the title is misleading, this is specific to investigations regarding the now rescinded executive order: "Executive Order 11246 requires affirmative action and prohibits federal contractors from discriminating on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, or national origin. Contractors also are prohibited from discriminating against applicants or employees because they inquire about, discuss, or disclose their compensation or that of others, subject to certain limitations."
It's bad news for any worker. If the Feds won't enforce, then it's up to the individual states. And of course there's lots of states that want to attract industry, and lowering worker protections is one way to do that.
It also means that the FAANG monsters, among others, will have an easier time screwing, I mean controlling, their workforce. Salaries will probably decline, shareholder profits will improve.
Your salary is determined by your replacement cost.
Let’s say your company renegotiates their office lease and now pays half what it cost before. Are they going to give everyone a pay bump? Unlikely. Might give a bonus to whoever renegotiated the lease. They might reward shareholders by buying back some stock or paying out dividends. They might invest in future growth by hiring new people or by buying new equipment. But why would they give the money to the employees? That doesn’t reward shareholders or increase productivity; it might make everyone a little happier but that is unlikely to increase productivity enough for it to be worth it (and even if was, management doesn’t think like that).
Same argument as AI efficiencies: when automation (or another change such as arguably less HR activity) results in more free time for employees, the result is not higher wages because this is the type of competitive edge that is sought in order to increase profits rather than redistribute wealth. The result of efficiency for workers is either more work, or layoffs.
Wages don't come from surplus. Wages come from negotiation power. Surplus goes to ownership
If you're a federal contractor: Congratulations you can now be discriminated against on the grounds of "race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, or national origin"
And as a reminder to the lurkers who don't do their homework: The rescinded EO is from 1965. This is not just "woke nonsense". I will also note that Elon Musk has recently made statements about white tech workers being "retarded" and needing to be replaced by immigrants. And he's just been put in charge of government efficiency.
Some states (CA, NY, IL, WA, OR come to mind) and many municipalities have additional explicit employment discrimination laws that cover much of these. Obviously it’s not at a federal level and will vary (much like the nonsense that shifting Roe v Wade unraveled). Not sure how that will play out exactly (I’m no legal expert).
The fact of the matter is, most employers aren’t naive and have always found legal proxy rationales to discriminate and prevent hiring or fire someone. If an employer doesn’t want to hire you or wants to fire you, they’ll find a way. That doesn’t mean these sorts of laws are entirely useless. Some employers are pretty stupid and through emotion vent out the real intentions in a recorded fashion, so these sorts of protections help there.
They also curb some of the language businesses choose to use, making them at least appear a little more professional, for example in this thread, by not calling their white workers “retarded” (not aware of this happening but it seems reasonable). They may think it, but they need to say “our current staff are inefficient” or something else of that nature. I like not being insulted based on my race, age, sex, orientation, etc. it sets some guidelines, even if you might detest me for those reasons I at least don’t have to listen to it daily. Now legally in many cases some might have to.
Yes. My concern is the opposite here; A lot of red states are gleefully following every whim of the Trump Administration, and we can expect their state-level equivalent rules (insofar they exist, which a fair amount of states already fail) to be revoked soon.
> The fact of the matter is, most employers aren’t naive and have always found legal proxy rationales to discriminate and prevent hiring or fire someone.
It's certainly a problem.
But secret and-or implied agreements to discriminate are less effective, and subject to obstruction by wilfully-ignorant staff. Where put into writing, you get things like Eric Schmidt creating evidence for the tech antipoaching cartel of the 2000s.
Letting companies get away with explicit & stated policies is much worse.
> for example in this thread, by not calling their white workers “retarded” (not aware of this happening but it seems reasonable).
Aren't there other laws and judgements in place that protect us from discrimination based on certain traits like race and religion, or has the entirety of the protection for the last 60 years been based upon this one executive order?
What the claimed motivation is does not matter; the order is gone in it's entirity now.
Frankly, it's just conservatives using "affirmative action" as a buzzword, because it really doesn't describe affirmative action as it's colloquially understood. "affirmative action" is followed by an immediate and explicit requirement of equal treatment.
> "(1) The contractor will not discriminate against any employee or applicant for employment because of race, color, religion, sex, or national origin. The contractor will take affirmative action to ensure that applicants are employed, and that employees are treated during employment, without regard to their race, color, religion, sex or national origin. Such action shall include, but not be limited to the following: employment, upgrading, demotion, or transfer; recruitment or recruitment advertising; layoff or termination; rates of pay or other forms of compensation; and selection for training, including apprenticeship. The contractor agrees to post in conspicuous places, available to employees and applicants for employment, notices to be provided by the contracting officer setting forth the provisions of this nondiscrimination clause.
Genuinely, this is just a lot of words to say "don't do a racism". The examples are on the level of "consider doing recruitment advertising outside of places visited primarily by white dudes"
It does seem Musk holds a lot of contempt for American Tech workers. It appears his demands for an extraordinary level of commitment as one of the reasons. I'm not sure there is any consideration for a work life balance. For a young person starting out, that may be acceptable. Perhaps it's why I never see anyone older than 30ish working for him.
He, and most of the executives like him, are just being idiots about this particular thing.
Our field is notoriously hard to quantify in terms of productivity. The metrics (Lines of Code, Velocity, etc) are all garbage. Rather than learning how to manage what they can't measure, they just latch onto hours of work.
They have no clue on how to make things more efficient so they just demand longer hours.
> I'm not sure there is any consideration for a work life balance.
There isn't. The entire idea of working long hours & long weeks immediately falls apart under the slightest interrogation.
Anyone who's done serious knowledge work knows it's physically tiring to actually use your brain, so much so that even doing it at full 100% throttle for merely 8 hours is farcical. Anyone can work for 12 hours a day if they're sitting on their ass barely doing anything.
This also readily shows in the stats. Japan ain't a productivity superpower. Despite the praise of Indian H1Bers, India sure ain't a productivity superpower either.
Long hours are just pointless virtue signalling. "Look how loyal to the company I am". Something the western world was suppose to be better than.
> For a young person starting out, that may be acceptable.
It's just desperation. With cost of living so high many don't have a choice. And this field's allergy to unionization hasn't made it better.
The few who proudly proclaim their ability to "work 80 hour weeks" are delusional.
Since we're back in the Conflict of Interest years, I'd note that DoL is also involved in the applicability of work visas, not just H1-B that most tech workers are familiar with, but also H2-B visas that used for "temporary non-agricultural workers", such as servers and cooks at the President's private companies.
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