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Comment by koblas | Hacker News Reader

This is not really a technology issue, it's a non-union employee issue. As a society we're asking the government to step in and legislate to protect workers rather than fostering unions to negotiate on a case by case basis.

http://www.theguardian.com/money/us-money-blog/2014/jul/23/e...

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Yeah, there was recently a (rare) train strike in Sweden over something vaguely along these lines. The train company wanted to move to flex-staffing that can vary on a week-by-week or day-by-day basis based on traffic models. The proximate trigger was that they laid off 250 salaried employees and immediately re-hired them as hourly employees, but the real issue of the strike was over that kind of flex-staffing. The strike ended with a compromise proposed by a mediator that was a victory for the train companies on the main formal dispute (no limit on hourly or flex staffing), but seen as a practical win for the union (hourly workers will have to be paid a significant wage premium over the salaried equivalent, to compensate for the uncertainty/precarity of the arrangement): http://www.thelocal.se/20140618/swedens-trains-back-on-track...

At least here in the UK, it's not (just) a non-union employee issue. Part of the problem is that business interests have a hugely disproportionate influence over the media, and as soon as any media outlet lets any union spokesperson speak it's portrayed as an example of left-wing bias. So instead we get people like the head of the Confederation of British Industry, a business lobbying group, claiming that workers benefit from this because it offers the workers "flexibility". I hear the US is even worse in this regard.

I disagree, the media in the UK is popularist, they gleefully attacked businesses over zero hours contracts.

I agree that the software connection is weak, but it can be a reminder to people that decisions made by software can have a real positive or negative effect on human beings, in ways that the software (and software makers) can't easily predict. How do we build more humanism into our apps?

The bigger question will be how can we build more humanism into our managers.

Software is just a tool. Ultimately, managers are the ones who need to be educated on the impact of their decisions.

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