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Comment by moonshinefe | Hacker News Reader

Isn't that attitude the issue at hand though? Large corporations (this one has north of 3k employees and is pulling in hundreds of millions in revenue) shouldn't be able to treat their employees like replaceable trash instead of human beings to save a few bucks.

Ironically, if I had a family tragedy and asked for leave at the small company I work for that makes very few profits, they'd give me the thumbs up instantly. You'd think the super rich corporations would have an easier time accommodating that, but some of them just refuse if it means a few bucks out of the pocket of John Q Millionaire.

This is precisely why our parents' generation had far more robust unions: they got paid higher wages, and got treated with a lot more dignity over it. Even if unions weren't perfect, they prevent a few millionaires at the top from stomping all over the little people.

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> they got paid higher wages, and got treated with a lot more dignity over it

This. But I guess working conditions will need to go back to early 20th century ones for people to find out how low can things go without bargaining power.

Would she be offered such position if the company didn't "treat their employees like replaceable trash instead of human beings to save a few bucks"?

Performance-based sales in any industry (Internet ads, Yellow pages ads, timeshares, used cars) are known for high pace and high turnover. Companies are quick to hire, but also quick to fire.

If you told the company they were entering a long-term relationship with an employee, and it wouldn't be that easy to get rid of them, the employer would suddenly get very selective, and the candidate would probably have to show years of past sales experience, recommendations from previous employers, go through a few rounds of interviews, etc.

They are not treating employees like replaceable 'trash'. They are treating employees like replaceable workers.

And this relationship goes both ways. Employees can treat their employers as replaceable. Although I haven't seen an equivalent loaded word for 'trash' in this scenario.

And there is no reason to believe that the only reason she was fired was because she wanted days off. Based on her own testimony, which is the best version of the events for her, she had many times used leaves to care for her children and put her manager in a 'difficult position'. So she would have been marked as a bad employee.

As for the union. A union of sellers of anything is called a cartel and is illegal, but if it's a union of sellers of labour then it is suddenly the shining beacon of equality. The only real difference is that union of sellers have way more voting power.

> Large corporations (this one has north of 3k employees and is pulling in hundreds of millions in revenue)

The statistic 'revenue' is well chosen to support your point, because they also posted a net loss in 2015, and 2013, and 2012 and 2011, all in the order of tens of millions of dollars, so while they have a lot of receipts they don't actually have any spare cash.

Companies, big or small, have some quota of instances where they can engage in charity instead of business (that is, make decisions on the basis of their humanitarian value rather than how much they increase net revenue), sometimes they literally engage in charity outside of the company (sponsoring good causes) and sometimes they engage in charity inside the company.

However, if they exceed their quota, they go bankrupt, and then they are incapable of engaging in any future charity and also everyone who works for them gets fired. Companies who consistently lose money (like Yelp) have a lower quota for charity than companies who consistently post profits.

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