It’s absurd that even at places like Google, which has effectively infinite money, there’s still this present attitude of not being able to afford paying workers. Nuts.
I think what’s particularly fascinating is not the relentless drive for more profits, that’s been hashed to death and I have nothing original to offer here, but how the internal narrative of “we can’t afford to pay them” holds in cases where it’s transparent bullshit. Of course Google can afford to pay its temp workers a fair wage, and of course they don’t want to. It’s just surprising that the story they tell themselves is so trivially falsifiable.
> the company just set an all-time record revenue of $61.9 billion this quarter, and record profits for the fourth quarter in a row at $18.5 billion.
From https://www.theverge.com/2021/7/27/22596592/google-q2-2021-r...
Regardless, the fear of marginally reducing profits drives companies to do a bunch of things that are fundamentally pretty gross.
It's understandable that a company, crunched for cash, ends up in odd situations.
It's not acceptable when you're sitting on mountains of cash - and - claim to have some kind of moral situation in commerce.
Google is exploitative because they don't fully compensate the value of labour used in production. This is wrong and damnable and illegal in any reasonable jurisdiction. Google is profitable. This is not wrong and commendable in most places. The concepts should not be conflated.
unfortunately, ceteris paribus, the tendency of a rate of profit to ultimately slow is one of the costs of a free market, there is not really a way out of it long term!
I generally use this phrase in the context of companies being willing to do anything to get back to being wildly profitable. And in that case, yes, there is quite a bit of danger towards basically everyone else.
It's not that these sages didn't understand. They refused. They actively rejected understanding.
Our epistemological crisis, where we don't even have a shared reality, has ancient roots.
> “the correct outcome from a compliance perspective” and could place the staffing companies it contracts with “in a difficult position, legally and ethically”.
The systemic abuse of subcontracting companies to undermine the rule of law by these large corporations needs to stop. But it only will if executives at Google would face the same consequences as executives at the subcontractors (which tend to escape criminal punishments as well by hiding behind multiple shells and false ids).
Alternatively, start issuing fines such that it’s X percent of revenue plus Y percent of salary from all employees. Even a fine of 1% of annual pay would light a big angry fire under most employees, and perhaps incentivize them to stand up to the execs and refuse to follow illegal or unethical decisions.
They're fined indirectly with stock prices already, but man is your idea really bad.
In terms of dollars, I don't think it would take much to make the point. Suppose you set the fine to 0.5% of salary from all employees. Someone in an entry level job earning $40k would only owe $200. But they'd be really flipping mad and might quit over it. That scales up pretty well - a middle-manager at Facebook who makes $600k would owe $3k. Not enough to really affect their life, but enough to make them really pissed off and potentially bail on the company.
In the end, if we as society want corporations to follow the law, we have to start recognizing that corporations are made up of regular humans following incentives, and if the corporate shield means the people who work in the company and carry out its actions feel no personal consequences of illegal actions, then it's not surprising they'll ignore the law.
That’s the thing I think most people don’t understand about large companies. Money is just a number, they’re playing a game with it. If the company pays a huge fine, all those folks are still rich and nothing bad happens to them, they just have a few different numbers on their spreadsheet. That’s why they don’t care. It’s not like a normal person getting fined, who then loses the opportunity to use their money for things that matter to them.
If we want to hold corporations accountable, we have to issue punishments to corporations that actually hurt their leaders.
I do agree there’s an us/them mentality, but that breaks down when people feel like they can air out their grievances against senior management without sinking the company itself.
If the punishments are set too high, individual loyalties begin to dissuade reporting. You might not love your boss, but you might not want to see his kids lose their father. So executing executives has its downsides.
However, the sanctions must be visible so as to decrease the tendency for offenders to defend each other and entrench corruption. This is difficult because it means that people will still be employed (in less powerful roles) after being sanctioned for offenses many people find morally repulsive.
It's a difficult balancing act. Cultural factors play about as big of a role as incentives. Rick Scott's Medicare fraud is infamous but it didn't stop him from winning three statewide elections in Florida.
If someone does not pay their contractors enough, knocking them down a peg to the level of those contractors seems like an appropriate punishment.
They can work their way up again.
Also, a lot would be solved if responsible people would get punished too, especially if they knew about the illegal stuff, and didn't do anything.
If I don’t pay a parking meter I’m likely to lose up to 100x as much as I saved… if Google doesn’t pay its employees…
If your city has exactly 0 'meter maids' what does the 100x fine do to deter you? Nothing.
If your city is patrolling its meters with a frequency that guarantees you will be caught 100% of the time you will definitely not do it ever (if you knew or after being caught multiple times in a row) and the expenses for meter maid salaries would be exorbitant. No more money coming in.
Theres probably a hard to attain sweet spot where having the patrols brings in enough money to offset enough of the salaries and which also gives you the feeling of 'always getting caught' thus not making it worth your while.
And then you talk about meter maids. What do meter maids have to do with Google not breaking labor laws?
Their point is that high potential punishment alone isn't sufficient, but that it must be likely or inevitable as well.
I could use a different one that would stir up much more controversial debate. What if stealing office supplies carried the death sentence? If you are guaranteed never to be caught how much of a deterrent would it be? If you get caught 100% of the time for that but all they do is to make you pay 10x what the supplies were worth?
Basically what I was trying to show that it's all about a combination of percentage of getting caught and the sentence. Only upping the possible sentence does not act as the deterrent people commonly attribute to it.
(what I didn't say is that if all you get is 'you bad boy but please don't do it again' then 100% enforcement doesn't help either. That should be obvious)
In the cheaper ticket city I would freely not pay the meter more or less breaking even on cost, and now in a more expensive city I do unless i’m only intending to park for a few minutes.
The problem is just lack of political willingness to reign them in, nothing else.
So it's not economical for the offending parties to continue such behavior.
Of course it is. The only needed change is to take adequate care to not leave incriminating evidence such as emails around.
> But rather than immediately correct the errors, the company dragged its feet for more than two years, the documents show, citing concern about the increased cost to departments that rely heavily on temporary workers, potential exposure to legal claims, and fear of negative press attention.