Well, this is what unions are for. In the countries I know, union membership gets you legal costs insurance for work related cases (for exactly these power dynamics). And economies of scale usually mean that unions have pretty good employment law attorneys.
Union can't force a company to rehire you when you're "untouchable". In a lot of these environments corporations like Konami have enough power to essentially make you unemployable. Not having a positive reference (or even having an unofficial black mark against you) from them can easily be end of your career in the field. Especially if you slandered (or, god forbid, sued!) your previous employer.
As said, I have now clue about things in Japan, but in Germany, a court can definitely order the company to rehire you if the reason for firing was unlawful. In smaller companies coming back to that job usually isn't fun (as your boss usually was directly involved in the case), thus in these cases you usually get compensation of about a year's worth of wages.
Bigger companies are usually pretty professional about these things. (Completely different domain, but just look at Apple and Samsung being in court while Samsung still being a supplier for Apple.)
I mentioned in some other topics, but Japan has a pretty good protection systems like most European countries on paper. The difference lies in what a law can't easily catch. They can put an enormous amount of informal obstacles to a so-called "bad" employee, from subtle changes of seating to relegating to a humiliating position. Each of them is annoying by itself, but they're smart enough to make sure that none of them are significant enough for litigation. Then there can be a group bullying. Because every other employee is equally afraid of the company, they can collectively act like an orchestrated attack even when there's no explicit order. Japanese team work at its finest.
Again: union in the company you left of your own will (did you RTFA?) won't help you. Union in the company that won't hire you due to informal pressure won't help you either, because you aren't a member or working at the company.
I don't know about Germany but in the US, we apparently have a do not hire list that goes across company lines for even positions like bank tellers? There was no visible public outrage against any company that refused to hire former Wells Fargo employees for example
America has some of the worst worker protection laws and regulations in the developed world: occupational health and safety; minimum wage; paid time off (vacation, illness, parental leave); lunch and other breaks; consecutive hours worked in a day; 'at-will' termination; and so on. It really is an extreme outlier.
On the other hand, at least when it comes to software developers, americans seem to be extremely well paid compared to the rest of us and they pay far less in tax.
I'd make that trade any day, but then again that's just one industry and I'm just one person.
It's not a trade, it's just a temporary result of a market imbalance. When that stops to be case, programmers will get the same bad treatment like everybody else.
So I'd make rather live in a country with more sane and fair laws for all, and not extrapolate too much from what a specific field or two (even if it happens to be mine) might temporarily command.
> It's not a trade, it's just a temporary result of a market imbalance.
That temporary result has been going on for a few decades now. And it's only getting better for the engineers, because more and more tech companies need more and more employees and for the most part, CS degrees still remain difficult to get (relative to some other degrees).
So I agree it's temporary, however it will probably last until after my retirement short of another .com bubble.
It depends on how old you are but I'd be careful assuming that things will last that long unless you're in your 50s now. There's a huge IT community which was employed to do commodity tasks (helpdesk, networking, PC management, etc.) or working on enterprise software which is increasingly outsourced, competing with cloud offerings, etc. anywhere companies see it as a high cost, low strategic value area – which is not an uncommon attitude even where that's not true.
Software developers at the top end are better positioned than many for that but even if your job isn't directly exposed that's going to contribute to pressure against wage increases and respect, especially since senior management is going to keep seeing comparatively high labor costs.
I'm a frontend engineer for the one of the big 4 tech companies, so I'm not really concerned. I'm in my 30's now, and don't expect to be coding for the rest of my life, but is the field going to become so constricted that 30 years from now wages will stagnate? I doubt it, at least not in the grand scheme of things.
At the end of the day, I'm not going to plan my life around my job suddenly becoming less valuable.
It's been some time since I ran the numbers but when you isolate federal taxes and compare them the difference is stark. But when you combine all of our income taxes and compare the percentage the difference is much, much less significant. Federal, social security, state, state disability, etc. It does depend on the state though. If you add in health insurance costs since those are covered by the government in other countries the difference shrinks even more.
When you combine it all and compare the amount of benefits and safety nets provided to other countries it kind of feels like you're being screwed. I guess getting paid more is nicer but raising children here and realizing that they may not make nearly as much money while having such small or irrelevant safety nets is a sobering experience.
So my total tax rate in the US is just shy of 50%. Software developers are actually in the "sweet spot" for paying a ton in taxes: they make enough money to qualify for the high tax rates, but not enough money to make it worth exploiting the loopholes that rich folks use to avoid paying taxes.
What's your effective income tax rate (both state and federal)? Assuming your an average paid software engineer in SV, you have a marginal income tax rate of 28% (33% over $198k). Which means your effective tax rate is actually a lot lower than that. Assuming you are in California your marginal income tax rate is between 37% and 43%.
So I call bullshit. Marginal income tax rates are always higher than effective income tax rates. The only way you are paying a 50% tax rate is if you pretend ALL of your income is taxed at the 43% I mentioned AND you count FICA as a tax.
There are certain deductions that go away as your income goes up which is effectively an increase in tax rate as well. Student loan deductions for instance are 2500 I believe, but start going down after you break 80k. Then there's things like the social security payments which stop at 127,200 in 2017 so every dollar after that has a lower tax rate. It's very complicated but the last time I did taxes I paid north of 40% effective
> It's very complicated but the last time I did taxes I paid north of 40% effective
It's not that complicated. In order for you to have a 40% effective tax rate (including Federal, State, Local and FICA), assuming you ONLY took the standard deduction and you file single, you'd need an income of just over $450,000/year.
That assumes you have 1 exception, no deductions for retirement (which would actually reduce your effective rate) and only taking the standard deduction (you can't get lower!)
In fact, if you want to tax EVERY POSSIBLE tax into account (sales, property, fuel, etc), you'd need to make $300,000/year to achieve a 40% effective tax rate across all taxes.
So either you make a mountain of money, you have a terrible accountant, or you are lying.
Unpopular opinion, I know but I think we should try to get rid of as many credits and deductions as possible.
Every time someone take about simplifying the tax code, I bring it up. It will hurt me as well (I'm poor) but it is ok.
If you're in the tax bracket to pay 40%, I'd say I want to raise your taxes you pay but I also want to raise the taxes your overlords pay.
I want higher taxes so we can offer the same services to the wealthy that we offer to the poor. It is the right thing to do. We don't have too many wealthy people in this country. We should be able to include everyone. Can't afford to include people who make too much money? Too bad. The program can't exist.
I would want to create a consensus towards "no income checks". The government should not have any program that qualifies people based on income or assets. Be it Medicare, social security, or Medicaid, food stamps, college tuition, rent subsidies, school lunch or whatever. You should not be able to exclude anyone because they make too much money or have too much money.
Of course, economists will say this is stupid and inefficient and irrational but I say economists are not even people. Nobody is rational in the real world.
I'm not sure how unpopular that is unless you are one of the vested interests behind some of these deductions. The cost of enforcing these regulations seems to grow exponentially as the number of regulations grow. Many proponents of UBI, such as myself, want there to be zero means testing as it would save a significant amount of cost vs all of the current regulation behind things like welfare, unemployment, Medicare, etc.
If you're in a marriage with two high earners (lets say > $500k household gross) then most of your income is being taxed at the highest (or close to highest) marginal rate. You also don't qualify for a bunch of deductions (student loan tax breaks are only for people under a certain income, you can only deduct medical expenses over 10% of household gross, etc). You also don't always get to claim the full amount of your deduction from local/state taxes thanks to the way AMT is calculated.
If you earn much more than that, generally companies find other ways to pay you (equity, deferred compensation, etc.) that have more administrative overhead, but less of a tax hit.
And yes, FICA is definitely a tax. A regressive one since the rate goes down the higher your income is, but it's still a tax.
> If you're in a marriage with two high earners (lets say > $500k household gross
Well yes, if you are in the top 1% of wage earners in the US your effective tax rate is going to be pretty high. In fact, you'll pay around $200,000 in taxes on that, give or take (if you live in a high-tax state like California). But that's literally affecting 1% of the population, and they're probably doing ok.
> If you earn much more than that, generally companies find other ways to pay you
Most companies give equity in the form of RSU's rather than options, so income taxes hit immediately upon vesting.
> And yes, FICA is definitely a tax.
Yes they are a payroll tax, but just "adding" them into your income taxes is extremely misleading. Income tax is just that. FICA is a payroll tax.
> If you're in a marriage with two high earners (lets say > $500k household gross) then most of your income is being taxed at the highest (or close to highest) marginal rate.
Incorrect.
The highest marginal rate kicks in, for married-filing-jointly, at just over $470K; the next highest at over $416K. You have to making close to $1M in taxable income for a married couple to be paying the top marginal rate on most of their income, and over $800K to paying at least the second-highest marginal rate on most of your income.
At $500K, you're just barely paying at least the third highest marginal rate on half your income.
> Software developers are actually in the "sweet spot" for paying a ton in taxes
That is as it should be. Is there something wrong? The only problem is that people above you are able to weasel out of their taxes, but the fact that you're in the top bracket means you're rich, you made it. Congratulations! Enjoy the high quality meats! Consider lobbying your Senator to close the loopholes.
Someone earning £80k ($100k) per year in the UK will pay about 30%[0] tax this is inclusive of income tax, local property tax and National Insurance ( mandatory insurance which covers healthcare, basic sickness and retirement benefits ).
If you are paying 50% tax, then you are being ripped off by your country because you are not gaining anything in exchange for paying all that money AND giving up all those protections.
We have those protections in the UK and they are similar across all of the EU. The highest rate of tax in the UK is 45% and you only pay that on anything you earn over something like £150k ($200k) per year. You have to pay ~2% to national insurance as well, but this is much much cheaper than private healthcare in the US. Local tax is pegged to the value of the house you live in and is typically between £0.8 and £1.5k ($1k-$2k) per year.
You're right, but keep in mind that VAT is really only paid on things you buy for private consumtion, e.g. not on rent, medical insurance, pension plans, mortgages, not on your office etc. In the income brackets we talk about, at most 20% of income is taxed with VAT making the effective VAT tax rate 20%x20% or about 4%.
> and yes, you're not getting your taxes worth.
Thats debatable :) The US has a live expentancy as low as Cuba, very high crime rates, very high violent crime rates, low trust in society, massive homelessness, bad schools (but good top universities), bad care for the mentally ill, horrendous working conditions, ...
As far as quality of live per GDP per capita goes, the US is among the least efficient of all industrialized countries. Just think about the fact that Cuba manages to archieve the same live expectancy as the US with 1/6 of the GDP per capita of the US!
Total tax rate of 50%? This sounds extremely high. Are you sure you are not confusing between marginal and total tax rate? If you prepare you taxes with any software package, it usually tells your effective tax rate, does it really say 50% or near that? I checked back and they year I paid the most taxes I had effective rate of 24%, usually it's even less. I know software devs who make way more than me, but I don't see how even that would take them to 50%.
> ...we apparently have a do not hire list that goes across company lines for even positions like bank tellers? There was no visible public outrage against any company that refused to hire former Wells Fargo employees for example
For bank tellers, I believe this is tracked via the federal agency FINRA, through AWC submittals. For the Wells Fargo employees, you likely are thinking of the brokers who were ordered by Wells Fargo management to fraudulently open accounts. Allegedly, many of these brokers then found out later after they were terminated from Wells Fargo that the bank marked their termination on a U5 form in a manner that all but ejects them from the financial services industry, forever [1]. In both of these cases, they are via mandatory regulatory notifications, and not like the Japanese cases discussed here where it sounds more informal.
The most famous financial criminal of the 1980s United States, Michael Milkin, is now a wealthy philanthropist living large in Los Angeles. The disincentive for large-scale financial crime in the United States is just not there.
In countries where unions can cover your legal costs in work-related conflicts with employers/ex-employers this at least counteracts the power assymetry. Which might mean that you can still put your experience on your resumé without worrying about Konami going after you.
It is obviously not a flawless protection, especially not in terms of backroom business and that sort of quiet slander. But it does have the potential to counter some of these aggressive methods.
Not so sure. The relations between mafia and unions seems to me unique to the US, or at least not so widespread.
Unions can indeed have issues (on one end corrupt leadership that just pads their bank accounts or screws those that they're supposed to represent, on the other end over-privileging of a certain field), but turning into "unlabelled mafia" is not a core trait.
Certainly it's possible, and yet I don't think there is much other way for employees to achieve any sort of political power over their employers. It's also probably worth mentioning, since we're talking about Japan, the extent to which the worlds of Japanese business and Japanese organized crime are intertwined.
Many countries have laws mandating that a company has to provide a positive or neutral letter of reference for all leaving employees. Apparently not the case in Japan though.
This happens in Germany but it just means that if someone has a simple neutral letter of reference, the person herself is a terrible worker.
You are making the scale from 0 to 10 into another scale of 5 to ten. Employers are not stupid and in fact they have developed their own codes to express whatever they want to express to other employers they have good relationships with.
The same happens in China where it is offensive to say: NO!
So , instead of telling it, they wait and tell you Yes(!!)
There is an indirect code to translate the time and emphasis employed by the a yes into a no everybody agrees with.
> Union can't force a company to rehire you when you're "untouchable".
In Italy we had the popular article 18 of the workers' statute that stated that if someone got fired without a dismissal for cause the company was obliged to rehire the worker.
I don't know an accurate answer to your question, but lets presume unions did it all.
I the GPs point is that having the power to change culture over the course of decades does not guarantee the ability to fix a single problem for a single individual.
Well, if the unions managed to secure reforms such that that person's problem would not occur then they'd solve it. It certainly seems more likely to help more people than doing everything piecemeal and on an individual basis.
A strong enough union can force all kinds of things, for better or worse. Whatever a company may gain by harassing a few ex-employees is nothing compared to the damage done by your entire workforce walking off the job.
If you have been bullied out of, or illegally fired from, a workplace, I don't imagine you'd actually want your old job back. What you would want is enough money to cover your living expenses for long enough to get a job you do want.
If you slander your previous employer, then you deserve it if your career comes to an end.
A successful lawsuit against a previous employer wouldn't be likely to make you untouchable. However, I could see how an unsuccessful one would.
Unions are just another source of abuse for workers. Their leaders often make much more than those they represent. You have to pay the dues, even when you know the union is going to waste the money on this type of largess, as well as on politicians you don't agree with and who you know aren't going to help you anyway. Got talent? It doesn't matter. In union jobs, it's the politically connected and those who have been in the union the longest that will get the job.
Unions are organizations like any other. You can structure it on merit or on politics, and you can't blanket all unions as acting the same way. Most have awful charters meant to just enfranchise the established old guard at the expense of new blood, but they don't have to do it that way.
It is also a bit funny to demonize unions in a conversation about a company that uses its own largess to ruin the lives of former employees.
Perhaps you could point me to some unions that operate in this egalitarian way. I haven't seen them.
As a thought experiment, just how would a union decide to protect or not protect a worker in a certain situation? By adherence to union rules? These are often inflexible, counterproductive, and morale destroying. Have you ever worked in a shop where you were not allowed to plug or unplug an appliance because thats a job for the electricians union? I have. It took several weeks to install a copier because of the unions involved. The movers couldn't unplug the thing, so they left when they saw it was plugged in. That company is no longer in business. What happened to the workers?
Perhaps the workers could be protected by always siding with the worker, even when the worker is not good at what they do or is abusive? Sounds like some police unions.
I see the pro-union people are out in force. I suggest you go read UPS, FedEx, and Kroger's Union stuff. What I say is true because I've been to court over it. You sign up, YOU LOSE THE RIGHT TO REPRESENT YOURSELF IN ALL LEGAL MATTERS. It's explicitly written like that.
Unions did wonders to drag the workforce out of slavery-like conditions. You are confusing the real thing with the modern, corrupted and nepotist, organizations.
It's bordering delusional to me to argue that unions are obsolete with all the "sharing-economy" dystopia and more being spouted about. Especially in the case of the US that never really had a continuously strong labor movement, which is clearly reflected in its laws and regulations.
Exactly - especially when so many "sharing economy" style jobs exploit defining workers as independent self-employed contractors instead of employees, a critical distinction to avoid paying for benefits that employees are often legally entitled to.
This is why Uber spend so much money fighting cases about the classification of their drivers work status in virtually every country they operate in. Most western countries have laws designed to prevent companies exploiting employees by reclassifying them as contractors, especially for low paying or low skilled jobs. The recent Uber employment case in the U.K. Is a great example, and is precisely the kind of problem unions were historically good at dealing with.
Indeed. Another example, that may hit closer to home for the readers of this site, would be the idea of the "inherent" need for unpaid overtime which must not be labeled systematic, but is just coincidentally repeating.
"But IT has unique demands requiring it!". That the same trick is used from literal sweatshops and up must therefor also be a coincidence.
Is it possible to make a company that doesn't pay a "living wage" to its employees without being accused of abuse and exploitation?
Serious question, what if I made a small side business just for fun where I paid school children peanuts to run errands for me? Soon, those kids grow up and are still working for me and are now angry with me that I am paying them peanuts when their livelihoods and families depend on me. Yet I don't have enough to give a "living wage" with benefits - I just wanted a fun little side business for the school kids - not support everyone's entire family...
Sure - I have a farm that I run. A high schooler asks if I'll hire him so he can make an extra buck. I say sure - I'll pay 10 cents per egg that he gathers.
Soon he drops out of high school and demands to be paid a living wage with health benefits since I am now his source of income. The other egg gatherers unionize with him and threaten to strike if I don't. I fire them all and scrap the business instead because I can't afford to pay them all a living wage with benefits without making my eggs way more expensive than the competition.
Do you have an example that doesn't involve children at all? I am not touching one with them because of the other needless complications they introduce.
I'm currently part of a consulting firm. It essentially manages and provides labor to paying customers. It provides benefits to the maximum extent allowed by law. That is, we are often frustrated by the law when we want to provide better benefits. One example is retirement savings. We would provide more, but the law prevents us.
If an employee is doing good work, the customer paying for it will let us know. If an employee isn't, the customer will let us know. Most of the time, we'll find a better fit for that employee. Rarely, we'll let them go. When an employee wants to move on, they can find another position within what we offer or they can find new business and bring that in. They'll get a share of that.
To be honest, this sounds like a (more) authoritarian version of a union, where it's led by a dictator/owner rather than an admittedly flawed democracy, and capable of the same flaws unions are vulnerable to.
For workers, what makes this ambivalent dictatorship arrangement categorically better than a union hall?
I think any honest examination of the question is going to conclude that employers and their employees often have opposing interests and the lack of collective bargaining makes it much easier for employers to have their way in a relationship that is wildly imbalanced in the first place (I mean, really, compare the stakes of one worker's job for the employee and employer). We are in a profession where we are far more insulated from the ill effects of this than others; I think a lot of people posting here forget that.
Granted, I have no idea how it works in Japan.