> are employees actually at the level of indentured servants (which I would expect to be a contract between TWO parties)
no, it's actually the polar opposite of that. either party is free to end the relationship at any time. there is essentially what is a long term contract (may not be called a contract), but one which either of the two parties can terminate. it's halfway between being a european style employee and being a truly independent contractor. an indentured servant is certainly not free at all to end a bad relationship or to seek a better job or more pay - totally the opposite thing.
and i don't think there's anything wrong with it. in fact, i personally strongly want to move more toward becoming a true independent contractor someday, but the culture of engineering strongly favors employees for what i prefer to do. i'd rather pay my own taxes and handle my own retirement and medical insurance and other "benefits", many of which do not benefit me at all.
when you say "click-or-be-fired" it seems shocking. rephrase it into "agree to our new terms going forward, or we will not renew". i have zero problem with that if that was the situation that was originally agreed to.
now, i don't know what those new terms are or whether they were fair, and that might have been a problem. but simply the at-will employment system isn't wrong on it's own. but in our jurisdiction, not ireland (which is how X appears to have got itself in trouble).
If this was a conversation between equals, I think you might have a point, but the balance of power between employee and employer (especially when it’s a huge corporation) lies firmly on the side of the employer.
An employee has needs that sometimes cannot go untended, s/he has rent/mortgage payments, s/he may have family to take care of, loan repayments, children at non-free school, etc etc. This is normal, and the paraphernalia of living a life. They are long-term commitments.
So if the employee is presented with an ultimatum like this, it really amounts to “rip up your life, or take the new (worse) offer we are giving you”. It smacks of Vader’s famous line: “I am altering the deal. Pray that I don’t alter it any further”. You may prefer living in a world where corporations can wreak havoc with employees lives without consequence (like Vader) but I don’t.
Leaving the country at the end of this year and returning back to the UK. I came here for the money and the weather. The weather is now too damn hot, and I’ve made enough money to retire (in the UK at least) and look after my wife after an American hospital utterly destroyed her life, putting her into a coma after trying to “turn beds” like restaurants “turn tables”. I so much wish I’d done this 2 years ago, life would have been very different if I had.
all of that is fine, but my point and what i was responding to is that comparing the US system to "indentured servitude" is completely the opposite of a good analogy to what it is.
you prefer "guarantees". that's fine. i prefer more freedom and i don't want or trust those guarantees. nothing keeps a company from going out of business and then it doesn't matter what the law says or what they owed you - piff - you're screwed right then and there. you can also be run over by a bus tomorrow through no fault of your own in spite of any number of laws to keep that from happening.
> You may prefer living in a world where corporations can wreak havoc with employees lives without consequence (like Vader) but I don’t.
i don't like that either. but realize we both already do live in that world. unfortunately it is a fundamental universal fact of life that enough power and money can be, and usually will be, wielded to do bad things. since you can't fundamentally change that, most "fixes" are just trading one thing for another, or shifting costs to someone else, who is probably poorer and less powerful. every safety net is also a set of handcuffs. every benefit has a cost somewhere else. to move more toward more employment guarantees makes you more of a slave, not less. ironically, more regulation strongly favors the larger bureaucracies and bigger companies at the expense of the individuals and small companies. so now you just encouraged more economic asymmetry.
i'm not telling you what you prefer or what's best for you or what to believe. just realize that everyone does not have the same viewpoint or needs at all. and it's not simply evil vs. good as portrayed in the movies.
i'm sorry to hear about your wife. the quality of healthcare in this country can be highly variable, it's certainly not always bad. i've heard that UK sometimes has different issues. use your intelligence to make the wisest and best decisions you can and be as proactive as possible, that's all you can do, anywhere, anytime.
"Accept this employment contact change or be unable to afford treatment for your illness" is often not really a choice. It's "freedom" for those with money, oppression for those without.
> nothing keeps a company from going out of business and then it doesn't matter what the law says or what they owed you - piff - you're screwed right then and there. you can also be run over by a bus tomorrow through no fault of your own in spite of any number of laws to keep that from happening.
You seem to refute your own point. It's true you could get ran over by a bus - so why do we still have laws to prohibit bus drivers from knowingly running you over? Because we typically want to minimize the number of lives we "screw", even if we can't reduce it to zero.
Further, a company going out of business is still very much in the realm of something sufficient social safety nets can help with - lessening the blow to employees' lives while they search/train for a new job.
> i don't like that either. but realize we both already do live in that world.
We can and should try to improve it. There is no reason to be resigned to the idea that this is how things must always be, when this itself is a relatively recent state of affairs and already a notable improvement over, say, feudalism of the 10th century (in both freedom and quality of life).
> every benefit has a cost somewhere else
Humanity's progress isn't a zero-sum game - there are plenty of net positive changes we have made and can continue to make.
> and it's not simply evil vs. good as portrayed in the movies.
I found spacedcowboy's consideration of power dynamics a significantly more developed worldview than what you've demonstrated above.
An interesting facet of a universal healthcare system is how much it could increase competition due to relieving healthcare costs for SMBs and for manufacturing industries like automotive by removing their healthcare obligations.
You actually net increase the ability of people to work for themselves. Healthcare is often cited as one of the primarily reasons people don’t take the step to found their own business.
Not to mention that if you want more equity between employer / employee relationships we need more ways to break up the asymmetric leverage of the relationship and this is a major one that traps folks
Considering the salaries of software engineers healthcare costs in the US are way cheaper than most EU countries. Also, you don't have to wait months to see a doctor.
this is a good point. there really used to be two major items that were part of this asymmetric leverage. one of them, retirement plans, have started to disappear, and that's a good thing.
- as you mentioned health insurance (and to some extent life insurance, cheap when young, but not so cheap as you get older)
- retirement. this seems to be steadily changing to 401K type schemes. the 85 point (age + years of service = 85) pensions are solidly in the rear view mirror, and i for one, applaud that. you can take your 401K where-ever you want and decide for yourself what age and how much money you need.
but i have other problems with "universal" health care though; the VA has something like this and it's not better. must it be that way? maybe not, but is it likely be that way? yeah...
then you have the free-rider problem vs. basic human rights. i'd just be happy if everybody could purchase the same insurance at the same price employed or not if they wished to do so. it's not quite there yet, although i have received quotes from Kaiser in CA for equivalent individual policies are that are nearly the same price to what just my parole deduction portion is from $$big$$corp - not counting their ~40-50% portion. which implies, as usual, big companies are being not very efficient. billing is a disaster; why is my insurance charged $50,000 for something i can buy out-of-pocket for $5,000? patents and drug companies are a disaster; problem: drugs are too expensive - solution: give artificial monopolies...
so what we've done so far in this country manages is a half-measure that manages to be worse than what we had before and just as bad or worse than some ideal universal health care would be. i acknowledge that health care is a thorny problem, nothing seems to be a good answer and we're highly unlikely to be fixing it (by fix, i mean make it better, not just doing more stupid stuff).
> and i don't think there's anything wrong with it.
except all the legal ways you can't fire someone. Sexism, Racism, Ageism, and maybe Sexual Orientation (may not be Federal) are the big 4 reasons why this can't simply be a social contract. And there's more subtle but not illegal ways you can screw yourself over like Promissary Estoppel, because you can't just hire someone and fire them the first week "for whatever reason" and think that's not open for abuse.
>when you say "click-or-be-fired" it seems shocking. rephrase it into "agree to our new terms going forward, or we will not renew". i have zero problem with that if that was the situation that was originally agreed to.
"I have altered the terms, pray I do not alter it further".
These aren't even labor laws. This can be extortion or retaliation. Neither of which are exactly squeaky clean. Or it could be a simply breaking of contract (e.g. your contract says WFH and now they want to force RTO you). If there's no protection nor reparation on the employer side for breaking a contract they can remake at anytime, it may as well be handcuffs instead.
no, it's actually the polar opposite of that. either party is free to end the relationship at any time. there is essentially what is a long term contract (may not be called a contract), but one which either of the two parties can terminate. it's halfway between being a european style employee and being a truly independent contractor. an indentured servant is certainly not free at all to end a bad relationship or to seek a better job or more pay - totally the opposite thing.
and i don't think there's anything wrong with it. in fact, i personally strongly want to move more toward becoming a true independent contractor someday, but the culture of engineering strongly favors employees for what i prefer to do. i'd rather pay my own taxes and handle my own retirement and medical insurance and other "benefits", many of which do not benefit me at all.
when you say "click-or-be-fired" it seems shocking. rephrase it into "agree to our new terms going forward, or we will not renew". i have zero problem with that if that was the situation that was originally agreed to.
now, i don't know what those new terms are or whether they were fair, and that might have been a problem. but simply the at-will employment system isn't wrong on it's own. but in our jurisdiction, not ireland (which is how X appears to have got itself in trouble).