
Don’t Subsidize Companies That Silence Workers - smacktoward
https://otherwords.org/dont-subsidize-companies-that-silence-workers/
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sarcasmatwork
/me looking at your silicon valley companies...

This also has to do with companies hiring more contractors vs full time
employee's, then there are laws, and policies and regulations around that.
Lots and lots of red tape.

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fallingfrog
Firing workers for trying to speak up about safety issues or starting a union
is _illegal_ , is it not?

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reallydontask
A lot of companies have really poor performance review processes, read non-
existent, this can be used to justify almost any firing.

In other words: Joe didn't get fired for raising Safety issues, he just
happened to have a terrible performance review so he had to be fired.

Should the company have good performance review process then it's a bit more
complicated but not by much:

1\. Employee Raises Safety Issue

2\. Fail Perf review # 1

3\. Fail Perf review # 2

4\. Get put on PIP

5\. Fail to meet PIP objectives

6\. Get Fired.

So, not immediate but can be done in 6 months or less. Not to mention the old
trick of making the employees life impossible, etc ..

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exabrial
Dont work their either!

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inlined
This is an inherently classist attitude. I (and presumedly you) can get a new
job easily and are in a labor seller’s market. This often isn’t the case
universally or employers wouldn’t be able to act like this.

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donatj
I don’t agree. It’s easier to change job now than it has ever been in history.
That’s undeniable. You’re not bound by the jobs in your local area the way
people were 50 years ago. Between remote work and the gig economy it’s safer
than ever to quit a bad job and pick up temporary work in the meantime.

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acdha
It’s easy for people who have in-demand skills and live in certain areas. If
you aren’t in certain fields, the “gig economy” usually means minimum wage
with no job security or benefits with an automated boss constantly pressuring
you.

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donatj
Which to me at least seems a far more comforting place to land than no job.

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acdha
If you’re young, single, and healthy, it’s better than nothing. For anyone who
has non-trivial commitments, it’s not going to support being as cavalier about
quitting jobs as was suggested up-thread.

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briantakita
Support small businesses & financial independence instead.

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olliej
Don't subsidize for profit companies.

Subsidies are a transfer of tax payer money to a company. If a company is
turning a profit while receiving subsidies, it is simply a transfer of tax
payer money to business owners.

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mschuster91
There are multiple kinds of subsidies, it's not as simple:

1) Walmart (or other) companies pay so low wages that employees are eligible
for food stamps or other subsidies. This is utterly outrageous and should be a
criminal offense - at least, states should be allowed to claw back the
assistance costs plus a 200% fine from the company to discourage this
behavior.

2) Environmental subsidies: Government pays subsidies to companies (or private
persons) to install new environmentally-friendly technology which is (thanks
to being new) too expensive from an ROI viewpoint. Germany did this with solar
and basically kickstarted the market for home solar, USA did the same with the
incentives for Tesla and other e-vehicles. Obviously, these subsidies are fine
as they lead to further savings or environmental goals down the road.

3) Government gives tax breaks to companies for relocation/creating new
business: these are the most contested probably as multinational entities
(hello Amazon) often enough abuse them for their own profit only. Done right,
however, this form of subsidies has a positive ROI as a new business pays
local taxes as well as its workers, who additionally provide purchasing power
in their communities.

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donatj
> 1) Walmart (or other) companies pay so low wages that employees are eligible
> for food stamps or other subsidies.

How would you compare that to simply not offering the job at all?

For a lot of low paying jobs, that’s the deal. Asking a company to pay more
for labor than said labor increases profits is unreasonable. These jobs just
largely wouldn’t be offered.

The same people would still end up on subsidies and don’t get any work
experience. I’d argue it’s a worse result.

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Joe8Bit
There's no real evidence that's true. There are lots of countries where
minimum wage policies are providing (or exceeding) a living wage for their
employees[0]. At least enough for their employees to feed themselves without
government assistance.

None of these countries have a demonstrable lack of employment growth[0] at
the low end, and in macro and micro economic terms have comparable growth with
the US.

[0]: [https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/web/products-eurostat-
news/-/D...](https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/web/products-eurostat-
news/-/DDN-20190131-2) [1]: [https://data.oecd.org/emp/employment-
rate.htm](https://data.oecd.org/emp/employment-rate.htm)

~~~
donatj
The European economy is different in many ways, closer to home we’ve seen
slashed hours [0] resulting in workers getting less overall take home pay, as
well as increased prices.

Not only did it result in the poor making less but the cost of living went up.

[0]: [https://www.vox.com/the-
highlight/2019/7/13/20690266/seattle...](https://www.vox.com/the-
highlight/2019/7/13/20690266/seattle-minimum-wage-15-dollars)

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markmark
That article doesn't seem to say what you claim it says?

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donatj
> They found that the policy “reduced hours worked in low-wage jobs by 6-7
> percent, while hourly wages in such jobs increased by 3 percent ...
> consequently, total payroll for such jobs decreased.” That means the total
> amount that employers paid to workers was less with the new minimum wage in
> place than projected payroll if the policy hadn’t gone into effect.

Also

> Surveying employers, Romich and other researchers found the most common
> response to the wage increase was to raise prices

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t34543
On the same note - don’t subsidize companies full of activists. Center is a
good place to be, radicalism doesn’t help anyone.

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danaris
...Which can be a fine philosophy, if you define the "center" relative to some
absolute.

If your idea of "the center" is "precisely between the two current mainstream
left-wing and right-wing parties", then right now you'll end up with something
along the lines of "well, _some_ genocide is OK, so long as it's of people I
don't like."

There's no special virtue in saying "both sides have good points" all day
long, no matter who the sides are that you're dealing with. The political
center, by any objective measure, is way, way to the left of what the "center"
is in the US right now.

Or, to put this all more succinctly: I don't think anyone whose primary
position is "Nazis are bad and we should treat them the way we did in WWII"
should be classified as an "activist."

