Now that they have that - and without offering any new value to Facebook - they want all the perks that high demand, highly skilled workers get. It's a never ending cycle.
Not that I don't feel for their disposition, but it shows how these types of requests come with no understanding of basic supply and demand.
That leads to Eloi and Morlocks, an underclass schlepping 50+ miles, doubling their day, to do janitorial work for companies.
Are they (technically) skilled employees with valuable knowledge, to Facebook? No. Is the value they present to Facebook worth more? Arguably so.
Or they'll start deserting SF/SJ and who will valet park your car at Facebook after that?
Also, I don't think I saw a quote where these workers asked for "all the perks". Just perhaps an opportunity to not be homeless.
Not everyone has the means for political action. Frequently, those who need it most are those least able to participate.
It's a losing situation all around. What's left that might be a winning option? Convert contract services into in-house services, (and downside services until the costs are considered acceptable)?
Everyone wants everything they can bargain for. Welcome to real life. Nobody goes and reads God's Supply Meter to decide what job they're gonna do or where they're gonna live. People don't make personal career choices to optimize the GDP; they make them to maximize their own standard of living.
Now workers behave exactly as the system says they should -- and you complain?
Shouldn't any worldly, aware capitalist understand this?
I think it's a moral issue. We need to find a way to structure society in away that even people who don't have the hot jobs of the moment can survive.
Increasing wages does not help if the housing supply is the underlying problem, since everyone is still bidding for a fixed resource. It just means everyone pays more rent. Wage increases in the bay area are always at least partially wealth transfers directly to landowners. Facebook can't solve that by paying more, the housing policy in the bay needs to change to allow more density.
We have several ways to do this, but evidently none of them are acceptable to the people who have the power to implement them.
The differential value software engineers create over janitors is not because of their intrinsic worth but because of their position in the economy. There is no reason to think engineers should be more entitled to the surplus value they produce than the support workers who are equally essential to the process.
Saying "this is just how supply and demand works" is a refusal to think.
At companies like Facebook and Google, perks aren't divvied up by how skilled you are. A junior HR worker or accountant gets the same free food as the top engineers. One could hardly argue that they are equally important to the company. The division is between white collar and blue collar workers - the former get all the perks, and the latter get nothing. When you offer the perks to lawyers (an oversupplied profession) without a second thought but withhold them from the technician who fixes stuff at your datacenters in the middle of the night (someone who actually works on your product), it smells more like classism than anything else.
Similarly as a contractor for an external services company you aren't going to get all the perks as the employees of the company. And they have to be separate for tax reasons.
And of course this is shitty. I think there needs to be something done about the housing market and general CoL in the area though, as well as asking one employer to pay a bit more. Having Facebook subsidize the area might look great while they have money but isn't sustainable; they should be putting pressure on Facebook to back/lobby for affordable housing initiatives on behalf of it's employees.
i mean, don't city councils also find it highly revenue-enhancing to encourage the replacement of older housing stock and long time owners with new, high priced, units?
The point remains that both groups of workers are essential to have in close proximity.
It may not work for everyone, but where housing is in short supply, and the demand for labour is great, a working dorm/camp setup for those forced to be working homeless might be helpful.
You can make $150/hr, if your living expenses work out to $140/hr you're not making (or keeping) much.
Like co-working, maybe other setups like co-housing setups might need to come up. They obviously may not work for everyone including families.
If COL in an area is so high that essential personnel can't afford to live within 100 miles or reasonably commute there, it seems to me like the sort of circumstances that lead to a company moving to a more affordable area.