All about labor (4.00 / 1)

1099 "contractors": This seems to be the hip way for employers to get around employment regulations and overtime pay -- transfer any responsibility for meaningful organizational support into their hands, give them just enough freedom that you can call them independent contractors, pay them almost whatever you feel like, don't pay them for anything that isn't direct hands-on work production, and take responsibility for absolutely nothing.  Voila, a recipe for self-replicating wealth and socialized losses.

I'd love to see the Dickens regulated out of this (no pun intended).  Particularly, wage and hour regulations need to apply to such arrangements, the IRS regulations on it need to be tightened, and state payroll regulations ought to be applicable to such contracts.  For starters.

Heavy-handed fines for payroll violations: Hearing that many employees under wage and hour laws don't assert their rights when wronged disheartened me.  There should be stiff minimum penalties for employers and rewards for employees -- a minimum of two months full-time pay, payable to the employee, with no "look for work" strings attached, for ANY verified violation, with exactly one chance for the employer to remedy the problem before it goes to labor court.

Mandatory paid vacation: Yeah, this will upset the Calvinist nuts who think pain is just God's way of telling you you're alive.  They can spend their time off in church-sponsored torture camps if they must; the rest of us will take the time to recover sanity and do fun things with our lives.

While we're at it, how about establishing capital crimes for corporations and an effective corporate death penalty?

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by: marxmarv @ Fri Nov 27, 2009 at 22:43:50 PM UTC

hmm. (0.00 / 0)

i am a 1099 contractor but no really i AM a contractor. i'm no employee of these people, they're just clients. i'd hate to get caught up in a whole mess of regulations that are aimed at companies like Microsoft that call de facto employees "contractors", which i think is what you're describing.

a similar scam is the way that everybody's in management these days. technically. which means, neat, no mandatory overtime pay, do what we tell you or you're canned. and no unions either.

of course, there already are laws and regulations about these things. as you say, they go unenforced because (i think) the burden is on the employee to complain. with no support, vs company lawyers, and frequently contracts that mandate "private arbitration".

i wonder if it would be possible to have some kind of contractors union or guild or such, to provide legal backup. it'd probably be a hell of a job to get people to sign up for it but isn't it always...

not everything worth doing is profitable. not everything profitable is worth doing.

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by: tatere @ Sat Nov 28, 2009 at 00:05:34 AM UTC

[ Parent ]

Giving up rights (0.00 / 0)

You're giving up lots of rights, including unemployment benefits when you aren't working.

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Seeing The Forest -- Who is our economy FOR, anyway? Twitter: dcjohnson

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by: DaveJ @ Sat Nov 28, 2009 at 03:51:24 AM UTC

[ Parent ]

The myth (0.00 / 0)

The myth, repeated endlessly over and over is that "businesses create jobs."  The fact in our present economy is that it is far more likely that consumers create the jobs and businesses work like crazy to try to eliminate or externalize those jobs or outsource them.

Businesses seem to be "in business" for other reasons than they were just a short time ago.  They are no longer about their customers.  Or their product.  Or their workers.  Or their suppliers.  Or their communities.  They are about lining the pockets of their high muckety mucks and perhaps the stockholders.

Stockholders, for the most part, did not provide the seed money or the capital but are just speculators in it for a very short term ride.

The social contract has been shot to he**.  Making businesses responsible for the costs they generate is a big first step towards rstoring things to the way they should be.

The Constitution says we should promote the general welfare.  That is way over and above promoting the welfare of the top 1/100 of 1% or corporate "persons."  Forget "sountry first", "constitution first."

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by: David Kowalski @ Sat Nov 28, 2009 at 00:40:08 AM UTC

Nailed it (4.00 / 1)

You nailed it.

And the corollary, "Rich people create jobs."

DEMAND for a product or service creates jobs.  Period.  If people are asking for something, a business will appear

Another corollary, raising the minimum wage or taxes or whatever causes employers to lay people off.  Businesses have as many employees as they need to meet demand.  They don't have extra employees sitting around on a bench, to be laid off if they have to pay a few cents more...  When there are customers coming in the door employers want them served.

PS Why did you put asterisks in "shot to heck"?

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Seeing The Forest -- Who is our economy FOR, anyway? Twitter: dcjohnson

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by: DaveJ @ Sat Nov 28, 2009 at 03:55:57 AM UTC

[ Parent ]

Its not really a myth (0.00 / 0)

The reality is that most businesses do create jobs. Proof? Most people work for businesses in the USA anyways. Yes consumers create jobs, but they create jobs through businesses. When you, the consumer, buy something, most likely you're going to buy it from a business who hires someone to make the thing you buy. You're right that businesses don't create jobs that produce something that no consumer desire, but who would want to do something that nobody wants to consume? Businesses create jobs in that they capitalize on consumer demands and service those consumer demands and create jobs in the process.

And yes, businesses try to reduce costs. But isn't that reasonable? If you're needing something copied, would you hire a person to copy it by hand or use a copy machine? Keep in mind you're possibly eliminating a potential job. If you need your house remodeled, would you hire 5 people to do the job when it could be done with 2 and doing it with 5 produces only a slightly better job than doing it 2?

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by: Zugzugzug @ Sat Nov 28, 2009 at 04:00:16 AM UTC

[ Parent ]

I've Been Writing About This Subject For Years (4.00 / 1)

primarily in the form of air pollution around the ports of LA & Long Beach.  The externalized costs--if one includes outlying impacts--run somewhere from $10 to $20 billion per year.  Traffic congestion (a bigger time-suck than customer non-support) and asthma are amongst the most widespread impacts, but premature deaths are far and away the most costly.

These costs can only be virtually eliminated by conversion to electric power, among other things, which no amount of money could accomplish overnight.  But dramatic reductions in externalized costs could be gained just by spending on the order of $5 billion or so--25% to 50% of just one year's externalized costs.  And a 2005 plan called for total expenditures through 2020 of just around $13 billion, with the substantial majority of that in the out years.

The biggest problem we face in the grand scheme of things is that--unless a major change in environmental laws is accomplished--grandfathered technology will be left in place for decades, racking up enormous externalized costs far in excess of what it would cost to replace said equipment.

Speaking with an economist about this situation back in 2004 or so, he put it simply: the problem, he said, was that the folks benefiting from externalizing the costs were a small well-organized minority, while the people paying the costs were stuck in traffic wasting millions of hours of their lives.

Of course traffic congestion wouldn't vanish if the ports were made as efficient as they could be--this is LA, after all.  But certain routes have been dramatically less congested with port traffic down 15-25% this past year.

"You know what they say -- those of us who fail history... doomed to repeat it in summer school." -- Buffy The Vampire Slayer, Season 6, Episode 3

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by: Paul Rosenberg @ Sat Nov 28, 2009 at 01:03:05 AM UTC

Wrong assumption (0.00 / 0)

Businesses were never for the good of the public. Businesses are there for money. Regulations are just there to prevent businesses from stomping over the public in the quest for money. It has always been this way, its part of human nature.

And the relationship is symbiotic with regards to most businesses. In your case, if you don't like B of A's debit card support system, cancel your card. There are plenty of banks out there. When you sign up, make sure you ask if there's an automated or guaranteed live support.

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by: Zugzugzug @ Sat Nov 28, 2009 at 03:47:59 AM UTC

Nope. (4.00 / 2)

"Businesses were never for the good of the public."

There is one and only one reason that We, the People created the laws that allow corporations to exist and that is because we decided that pooling resources and distributing risk is a good way to accomplish large-scale, capital-intensive projects.  THAT is why we enable corporations to exist.  Not to make money, but to use the possibility of making money to attract the capital, because doing so SERVES US.

And We, the People have the right and the power to demand that businesses act in ways that WE want them to act.

And if they do not we have the right to close them down and hand the charter to businesses that will.

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Seeing The Forest -- Who is our economy FOR, anyway? Twitter: dcjohnson

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by: DaveJ @ Sat Nov 28, 2009 at 03:59:38 AM UTC

[ Parent ]