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this post was submitted on 19 Jan 2024
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Work Reform
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A place to discuss positive changes that can make work more equitable, and to vent about current practices. We are NOT against work; we just want the fruits of our labor to be recognized better.
Our Philosophies:
- All workers must be paid a living wage for their labor.
- Income inequality is the main cause of lower living standards.
- Workers must join together and fight back for what is rightfully theirs.
- We must not be divided and conquered. Workers gain the most when they focus on unifying issues.
Our Goals
- Higher wages for underpaid workers.
- Better worker representation, including but not limited to unions.
- Better and fewer working hours.
- Stimulating a massive wave of worker organizing in the United States and beyond.
- Organizing and supporting political causes and campaigns that put workers first.
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Oh, I very much doubt that he's the only billionaire who's written a letter like this to Google in the past year.
They've written one like that to every tech company. It's probably just so they can repeat the conditions from before they got sued for colluding to depress employee wages. This has the same effect, except this time it's not collusion, it's doing their fiduciary duty because shareholders are demanding it.
the "fiduciary duty" isn't a real thing.
they can fire and change who governs the board by using their majority share holder votes (which has been selecting short term max profit guys) but it's a myth that they have a legal responsibility to return anything to shareholders
Uh... its not illegal for an investment to not make money?
Fiduciary duty is real, in many jurisdictions at least. It means that the executives of a company are required to act in the best interest of the shareholders. In 99% of the cases what shareholders want is maximum profit.
But really, in almost every case where someone is found to be guilty of breaching this duty, it's because they actually actively did something fraudulent. Otherwise it's much easier for the shareholders or board to just fire the problematic people and get new ones. It's not like being incompetent is a crime.
for source you can look at eg. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fiduciary
This goes through the legal cases in the US and UK that establish it isn't generally a requirement to maximize shareholder value above all else: https://legislate.ai/blog/does-the-law-require-public-companies-to-maximise-shareholder-value