Google’s CEO faces employee questions about layoffs — “Why has there been such an extraordinary effort to limit the internal visibility of layoffs announcements?”

L4sBot@lemmy.worldmod to Technology@lemmy.world – 313 points –
Google’s CEO faces employee questions about layoffs
theverge.com

Google’s CEO faces employee questions about layoffs — “Why has there been such an extraordinary effort to limit the internal visibility of layoffs announcements?”::During a recent TGIF all-hands meeting, Google CEO Sundar Pichai addressed what sources describe as a growing morale crisis inside the company.

66

You are viewing a single comment

Each and every one of us deserves to work for a company that cares enough about its employees that they don't need a union.

That failing, we need protection from the companies we work for and the only viable opportunity at this point are in fact unions.

That's not how relations between employers and employees work.

It's like saying you don't need a democracy if the king cares enough about his subjects.

It might work for a time, but the power balance is such that you can't rely on the goodwill of leaders alone.

Believe it or not, there are jobs out there that do work that way. It's generally not in public corporations.

That's why I also said failing that we do need unions.

he's not saying there aren't any companies that do right to their employees at this current moment. he's saying if left unchecked, it leaves room for somebody to come in and make it bad for everyone. that being said, we've already failed. we need union.

So is that significantly different for me saying it would be nice if we could do that but that feeling we need unions?

It's different because you seem to be saying "workers should be able to be incredibly vulnerable to the whims of employers because employers should be good people". The other guy's response to that is "why would we ever assume employers are going to be good to their employees absent any mechanism to enforce said good behavior?"

Of course we all deserve that kind of employer! Unfortunately, the entire problem is that employers aren’t generally like that.

It’s like saying we shouldn’t need laws against murder if people would just stop the killing, or we shouldn’t have XYZ problems with youth if only the parents would do a good job, etc.

We should not base our decisions on the fact that a few companies are generous enough to treat their employees well. Those are exceptions, and will always be exceptions. Capitalism doesn't reward you for doing it beyond some good PR.

Sometimes, those companies aren't even as generous as it first appears, anyway.