Morning Ed: Labor {2016.09.05}
To ensure it’s future, the owner of a car restorer turned his ownership stake over to his employees.
How the Soviets achieved full employment.
Hamilton Nolan reports that fidgeters don’t need standing desks.
It used to be believed that ringing a bell in a storm would disperse thunder, and so people died doing it.
The New Yorker has a good article on immigrant caregivers and the personal costs of the care they provide.
At Cracked, Michael Hossey gives seven weird and dispiriting ways that companies screw their workers.
Ryan Avent looks at why we work so hard, and says that Marx has a point.
It’s good to be an American worker.
The New Yorker story was very good but very dispiriting, I often see libertarians post articles on how everything is grand because of decreasing global poverty. I wonder how much comes from remittance economies though. The Philippines still has an extremely weak and horrible economy if college grads earn more by being house-cleaners, nannies, and home health aides in the US than working for the government at home.
Did not know that about the anime industry.Report
I often see libertarians post articles on how everything is grand because of decreasing global poverty.
That’s a strawman, of course. Everything isn’t just grand, and that’s not what we’re saying. We’re saying that things are improving.
I wonder how much comes from remittance economies though.
Looking it up, remittances are about 8% of GDP in the Philippines, which is pretty big. For China, it’s only half a percent, and for India about 3%. Although the economic growth in the Philippines has been very good over the last 15 years, it’s still a poor country with about half the per-capita GDP of China. India is a bit poorer still, and even China’s barely at a quarter of the US per-capita GDP. But things are much, much better than they were back in the 90s, and remittances, while they certainly help, are not large enough to explain more than a small part of that. Developing countries still have a long way to go, but they are actually developing, which hasn’t always been the case.Report
The Cracked article is why I remain very skeptical with the free market will solve all problems. Just as government comes with civil servants and their follies and vices, markets are not composed of ideal market actors but business people and their follies and vices. People go into business to make money and there is a lot of evidence that business people will lie, rob, cheat, steal, and exploit to make the most money for themselves regardless of the consequences of others. Many even engage in these activities for the thrill of power and because they can. Markets need a countervailing force to put a leash on the worst instincts of business people.Report
Once, when working at a company that shall not be named, they “updated” their vacation acquirement policies to be “more attractive to new employees”. (Keep in mind this company does NOT roll over vacation hours. Use it or lose it).
Previous policy was “You accrue vacation THIS year for NEXT year”. That is, an employee working all of 2013 would accrue his or her full vacation for 2014, which could be used on January 1 and would be paid out if he or she quit on Jan 1.
The new policy was “you accrue as you go”. So you earn your 2014 Vacation as you work in 2013, so one month of work = 1/12 of your vacation earned. If you take all your vacation but quit after six months, you owe them money for half your vacation.
Except…what of the worker who worked all of 2013? When 2014 switches to “accrue as you go” he had already earned his vacation for 2014. So said employee should either earn twice the vacation time for 2014 (a one-off as schedules adjust) or be owed the pay for those weeks of vacation.
Except…that didn’t happen. Every employee who had worked the previous year saw two or more weeks of pay…disappear. They worked all of 2013, accruing 2014 vacation — to start 2014 with no hours and vacation accrued as they worked.
Somewhere, high up in HR, some “genius” came up with this. The company is a large one. Tens of thousands of employees across the US. Do you know much money that comes out to be? (If you guessed this happened somewhere between 2007 and 2010 you’d be right…)Report
Apparently wage theft is more common than ordinary theft, a little under a trillion is stolen by wage theft in the United States every years compared to only a third of that for regular theft.Report
Oh yeah. Then there’s less obvious theft — when every major player in Silicon Valley colluded on wages, to keep them down.
Or heck, when Apple got together with a bunch of publishers to try to drive Amazon out of the ebook business — I just got a rather sizeable amount of credit from Amazon as part of that settlement.
And that’s just what we know about — the DoJ hasn’t really been huge on investigating or prosecuting these things, and SCOTUS has been chipping away at the concept of a class-action lawsuit for ages. (Because really, I should go ahead and hire a lawyer to get back the 300 bucks that Apple’s illegal price fixing took out of my pocket. That makes fiscal sense).Report
@morat20
Not quite. I worked on that case. The major tech companies agreed not to recruit from each other which had an effect of bringing down wages.Report
Oh yeah. Then there’s less obvious theft — when every major player in Silicon Valley colluded on wages, to keep them down.
That’s not “less obvious theft”—it’s not theft at all. Everyone got the salaries they agreed to work for. Regardless of whether you think it should be illegal for companies to agree not to cold-call each other’s employees, calling it theft is really stretching it.Report
We must never question the holy market.Report
Employers agreeing to fix wages is smart business. Union attempting to raise wages is Communism.Report
Either way, it’s an attempt to manipulate the price signals of the labor market, and it will have second order effects that can be quite negative.Report
Apparently wage theft is more common than ordinary theft, a little under a trillion is stolen by wage theft in the United States every years
I guarantee you that’s not correct. Even putting aside the fact that “wage theft” is an advocacy-oriented term with a broad definition encompassing a wide range of practices, most of which are done with the employees’ full knowledge and consent, total cash compensation to all employees in the US in 2015 was a bit over eight trillion dollars. Unless you meant to insert a double-digit number between “every” and “years.”Report
1. http://curious.kcrw.com/2016/08/wage-theft
2. http://investmentwatchblog.com/in-the-united-states-more-money-is-stolen-by-employers-from-employees-each-year-than-is-stolen-in-robberies-burglaries-larcenies-and-auto-thefts-combined-the-most-common-victims-of-wage-theft-are/Report
Second link say $40-60 billion, you said almost a trillion. And again, much of what gets called “wage theft” isn’t actually theft. Some is, and that’s a real problem. But actual theft shouldn’t be conflated with stuff like employing workers on a contract basis when the government has arbitrarily decided you can’t do that.Report
That’s odd because I don’t remember anyone here ever arguing that. Why would even think that a free market could solve all problems?Report
Giving businesses to employees: see Bob’s Red Mill in Oregon.Report
9.93 Million More Government Workers Than Manufacturing Workers
https://anthonybsanders.wordpress.com/2016/09/02/there-are-9-93-million-more-government-workers-than-manufacturing-workers/
Just what the country needs, more govt parasites. Bet they will vote democrat to keep their jobs.Report
Government employment has been flat for a while. It isn’t that there are more government employees but that there are fewer working in manufacturing for a host of reasons.Report
Hey, wait a minute. Now that farming is gone, manufacturing is the only truly Holy and American job. We cannot accept fewer manufacturing jobs, ever.Report
At least folks in manufacturing jobs make something unlike most gov’t workers that create paperwork, regulations, red tape and BS.Report
The funny thing is, if notme was bemoaning the loss of manufacturing jobs, we could have that conversation. Instead he is using a faulty stat to complain about the “rise” of government workers when no such rise exists.Report
Or it could be both for those folks that have any intelligence.Report
Check the chart in YOUR link… aside from temporary census hiring, government employment has been flat for over a decade… down if you factor in population growth.Report
Yes, maybe over the last decade but so what? I’m talking about the long term. You can cherry pick a short period over a long period to prove anything you want. Wow, Kazzy can cherry pick, good for you!!Report
2016: 22.2M (September)
2006: 21.8M (January)
1996: 19.4M (January)
1986: 16.7M (January)
That is for all government employees.
For federal it is:
2016: 2.8M (September)
2006: 2.7M (January)
1996: 2.9M (January)
1986: 3.1M (January)
Which means that all of the gains have been at the state and local level.
Approximate US population over that time:
2016: 320M
2006: 300M
1996: 270M
1986: 240M
In 1986, that works out to a ratio of approximately 1 government employee per 14 Americans.
In 2016, that works out to a ratio of approximately 1 government employee per 14 Americans.
So while the absolute number of total government employees has grown in the last 30 years, all of those gains have been at the state and local level AND the growth has kept pace with population growth.
Now, let’s talk about what the word “cherry picking” means and if you actually have any idea.Report
Obama Kept His Promise, 83,000 Coal Jobs Lost And 400 Mines Shuttered
http://dailycaller.com/2016/09/05/obama-kept-his-promise-83000-coal-jobs-lost-and-400-mines-shuttered/
Happy Labor Day!!!Report
You’re right… the government, hardworking citizens, and innocent taxpayers should foot the bill so that these dregs off society can keep their jobs.Report
So now coal miners are the dregs of society? Nice!Report
It is all about framing. What else should we consider people who are destroying are planet for their own private gain?Report
Too bad Obama didn’t give them cushy gov’t jobs where they can save us from all those other planet destroyers, right?Report
As you see from my numbers above, Obama has been employing fewer people in the government, not more.Report
But at some point, government employment went up. It was zero at some point in history and now it’s nonzero. So clearly Obama is history’s worst villain.
Cherry picker.Report