

In so far, as big firms having more trouble retaining suitable employees, without providing healthcare benefits, that is not a bad thing, and would likely boost employee wages. Without the issue of healthcare, some employees might decided to work for themselves or start their own firms. Others might opt to go to other and smaller firms. Not trying to be mean, but competition against a giant like Microsoft or Google is actually a good thing.

[Martell Spy]

Contractors in many industries do get benefits and they aren't really like the contractors in the transport industry, like Uber drivers. The benefit packages can vary quite a bit though. The big thing is important protections are in place such as minimum wage and overtime laws. Also, wages get deducted to pay Social Security, etc. Many contractors in the transport industry are forced to pay their own Social Security yearly. They get called owner-operators and the like in order to off-load legal obligations on to the worker. 

The main thing that happens to contractors is their contracting company takes a good chunk of their wages. Sometimes the company hiring the contractors even get angry about how much is being taken by the contracting companies and even fire contracting companies over this.

[Guest]

Re: UHC, would it be possible to write the law in such a way that companies currently offering health insurance as a benefit will be required to pass that savings on to their employees, which is then taxed, or if they choose to not pass the savings on to the their employees, they must pay the UHC tax on their employees' behalf?

Also, I'm not sure it necessarily tracks that employers would just start dumping employees in favor of contractors. Benefit considerations are a carefully balanced mix taking into account a competitive compensation package, subsidies and tax breaks for offering these benefits, and among companies that offer benefits, healthcare is usually only one benefit offered among others like pensions/401k, childcare subsidies, education perks, etc. I'm pretty sure most employees wouldn't be thrilled about their 401k benefits being taken away to turn them into contractors just because they now have UHC.

Also, I fail to see how UHC gives more bargaining power to companies as opposed to workers, when one of the biggest arguments for it is to allow greater mobility of labor, among other benefits.

This also ignores the tens of millions of workers who we are leaving out of this conversation whose lives would absolutely be impacted for the better because they're not offered workplace insurance at all.

[DMC]

3 hours ago, The Great Unwashed said:

Wouldn't the solution be removing the post from being politically appointed?

Not a bad idea considering it's an independent agency, but that wouldn't necessarily solve this problem.  The GSA is one of the largest independent agencies both in terms of budget and staff - not to mention it oversees about a half a trillion dollars in federal property.  It'd be an even worse idea to have a permanent appointee running it.  You could have set terms of say 5, 7, 10 years, but then of course there's no guarantee that term wouldn't have expired under Trump anyway, plus who knows if the administrator wants to keep that job that long (they almost always don't even last a whole presidential term).  Another thing to consider is Murphy was confirmed by unanimous consent.  I don't think this really is a problem with the institutional rules necessarily but rather that nobody really cares whether an unqualified hack runs the agency.

[OldGimletEye]

1 hour ago, The Great Unwashed said:

Re: UHC, would it be possible to write the law in such a way that companies currently offering health insurance as a benefit will be required to pass that savings on to their employees, which is then taxed, or if they choose to not pass the savings on to the their employees, they must pay the UHC tax on their employees' behalf?

Personally, I don't think a law would be necessary, as UHC would give employees more bargaining power in wage negotiations, as you pointed out. That and for a given level of aggregate demand, employers would have incentive to maintain their output, which would tend to drive up wages paid in cash.

1 hour ago, The Great Unwashed said:

Also, I fail to see how UHC gives more bargaining power to companies as opposed to workers, when one of the biggest arguments for it is to allow greater mobility of labor, among other benefits.

I fail to see it too. In fact, it would likely give employees greater bargaining power. To make a point, I wrote down some equations, which made the simplification that firms don't control wage setting, but instead take wages as given. But, that is not quite how it works. Most firms have a degree of bargaining power, largely due to informational problems in the labor market that causes it to depart from the completive ideal. The firm will take into account its estimated value of the new employee. The employee will take into account his outside options, which will be influenced by the state of the labor market and his ability to obtain benefits like healthcare.

Firms like Google and Microsoft likely collect economic rents because of the intellectual property they hold and because what is called "network effects". You can think of employer/employee bargaining as trying to divide up these economic rents. The better bargaining power an employee has, because he has credible outside threats, the more likely he is to capture these economic rents.

[argonak]

55 minutes ago, OldGimletEye said:

Employers being able to offer healthcare might make it easier for them to get full time employees, but its not clear to me how that makes having full time employees any less desirable from a firm's point of view.

There are potentially a number of reasons, why companies prefer long term arrangements with employees, rather than going to the "spot market" to hire labor when needed. One is the potential variability in employee ability or skills. Another is those many jobs have specific skills to that job that a employee has to learn and becomes more proficient at as he does his job. Another reason is the fixed cost of finding a suitable employee for a particular position.

In so far, as big firms having more trouble retaining suitable employees, without providing healthcare benefits, that is not a bad thing, and would likely boost employee wages. Without the issue of healthcare, some employees might decided to work for themselves or start their own firms. Others might opt to go other and smaller firms. Not trying to be mean, but competition against a giant like Microsoft or Google is actually a good thing.

Exactly.  As a manager, I would not like having a team of hourly contractors.  I think it would add far too much uncertainty and lack of trust on everyone's part.  A huge part of my job is the relationship with my design and install team so that I don't have to double check every piece of their work constantly or be fearful they'll just not show up when priority work is on the line.   And to be honest, I don't think that would change much if I was digging ditches instead.  But that is just me.

But coupling health care to jobs gives employers a disincentive to have long term employees, that runs counter to the incentive of having employees you can trust and rely on.  Managers are (mostly) people too, and having good relationships with your team can lead to higher productivity and profit margins.  But when you've got that disincentive of paying benefits hanging over your bottom line, its easy to lose sight of that.

My friend works in server center maintenance, and its important that his employer can trust and rely on him to go to a site and get the repairs done on his own.  While I'm certain there are many firms with contractors who do this work, as a manager I'd really rather have someone I know I can rely on to have our company and team's best interest in mind when he's the only guy with boots on the ground.  Versus a guy who is absolutely just there for the dollars per hour I'm paying him that day.  I don't expect my people to stick with their jobs forever, and I'm happy for them when they move on to bigger and better things.  But because of my relationship with my crew, (at least to date), no one has ever left me in the lurch, and they've always given me plenty of warning before they were heading on to those greener pastures.

[argonak]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2020/11/18/health-care-worker-threats-coronavirus/?arc404=true

This is the story of a county health clerk who has been working in Missouri to try and save her community, and was so mercilessly attacked for it she was worried for her family's safety and quit her job.  It's heartbreaking and should be a real warning sign that a huge portion of our country has been radicalized to a dangerous extent by right wing media.  I used to wonder how people could join ISIS, but now I don't.

[GrimTuesday]

4 hours ago, Chataya de Fleury said:

Please don’t. Last time I got rehired as a contractor, I made $125/hr. On top of the salary I was making at my day job.

I nearly had a nervous breakdown, but 2013 was a VERY good year for me

This (not you specifically) attitude is a major part of what has caused the decline of worker power in the US. The practice of hiring contractors is one of the greatest methods for preventing unionization and collective action on the part of employees because you've basically created an internal class system when you have a large number of people who are being brought on in a contractor capacity who have no long term investment in the conditions that the regular workers are subject to because they are temporary, and are often times pulling in quite a bit more money because they are actively being courted. The fact that we have people at the top who benefit from these exploitative practices fighting against the destruction of those practices because they serve their economic interests. We need more solidarity between workers of all classes because for every one person like you who who comes out ahead of this, there are hundreds, maybe thousands more who are being brutalized by the this system. We see this same attitude all over the place, most notably in terms of race, so it isn't like this is exclusive to labor, but it's the same. White people are in a privileged position, now that people are trying to make things more equal, white folks suddenly feel under attack because they are no longer being directly favored as much.

I feel like I've been going after you, so if it feels like I'm being unfair here, I apologize. This is a problem that goes beyond you, but you're the one who I saw bring it up.

[Kalbear]

1 hour ago, OldGimletEye said:

Personally, I don't think a law would be necessary, as UHC would give employees more bargaining power in wage negotiations, as you pointed out. That and for a given level of aggregate demand, employers would have incentive to maintain their output, which would tend to drive up wages paid in cash.

I fail to see it too. In fact, it would likely give employees greater bargaining power. To make a point, I wrote down some equations, which made the simplification that firms don't control wage setting, but instead take wages as given. But, that is not quite how it works. Most firms have a degree of bargaining power, largely due to informational problems in the labor market that causes it to depart from the completive ideal. The firm will take into account its estimated value of the new employee. The employee will take into account his outside options, which will be influenced by the state of the labor market and his ability to obtain benefits like healthcare.

Firms like Google and Microsoft likely collect economic rents because of the intellectual property they hold and because what is called "network effects". You can think of employer/employee bargaining as trying to divide up these economic rents. The better bargaining power an employee has, because he has credible outside threats, the more likely he is to capture these economic rents.

I agree! My point is that those people are very much inclined to do contracting because contracting (especially self-contracting) is usually more lucrative and gives more work-life balance and individual bargaining power.

[GrimTuesday]

1 minute ago, Chataya de Fleury said:

Naw, you definitely aren’t going after me - I can tell it’s not personal.

Here’s the thing, though - my job is a “professional” role. In the US, professional employees DO NOT unionize. It is simply “not done”. We have professional associations, but we do not unionize.

Also - does “management” ever unionize?? In that role, I was right below the VP of Finance in a $2 bn company. Third level from the CFO of the company.

I am aware that professionals don't unionize, but honestly, I think that is a mistake. We have massively narrowed the scope of unionization to the point that it is seen as something that only blue collar workers do, and that is another thing that has created the ground work for breaking unions, because if you have a significant number of folks who have no investment in union power and do not see the benefits of it personally and are thus less likely to believe that it is important and needs bolstered and protected. I think that rebuilding union power in the US needs to include unionizing professionals and bringing them into the movement, because the percentage of professionals vs blue collar is only going to keep going up and we will need those numbers to build a substantial enough base that we can start helping the people in the service industry who are subject to the worst predations of this capitalist hellhole we live in.

Oh, you're management... maybe it is personal...

[IheartIheartTesla]

My superficial understanding is that pay scales and experience levels among so-called 'professionals' is so diverse that you cant really collectively bargain for anything without shortchanging someone. Also, as has been mentioned before, the set of specialized skills they (we) tend to have allows for greater mobility and therefore greater individual bargaining power with the employers.

As to why others with specialized skills (e.g. nurses) need to unionize, I dont exactly know. Perhaps the labor market has enough candidates for nurses in various geographies.

[Kalbear]

Professionals in other countries regularly unionize. 

[Martell Spy]

1 hour ago, Kalbear Total Landscaping said:

I agree! My point is that those people are very much inclined to do contracting because contracting (especially self-contracting) is usually more lucrative and gives more work-life balance and individual bargaining power.

Sure, in some cases. And definitely in self-contracting. Many people though do contracting because it's easier to get hired and get jobs they might not get otherwise. And yes, some actively make a choice to contract because the company might want extra hours beyond 40 worked to get the employee badge.

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

8 minutes ago, Kalbear Total Landscaping said:

Professionals in other countries regularly unionize. 

Communist! 

[argonak]

1 hour ago, Chataya de Fleury said:

Naw, you definitely aren’t going after me - I can tell it’s not personal.

Here’s the thing, though - my job is a “professional” role. In the US, professional employees DO NOT unionize. It is simply “not done”. We have professional associations, but we do not unionize.

Also - does “management” ever unionize?? In that role, I was right below the VP of Finance in a $2 bn company. Third level from the CFO of the company.

There are American professional unions, but they are rarer.  Mostly only with government agencies.  I was in IFPTE for a number of years.