About Half of Google's Workers Are Contractors Who Don't Receive the Same Benefits as Direct Employees (bloomberg.com) 192
Every day, tens of thousands of people stream into Google offices wearing red name badges. They eat in Google's cafeterias, ride its commuter shuttles and work alongside its celebrated geeks. But they can't access all of the company's celebrated perks. They aren't entitled to stock and can't enter certain offices. Many don't have health insurance. Bloomberg: Before each weekly Google all-hands meeting, trays of hors d'oeuvres and, sometimes, kegs of beer are carted into an auditorium and satellite offices around the globe for employees, who wear white badges. Those without white badges are asked to return to their desks. Google's Alphabet employs hordes of these red-badged contract workers in addition to its full-fledged staff. They serve meals and clean offices. They write code, handle sales calls, recruit staff, screen YouTube videos, test self-driving cars and even manage entire teams -- a sea of skilled laborers that fuel the $795 billion company but reap few of the benefits and opportunities available to direct employees.
Earlier this year, those contractors outnumbered direct employees for the first time in the company's twenty-year history, according to a person who viewed the numbers on an internal company database. It's unclear if that is still the case. Alphabet reported 89,058 direct employees at the end of the second quarter. The company declined to comment on the number of contract workers.
Earlier this year, those contractors outnumbered direct employees for the first time in the company's twenty-year history, according to a person who viewed the numbers on an internal company database. It's unclear if that is still the case. Alphabet reported 89,058 direct employees at the end of the second quarter. The company declined to comment on the number of contract workers.
So what?? (Score:5, Insightful)
I have been a contractor myself for many years, sometimes in huge groups of other contractors working for companies with employees.
I have also been on the other side, working for companies as an employee in teams that worked alongside large teams of contractors...
I think it should say a lot as to which situation is better that I have ended up working as a contractor for years instead of working as an FTE. If for no other reason than, overtime work really loses the sting when you are paid hourly...
Yes I lack some "benefits" a company might offer but I get more freedom in how to make up those "benefits". Because I work on contract I can take more vacation time than almost any company would allow. Because I work contract I can choose health care options that make sense to me and stick with them rather than being shifted around in changing company plans. And It's also lots easier to untangle myself from a bad contract than a bad employer... not to mention being more free to speak my mind since as a contractor I am generally free of politics (though on larger team of contractors that still can be a factor, but not as much as it is for employees).
Re:So what?? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:So what?? (Score:4, Informative)
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In software too companies like Google , Apple etc use Contracting as a filter. You cant always tell in a 30 minute interview if the person is a good fit but once you have them as a contractor for a year you can very confidently recommend them for a FT position. And if not getting rid of a contractor is as easy as not renewing a contract. No action needed.
There is also the fact that some companies have taken a conscious decision to have a certain FTE-Contractor ratio. That way if times turn bad they dont hav
Re:So what?? (Score:4, Informative)
And Google could get in a lot of trouble if they turn out to be the latter.
The problem is that though the line is, fine, it is not fixed. It is generally determined on a case-by-case basis. In order to be a contractor:
* You are expected to know how to do your job. If it's something you have to be taught to do (more than a bit of reasonable orientation), you're probably an employee.
* You are expected to set your own hours. If you have to be there 9 to 5, or punch a time clock, or fill out a time card, you're probably an employee, not a contractor.
* You negotiate your own rates.
There are a few others. These rules are enforced by the IRS and a few other Federal agencies, but mainly the IRS.
IBM and rather famously Microsoft were both busted for having "off-the-books employees" which they called contractors. It cost them big.
Don't get stuck being an off-the-books employee. If you are, the company probably owes you back benefits.
And setting your own hours is not enough. You must have control over them. Even simply reporting the hours you worked to a client, in some circumstances, can be considered prima facie evidence of your status as an employee.
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Here's a question: do they have healthcare or not?
Corp-to-corp contractors should get healthcare from their contracting corporation. Self-employed contractors...it must be a nightmare to manage that many contracts, holy crap.
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If you're a full-time employee of a contract house, you probably *can* get health insurance, but it won't be anything like what a large company (like the client) would offer. Until my wife went back to work full-time for a company with great benefits, we had my contract house's insurance, which cost us enough that we qualified for a medical expense deduction on our taxes every year.
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I work for a contract house. Difference is I have a 25 dollar copay. The FTEs where I work have a 5 dollar copay. Both have same yearly caps and the FTEs get egg freezing covered. As a guy with 2 kids the egg freezing benefit is not really that big a difference.
The point is many contract houses have good health insurance.
On the other hand when in a design discussion I make a point , people listen as I am not a threat to their career or their budget unlike the other FTEs.
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I've seen FTEs with shit insurance, too. I've seen full-time positions with crap like Aflac before the ACA.
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You make it sound like overtime was a thing everyone should be asking for.
Opposite (Score:2)
You make it sound like overtime was a thing everyone should be asking for.
I'm really more saying that in software work It is inevitable, contractor or not.
Being a contractor though means at least there is some reward for the loss of personal time.
I personally would rather have more time than money. But more money and less time is still preferable to me than less money AND less time - and more money is always transferrable to more time as a contractor at some point as you can reduce your hourly load for a w
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I've been a contractor for about 30% of my IT career. Your employer has much more respect for your time when you're a contractor than when you're an FTE. When it costs them $200/hr, they're not quite so glib with the "Um yeah, I'm gonna need you to come in on Saturday..."
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That works great while your health holds out (Score:2)
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I really regret contract work not being talked about when I was still a college student. I had never considered it versus a full time position.
After starting to use recruiters to find work I ended up doing a couple of contract to hire deals. I had no idea it was so nice! I bill hourly and get paid weekly. I get to deduct business expenses and have control over my benefits. If I want to take a month-long vacation at the end of a contract I can do so. I have someone to represent and advise me; it's real
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Yeah well certain Silicon valley companies (make i products) pay contractors only for 40 hrs irrespective of whether they are working 60 hr weeks and taking calls with offshore at night. The contractors all hope to become FTEs and get their own chance at exploiting contractors.
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Re:So what?? (Score:5, Interesting)
To be honest, I'm one of those red badges, about to transition to FTE in a different .
I work in a relatively small office (around 300 people) so I can't really say about behemoths like Mountain View or Dublin, but in the day-to-day operations red badges are not much different than white ones. You still get invited to events and initiatives, you have lunch with whoever pleases you independently of badge color, and while it's true that you don't get full FTE benefits, that's simply because you're hired by a different company (I work for an actual company selling a service to Google, not a mere intermediary like Adecco). Health insurance is a very American concern, I live in a country with universal health care so the impact on the whole benefit package is much smaller.
It still allows you to enter in a big corporate environment and puts you in the radar for other big companies (that's exactly what happened to me, I didn't apply for my new position, I was proposed it).
As an American (Score:2)
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It's not perfect, but it's better than nothing. I don't have "sick days", I have a state-certified family doctor which orders me to stay home if he thinks I'm too ill to work. State pays for the first 3 days of leave, then my company has to. Of course I need to present a certificate to my employer for that.
But still, right now I'm undergoing a root canal surgery that is costing me basically 70% of a monthly salary. I could have gone with public health care, but the wait would have been quite long, which is
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Apple's got colored badge for FT and Gray badges for contractors. Its not just Google.
Funny thin the high schooler at a Genius bar is a FT and can get Apple products at a discount but the 10 yr Machine learning architect driving the architecture of iTunes is a Grey badge and needs to pay full price for Apple products. (Contractors have their own way of getting back. They flaunt their Samsung phones inside Apple buildings. iPhone X has finally caught with Android by getting rid of the hardware home button so
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Don't do that (Score:2)
See, those contracting companies will lure you in with seemingly great rates.
I contract for myself.
When working as a subcontractor, I've worked through small to medium size consulting firms - but still under my own company, not theirs.
I should have mentioned, but basically, do not contract for the giant firms. The rates they give are terrible, and they treat you worse.
I assure you, working independently you can make more. than you would working at a company, even after factoring in taxes and paying for you
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You forget to factor in that as an Employee when you work from home you work from home. When you commute you commute.
As a contractor when you work from home , you take a home office deduction on your taxes. Your car is a writeoff. Your lunches are business expenses. Ditto phone, internet, clothes, conferences, computers. Almost everything an employee pays for with after tax money you pay with before tax money. You also are not limited to only putting 18.5 K into 401. You can put upto 50K. Once you bring the
Industry Wide (Score:5, Insightful)
This isn't a "Google" problem, this is an industry-wide problem. What larger tech company ISNT doing this?
What company isn't doing this? (Score:5, Insightful)
Time for a New New Deal.
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That plus the death of Unions and the end of collective bargaining is why wages are declining even though productivity is way, way up.
Thing is, all this shit changed in the 70s. It's not a recent change. And yet our standard of living went up very nicely from the 70s through around 2000. It's not obvious what changed, though political corruption has been getting worse since the 90s. Perhaps it passed some tipping point: the Bush/Obama bank "bailout" was the single largest looting of the treasury in US history, perhaps worse than all previous corruption combined. But that was many years after the change in ~2000.
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Thing is, all this shit changed in the 70s. It's not a recent change. And yet our standard of living went up very nicely from the 70s through around 2000. It's not obvious what changed, though political corruption has been getting worse since the 90s. Perhaps it passed some tipping point: the Bush/Obama bank "bailout" was the single largest looting of the treasury in US history, perhaps worse than all previous corruption combined. But that was many years after the change in ~2000.
The standard of living did not go up from the 70s-2000s. As the previous poster noted productivity went up but wages didn't. I'd *love* to go back in time and work in the 70s or 80s. I'd be making a lot more and housing would be far cheaper.
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"Wages have not risen as much as expected" is not at all the same as "the standard of living has not risen".
Improved capabilities and lowered costs for computers, personal electronics, and telecommunications features are huge examples of increases in the standard of living. In the 1970s, there was NO amount of money that could get you a smartphone.
The richest people in the world died of diseases you don't seriously think about.
You travel faster, safer, and cheaper than the anyone in those days did.
Your ent
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"Wages have not risen as much as expected" is not at all the same as "the standard of living has not risen". Improved capabilities and lowered costs for computers, personal electronics, and telecommunications features are huge examples of increases in the standard of living.
So how is life working for the Feds and finding ever new ways to try and convince the people that they are really getting ahead when it's obvious that they aren't? Hey cars, housing, and college costs doubled but congratulations - you get a larger TV at a lower price. That's surely a fair trade right?
In the 1970s, there was NO amount of money that could get you a smartphone.
I guess for some that would be a deal breaker. If you have much of a *real life* in the *real world* you will be fine.
The richest people in the world died of diseases you don't seriously think about.
Like heart disease and cancer? Those are still the main killers. Medical advances have
Re: What company isn't doing this? (Score:2)
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He can afford a house of the quality that the guy in the 60s could afford: a tiny 2-bedroom track house with no AC (and no appliances). You can't ignore technology - people have just decided they prefer to spend on the big screen with PS4 and lots of other tech and bling over the house. Fair enough.
And you have savings if you want to have savings, though you might not also have the TV and PS4. The Silent Generation were raised to save above all else, as their parents lived through the great depression, s
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Then don't whine when the workers put the management in gulags and the executives to the guillotine.
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Yup. I think it's due to the fact that regulations are much looser for contractors. If you have a company that has a mix of high-wage and low-wage jobs, chances are the high-wage jobs will be mostly filled with full-time employees and the low-wage jobs will mostly be filled by contractors. It sets up a pretty disgusting class segregation. I really think the only way to deal with it is to solve it at the regulatory level, to ensure that contractors have the same protections as full-time employees, and by
Global, Economy-Wide Problem, Not Just IT (Score:2)
This isn't a "Google" problem, this is an industry-wide problem. What larger tech company ISNT doing this?
This goes beyond even the tech industry to an ongoing global problem . Whether in the United States, Canada [theglobeandmail.com], Europe [apnews.com], or East Asia [straitstimes.com], you have more and more companies opting to use more and more contract labor. It's many of the same reasons: easy to hire and fire / surge, cheaper, etc.
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This is an experience and skill problem. People new in the job market have fewer skills and experience. A position as an employee is better for them. Once you become known in your industry for your skills and people seek you out specifically, being a contractor is much better.
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Many don't have health insurance ??? (Score:3)
Then they are in violation of the Affordable Care Act which requires everyone to purchase insurance or sign up for Medicare otherwise they face IRS fines.
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Don't have health insurance provided by Google. That doesn't mean they don't have health insurance. If they are a W2 employee of a contracting firm, they likely have health insurance through them. If they're a pure 1099 self employed contractor, that's on you, you work for yourself officially.
The fine's a couple of grand (Score:2)
Of course, that completely screws up the insurance pool. That's why folks like Bernie Sanders have been pushing for the biggest possible pool: everyone. Aka Medicare for all aka Single Payer.
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healthcare on your own costs thousands
Per what time period? I'm a geezer and my private insurance is much less than a thousand per month.
But then it depends on which group you are a member of. When I left Boeing (laid off), they offered me their insurance plan through COBRA. It turns out that the working population at Boeing is so old (and sick) that their group plan was a few hundred dollars a month MORE than the same benefit package bought privately.
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Only companies with more than 50 employees are mandated to provide health insurance. Many contracting firms are mom and pop. They dont even have to pay the Employee part of social security (Well they do but they dont and by the time an IRS audit comes around the company will be dissolved and operating under another EIN)
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Well.. that USED to be true. These days the fine has been reduced to zero by the current administration has it not?
The tax bill passed by Congress effectively removed the personal mandate but that isn't until next year, meanwhile it is still required.
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diversity contractors (Score:4, Interesting)
Maybe I missed it in TFA, but I don't think that Google applies the same diversity requirements when hiring its contract employees as it does its permanent ones. I wonder what its employee demographics would show if they included contract workers into the total labor force.
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Most contractors are visa employees. The contracting firms do their visas and Green cards. Once they have green cards Apple and Google hire them as employees. This way their statistics on visa employees vs non visa employees look good (GCs and citizens are counted in the same bucket)
DUH (Score:1)
if they are working 29+ hours health insurance law (Score:2)
if they are working 29+ hours health insurance is buy law unless they are 1099's but the IRS may not see it that way. even more so if they told to be at desk at X time.
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but you are not dealing the mechanic week after week. But if you are working w2 for manpower week after week then they must give you health insurance
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And most contracting companies do provide health insurance. Only mom and pop contracting firms with less than 50 employees dont.
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I would suicide without contracting (Score:1)
I'm a contractor.
I would f*cking die if I had to have a permanent job.
I work for three months and then take the rest of the year off.
The idea of going into a job, day after day, week after week, month after month, year after year - UNTIL YOU ARE OLD AND YOU NEVER LIVED JUST WORKED THEN YOU DIE -
Who the hell wrote this article *complaining* about contracting?
If they want to work full time for their entire lives, go right ahead.
Don't fuck it up for the rest of us.
It gets worse (Score:5, Funny)
The article forgot to mention the worst part of these contractors' jobs:
The team members with red badges who beam down to uncharted planets rarely make it back alive.
The old Microsoft "Permatemp" problem (Score:1)
Google is repeating Microsoft's history.
https://www.theregister.co.uk/2000/06/30/ms_casts_its_permatemps_into/
https://www.seattletimes.com/business/microsoft/microsoft-tries-to-reassure-contractors-about-rule-changes/
https://www.cnet.com/news/microsoft-permatemp-checks-finally-arrive/
Welcome the low lower class (Score:1)
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At Apple its reverse. Its very easy for Contractors to convert to FTE , much easier than for someone from outside to come in. And Apple does not provide anything free so its all the same. Contractors get to use the bus. Only thing which sucks is contractors dont get the 25% discount on iPhones so we buy Samsung ;) and use them inside Apple buildings.
So what (Score:1)
I have about for dozen friends between high school and college that work at Microsoft, and as far as I know, all of them receive worse benefits than a real Microsoft employee.
Staff Meetings (Score:2)
In general, contractors have been involved in staff meetings right alongside full time employees. If it was project related, they needed to know as much as the employees.
The ONLY times I have ever seen contractors excused was when there was bad news to be handed out about the companies situation. And then we were all reminded that this info. had not yet been released publicly, so we were now prohibited from trading the company stock for a period of time. When we all made it back to our desks, the contracto
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Highly doubt contractors have stock in the company they are working at. Its dumb to put all eggs in one basket. Employees get free stock so they have company stock but it would be dumb for a contractor to use real money to buy stock in the company they are contracting at.
There's contractors and there's contractors (Score:2)
You have your upper tier skilled contractors (I suspect a fair few here) who are brought in on very good money to complete a project or do a specialist task. In Australia, they'd make at least 100 to 200k a year. Day rates exceeding $500/700 a day. I'd assume in US / SF, these people would be 200k+ minimum.
Then you have 'normal' IT workers, doing basic work, account creation, service desk, back up and restore teams, desktop support. These guys aren't really specialists (not anymore) and there's a volume
It's the money duh (Score:2)
Can't speak for Google or employees in the USA - but here in the UK contractors might not get the free perks, but more than make up for it in the additional money they earn.
A FTE project manager on £55k has a day rate of around £211. A bog standard contract project manager can easily earn double that. If you're a really good PM then you can earn three times that amount.
All of the contractors I know wouldn't want to give that up for some free hors d'oeuvres, free beer and the ability
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Their only responsibility is to the shareholders.
[citation needed]
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they also have a responsibility to obey Federal labor laws
And they do...right down to the letter of the law. Which allows them to hire contract labor for a temporary position for a period of up to one year. So about the 350th day of their contract (which also coincides with Christmas break in many cases) the position is eliminated and the contractor let go. Seven days later a new position with the same responsibilities is created and the contractor is offered a NEW position for another 350 days. Numerous tech companies (as well as many other industries) employ thi
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Intel even made an end-run around that caveat. They hire contractors through a third party (Kelly services) and they people are Kelly employees doing work for Intel. Unlimited contract duration, second class citizen status. Further it all but eliminated the one drive for managers to actually hire good people as GFT, because now there's no limit on contract duration, there's no worry that the person will go somewhere else on their next contract.
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Re: Not surprising (Score:2)
That probably only applies to the base salary.
There is still the potential to get 1 to 2 times as much in bonus.
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It's quite possible they likely are, otherwise, we'd have heard about it.
I see these articles all the time now and somehow, people think it is inherently BAD to be a contractor for some reason.
It is not.
There are many out there, that make a comfortable living contracting. It can be VERY lucrative. But you have to put your big boy pants on, know how to calculate your bill rate, so that you cover insurance, time off, retirement, taxes...etc.
B
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You're talking about a different kind of "contractor". These aren't the kind that set their own billing rate - they're the kind that work for a contracting company for peanuts (aka outsourcing). They're W2 employees of the actual contractor.
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If that is the case, then they are getting their "benefits" from their W2 contracting house employer...who is their real employer, not Google.
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"know how to calculate your bill rate, so that you cover insurance, time off, retirement, taxes...etc."
Yeah, that's awesome when the client will let you work on a 1099 or if you can go corp-to-corp. Then just bill in dollars per hour what you'd want in an equivalent full-time salary in thousands per year, e.g., $150/hr == $150K/year.
The vast majority of contractors don't have those options. They have to go through one of the client's preferred contract houses, like the ones mentioned in TFA. Those companies
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Well, first thing to do, is incorporate yourself, so you can more easily do 1099 corp-to-corp.....
And I've done the W2 contracting thing too....but even with that, you need to know how to negotiate your salary, just like any other job.
Both of those opportunties are out there.....you gotta look for them.
Again, why take a job that is bad for you and doesn't fit your needs? Especially today, it is becoming more
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You do realise that some of these contracts are for things like warehouse jobs. Good luck "negotiating a billing rate blah fucking blah" with that.
Not everyone is as totally awesome as you. Or rather as awesome as you think you are.
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I have never claimed to be "awesome"...just putting out facts as I see them, and arguing against those I disagree with, hopefully with my clear reasoning behind it.
Again I say, if the gig isn't paying you well, find ANOTHER job!!
And, you may need to move to get to better wor
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Point taken, but Disney doesn't count. They own Congress.
That said, Google owned the previous presidential administration. I wonder how things are going with the new guy?
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https://www.nytimes.com/roomfo... [nytimes.com]
FTA: The leading statement of the law's view on corporate social responsibility goes back to Dodge v. Ford Motor Co, a 1919 decision that held that "a business corporation is organized and carried on primarily for the profit of the stockholders." That case — in which Henry Ford was challenged by shareholders when he tried to reduce car prices at their expense — also established that "it is not within the lawful powers of a board of directors to shape and condu
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That's not strictly true, as the corporate charter can spell out other priorities. But the board has to follow whatever that is (and by default it' the financial interest of the shareholders). You can, however, have a corporation where being "green" or "socially responsible" is a priority, as long as that's public before anyone buys stock. You just have to be clear about what "benefit of the stockholders" will mean, if it's not just money. Almost no one does that, of course.
Exactly. Can'te selfish. Most common purpose is (Score:2)
This rule is so often spun, to the point it's almost unrecognizable. People say all kinds of things that just aren't true. It's really not difficult, either. Very simply:
The officers of a company (CEO etc) don't own the company. They work for the people who own the company, mostly people with retirement funds that have the stock. Therefore, the CEO isn't allowed to give himself or his wife money out of the company bank account. Rather, he must use company assets to do things that the shareholders (retiremen
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Having been under SEC laws in a publicly traded US corp as an officer, much of what you cite is correct, but there are a few errors.
There is a wide variance in charters, state laws, and how US Federal Law is applied, then there's the IRS, and other taxing jurisdictions.
The stockholders own the company, and their directives to for-profit entities is to make profit. The onus is huge, and in some exec's minds, all-important. Laws are skirted, rules bent, policies defended, and much more, all in the quest to op
Interesting post. Median income or head count? (Score:2)
Interesting post.
What would you guess is the median net income for US corporations? Just for fun, care to guess the median number of employees?
Would you be surprised to learn that over 80% of US corporations were created primarily to employee specific people? Would your thoughts change if I mention that over 80% employee only one person, or one person and their immediate family? That over 80% of US corporations are people who own their job.
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Do publicly traded corporations employ a lot of people? Yes. Do they 1099 an incredible number of people? Yes. Do those agency or 1099 people benefit as employees of the corporation? Only slightly. Does the US Treasury and the Social Security Administration funds lose out because of the agency or 1099 employees? You bet.
There are a myriad corporations with no employees, or perhaps one or two at best. Add to this, lots of other corpus like LLCs, LLPs, SubS, and other schemes/theories/dodges? A profound numbe
400 current shareholder resolutions on social iss (Score:3)
Here are 400 current shareholder resolutions, in which shareholders are directing companies to prioritize various social issues, such as environmental issues:
https://www.greenamerica.org/s... [greenamerica.org]
This is 400 cases this year of shareholders explicitly telling executives "we want you to do this socially responsible thing, even if it cuts into profits".
You're absolutely right that, lacking any other information, the default assumption is that investmentors would generally prefer to make money rather than lose money
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Your citations are specious to the point.
You now desire to disambiguate shareholder rights, as a function of their ownership of a corporation, stock classes held, laws regarding shareholder rights, and more. That's another conversation.
Resolutions, aiding the aims of social justice, are plentiful and find their ways into stockholder resolutions, which may or may not be viable. They're a nice outlet-- should they be able to influence outcomes, but most often, they don't for a number of reasons.
My point remai
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Of course, then there's this:
https://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2015/04/16/what-are-corporations-obligations-to-shareholders/corporations-dont-have-to-maximize-profits
FTA: "To quote the U.S. Supreme Court opinion in the recent Hobby Lobby case: “Modern corporate law does not require for-profit corporations to pursue profit at the expense of everything else, and many do not.”"
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https://www.forbes.com/sites/s... [forbes.com]
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Re: So? (Score:2)
Most people getting into these gigs don't understand this and undershoot their worth, which these companies abuse to hell.
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If you are a grown adult, over age 18yrs...you need to grow up and be responsible and learn how the world works and what your worth is, etc.
No one is there to take care of this for you....it is up to the individual to learn how to take care of themselves.
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How about they thank the heavens for having a decent job with a decent wage and live in the best country on earth.
Simple, because the economy forces costs up. Everyone is paying to be in the best country on earth.
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They have the money but lets go with slave labor.
Next some moron will defend Nestle for actually using slaves to produce cocoa. Ass holes.
Re: Sounds familiar... (Score:2)
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Yep.
Frankly, I'll take the extra $$$ over a free coke any day of the week.
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Well unless you're literally saving lives or something it's pretty obvious both employees and contractors are in it for the paycheck. That doesn't mean I'd do anything for "extra $$$", it's the total package of work content, working conditions, colleagues, management, job security, perks and so on. And other things like the commute that doesn't really change with employment status but might mean you'd like to stay where you are. I'm not in the best paid job I could be, but I'd probably come home more tired,
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Jesus titty fucking Christ, I'd take a pay cut to avoid a _weekly_ all hands rah-rah meeting. Sounds excruciating...
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The United States literally has Social Security benefits. USA is much more socialist than say India. In India you dont work you starve.
Elon was able to create SpaceX because he lives in a socialist country which catches you if you try something and fail.
Re: (Score:2)
And many of the people who foam at the mouth railng about how much they hate socialism are collecting Social Security,Disability benefits, Medicare, Medicade, Food Stamps, and WIC, and other social benefits.
And the angry mobe pissed at everyone receiving social benefits but they fully deserve theirs - sometimes they have mod points.
We get it. Today's crypto conservatives are suffering from Red Queen syndrome:
"Alice laughed. "There's no use trying," she said: "one can't believe impossible things."
"I daresay you haven't had much practice," said the Queen. "When I was your age, I always did it for half-an-hour a day. Why, sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast."
Re: (Score:2)
The contractors are paid $137.25 an hour, or their contract management company is paid $137.25 per hour, out of which the employee is paid less?
One wonders...