
Labor board will let more workers bargain with their employer’s employer - greenyoda
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonkblog/wp/2015/08/27/labor-board-moves-to-make-businesses-accountable-for-their-subcontractors/
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shawnee_
This is such a big win for the temporary / contingent workforce. The reality
of the industry perpetuated by companies like Manpower, Kelly Services
(Aerotek), Robert Half, Randstad, Adecco, etc. is rapacious and financially
harmful to most workers. All the while being unnecessarily expensive (in my
analysis) for the clients those workers are sent to.

The cut that these companies take from the employees they outsource does not
justify the cost they're charging the clients. 50 percent sometimes for doing
nothing more than posting a craigslist ad and shoving a contract in the face
of some poor, but earnest, immigrant or a down `n out tech worker.

[edit typo]

~~~
blisterpeanuts
How are the temp companies harming "most workers"? How would you do things
differently?

~~~
dalke
While the news article didn't describe the percentage of people "harmed" by
using a temp company, it did give examples including the Teamsters / Leadpoint
/ Browning-Ferris case, it described that it was a non-trivial fraction of
people affected, and it explained the rule change for to do things
differently. It also linked to the actual decision, at
[https://www.nlrb.gov/news-outreach/news-story/board-
issues-d...](https://www.nlrb.gov/news-outreach/news-story/board-issues-
decision-browning-ferris-industries) , so you can read the full details. That
in turn says (emphasis mine):

> Consistent with earlier Board decisions, as well as the common law, we will
> examine how control is manifested in a particular employment relationship.
> We reject those limiting requirements that the Board has imposed— without
> foundation in the statute or common law—after Browning-Ferris. _We will no
> longer require that a joint employer not only possess the authority to
> control employees’ terms and conditions of employment, but also exercise
> that authority._

What more information do you want on the topic, rather than shawnee_'s
opinions? I ask because your questions here look like they are meant more to
put shawnee_ on the spot than anything else, when shawnee_'s opinions are
consistent with that of:

> labor advocates and academics who have described an increasingly “fissured”
> economy, in which whole industries have been built on business models that
> offer workers few of the protections of a traditional employer relationship.

Is it not more useful to look at the broader arguments already presented in
the WaPo article?

~~~
blisterpeanuts
I read the WaPo article and see no financial rationale for forcing this
relationship between contractors and commercial organizations.

And since when is it wrong to "put someone on the spot" by asking questions?
The "increasingly fissured economy" argument is an old one but the solutions
are not at all clear. Legislating more lawsuits, forcing contractors and temps
into an employee relationship with 3rd parties -- this is a temporary favor to
unions and wage-and-benefit advocates but doesn't solve the real problems
which are the prohibitive cost basis of hiring full time employees in today's
economy in the U.S.

I would address the cost basis first, and make it less expensive to hire full
timers, and then we'll see more hiring of full timers.

~~~
dalke
There's no financial rationale because the case didn't concern financial
rationale. This is a question of how to interpret the existing National Labor
Relations Act. Thus, your comments make no sense.

Regarding "put someone on the spot"; you are veering close to "JAQing off"
territory. The question you had were general ones addressed by the article,
and here are many easily found sources that would give you the insight you are
looking for.

Your one line response to shawnee_ did not give any evidence that you
understood the context, or cared to do your own research, it had a implicit
assumption that a random HN should educate you, a full answer would have
required multiple paragraphs, and would unlikely to be correct as HN readers
tend to not be aware of labor law.

Plus, shawnee_ was clearly expressing an opinion and not trying to make
provable statements that can be backed up by the specifics you wanted.
Following up as you did is hard to distinguish from sealioning.

------
swalsh
I was working for a small temp company when I was just starting. I was hired
to do some server work, but ended up developing a system to automate most of
it. So my job became more developer. However I was still getting paid as a
server admin (and the low end of that to boot). So I asked to get paid more
appropriately. After asking they gave me a really small boost, pretty much
what you'd expect just as an annual increase. So I went to my manager at the
company, said I get paid pretty low here i'm going to think about looking for
other opportunities. About an hour later, I had the boost I wanted.

------
pc2g4d
Perhaps there was a time when they were a necessary check against industrial
abuses in an economy with few choices and little opportunity for education,
but nowadays unions seem like little but a market distortion extorting (with
government support, as from the NLRB) money from the general public and
transferring it to special interest groups.

Rather than special privileges for unions, I would prefer that workers
negotiate contracts as individuals, but that the government or private
philanthropy provide a massive subsidy to workers who wish to retrain and move
from lower-wage to higher-wage industries.

~~~
dalke
The Taft–Hartley Act prohibits unions from carrying out 'jurisdictional
strikes, wildcat strikes, solidarity or political strikes, secondary boycotts,
secondary and mass picketing, closed shops, and monetary donations by unions
to federal political campaigns' (quoting Wikipedia). This is a form of market
distortion which takes money from one special interest group (labor) and
moving it to another special interest group (employers).

If you do not like market distorting laws then you should not like the Taft-
Hartley Act, which weakens the power of the unions to maximize the market for
the labor they represent. Yet somehow I think you believe that distorting the
market in this fashion is correct.

Regarding 'negotiate contracts as individuals', do you disagree with the
concept of inequality of bargaining power? Quoting from the National Labor
Relations Act, which is the relevant US law:

> "The inequality of bargaining power between employees who do not possess
> full freedom of association or actual liberty of contract and employers who
> are organized in the corporate or other forms of ownership association
> substantially burdens and affects the flow of commerce, and tends to
> aggravate recurrent business depressions, by depressing wage rates and the
> purchasing power of wage earners in industry and by preventing the
> stabilization of competitive wage rates and working conditions within and
> between industries."

If workers negotiate contracts as individuals, then they are at a disadvantage
to employers who, quoting now from Adam Smith's "Wealth of Nations":

> ".... being fewer in number, can combine much more easily; and the law,
> besides, authorizes, or at least does not prohibit their combinations, while
> it prohibits those of the workmen. We have no acts of parliament against
> combining to lower the price of work; but many against combining to raise
> it. In all such disputes the masters can hold out much longer.

Finally, a massive government subsidy distorts the market in order that give
some special interest groups (employers) free training for their workers. It's
curious that you want market distortions that favor employers, but not those
which favor labor.

------
BJBBB
For the low-skill stuff, treading dangerous ground. We had four part-time
warehouse workers, each approx $11USD/hr.Did the mundane/grunt stuff. They
were not poor employees, but they had no skills not easily replaceable, so
managers gave little consideration to their joint demands for increased pay
and benefits (not unreasonable requests). But the incremental difference of
their demands did make it worthwhile for the boss man to block out several
weeks of engineering time to automate. My employer now has ONE par-time
warehouse worker.

And the result of this was essentially zero stocking error, and I learned
pyQT.

~~~
smackfu
I'm not exactly sure what the moral of this story is.

~~~
sokoloff
I read it as, "There is some value created by the work someone does. When the
value created is capped, and there are on-going demands from the workers to
increase pay/benefits/other in excess of the value created, the employer has
an incentive to seek a replacement good [in this case automation; in other
cases, other employees]"

