"The unions also procured a letter from 14 mayors that criticized the company for not making its fiber optic network available to enough of their residents, and from 20 United States senators urging Verizon to act as a “responsible corporate citizen” and negotiate fairly with its workers."
Interesting; so the union's going on strike not only to maintain their pension levels, but also to help underserved communities. Noble of them. But it would be nobler still if they offered concessions of pay and benefit cuts in exchange for Verizon making its fiber available to more neighborhoods.
Obviously it's just a ploy to get the voters on their side, but they're omitting the detail that the voters are going to end up paying higher for their phone and data service as a result.
The union is doing what it is supposed to do. Fight for the workers it represents. The ability to negotiate with Verizon is important and critical to ensure that each worker gets a fair wage, regardless of the message. These are hardworking men and woman who need a fair wage and benefits. I know several folks who work for Verizon & support them and hope they get what they need to make it in this world.
Verizon has had years to install fiber in all of its markets. Instead, they took the money & gave it to shareholders & management. Incarnations of Verizon (MA-BELL) have had protections from the government for many many years. They have neglected their infrastructure for years, but their rates keep going up and up!
There's no ploy. Verizon customers always pay because the prices keep rising regardless of what the union is doing.
What the USA really needs is to shutdown these for profit companies that provide our voice/IP infrastructure. We need have a "new-deal" type of deployment, where every state in the country should have fiber on every pole. This can be done, only if we remove the for-profit mindset. Once this is done, anybody can sell services on those fiber lines (streaming movies, cloud base storage etc... VOIP).
Enough with the bullshit, the current ISP/Voice/Video in the USA is shit and we need to remove the stranglehold these companies have in our states and government (COMCAST, VERIZON, AT&T, Time Warner etc...). Their is not competition in the USA and it's bullshit.
You can't pass on 100% of worker wage increase to customers without losing net revenue. So, a lot of this money comes from management and stock owners.
PS: It's a question of price / demand curves. Raising prices costs customers which reduces profits.
But by the same logic, you can't pass on 100% of profit to the workers without losing spending flexibility and the ability to reinvest in the company's infrastructure and future prosperity.
No one complains that Google Fiber doesn't serve every neighborhood in the cities where it is established. Google negotiated that deal with the cities, and if a city refuses to let them target only specific, profitable neighborhoods, they simply take that city off the list.
In my opinion, this whole situation is emblematic of why American digital infrastructure is slow and behind the times, because of antiquated and senseless rules.
I don't think Verizon is some kind of nice company; they're reprehensible at times and frankly I feel sorry for the people working there and I kind of understand their anger. But, business is business.
A failure to serve poor neighborhoods actually is a criticism people have of Google Fiber (search for "google fiber digital divide" for examples), and it's something they attempt to combat by providing free service to libraries, community centers, and low-income housing in some places.
I do think that trying to shame or regulate companies into serving unprofitable areas is the wrong way to go about it. If it's that important, then subsidize service in those areas so it's actually profitable. But Americans seem to hate obvious subsidies, and prefer to make them weird and convoluted instead.
The problem is it is generally profitable, just less profitable. Worse we are subsidizing them, but if they finish the subsides end and none of the subsides where directly tied to actually deploying new fiber to every home.
PS: You get a lot of very different numbers out there. But remember at 10 acres per house you get 64 houses per square mile and people tend to clump near roads and in towns. http://blog.performantnetworks.com/2012/11/how-much-does-rur... Sure, there are a few places where it's still unprofitable, but we can debate the last 1/2th of a percent of homes when you get close to 99%.
Don't forget that in order to make the fiber optic network available to more residents, more work has to be done on the ground and up the poles, and some of that work will be done by unionized workers.
Nobility has little to do with it. The complaint is that the company is refusing to pay for work that might be done by union-represented employees. The fact that the work would also benefit the paying customers is just poking the other thumb in the other eye, too.
When the interests of both your customers and your employees are aligned behind something, I would think that you might have an interest in doing it, whatever it may be.
Pensions are outdated and are bad for both workers and employers. The idea that you get a guaranteed payout (defined benefit) creates conflicts when today's managers have to make decisions that affect the entire company over the next few decades. Considering that few managers believe that they will be in charge at the time the pension benefit are due, they are incentivized to push costs into the future through bloated pensions.The employee is then stuck holding the credit risk of their employer from long ago.
A much better system is a defined contribution, in which the employer makes a contribution to a retirement fund for the employee. The employee then has sole proprietorship of the funds, regardless what happens to the company.
Something that only has value because you can buy things with it. Contrast with gold-backed dollar or silver-backed dollar, which have value because they may be redeemed for a fixed quantity of a commodity good.
Money not subject to massive inflation and deflation as its value is not tied to the amount of gold coming out of the ground, but rather to the economy.
Gold-backed current sucks. When new gold is discovered it's value swings wildly. When no gold is being discovered but the economy is going great there is a shortage of it so deflation sets in, causing loans to balloon in real terms.
> A much better system is a defined contribution, in which the employer makes a contribution to a retirement fund for the employee.
I agree, but the government has so many rules around this I wonder if pensions at one point were a better value and a way to work around these arcane rules. For example, the max an employer can add to a 401k is 35k. Another is if a family clears 200k, then you're not allowed to put money into an Roth IRA without huge penalties. Never mind that $5500 is already not very much to save for retirement, but we definitely cannot let everyone do the right thing and save money.
$5,500 per year, presumably for many years. And heaven forbid you should be so well off that you have to save for retirement with after-tax dollars and/or in taxable accounts! :P
Tax-advantaged savings accounts are to reward savers who might not otherwise save. They don't mean that everyone deserves tax-free saving.
While someone living in Dallas would see $200k as being very well off, think about a couple who lives in San Fran, or New York. 100k each is not truly 'well off' in those cities, so they are unfairly punished if they wanted to contribute what little money they have after living expenses to a roth.
We have to have a variety of tax bases (consumption, income, property.) Otherwise those with income/assets in excess of $500k can easily move money around to avoid paying a similar share to people who are less well-off.
Except that consumption based taxes encourage wealth hoarding, and are extremely regressive for families that spend most or all of their income. A better format would be a "average middle class household cost of living" adjustment.
>And heaven forbid you should be so well off that you have to save for retirement with after-tax dollars and/or in taxable accounts!
Well, this is where the distortion comes in. The employer uses pre-tax money when funding pensions. The employee doesn't have the ability to do this. It's the same situation with other benefits.
So it's optimal to take a lower salary and more benefits. But this is strictly worse than if the taxation regime was the same for both employees and employers.
The government hates savings. There is no need for it anymore, as loans and the products on which the banks make money appear to be entirely divorced from the deposits on-hand at this point. The Fed just prints more money if the banks overextend. Thus, there is no need for banks to give a meaningful interest rate on savings, and the only reason to put your money on deposit at the bank is that things are intentionally made more difficult and expensive if you don't.
We need to recognize that we live under a regime in which bankers have the entire populous by the throat. To live a decent life by American standards, nearly everyone has to take out loans for every major purchase and ends up paying 2-3x the nominal cost in interest. Let the massive scale of this sink in for a moment and you'll get some concept of just how powerful, all-consuming, and critical the banks are in this country.
Savings is anathema to this loan-based society that's been concocted. If someone has substantial savings, they may not need a loan, and that's very bad for the powers that be (because they won't get 2-3x the cost of the item over some years). Keynesian economics has been taken to its logical conclusion of sub-zero interest rates and practically everyone is indentured to their lienholders and employers. "The Road to Serfdom" indeed.
I agree that the government hates savings, but I'm confused about two of your points. If rates are at or near zero it does not cost 2-3x to buy an item with loan. The indentured part is certainly true though. The government has helped tie everyone to their company. Health insurance and max retirement savings are two of the biggest items that are almost impossible to do outside of your employer.
Better still would be to divorce healthcare and retirement planning from employers altogether, and make it easier to move your retirement money between competitors.
From an actuarial standpoint, a defined benefit plan isn't any more complicated than just buying perpetuities from any companies or governments stable enough to offer them, until your benefit obligations are met.
The problems arise when current managers use the pensions as a means to game the accounting numbers or as a means to embezzle funds.
401ks are fairly mobile although many people simply forget about them. The sad truth is that many people would not allocate enough to their retirement and healthcare without guided direction or a minimal effort option.
But I agree with the problem of pensions but I would also add that today's managers don't want to fund them the way they should. Instead, they set aside some money and assume a very rosy growth rate that doesn't always materialize. Even with that inflated expected growth rate, pensions are often still underfunded. An employee should be free to contribute to such a perpetuity if he so chooses.
Underfunded pension liabilities will likely take down several large cities over the coming years.
> Underfunded pension liabilities will likely take down several large cities over the coming years.
No, they won't. As usual, the federal government will step in as the insurer of last resort, just as they do with the pension guarantee corp [1].
It's almost like HN gets off on people's retirement compensation being cut. Don't blame the people who were promised benefits, blame the politicians who did so, and the apathetic voters who allowed it. If your returns forecasts were wrong because of lack of growth, guess what, you get to make up the difference. That's how business works.
I would think that the larger problem is "overfunding" pensions. The IRS has some pretty strong ideas about what constitutes an appropriate amount of funding for pensions because there were a few situations in which it could be used as a tax shelter (http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/05/09/how-the-irs...). Without the tax benefit, employers are discouraged from putting an appropriate amount of money in during good years.
I agree with you, but your point seems to be irrelevant. Verizon isn't proposing to replace the workers' pension plans with a defined contribution of equal value, they're just cutting the pensions.
If I'm understanding you correctly, it seems like those conflicts could be mitigated by better regulations around company pension contributions. Plus, you could probably align the c-level manager's incentives by regulating that their pensions have less priority than those of regular employees, so if pension cuts have to be made, they'll feel the hit harder and faster. Power should come with responsibility.
Defined contribution is not "a much better system" for employees. It just moves risk from the company onto them. IIRC, there's not actually much "employer credit risk" to employees because pensions have to participate in a mandatory government insurance program.
Defined contribution plans are better positioned for today's employment reality in which people switch jobs much more frequently. Pensions give employers more power to keep employees when it would otherwise be beneficial for them to leave for better pay.
Pay of the problem with DB Sachems is a few years ago accountants pushed though changes that overstate the liabilities.
In the uk you have to account for pension liabilities as if tomorrow 100% of your scheme members became liabilities which is only likely to happen if there is a zombie Apocalypse.
One has to ask who benefits from this dodgy change to acounting rules.
The labor dispute primarily (only?) involves workers in the wireline division. That division made about $1 billion in operating income (before taxes), on almost $40 billion in revenue. The division's operating profit margin is a razor-thin 2.7%.
Not necessarily. If the 2B in sales is highly volatile, and/or requires a lot of equity investment, you might rationally prefer the 1T in sales if the latter is highly stable (utility) and highly leveraged (tiny amount of equity).
Otherwise: agreed that these things are rarely reduceable to a single scalar (amount of profit).
Zero profit theory is based on having heavy competition which utilities do not have. 2.7% is absolutely razor-thin for something that is so capex heavy and with a heavy pension burden.
Not weighing in on whether the 1B in profit is "a lot" but a financial analyst would also want to look at return on equity, because a business like VZ likely "should" be highly leveraged (financing its long lived assets not with equity but with cheap long term debt). It is common that small absolute earnings as a percent of revenue look much more attractive when considered as against how much it yields the owners (equity).
Also, a business like that is going to have a metric crap-ton of noncash items, plus interest and taxes. So looking at free cash flow or ebitda are pretty enlightening in such cases.
Finally, there are comps so looking at this in isolation tells us nothing about idiosyncratic (management) performance rather than industry conditions.
My point is that a drive-by financial analysis of the net income margin of VZ is not at all instructive, and can't be used one way or another to justify/attack the propriety of labor grievances.
Actually, zero profit is guaranteed only if the market exhibits perfect competition or monopolistic competition.
Those that are not (which the wireline business should be in, given its very high barrier to entry and low number of competitors) do not go to zero in the long run because of the market power they control and tacit collusion with other players in the market. The 'razor thin margin' likely exists not because of competition, but because of inefficiency in the way the business is run.
US white collar culture works better with associations than unions. Arguably, its a better solution as union corruption is a big problem, especially in the public sector, and associations solve this by being less powerful entities while still being effective for their member's goals.
Many other countries either have associations or simply join US associations and re-distribute their certification materials locally and promote their research and policies locally. I think its pretty obvious that unions solve a specific problem that is more in tune with the earlier industrial era than today.
The rise of associations in the past 40-50 years isn't a coincidence. Unions simply do not work well outside of very specific industries. This trend works internationally too. Associations aren't a US thing anymore.
Union, association, enterprise agreement ... it doesn't matter to me what it's called, but I think there should be collective bargaining and written agreements. I don't want an adversarial approach that sucks the life out of the company.
It depends on the type of white collar job. Collective bargaining, in general, assumes a degree of fungibility that doesn't exist with all white collar positions. Two different managers, for instance, can have profoundly different consequences on a company's bottom line. Treating them as equal in that situation is hard to justify, to the company and the workers alike. That's one of the reasons private-sector unions have had so much trouble trying to unionize professionals even though they've been playing up their efforts for years now.
Good. If only tech workers had the spine to do the same after finding out their CEOs had conspired to suppress their wages and targeted those who wanted to leave...
> Verizon said that the average annual salary and benefit package for an associate in their Eastern region is $130,000. In the New York City/Long Island region, Verizon technicians currently have an average total wage-and-benefit package worth in over $160,000 a year.
> Verizon said that the cost of medical coverage for an East employee and one or more family members currently averages nearly $20,000 a year. In one of the company's East plans, the annual cost for this coverage is over $23,000 a year. The company said these costs are higher than the national average for family healthcare coverage of about $16,800.
These are well-paying union jobs. The problem is not the union, or Verizon itself. The problem is the constant Wall Street pressure on companies whose workers are unionized and enjoy good pay and benefits. From the perspective of investors, having a division that returns under a billion dollars in net income annually on tens of billions of dollars of invested capital is a huge drag on the whole company.
I never would have expected Verizon to pay technicians that well. That level of compensation on Long Island is roughly 3 times the median for the region.
In 2006 I made $28 an hour working as a Verizon business customer service rep. Prior to that I worked at Comcasst doing the same thing for about $20 an hour($12 hourly rate plus commission) after being there for four years.
Overall both jobs bored me to tears and prompted me to learn how to code. Now happily a coder for a living.
In 2006 I made $28 an hour working as a Verizon business customer service rep. Prior to that I worked at Comcasst doing the same thing for about $20 an hour($12 hourly rate plus commission) after being there for four years.
Overall both jobs bored me to tears and prompted me to learn how to code. Now happily a coder for a living.
Technology workers tend to value interesting problems more than money. In my case, my motivation has always been trying to make a positive impact on the world rather than money. I have turned down plenty of job offers, including ones that pay better than I am paid now. I even spent two years unemployed because I felt that that being an independent OSS that worked for free allowed me to have a greater impact on people's lives than I could have at any of the jobs that had been offered to me during that time.
That gamble paid off because it enabled me to help lay the groundwork for adoption of ZFS by major Linux distributions at a time when the amount of development to make ZFS production ready on Linux was more than employers were willing to stomach. The integrity of the world's data is better off because of it and in hindsight, nothing else that I could have done would have had such an impact. My OSS development had started as a hobby, but at some point, I began to realize that it could make a positive impact on the world and focused entirely on it, with ZFS taking the bulk of my time. That serendipitously resulted in job offers where everything I do would be OSS and I could continue working on the ZFSOnLinux code as part of it, which I had not anticipated.
I was lucky enough to have supporting parents that I could fall back on for me to pursue that. Not everyone does and a certain amount of money is definitely important, especially for those with dependents. If people who need it find they are not compensated well, they can find an employer that does compensate them well. Trying to force an employer that does not value you like they should to behave otherwise instead of finding one that does is masochistic.
> Or in other words, both conditions already happen automatically. That's kinda the whole point of capitalism.
Not necessarily. Two scenarios come to mind:
1) Collusion among employers. This necessarily disrupts the "ideal" marketplace. It has happened, does happen, and will continue to happen. The result is, perhaps, fair wages that are not truly competitive. The employees are captive (depending on their financial abilities) in the local market and forced to accept unfair or uncompetitive wages for their work or go without.
2) An abundance of workers can result in competitive, but unfair wages by driving down the pay needed to keep an office or business staffed below fair (I read fair as alternatively what the job is actually worth or what is needed to live). An employer can offer a competitive rate 50 cents above others in the area, but that doesn't mean it's a fair wage.
At the risk of stratification bias, I do not know anyone who has chosen money over the ability to do interesting things. Recruiters also like to pitch how interesting their problems are.
> Trying to force an employer that does not value you like they should to behave otherwise instead of finding one that does is masochistic.
I think that you overestimate the ability of workers to exert an influence by switching jobs, but also, and perhaps more seriously, assume that the only strategies for workers getting fucked over are individual strategies. Collective struggles are what can change things on a more fundamental level, and great gains have been won through the organised withdrawal of labour.
I would not bet too much on the ability of collective struggles to solve individual problems. I still think that this is at the heart of Boris Pasternak's "Doctor Zhivago". both the movie and the book. And it has taken on the patina of timelessness and universality in my experience
Organized labor creates an opportunity for collusion between management and the union leadership. My grandfather was a union worker who his colleagues selected to represent them. Management offered him the opportunity to make several times what he makes as part of a deal that would give the others negligible increases. He declined, but I have met union workers who complain that the union leadership and management collude. Knowing what happened to my grandfather, I do not doubt it. If you have an employer that intentionally undervalues you, they are going to aim to use the union to ensure that they continue to do that. If collectively people overvalue themselves, they tend to get their positions terminated by outsourcing.
If people think they are underpaid, they should each ask management to correct it. If management does not value all or some of them enough to do that, those that are undervalued are better off leaving for greener pastures.
That being said, after a certain amount of income, more income does not equal happiness. Rather than be a slave to trying to get more, I am inclined to ask myself if what I am doing is worthwhile, if what I make is over the minimum required for happiness and if what I make is fair under the Nash Equilibrium. If all are yes, I am fine with it. Others might be happier if they do that too. If they are working in an industry that pays below what is necessary for happiness (and this probably increases with dependents), they should find another career.
"I have met union workers who complain that the union leadership and management collude."
I won't quibble with this and don't doubt it exists (though I don't know how widespread it is, and would suspect it is not widespread) .. but there is a simple solution:
Vote out the corrupt management and vote in better ones! Unions operate democratically. If people are unhappy, show a little engagement with the process and do something about it.
If the problem is that people put in charge cannot be trusted, how do you avoid voting in the next corrupt union leaders? Also, if they collude and you decide to be a rabble rouser, they could likely just have you fired to maintain the status quo.
If I were a Verizon employee and thought what I earned was unfairly low, I would opt to find another employer or if that is not possible, consider a change of career. Propping up a lousy company by letting them have access to my abilities is not worth it. If everyone left for greener pastures under such circumstances, they would correct things or go out of business.
Well, frankly speaking, that's a silly remark. If you vote in people you know and trust, it doesn't seem likely that your mates you've gotten to know, placed your confidence in will be corrupted only just as soon as you've voted them in. And if they are, vote them out!
As for the latter remark, the world you're describing, frictionless job movement as a means of changing business practices and business-worker relations, obviously has very little relationship to the world we actually live in, or we'd never have these discussions at all.
This is a bit like saying "the government is corrupt so lets we'd be better off without it". Better with union representation than without, though better with unions who actually represent their members than corrupt unions.
The union exists at the point of confrontation (or negotiation) between employer and employees, and there is every reason for the employer (who doesn't want to negotiate) to undermine the unions. This can lead to both actual corrupting influences, and constantly spreading the idea that the union is corrupt, is a 'drag' or a 'burden', in order to undermine its strength.
The last thing I'm saying is that current union structures are ideal and devoid of corruption (and what little I know about US unions, the case is worse over there), but that organised, collective struggle is what wins gains for workers and that unions are often the best vehicles for to push those struggles forward.
Alternatively: technology workers have historically come from affluent backgrounds where they can absorb small deviations in wages.
Other supporting evidence: the popularity of privately held company stock on an unspecified valuation and solution schedule being considered not only a reasonable trade for real money, but in fact demanded.
> Technology workers tend to value interesting problems more than money.
You're projecting. I want to be paid fair market compensation for the hours of my life I'm spending at work and not with my family.
Your employer values money over anything else, so while workers are ignoring their value, they are doing what they can to drive your costs down.
Look at the white collar jobs that have stagnated in terms of compensation or were outright eliminated in the past decade.
> If people who need it find they are not compensated well, they can find an employer that does compensate them well. Trying to force an employer that does not value you like they should to behave otherwise instead of finding one that does is masochistic.
What if you aren't compensated well because employers have realized they can pay below market value for your labor? What if that becomes an industry trend because other employers have no incentive (strikes, worker solidarity) not to and every incentive to cut costs?
What if you live in a market that isn't tech hub? Offers for $30k-$60k/yr for a job you'd be paid $90k-120k/yr in SF for isn't unheard of.
We're in a boom and we get to enjoy relatively high wages and good working conditions. That won't last forever.
Last year, I turned down an opportunity to co-found a startup where I had been promised >$1 million a year in compensation (many times more than I make), but I would not have been spending my time at work on OSS. I declined because getting things done for the greater good is worth more to me than any sum of money.
The Nash equilibrium suggests that focusing on the greater good is the best for everyone. Not to mention, I find focusing on the greater good to be more rewarding than the blind pursuit of wealth.
Ah this is such a fascinating mindset. Do you think that if software professional worked together they could not achieve a) Fair compensation b) Interesting problems c) Dedicated time for ALL software professionals to contribute to OSS?
Imagine if there were an entire profession of people just like you dedicating time to OSS? Imagine where we could be now in that reality...
Re-read up on what was being done. CEO's were blocking the ability for workers to switch jobs by agreeing to not make offers to those who wanted to leave. You would have been essentially black-balled.
The incident involving CEOs colluding was handled by the legal system, not coercion through strikes. Refusing to compete on employee compensation is also rather different than refusing to pay as much as people should get.
It also appears to be the case that Verizon's employees are overpaid rather than underpaid:
The total benefits for a Verizon technician on Long Island are $160,000 a year while the median for this region (across all professions) is about $50,000. Until today, I had never heard of a job for a technician that reached 6 figures.
These high salaries might have triggered Verizon's change of focus to wireless from wired and investment in 5G. The strike is probably going to accelerate Verizon's shift to wireless, which requires fewer employees and is non-unionized.
It's very hard to complain about wages when you make $200k+ on flexible 40 hrs/week with free food. From the outside, tech workers would look entitled.
You need to weigh this perspective with the alternative point of view, that the US tech industry wouldn't have developed as quickly or be as world leading as it is if it wasn't for what has been accomplished because of the long hours. I don't disagree with you entirely, but I think we ended up in a good enough spot that it's much more productive to focus on the future than dwell on the past.
What gets me is the dichotomy between "big tech" and everyone else employing programmers/designers/UXers doing exactly the same kind of work but for 1/3-1/2 the pay. But hey, when those companies have quarterly EPS above $5, they might start paying better, too.
Did the U.S. tech industry actually have long hours during the period when it became world-leading? The U.S. was dominant in technology by the 1970s, and as far as I understand the '50s-'70s tech work culture, it was more of a professional engineering culture. 9-to-5 jobs, everyone wore a tie, etc.
As it is known now, there sort of wasn't a "tech work culture." People just topped out at fairly low salaries relative to now. People were mostly "lifers". There was very little hope of a replacement job. I had relatives caught up in the early 1970s aerospace bust and they were out of work for a while and had to retool.
As a view into it, see "Moon Machines" - that's what it looked like as a child to me.
A lot of the "work long hours" thing is cargo culting / social signalling to project the image of "high performance." The first step is admitting you're not John Carmack. I have tendencies that way; I'll get caught up in something at home on the weekends and completely lose track of time.
But it must be managed. I know better than to do that at work. You have to let the work breathe ( a metaphor for letting all your cognitive processes catch up after a burst ).
It's fun to do... beer/coffee-fueled sprints far into the night but it's not very responsible nor sustainable. I learned this looking carefully at what I'd done in those.
"You need to weigh this perspective with the alternative point of view, that the US tech industry wouldn't have developed as quickly or be as world leading as it is if it wasn't for what has been accomplished because of the long hours."
I do not believe that for a second. And even if it were true, how does that justify not paying for those hours?
"but I think we ended up in a good enough spot that it's much more productive to focus on the future than dwell on the past."
Those who refuse to learn from the past are doomed to repeat it.
"What gets me is the dichotomy between "big tech" and everyone else employing programmers/designers/UXers doing exactly the same kind of work but for 1/3-1/2 the pay. But hey, when those companies have quarterly EPS above $5, they might start paying better, too."
If the company is doing well, it makes absolutely no sense that the people who did the actual work to make that happen don't share in it.
The unseen factor in companies is how risk is priced. Our perceptions of capital have gotten extremely self-referential - cash is its own good thing for lottery winners.
If you're Apple, the probability of another iPhone is low. For MS, it's Windows. Dunno what really qualifies for Google, but Yahoo seems to be struggling.
I strongly recommend empathy with the positions of those you oppose. It is, IMO, the only path to understanding. Chances are they're not psychotic.
hmm, would you rather have a larger paycheck with dues taken out, still increasing your take home pay?
Thats whats actually on the table - wage collusion has artifically deflated wages. Unionization would fight against that artifical deflation and bring wages up closer to market value.
As long as union fees are less than the increase in your wage, why would you prefer to make less money overall just to not support a union?
So stop doing that and let Nature take its course. If something exists that you don't like and your behavior helps cause it to exist, you're part of the problem.
There is no information anywhere that says the employer is doing anything by doing that that will help them get what they want. There is a lot of literature that says its a bad idea - for their own enlightened self interest. We do automation of things. If there is no multiplier inherent in that, we should not be there to start with.
I'll caveat this with the statement that there may be things where it's just inherently that way, in the way that a surgeon must be there or human life is in the balance. Pushing your CRUD changes isn't likely to tip the scales on human life one way or the other. I've been in sprints where the fate of the company hung in the balance; I worked those hours. In the end it failed because it was going to fail anyway. It was worth doing, but this was cases where we knew it would fail if we didn't.
There's no need for collective action. There is a need for many, many people to recognize what codependency is and adjust their behavior. I know all the "But I..." in the list. BTDT. But the truth is that until you stop, it won't.
Or maybe the employers are counting on that complacency to enable their exploitation of the people who don't make that much money, and don't have those benefits.
The fact is very few software developers make 200k+ (even adjusting for geographic CoL) but we all think someday we will and don't want to change the current system that allows that belief.
To me, working collectively isn't 100% about compensation. It's also having a fair footing at negotiations on things like time off, overtime, family leave, vacation, retirement, health care, etc. It's also about adversarial processes like performance reviews, age/gender/race discrimination etc. Those are all things that some of us can overcome individually, but it'd be a lot easier if we could ease up on viewing ourselves as mercenaries and actually work together.
I make 200K+ and Mark Zuckerberg makes 35 Billion. There is no sane reason for this kind of BS.
I don't see my generation of engineers tolerating clowns like Zuckerberg the way the previous generation tolerated Larry Ellison and Bill Gates. It's a different world. Expectations are different. The only thing he brings to the table is mindless ambition. It's highly overrated and damaging and the world does not need it at this point. He and his ilk will be taken down.
We need more Linus Torvalds, Jimmy Wales and Sal Khan's who are capable of thinking that their creations are more than just about world domination at any expense.
I'm confused what your point is. What's PC about the previous statement? You seem to agree with them. Are you mad you aren't making more, or that Zuck isn't making less?
We could unionize, you know? It would DEFINITELY mean outlier cash wages on the high side would go down as we normalize benefits. Right now the Valley is very focused on the needs of young, affluent, educated men who can take significant career risk. If we unionized, things like reasonable *ternity leave and a minimum standard of health care would appear, as would formalization of vacation rules ("unlimited vacation" is common but actually means "no vacation just dispensations from your founder for good behavior"), etc.
And we need less people like Linus Torvalds, thanks. It's possible to be good at tech and NOT be an insufferable asshole riding atop a human pyramid like some rendition of 300's Xerxes.
> I make 200K+ and Mark Zuckerberg makes 35 Billion. There is no sane reason for this kind of BS.
I don't understand your argument. It's insane for Mark Zuckerberg to make more than you, but it's not insane for you to make more than, say, a school teacher?
The point is that the very rich are making huge multiples of the rest of us. $200k in SF is probably double what a unionized teacher makes in the same area.
Some of the strongest and most successful unions in the U.S. right now are in the entertainment industry. Screen actors, professional sports players, heck even many screen writers make well above the U.S. median income.
Stepping outside of employee groups that are explicitly defined as unions, you find professional associations that work collectively to support high earning potentials. Most doctors, for example, are board-certified by ABMS, even if they work as employees of large corporations. Lawyers are members of the bar. Realtors can only call themselves "realtors" if they are members of the National Association of Realtors. Etc.
I thought anyone with a license from the state to practice real estate is a realtor. I could check with my father who has been doing real estate since he was laid off from an engineering position >20 years ago, but I am fairly certain that is how it works in New York. Maybe other states are different.
It's the word "realtor" specifically--it's covered by a trademark.
> Isn’t the definition of REALTOR® anyone who has a real estate license?
> No. The definition of a REALTOR® is a real estate professional who is a member of the National Association of REALTORS® and subscribes to its strict Code of Ethics. The marks should not be used inadvertently and improperly to denote a vocation or business. A good rule to follow is if the term “Member” cannot logically be substituted for the term REALTOR®, then the term should not be used. Appropriate substitutions might include the phrases “real estate broker,” “real estate agent,” “real estate salesperson,” “property manager,” etc.
I live in LA and have had actor friends tell me that being in the screen actors guild is not very helpful unless you are lucky enough to get a regular role on a series or a big role in a movie. If you're still climbing the ladder, there aren't enough jobs that are union jobs to make it worthwhile. They extra money you make from them is offset by how few of them you're able to get. It sounds similar to our field where there are some high-profile high-paying jobs, but the majority are not those.
i think what actually happened is the people who run the place realized it's better to pay the very exceptional few $200k+ so that the rest of the peons getting paid 80k have something to hope for.
the real test if they have a spine is if they take their talent elsewhere rather than congregating around digital water coolers. Look, most of us have been guilty of it one time or another but in the end the simple truth is, the hardest part is going after another job.
I'm really curious as to what long term effect this will have on managers' perception of their employees, now that they will have actual experience with what it's like to be one of their subordinates.
Honestly I have very little sympathy for them. They did this in 2012 of the same issues, and they're doing it again. I think they've got a really good job and a great compensation package. There are many others in the technology industry that can't even get a fraction of that.
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[ 5.8 ms ] story [ 171 ms ] threadInteresting; so the union's going on strike not only to maintain their pension levels, but also to help underserved communities. Noble of them. But it would be nobler still if they offered concessions of pay and benefit cuts in exchange for Verizon making its fiber available to more neighborhoods.
Obviously it's just a ploy to get the voters on their side, but they're omitting the detail that the voters are going to end up paying higher for their phone and data service as a result.
Verizon has had years to install fiber in all of its markets. Instead, they took the money & gave it to shareholders & management. Incarnations of Verizon (MA-BELL) have had protections from the government for many many years. They have neglected their infrastructure for years, but their rates keep going up and up!
There's no ploy. Verizon customers always pay because the prices keep rising regardless of what the union is doing.
What the USA really needs is to shutdown these for profit companies that provide our voice/IP infrastructure. We need have a "new-deal" type of deployment, where every state in the country should have fiber on every pole. This can be done, only if we remove the for-profit mindset. Once this is done, anybody can sell services on those fiber lines (streaming movies, cloud base storage etc... VOIP).
Enough with the bullshit, the current ISP/Voice/Video in the USA is shit and we need to remove the stranglehold these companies have in our states and government (COMCAST, VERIZON, AT&T, Time Warner etc...). Their is not competition in the USA and it's bullshit.
Peace.
Peace.
PS: It's a question of price / demand curves. Raising prices costs customers which reduces profits.
No one complains that Google Fiber doesn't serve every neighborhood in the cities where it is established. Google negotiated that deal with the cities, and if a city refuses to let them target only specific, profitable neighborhoods, they simply take that city off the list.
In my opinion, this whole situation is emblematic of why American digital infrastructure is slow and behind the times, because of antiquated and senseless rules.
I don't think Verizon is some kind of nice company; they're reprehensible at times and frankly I feel sorry for the people working there and I kind of understand their anger. But, business is business.
I do think that trying to shame or regulate companies into serving unprofitable areas is the wrong way to go about it. If it's that important, then subsidize service in those areas so it's actually profitable. But Americans seem to hate obvious subsidies, and prefer to make them weird and convoluted instead.
PS: You get a lot of very different numbers out there. But remember at 10 acres per house you get 64 houses per square mile and people tend to clump near roads and in towns. http://blog.performantnetworks.com/2012/11/how-much-does-rur... Sure, there are a few places where it's still unprofitable, but we can debate the last 1/2th of a percent of homes when you get close to 99%.
Nobility has little to do with it. The complaint is that the company is refusing to pay for work that might be done by union-represented employees. The fact that the work would also benefit the paying customers is just poking the other thumb in the other eye, too.
When the interests of both your customers and your employees are aligned behind something, I would think that you might have an interest in doing it, whatever it may be.
A much better system is a defined contribution, in which the employer makes a contribution to a retirement fund for the employee. The employee then has sole proprietorship of the funds, regardless what happens to the company.
Gold-backed current sucks. When new gold is discovered it's value swings wildly. When no gold is being discovered but the economy is going great there is a shortage of it so deflation sets in, causing loans to balloon in real terms.
I agree, but the government has so many rules around this I wonder if pensions at one point were a better value and a way to work around these arcane rules. For example, the max an employer can add to a 401k is 35k. Another is if a family clears 200k, then you're not allowed to put money into an Roth IRA without huge penalties. Never mind that $5500 is already not very much to save for retirement, but we definitely cannot let everyone do the right thing and save money.
Tax-advantaged savings accounts are to reward savers who might not otherwise save. They don't mean that everyone deserves tax-free saving.
However I don't care where you live, if you are earning $200K in a household you can afford to save.
Well, this is where the distortion comes in. The employer uses pre-tax money when funding pensions. The employee doesn't have the ability to do this. It's the same situation with other benefits.
So it's optimal to take a lower salary and more benefits. But this is strictly worse than if the taxation regime was the same for both employees and employers.
We need to recognize that we live under a regime in which bankers have the entire populous by the throat. To live a decent life by American standards, nearly everyone has to take out loans for every major purchase and ends up paying 2-3x the nominal cost in interest. Let the massive scale of this sink in for a moment and you'll get some concept of just how powerful, all-consuming, and critical the banks are in this country.
Savings is anathema to this loan-based society that's been concocted. If someone has substantial savings, they may not need a loan, and that's very bad for the powers that be (because they won't get 2-3x the cost of the item over some years). Keynesian economics has been taken to its logical conclusion of sub-zero interest rates and practically everyone is indentured to their lienholders and employers. "The Road to Serfdom" indeed.
From an actuarial standpoint, a defined benefit plan isn't any more complicated than just buying perpetuities from any companies or governments stable enough to offer them, until your benefit obligations are met.
The problems arise when current managers use the pensions as a means to game the accounting numbers or as a means to embezzle funds.
But I agree with the problem of pensions but I would also add that today's managers don't want to fund them the way they should. Instead, they set aside some money and assume a very rosy growth rate that doesn't always materialize. Even with that inflated expected growth rate, pensions are often still underfunded. An employee should be free to contribute to such a perpetuity if he so chooses.
Underfunded pension liabilities will likely take down several large cities over the coming years.
No, they won't. As usual, the federal government will step in as the insurer of last resort, just as they do with the pension guarantee corp [1].
It's almost like HN gets off on people's retirement compensation being cut. Don't blame the people who were promised benefits, blame the politicians who did so, and the apathetic voters who allowed it. If your returns forecasts were wrong because of lack of growth, guess what, you get to make up the difference. That's how business works.
[1] http://www.pbgc.gov/
Defined contribution is not "a much better system" for employees. It just moves risk from the company onto them. IIRC, there's not actually much "employer credit risk" to employees because pensions have to participate in a mandatory government insurance program.
In the uk you have to account for pension liabilities as if tomorrow 100% of your scheme members became liabilities which is only likely to happen if there is a zombie Apocalypse.
One has to ask who benefits from this dodgy change to acounting rules.
If I make $1B in profit off of $2B in sales, I'm much better off than $1B in profit off of $1T in sales.
Otherwise: agreed that these things are rarely reduceable to a single scalar (amount of profit).
According to economists, over the "long term", profits tend to 0%. Wireline technologies are quite old, it seems the long term is here.
Also, a business like that is going to have a metric crap-ton of noncash items, plus interest and taxes. So looking at free cash flow or ebitda are pretty enlightening in such cases.
Finally, there are comps so looking at this in isolation tells us nothing about idiosyncratic (management) performance rather than industry conditions.
My point is that a drive-by financial analysis of the net income margin of VZ is not at all instructive, and can't be used one way or another to justify/attack the propriety of labor grievances.
Those that are not (which the wireline business should be in, given its very high barrier to entry and low number of competitors) do not go to zero in the long run because of the market power they control and tacit collusion with other players in the market. The 'razor thin margin' likely exists not because of competition, but because of inefficiency in the way the business is run.
Many other countries either have associations or simply join US associations and re-distribute their certification materials locally and promote their research and policies locally. I think its pretty obvious that unions solve a specific problem that is more in tune with the earlier industrial era than today.
The rise of associations in the past 40-50 years isn't a coincidence. Unions simply do not work well outside of very specific industries. This trend works internationally too. Associations aren't a US thing anymore.
http://stopthecap.com/2016/04/12/breaking-news-waiting-forev...
You have a misconception here. The average Verizon wireline employee is making more than $70,000 a year. Not minimum wage or even close.
> Verizon said that the average annual salary and benefit package for an associate in their Eastern region is $130,000. In the New York City/Long Island region, Verizon technicians currently have an average total wage-and-benefit package worth in over $160,000 a year.
> Verizon said that the cost of medical coverage for an East employee and one or more family members currently averages nearly $20,000 a year. In one of the company's East plans, the annual cost for this coverage is over $23,000 a year. The company said these costs are higher than the national average for family healthcare coverage of about $16,800.
These are well-paying union jobs. The problem is not the union, or Verizon itself. The problem is the constant Wall Street pressure on companies whose workers are unionized and enjoy good pay and benefits. From the perspective of investors, having a division that returns under a billion dollars in net income annually on tens of billions of dollars of invested capital is a huge drag on the whole company.
Overall both jobs bored me to tears and prompted me to learn how to code. Now happily a coder for a living.
Overall both jobs bored me to tears and prompted me to learn how to code. Now happily a coder for a living.
That gamble paid off because it enabled me to help lay the groundwork for adoption of ZFS by major Linux distributions at a time when the amount of development to make ZFS production ready on Linux was more than employers were willing to stomach. The integrity of the world's data is better off because of it and in hindsight, nothing else that I could have done would have had such an impact. My OSS development had started as a hobby, but at some point, I began to realize that it could make a positive impact on the world and focused entirely on it, with ZFS taking the bulk of my time. That serendipitously resulted in job offers where everything I do would be OSS and I could continue working on the ZFSOnLinux code as part of it, which I had not anticipated.
I was lucky enough to have supporting parents that I could fall back on for me to pursue that. Not everyone does and a certain amount of money is definitely important, especially for those with dependents. If people who need it find they are not compensated well, they can find an employer that does compensate them well. Trying to force an employer that does not value you like they should to behave otherwise instead of finding one that does is masochistic.
What's a fair wage? It's a competitive wage - it's a wage similar to what other people doing that job get.
What's a competitive wage? It's a wage high enough that you are willing to work there, rather than somewhere else.
Or in other words, both conditions already happen automatically. That's kinda the whole point of capitalism.
Not necessarily. Two scenarios come to mind:
1) Collusion among employers. This necessarily disrupts the "ideal" marketplace. It has happened, does happen, and will continue to happen. The result is, perhaps, fair wages that are not truly competitive. The employees are captive (depending on their financial abilities) in the local market and forced to accept unfair or uncompetitive wages for their work or go without.
2) An abundance of workers can result in competitive, but unfair wages by driving down the pay needed to keep an office or business staffed below fair (I read fair as alternatively what the job is actually worth or what is needed to live). An employer can offer a competitive rate 50 cents above others in the area, but that doesn't mean it's a fair wage.
Source?
I think that you overestimate the ability of workers to exert an influence by switching jobs, but also, and perhaps more seriously, assume that the only strategies for workers getting fucked over are individual strategies. Collective struggles are what can change things on a more fundamental level, and great gains have been won through the organised withdrawal of labour.
Sorry, I don't know this movie/book, but I will check it out.
If people think they are underpaid, they should each ask management to correct it. If management does not value all or some of them enough to do that, those that are undervalued are better off leaving for greener pastures.
That being said, after a certain amount of income, more income does not equal happiness. Rather than be a slave to trying to get more, I am inclined to ask myself if what I am doing is worthwhile, if what I make is over the minimum required for happiness and if what I make is fair under the Nash Equilibrium. If all are yes, I am fine with it. Others might be happier if they do that too. If they are working in an industry that pays below what is necessary for happiness (and this probably increases with dependents), they should find another career.
I won't quibble with this and don't doubt it exists (though I don't know how widespread it is, and would suspect it is not widespread) .. but there is a simple solution:
Vote out the corrupt management and vote in better ones! Unions operate democratically. If people are unhappy, show a little engagement with the process and do something about it.
If I were a Verizon employee and thought what I earned was unfairly low, I would opt to find another employer or if that is not possible, consider a change of career. Propping up a lousy company by letting them have access to my abilities is not worth it. If everyone left for greener pastures under such circumstances, they would correct things or go out of business.
As for the latter remark, the world you're describing, frictionless job movement as a means of changing business practices and business-worker relations, obviously has very little relationship to the world we actually live in, or we'd never have these discussions at all.
The union exists at the point of confrontation (or negotiation) between employer and employees, and there is every reason for the employer (who doesn't want to negotiate) to undermine the unions. This can lead to both actual corrupting influences, and constantly spreading the idea that the union is corrupt, is a 'drag' or a 'burden', in order to undermine its strength.
The last thing I'm saying is that current union structures are ideal and devoid of corruption (and what little I know about US unions, the case is worse over there), but that organised, collective struggle is what wins gains for workers and that unions are often the best vehicles for to push those struggles forward.
Other supporting evidence: the popularity of privately held company stock on an unspecified valuation and solution schedule being considered not only a reasonable trade for real money, but in fact demanded.
You're projecting. I want to be paid fair market compensation for the hours of my life I'm spending at work and not with my family.
Your employer values money over anything else, so while workers are ignoring their value, they are doing what they can to drive your costs down.
Look at the white collar jobs that have stagnated in terms of compensation or were outright eliminated in the past decade.
> If people who need it find they are not compensated well, they can find an employer that does compensate them well. Trying to force an employer that does not value you like they should to behave otherwise instead of finding one that does is masochistic.
What if you aren't compensated well because employers have realized they can pay below market value for your labor? What if that becomes an industry trend because other employers have no incentive (strikes, worker solidarity) not to and every incentive to cut costs?
What if you live in a market that isn't tech hub? Offers for $30k-$60k/yr for a job you'd be paid $90k-120k/yr in SF for isn't unheard of.
We're in a boom and we get to enjoy relatively high wages and good working conditions. That won't last forever.
The Nash equilibrium suggests that focusing on the greater good is the best for everyone. Not to mention, I find focusing on the greater good to be more rewarding than the blind pursuit of wealth.
Imagine if there were an entire profession of people just like you dedicating time to OSS? Imagine where we could be now in that reality...
Yes, your tunnel vision had been previously established...
Have no fear, special snowflakes like yourself will be much welcomed in a software developer professional organization.
It also appears to be the case that Verizon's employees are overpaid rather than underpaid:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11488829
The total benefits for a Verizon technician on Long Island are $160,000 a year while the median for this region (across all professions) is about $50,000. Until today, I had never heard of a job for a technician that reached 6 figures.
These high salaries might have triggered Verizon's change of focus to wireless from wired and investment in 5G. The strike is probably going to accelerate Verizon's shift to wireless, which requires fewer employees and is non-unionized.
You may earn $200k but your still a worker and most do a lot of unpaid OT
What gets me is the dichotomy between "big tech" and everyone else employing programmers/designers/UXers doing exactly the same kind of work but for 1/3-1/2 the pay. But hey, when those companies have quarterly EPS above $5, they might start paying better, too.
As a view into it, see "Moon Machines" - that's what it looked like as a child to me.
A lot of the "work long hours" thing is cargo culting / social signalling to project the image of "high performance." The first step is admitting you're not John Carmack. I have tendencies that way; I'll get caught up in something at home on the weekends and completely lose track of time.
But it must be managed. I know better than to do that at work. You have to let the work breathe ( a metaphor for letting all your cognitive processes catch up after a burst ).
It's fun to do... beer/coffee-fueled sprints far into the night but it's not very responsible nor sustainable. I learned this looking carefully at what I'd done in those.
I do not believe that for a second. And even if it were true, how does that justify not paying for those hours?
"but I think we ended up in a good enough spot that it's much more productive to focus on the future than dwell on the past."
Those who refuse to learn from the past are doomed to repeat it.
"What gets me is the dichotomy between "big tech" and everyone else employing programmers/designers/UXers doing exactly the same kind of work but for 1/3-1/2 the pay. But hey, when those companies have quarterly EPS above $5, they might start paying better, too."
If the company is doing well, it makes absolutely no sense that the people who did the actual work to make that happen don't share in it.
If you're Apple, the probability of another iPhone is low. For MS, it's Windows. Dunno what really qualifies for Google, but Yahoo seems to be struggling.
I strongly recommend empathy with the positions of those you oppose. It is, IMO, the only path to understanding. Chances are they're not psychotic.
The scary part is - we seem out of ideas.
a) held that overtime is due to salaried workers so, abuse your employees at your own risk,
b) held that salary collusion is illegal and fined companies millions
Also I have no desire to be forced into a union, dues forcibly taken from my paycheck, thanks.
Thats whats actually on the table - wage collusion has artifically deflated wages. Unionization would fight against that artifical deflation and bring wages up closer to market value.
As long as union fees are less than the increase in your wage, why would you prefer to make less money overall just to not support a union?
There is no information anywhere that says the employer is doing anything by doing that that will help them get what they want. There is a lot of literature that says its a bad idea - for their own enlightened self interest. We do automation of things. If there is no multiplier inherent in that, we should not be there to start with.
I'll caveat this with the statement that there may be things where it's just inherently that way, in the way that a surgeon must be there or human life is in the balance. Pushing your CRUD changes isn't likely to tip the scales on human life one way or the other. I've been in sprints where the fate of the company hung in the balance; I worked those hours. In the end it failed because it was going to fail anyway. It was worth doing, but this was cases where we knew it would fail if we didn't.
There's no need for collective action. There is a need for many, many people to recognize what codependency is and adjust their behavior. I know all the "But I..." in the list. BTDT. But the truth is that until you stop, it won't.
And, quite frankly, from the 3rd world, McDonald's workers look entitled.
If you can find a job like that anywhere in my region, I'd crap myself in excitement. :)
To me, working collectively isn't 100% about compensation. It's also having a fair footing at negotiations on things like time off, overtime, family leave, vacation, retirement, health care, etc. It's also about adversarial processes like performance reviews, age/gender/race discrimination etc. Those are all things that some of us can overcome individually, but it'd be a lot easier if we could ease up on viewing ourselves as mercenaries and actually work together.
I make 200K+ and Mark Zuckerberg makes 35 Billion. There is no sane reason for this kind of BS.
I don't see my generation of engineers tolerating clowns like Zuckerberg the way the previous generation tolerated Larry Ellison and Bill Gates. It's a different world. Expectations are different. The only thing he brings to the table is mindless ambition. It's highly overrated and damaging and the world does not need it at this point. He and his ilk will be taken down.
We need more Linus Torvalds, Jimmy Wales and Sal Khan's who are capable of thinking that their creations are more than just about world domination at any expense.
We could unionize, you know? It would DEFINITELY mean outlier cash wages on the high side would go down as we normalize benefits. Right now the Valley is very focused on the needs of young, affluent, educated men who can take significant career risk. If we unionized, things like reasonable *ternity leave and a minimum standard of health care would appear, as would formalization of vacation rules ("unlimited vacation" is common but actually means "no vacation just dispensations from your founder for good behavior"), etc.
And we need less people like Linus Torvalds, thanks. It's possible to be good at tech and NOT be an insufferable asshole riding atop a human pyramid like some rendition of 300's Xerxes.
I don't understand your argument. It's insane for Mark Zuckerberg to make more than you, but it's not insane for you to make more than, say, a school teacher?
How large a portion of tech workers make this much?
Stepping outside of employee groups that are explicitly defined as unions, you find professional associations that work collectively to support high earning potentials. Most doctors, for example, are board-certified by ABMS, even if they work as employees of large corporations. Lawyers are members of the bar. Realtors can only call themselves "realtors" if they are members of the National Association of Realtors. Etc.
> Isn’t the definition of REALTOR® anyone who has a real estate license?
> No. The definition of a REALTOR® is a real estate professional who is a member of the National Association of REALTORS® and subscribes to its strict Code of Ethics. The marks should not be used inadvertently and improperly to denote a vocation or business. A good rule to follow is if the term “Member” cannot logically be substituted for the term REALTOR®, then the term should not be used. Appropriate substitutions might include the phrases “real estate broker,” “real estate agent,” “real estate salesperson,” “property manager,” etc.
http://www.realtor.org/letterlw.nsf/pages/TrademarkLogoFAQs
2. Regulate market capitalization of corporations
Doesn't make much sense otherwise.
http://www.businessinsider.com/top-tech-companies-revenue-pe...
I doubt they have as many managers.