
U.S. employment conditions compare poorly to the rest of the developed world - rbanffy
https://www.mercurynews.com/2018/07/05/is-it-great-to-be-a-worker-in-the-us-not-compared-with-the-rest-of-the-developed-world/
======
virmundi
What I don't understand, and you may say that it's the intrenched powers
keeping the status quo, is why the US picks such poor implementations of
certain ideas.

The article mentions low collective bargaining. Our model, as an American, is
pretty much one union per vertical. There is the Teamsters. There are no
unions that compete with the Teamsters. I believe that Germany has unions that
fight each other for contracts and membership. At the same time our model is
one filled with corruption. (Though I've never heard many complain about IBREW
corruption.) Our auto union would rather see the company disappear than reduce
wages, or have some of their members dismissed. All the while it's common to
hear stories of the Auto Workers Union defending drunk forklift drivers making
north of 90k a year.

If it is just institutional power, why do we defend or allow this? I was
watching Killer Mike on Colbert just now. He complained about the plight of
blacks in poor communities. It seems like they are a microcosm of the general
problems facing this country. He talked about how the governments kept people
down. When he mentioned the communities affected (an abridged list I'm sure),
they all had democratically elected officials by that community. The party
hadn't changed in 60 years. Why do they, and the US in general, allow these
failures to continue? Tribalism?

~~~
lkrubner
Much of this was determined by the so-called "Battle Of Detroit" of 1948. The
USA had just defeated Nazi Germany and was looking to make sure that fascism
would never return to Germany, so the USA encouraged the formation of strong
labor unions, and supported the law that made unions automatic for large
firms. The USA labor unions looked at that and wondered "If we are imposing
this on Germany as a good thing, why can't we also get this in the USA?" In
particular, there was the issue of who should have seats on the Board Of
Directors. It would soon become normal for German labor unions to hold seats
on the Board Of Directors at German firms. The USA labor unions wanted the
same thing. What resulted was the longest and most bitter set of strikes in
the history of the USA up till that time. Everyone understood the stakes --
the future shape of labor relations in the USA. The leadership of the major
USA corporations dug in deep to resist the increasing power of the labor
unions. The leadership of the major USA corporations were willing to offer
higher wages -- essentially they were trying to bribe the workers with money
instead of power, with the understanding that power is more important than
money. Eventually, the corporations won. Although the workers got higher
wages, they were denied control of the corporations. And at that time a so-
called Red Scare got going in the USA, a hysteria over Communism, which turned
into a dramatic episode of labor-union smashing. The most militant leaders of
the labor unions were arrested or blacklisted. After that, what remained of
the labor movement in the USA tended to be the least ideological and the most
corrupt. The true-believers were chased away during the Red Scare. Those left
behind were the ones who could be bought off with money. From that point
forward, the labor movement in the USA was to shrink, first slowly, and then
after 1970, much more quickly.

~~~
rbanffy
> Although the workers got higher wages, they were denied control of the
> corporations

There is an interesting lesson on giving up control of your rewards in favor
of an uncontrollable but larger reward. Stupid humans.

~~~
njarboe
The labor unions did not have control, but were striking to get that control.
Maybe if they don't take the higher wages then end up with nothing, busted and
broken. Complicated humans.

------
INTPenis
I'm glad this is being addressed but I don't feel qualified to add anything of
substance to it.

As many other techies I frequent message boards on reddit and other sites. A
majority of users are from the US and many posts are written from a US-centric
point of view.

What I've observed on those message boards regarding workers rights and health
has made me deeply concerned about US workers. And that's only in the tech
field. I can't even imagine how it compares to other industrial fields.

I'm not qualified to debate this but I am convinced that I would never want to
work in the united states.

~~~
DiddleBit
As a third-world citizen, reading about US worker conditions in Reddit made me
realize that working minimum-wage burger-flipping job with no benefits in US
affords you a better life than working one of the rarer white-collar high-
skill jobs in my country.

~~~
abritinthebay
That’s not really due to the job there though - it’s due to the overall state
of the country & infrastructure.

Not really the same thing.

When compared to countries with similar quality of infrastructure &
“development” the US fares _extremely_ poorly.

~~~
Reactionary_
Extremely poorly? How so?

~~~
moorhosj
Did you read this article or the OECD report it is based on? Probably some
clues in there if you are interested in finding your answer.

------
snarfy
> The United States and Mexico are the only countries in the entire study that
> don’t require any advance notice for individual firings.

This is why I never feel bad for quitting a job without giving the expected
two week notice. They don't give you any notice when they fire you.

~~~
AnimalMuppet
They don't have to, no. But I've been laid off, and given two weeks pay in
lieu of notice, and I appreciated it. I don't _have_ to give two weeks notice,
either. But those who enjoy receiving courtesy should also give it.

~~~
snarfy
I do give the two week notice, but it's out of courtesy, not guilt.

------
gota
Well, virtually nobody browsing HN can say they share the pains of the workers
of the US that 'suffer when compared with the rest of the world'.

Sure, there are many low-income residents, high inequality, high turnover, low
unemployment with low upward job mobility, etc. All those things are true for
the 'disadvantaged', and engineers, technologists, computer scientists etc.
are _not_ part of the population that makes less than the median income.

So, yeah, a more appropriate title would be 'vanishing lower middle class in
the US is increasingly facing the same problems as the lower class', which
some may argue is identical to 'is becoming poor' (but not technically true)

Anyway, at a _personal_ level, nobody here will come to the conclusion they
better leave to the EU because they'd be better there

~~~
braythwayt

      > nobody here will come to the conclusion they better leave to the EU because they'd be better there
    

If not the EU, there is this fairly European country that shares timezones
with the US and has a reasonable tech scene going on, and you can actually
drive back and forth between the US and this country across the longest
undefended border in the world.

It used to be one of the US's best friends and strongest allies. Before Russia
swooped in like a bad new BF/GF and convinced the US that all of its friends
are really its enemies.

There is already a fair bit of job mobility between this country and the US,
and you can get these weird "socialist" things like healthcare and education
that won't bankrupt you.

You're welcome here.

~~~
mmt
> You're welcome here.

I don't think that's strictly true. The last time I drove across the border, I
got pulled in for extra scrutiny (random, I assume). I happened to be
unemployed at the time and was asked a bunch of questions that seemed very
strange, since they included things like how much credit limit I had available
on my credit cards. The CBSA agent was very nice and eventually explained that
it was to make sure that I really was a tourist and wasn't circumventing the
procedure for immigration for employment.

My understanding (perhaps incorrect?) is that this procedure is fairly
stringent, even for US citizens. Getting a visa for that "reasonable tech
scene" requires a degree, last I checked. That makes "education that won't
bankrupt you" a bit of a catch-22, until the following generation.

More importantly, though, it's been a fairly recent topic of discussion here
on HN that tech salaries in the tech hubs of Vancouver and Toronto are very
low, especially considering the high cost of living (mostly land/rent) in
those locales, even factoring in "socialist" benefits. It's been causing
something of a "brain drain" to the US.

Perhaps less highly-paid workers in lower-cost areas would fare better, but
are they being sought from South of the border? Citation needed :)

~~~
braythwayt
We have offices in both SF and Toronto, and so far people report that even
with an increased salary, the standard of living is higher working in the
Toronto office.

Generally, the ones who transfer to SF are young and are looking to sacrifice
standard of living in exchange for "being part of the scene," which is
perfectly rational.

The standard of living in Toronto is reportedly quite higher for people with
kids, but that certainly doesn't apply to everyone.

Come work with us and you can conduct your own experiment: Work a year here, a
year there, for as long as you need to gather data.

~~~
mmt
> We have offices in both SF and Toronto

I have also read that US companies (especially the big-name ones likes FAMG)
who open Canadian offices pay more than purely local ones, so I wonder if
merely having offices in both places helps increase the otherwise lackluster
compensation.

> looking to sacrifice standard of living in exchange for "being part of the
> scene," which is perfectly rational.

I'd say it's only rational if that scene inclusion imparts a real benefit,
rather than a perceived one. It's at least arguable that it does, other than
providing greater opportunities for different, more highly-paid jobs.

> The standard of living in Toronto is reportedly quite higher for people with
> kids, but that certainly doesn't apply to everyone.

Is that across the industry or just for your company? Is there a difference
between homeowners (who would have a high degree of immunity from rapidly
rising home prices) and renters?

> Come work with us and you can conduct your own experiment: Work a year here,
> a year there, for as long as you need to gather data.

If only it were that easy (even if you'd hire me). I can't imagine that a year
in each place, especially with only one employer, would be nearly enough data,
and that's assuming two years at that particular employer would be
suitable/acceptable enough not to be the biggest factor in quality-of-life.

The other big confounding factor is that you can't really compare SF-to-
Toronto, if only because of weather/climate (though I'm sure there are other
aspects, not the least of which is whatever lifestyle details someone has
become accustomed to already). You'd probably need to do Vancouver-to-SF and
Toronto-to-NYC (or maybe Boston).

It's probably a reasonable option (if it's _actually_ on offer) for a non-
homeowner, without children, just starting a career, but, otherwise, it's not
a realistic ask.

I'm still not convinced there's any effort being made by Canadian companies or
government to recruit employees from the US.

~~~
braythwayt
I have not done a rigorous investigation, so YMMV, but what I would say is
that Sturgeon's Revelation is at work here.

90% of tech companies are crud. They're froth, undercapitalized, built to flip
but doomed. Which is fine, but if we try to measure the mean or median wages
while including all of them, we'll get numbers that are ridiculous in any
location.

I believe that if we filter down to "good" companies, by some hand-wavey
definition of good—Pedigree of founders, pedigree of VCs, existence of a
working revenue model, whatever—we'll get the US companies that open Canadian
offices plus a bunch of decent Canadian companies. Same in SF, we'll get the
obvious big companies plus lots of properly good companies.

It could well be that good SF companies out-pay good Toronto companies, it
would be wrong to compare my employer to a startup operating on angel fumes in
either location. We compete with companies like Amazon, Google, and Shopify
for talent.

But it could also be that we do pretty well against such companies. We work
hard to make sure that our pay is competitive, and we are trying our damndest
to grow our Toronto office even more.

~~~
mmt
That pretty much addresses my first question, but only that, from what I can
tell.

> it would be wrong to compare my employer to a startup operating on angel
> fumes

Only if you pre-suppose your hand-wavey definition of good, which I noticed
had very little in the way of qualities that affect actual working
environment.

> we are trying our damndest to grow our Toronto office even more.

Including "welcoming" US workers? That's what I have yet to see any evidence
of.

------
mac01021
This article has a lot of numbers in it. But it does a pretty poor job of
describing what set of people, or even how many people are struggling with the
issues it describes.

\- 20% of employees leave or lose there jobs every year, but it would be a lot
more helpful if that number weren't corrupted by the "leave" part when we're
only concerned with the "lose" part.

\- Half (or whatever number) of employees do not have union representation.
But what fraction of employees want or need a union. Many, for sure, but as a
software developer employed by a company I certainly do not need or want one.

I'm all for confronting issues with the way our national economy is structured
and assessing its pros and cons relative to the world's other countries. But I
think these issues deserve better reporting.

------
dghughes
With any job in any country there are measurements for many things but worker
mental stress doesn't seem to be taken into account. I know companies send out
engagement surveys but they are pointless since employees feel like they can't
answer truthfully.

I may be employed, the pay may be OK, some vacation time if permitted
(probably not when I want), work about eight hours per day. But it doesn't
take into account your manager screaming at you, that aggressive coworker who
always gets their way, pushy employees exceeding the scope of their position,
timid managers and supervisors who don't talk to bad employees.

I wouldn't agree about the US being the only OECD country that doesn't give
notice before lay off or firings. I'm in Canada and I was laid off two hours
into my day mid-meeting by an aggressive manager who I complained about to HR
nearly a decade ago.

------
1wheel
Original version has charts:

[https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2018/07/04/is-
it...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2018/07/04/is-it-great-to-
be-a-worker-in-the-u-s-not-compared-to-the-rest-of-the-developed-world/)

~~~
overlordalex
Not available to read unless you agree to their tracking.

Interestingly the original has a bad interaction with my adblocker where the
"x" to dismiss the popup dumps me back at the homepage rather than the article

------
sunshinelackof
While it may be true for a subset of posters here, the idea of just finding a
new job if it doesn't suit you is not possible for most people. The majority
of people need to be able to do something mildly productive and be able to
live a happy life as a result. If your economic model is leaving this many
people behind--or they even feel they're being left behind it's not a good
model.

Everyday I find it harder to argue against things like medicare-for-all.
Private healthcare only adds unneeded pressure to workers--heck even me
sometimes. Even if it weren't cheaper which it should be[1], there is surely
some value that soulless accountants could extract from lower stressors in the
workplace.

[1] [https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/07/upshot/why-single-
payer-h...](https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/07/upshot/why-single-payer-health-
care-saves-money.html)

~~~
ergothus
I read an interesting perspective on universal basic income recently that
suggested that it was MORE capitalistic than not: by freeing people from
limits imposed by needing to supply food/shelter for themselves/their
families, it allows more participation in the market.

That seems a radical but obvious-in-hindsight idea to me: a majority of the
population cant participate in the competition the system itself needs because
they cant accept the risk of failure that the system requires of us. Meanwhile
anyone who is already successful chides them about thow they should just work
harder.

~~~
rbanffy
> that suggested that it was MORE capitalistic than not

That's an awesome (but not very honest) way to sell it to the leftophobic
right. But, again, capitalism doesn't mandate small government and vanishingly
low taxes.

------
titzer
Article appears, is rendered fully, and then shows adblocker-blocker popover.
Dismissing the popup results in being redirected to the start page.

This is very anti-web. Nope.

~~~
rbanffy
They need to pay for the reporting, after all. Having said that, you can sneak
in by anonymously browsing there.

------
MatrixAlgebra
This article fails to understand the true costs of European economic
arrangements.

Let's consider healthcare. Often touted as an example of how much "better"
Europe (and Canada, etc) is than the US, consider:

1\. Wait times are often much greater in countries with socialized medicine
and this has serious implications: in Canada between 1993 and 2009, around
40,000 people died as a result of increased wait times due to socialized
medicine. [1]

2\. The US has "significantly lower rates of 30-day-stroke-induced mortality
than every other OECD country aside from Japan and Korea". [1]

3\. Cancer survival rates in the US are equivalent to or higher than in
similarly developed nations. [1]

Furthermore, let's consider the places where innovation in medicine is most
robust.

European nations do not get cheaper drugs for free. That is to say, there is a
real cost for the price ceilings and controls imposed on the European
healthcare sector in the form of reduced ability for European forms to produce
new drugs and therapies which has real implications for future mortality
rates.

The US, by contrast, has become an engine of growth for the healthcare sector
owing to its free(r) market.

Among the US to France, Germany, Switzerland, Japan and the UK, the US share
of drug discovery (based on inventing company headquarter location) has
increased from 31% from 1971-1980 to 57% from 2001-2010. This clear upward
trend will likely continue for US innovation as European nations grapple with
rising healthcare costs by continuing to clamp down on the free market. [2]

If the US were to adopt a European approach, it's likely that drug discovery
and innovation would collapse and as a result many millions of people in the
future who would have been saved by novel therapies would instead have to
suffer death at the hands of the socialistic stranglehold on innovation.

This is not to say the US is perfect or that it is always better than Europe,
but it is to say that discussions of the merits of US vs European healthcare
often fail to capture nuanced facts and realities that cannot be ignored.
European healthcare may be more available to European citizens, but it is in
general of lower quality (given wait times) than comparable US healthcare. And
the US, through its free market approach, has become the global engine of
healthcare innovation which directly benefits other nations who have shunned
free market principles in healthcare.

[1]: [https://www.google.com/amp/s/fee.org/articles/if-american-
he...](https://www.google.com/amp/s/fee.org/articles/if-american-healthcare-
kills-european-healthcare-kills-more//amp)

[2]:
[https://www.forbes.com/sites/theapothecary/2014/05/16/sure-w...](https://www.forbes.com/sites/theapothecary/2014/05/16/sure-
well-eventually-beat-cancer-but-can-we-afford-to/)

~~~
mnm1
European healthcare is lower quality than not having healthcare, which a
fairly large percentage of Americans do not? Any healthcare is better than no
healthcare and no amount of waiting is going to flip that equation.

~~~
supreme_sublime
Not having health insurance is different from not being able to access
healthcare. Everyone in the US is entitled to healthcare regardless of their
ability to pay. I don't really know if that's the best policy or not, but it
simply isn't true that people don't have access to healthcare.

------
Reactionary_
The US is one of the best places in the world to be a business owner, that's
why its economy is so much more dynamic than European economies. In order to
create such an environment worker protections cannot be as robust as in
Europe. This biased article of course ignores that fact.

Many workers are much better off in the US than in Europe as well. They get to
keep a greater portion of their income, their income goes farther in the US
than it would in Europe, and they have more opportunities to change jobs and
careers because the flip side of weaker worker protections means businesses
can hire with greater agility than in Europe.

~~~
finaliteration
> They get to keep a greater portion of their income

I always see this come up during discussions about how the US compares to
other developed countries. I think the mentality is slightly different in the
EU. If you were raised knowing that your income was going to be taxed at 50%
but you also got free healthcare, education, welfare assistance, etc., you’d
probably learn to value those things over buying a bigger TV or whatever. The
only reason we complain about how they have less disposable income is due to
the fact that we spend so much of ours on healthcare and education so it looks
like a scarce resource that we need to hoard.

~~~
MatrixAlgebra
The problem with free education is that as more people become educated, the
signaling effect of education becomes diluted. So the Europeans are paying for
something that decreases in real value the more that people have access to it.
That's a self defeating policy, especially since it encourages people to
remain in academia for significantly longer than they would otherwise, because
hey, it's paid for by the taxpayer.

Someone earning a second Master's degree in Russian literature is not a
productive use of taxpayer money.

In the US by contrast, people are able to make decisions for themselves about
how to educate themselves because loans are widely available and are just a
tax on their future income. If they want to pursue a high income career, they
will take out a loan to cover educational expenses since it makes financial
sense to do so. If their desired career is less lucrative, they will not take
out more loans than absolutely necessary, freeing that money up to be put
towards more profitable projects in the broader economy.

~~~
dasil003
That's a nice economic theory you've concocted, but it seems like you're
living in a bubble. The reality on the ground in the US is that college degree
inflation happened every bit as much in the EU by a generation of middle-class
people who saw a college education at the ticket to prosperity. Now to get any
kind of decent job requires a college degree. Federal loans are handed out
like candy, and people snap them up despite not having any financial basis for
that decision. Because the loans are unforgivable in bankruptcy, there is much
lower risk in handing them out. Because the loans are easy to get, college
tuition rises higher and higher outside the realm of real market forces.

The fantasy that the US system is someone leveraging market forces to optimize
efficiency is ludicrous. 18-year-old kids have no idea of the impact of 5 or 6
figure loans at various interest rates and their expected ROI. Even many of
their parents, who had good post-war working class union jobs with a nice
pension and affordable homes they could buy in their early 20s have a blind
spot around this because all they know is that the career paths they enjoyed
are dead and gone and just some vague ideal that "college-educated" is still a
meaningful adjective.

Frankly, it's an embarrassment to even try to sell the idea that the US system
is better. The only significant difference in outcomes is that a huge portion
of young Americans are destroying their lives with unmanageable debt, where EU
citizens may get an inflated degree but they won't be an indentured servant
for the rest of their lives.

~~~
MatrixAlgebra
So essentially:

You're trying to argue that forcing the entire population to pay for college
education for everyone is justifiable even when the people going to college
may study subjects or intend to enter fields that have very poor financial
prospects or lack productive value for the society as a whole.

As opposed to....

A system in which people have the freedom to decide for themselves how to
allocate their own financial resources based on their career goals and not use
other people's money to fund 4 years of useless study (if they study a useless
subject)?

You have a very skewed understanding of what is fair and justifiable.

If people make poor financial and educational decisions, that's on them. Don't
punish the rest of society by forcing it to foot the bill for someone else's
foolishness.

The sad thing is, Europeans will be the indentured servants for the rest of
their lives because of the depressed wages they'll have to endure and the high
taxes they'll have to pay.

