The left seems to want to put up as many barriers as they can when a company wants to hire an employee

[ksen]

Well then help me out. You feel an employer should/should not be required to provide a safe workplace?


You want to go through these one by one, then let's start with that.

I support the concept of an employer being required to compensate employees for workplace injuries. You'd have a list of injury types and have a flat dollar fee compensation for that injury type as determined by case law (pain and suffering compensation), plus medical expenses, plus lost income, as a result of the injury. The employer would be required to have private insurance to cover it and the insurance companies would do a through review of the company to ensure the workplace was acceptably safe (and refuse coverage or significantly jack up rates until the issues were resolved), as the insurance company would be on the hook for paying out claims and would obviously want to minimize that.

Required by law?

 

[Axulus]

If they can't do anything useful, then why force them to do something useless?

Who said anything about forcing? My position is that employment shouldn't be necessary to have the bare essentials to allow you to survive and meet your basic needs. Any work you do from there would be strictly voluntary, whether you think it is useless or not (and making the premises clean is not useless, whatever your aesthetic tastes and tolerance for dirtiness may be).

Yes. And 'employment' whose primary purpose is training - eg an apprenticeship - is fine. But nobody learns much sweeping floors or screwing a hundred fasteners onto a hundred widgets every hour for eight hours on some assembly line. Get a robot to do it - or pay a decent wage for it in the unlikely event that that is cheaper than the robot.

It keeps them busy and contributing to society and interacting with others in society (co workers, customers, etc.). Makes them feel more connected to society. Also tends to reduce depression and other forms of mental illness that some are vulnerable to when they are unemployed for extended periods of time. What good is it for them to sit around unemployed for years and years? Once again, I'm only talking about voluntary arrangements, nothing forced.

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I support the concept of an employer being required to compensate employees for workplace injuries. You'd have a list of injury types and have a flat dollar fee compensation for that injury type as determined by case law (pain and suffering compensation), plus medical expenses, plus lost income, as a result of the injury. The employer would be required to have private insurance to cover it and the insurance companies would do a through review of the company to ensure the workplace was acceptably safe (and refuse coverage or significantly jack up rates until the issues were resolved), as the insurance company would be on the hook for paying out claims and would obviously want to minimize that.

Required by law?

Yes, in the same manner that car insurance is required.

 

[Ford]

This thread is about the vision of many on the left.

Quite a lot of the things you seem to think are a "vision" for the future are reality today not because of some vague "the left," but as a result of real-world application of this idea of yours that everything should be a one-to-one negotiation between employers and employees without any laws intruding upon the process.

We have protections for worker safety because reality demonstrated employers cannot be counted upon to police themselves.

We have laws against discrimination and harassment because reality demonstrated that employers cannot be counted upon to police themselves.

We have minimum wage laws, a 40 hour week, and sick leave because reality demonstrated that given the opportunity employers would happily work people to death.

We have laws against factories dumping toxic chemicals into the environment because factories were dumping toxic chemicals into the environment.

We have child labor laws because...well, I think by now you know where this is going.



All these laws, regulations, and rules, didn't spring up merely because "the left" wanted them to happen. They were enacted (and to a certain extent "the left" exists) as a reaction to the abuses of unrestricted capitalism.


You imagine this is all some sinister plot by "the left" to undermine good, decent businessmen who just want to make an honest buck, but none of it - not labor laws, not environmental laws, not workplace safety rules or sick leave or unemployment insurance would exist if the businessmen were actually good and decent.




Does "the left" want to put up all these barriers to a company hiring employees? No, but they have to, because companies have demonstrated over and over again that they'll happily fuck over employees in order to maximize profit. This has been going on for the better part of the last two hundred years. Employers have to be dragged, kicking and screaming, to give their workers a fair shake.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

The employee compensation and benefit package should be determined based on voluntary agreement between employee and employer with no laws interfering in the process.

A reasonable goal. However, how do you address the vast power imbalance between employees and employers? Or does the power imbalance need addressing? Can you have a truly voluntary agreement from both sides if one side holds 50 cards of the deck?

If the economy is in decent shape most employees have reasonable power--not individually but as a group. They vote with their feet away from bad employers.

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It isn't. Who said it was?

What I can say is that if employees are so cheap that they don't take home enough money to live on, then that does not lead to an economy that serves everyone. And in order to avoid that, it is better for everyone that the menial jobs be automated - and one good way to make that happen is to prohibit employment of people at wages so low they can even undercut robots. Of course, if the welfare system is sufficiently generous, prohibition becomes unnecessary - pay people $500 a week for doing nothing, and they will not accept a job at $7.50 an hour or less even in the absence of any legislated minimum wage.

You hardly need 'reams' of laws to establish a progressive tax system, a well funded training and education system, and a widely available welfare safety net.

Just so I'm clear on your position, are you saying if that someone's level of skills and capability is such that they will not currently earn enough to support themselves in the employment market, then it is better that their job be taken over by automation and they be left unemployed and unemployable until they reach such a skill level?

Have you considered the possibility that they can develop skills and become more productive if they remain employed for a period of time, and the act of being employed may allow them to some day reach such a level?

To admit that a path to a good job is needed is to admit that there need to be some low-wage jobs. Since the left can't accept that they play ostrich with the issue.

 

[lpetrich]

If the economy is in decent shape most employees have reasonable power--not individually but as a group. They vote with their feet away from bad employers.

"Love it or leave it" -- all the freedom you'll ever need, and all the freedom that you'll ever have a right to. In the real world, as opposed to the Panglossian fantasies of capitalism groupies, that is not enough.

Furthermore, employers often call such a state "labor shortages". So, Loren Pechtel, are you willing to say that employers must stop whining about labor shortages?

 

[Loren Pechtel]

If the economy is in decent shape most employees have reasonable power--not individually but as a group. They vote with their feet away from bad employers.

"Love it or leave it" -- all the freedom you'll ever need, and all the freedom that you'll ever have a right to. In the real world, as opposed to the Panglossian fantasies of capitalism groupies, that is not enough.

Furthermore, employers often call such a state "labor shortages". So, Loren Pechtel, are you willing to say that employers must stop whining about labor shortages?

I do agree most labor shortages are not real.

 

[fromderinside]

If the economy is in decent shape most employees have reasonable power--not individually but as a group. They vote with their feet away from bad employers.

To admit that a path to a good job is needed is to admit that there need to be some low-wage jobs. Since the left can't accept that they play ostrich with the issue.

Twice. Two time I say. Loren Pechtel plays fantasy economics with us.

First the weasel approach providing pairings of words making something impossible to evaluate look reasonable. WTF is 'decent shape' and 'reasonable power'. Obviously it's not power of one individual so there must be some organization required A Union? They're not acceptable for the economy to be in decent shape according to businesses. Reasonable power sounds kind of like "Let me put it in and I promise to pull it out before I come."

Then the real insult. If it is a good job according to the employee your formulation is false since no person thinks a low paying job is a good job. So here we are back to employer definitions so an argument can be made because certainly low paying jobs aren't required for a path to a good job. A good education, a good economy, employers who recognize the worth of workers are paths to a good paying job. None of them require low paying jobs muddying up the path.

Its not liberals but conservative who insist their way is the only way. Give them one 'failure' of sharing economy and its in the conservative play book for every other option to be debunked in favor of their 'its all about greed' model. Time for them to look up and see that other places actually get by when acceptance rather than exclusion is at the core of their model.

As the old burger shop commercial put it, "Faux job creators step aside, please step aside, there's a more compatible burger in town."

Why is it always the conservative who fears anything new or improved. I guess that's why conservatives always focus on ostriches. All they can see is themselves.

 

[untermensche]

The "left" this and the "left" that.

Divide and conquer.

The rich plunder and the powerless squabble about "left" and "right".

When really it is "up" and "down". The few with power and the many without. That is the only real divide.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

If the economy is in decent shape most employees have reasonable power--not individually but as a group. They vote with their feet away from bad employers.

To admit that a path to a good job is needed is to admit that there need to be some low-wage jobs. Since the left can't accept that they play ostrich with the issue.

Twice. Two time I say. Loren Pechtel plays fantasy economics with us.

First the weasel approach providing pairings of words making something impossible to evaluate look reasonable. WTF is 'decent shape' and 'reasonable power'. Obviously it's not power of one individual so there must be some organization required A Union? They're not acceptable for the economy to be in decent shape according to businesses. Reasonable power sounds kind of like "Let me put it in and I promise to pull it out before I come."

Then the real insult. If it is a good job according to the employee your formulation is false since no person thinks a low paying job is a good job. So here we are back to employer definitions so an argument can be made because certainly low paying jobs aren't required for a path to a good job. A good education, a good economy, employers who recognize the worth of workers are paths to a good paying job. None of them require low paying jobs muddying up the path.

Its not liberals but conservative who insist their way is the only way. Give them one 'failure' of sharing economy and its in the conservative play book for every other option to be debunked in favor of their 'its all about greed' model. Time for them to look up and see that other places actually get by when acceptance rather than exclusion is at the core of their model.

As the old burger shop commercial put it, "Faux job creators step aside, please step aside, there's a more compatible burger in town."

Why is it always the conservative who fears anything new or improved. I guess that's why conservatives always focus on ostriches. All they can see is themselves.

What you are missing is that low wage jobs are the ladder to climb into the workforce. You remove them and you remove the ladder. Some other countries use a training wage instead to accomplish the same thing--just with more holes in the safety net as once an established worker falls they no longer have a ladder to climb back up.

As has been repeatedly shown the number of minimum wage workers is low and at least in general most of them are not the primary breadwinner.

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The "left" this and the "left" that.

Divide and conquer.

The rich plunder and the powerless squabble about "left" and "right".

When really it is "up" and "down". The few with power and the many without. That is the only real divide.

The right makes it's own mistakes.