Comment by yourapostasy | Hacker News Reader

Comment by yourapostasy | Hacker News Reader

Questions I haven't seen answered yet:

* Employee gets a destination with no parking available, who gets dinged for non-delivery?

* Employee gets a destination with no parking available, but is told to double-park by local manager. Gets ticketed. Who gets dinged?

* Does this constitute a non-CDL delivery service, or courier service? Will Wal-Mart handle licensing and insurance coverage of personal employee vehicles?

* What exactly constitutes "on their way"? A block out of their way? Several kilometers out of their way?

* What guarantees are in place that the definition of "on their way" isn't expanded without due consideration in the future?

* Is the compensation piece work, or based upon time? If piece work as implied by the 10-package maximum, and an unforeseen traffic stoppage takes up employee's time, does employee have flexibility to bail on delivery and do some shopping while waiting for stoppage to clear? If there is no such flexibility, I can practically count upon the absence of "surge compensation".

* Do recipients have the option to view a picture of employee and vehicle, with map showing location as delivery draws near, ensuring security and privacy?

* Employee slips on stairs while walking down them after completing last delivery on way to their car, breaks a leg. Is this covered by worker's compensation, or is employee on their own?

* Employee is assaulted by dog/perp while making delivery. Who pays?

This is a laudable effort, I like the general idea, but this is all but guaranteed open to worker abuses in the future as management "optimizes" it, in a "pray I don't alter it further"-fashioned deal. I don't expect Wal-Mart stocker staff for example, to think of these and many other contingencies when signing up, for which they will almost certainly be hung out to dry if their number comes up.

Now, if only there was some sort of way to force Wal-mart to answer these kinds of questions. Maybe... A union of employees, who want to understand their relationship with their employer better, and to push back on unfair parts of said relationship.

> Maybe... A union of employees

Wow that's a laugh! Last time I checked, even speaking the word 'union' is enough to be fired for cause at Wal-Mart.

Also, most of the people who work there have few or no other options, the only thing keeping them out of company towns is what little worker protection legislation that's left.

If you don't understand why businesses don't like unions, you've never owned a business. Also, historically, unions in the USA for whatever reason a lot of times end up becoming mafioso (not sure if it's the same in other countries).

Yet without unions, employees are on their own to evaluate the non-obvious risks and hidden costs in deals such as this one. It's massive information asymmetry leading inevitably to exploitation; it's far from the ideal of perfect information and distorts the labor marketplace, leading to huge inefficiencies in the labor economy.

We desperately need innovation in how labor unions are structured and compete with each other to reduce the drag they impose while keeping the benefit they provide.

There are (was) unions around Walmart, however, historically, they're just massive cash grabs operating in locations where unionization is favorable and can be forced.

I don't think anyone lacks understanding as to why businesses dislike unions.

Meh. We have unions to thank for the vast majority of workplace protections as well as things like the five-day workweek. In light of this, I'm okay with unions not being perfect.

Right, businesses don't like unions because they decrease their power over employees. That's not a good argument against them, however. If anything, I'd say its a good argument for them.

I've often heard that the biggest problem with unions isn't higher salary and benefit demands but inflexibility. Unions often insist on things like work rules (who gets to do what) and are resistant to automation or other forms of efficiency improvement. They basically end up mandating that things never change, eventually killing the host.

From what I know of union work rules I can't even imaging trying to run any form of high-tech manufacturing enterprise under those conditions. You just couldn't do anything. That kind of bureaucracy and restriction is death to any kind of innovation.

I've heard that unions in some other countries like Germany and Japan are different. I'd be curious to hear a German take on it.

Union rules change all the time. Management just isn't usually willing to offer sufficient incentive during negotiations, since that would eat in to their profits.

Ultimately I think this comes down to the paradox of thrift.

You want everything as cheap as possible, which means you want everyone else to not belong to a union. But you want to be paid as much as possible, so you want to belong to a union. Your economic self-interest would be maximized if you were the only unionized person on Earth... but of course that's impossible.

It's not just "corporate greed." I mean that definitely exists and many executives are over-compensated, but compared to other costs like capital, labor, and taxes, that's usually just not that big of a cost center for a large company. That's part of how they get away with it. If CXOs were a significant cost center the shareholders would be less tolerant of those fat compensation packages.

Everyone wants everything cheap.

A popular assertion, but one which ignores the demonstrable willingness of people to pay more at places like farmer's markets or shop at stores that don't always offer the lowest prices or widest selection. Since many people willingly make sacrifices on either price or convenience, you're arguing from a flawed premise.

Alternately, it is a good assertion but the interpretation of cheap is wrong.

Cheap should be defined in a way that is inclusive of all the costs, both monetary and non-monetary societal costs. Then I think everyone does want everything cheap - this is just a statement that nobody likes waste.

But it's just word games. It would be better if we did away with these pernicious generalizations.

Nah, I'd be willing to pay more if it meant my fellow workers were all provided with the protections a union. There's more to life than just money.

Germany's economy seems to be humming, and while it has some industrial giants like Siemens the bulk of its economic energy comes from the mittelstand, quality manufacturing firms with 500 or fewer employees. Worker's councils are the norm in German industry and have a collegial rather than adversarial relationship with employers.

It's not hard to find more information about this. You might also find it instructive to consider the much narrower earning discrepancies between line and executive workers in other countries compared to the US, even after you filter out the more sensationalist comparisons and allow for the fact of the larger domestic market.

> and have a collegial rather than adversarial relationship with employers.

That's basically what I've heard.

I'd like to see a US company intentionally try to form a union among its employees along the German model. That'd be an interesting experiment. I could see this working in a high skill area where ability to attract and retain top talent is a major differentiator.

businesses don't like unions because with a union they cant treat their employees like expendable cogs.

The Union/Mafia problems stems from unions getting suppressed by corporate-hired goons, forcing unions get their own goons to fight back. said goons tended to be the local mafioso

Also, construction (Which is notorios for the presence of 'mafiosos') is a business where... A lot of organized crime is involved, regardless of whether or not the work is unionized.

This is the comment I was hoping to see. Real scenarios and issues that the hand-wavy policy doesn't make clear, and that delivery operations deal with all the time.

Fortunately Walmart's law firm has answers to all of those questions. And every one of them favors Walmart, because that's their job.

I understand the concerns. They're absolutely valid. But I suspect a huge, multinational corporation like Walmart has likely done their due-diligence here. Or maybe I'm just feeling optimistic today.

Also:

* What happens if fewer employees volunteer than is required to meet delivery demand?

> and an unforeseen traffic stoppage takes up employee's time, does employee have flexibility to bail on delivery and do some shopping while waiting for stoppage to clear?

I wish every employer had a "traffic is hard, let's go shopping!" policy.

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