Is the profit motive essential to innovation?

We workers value time off, employers see it as a cost to be avoided, and avoid it they do, in a market with a shortage of jobs, holding out for time off is a losing strategy....

 

Employers have goals and expectations of what their employees will gain them and employees have goals and expectations for what their work will gain them. These goals and expectations are not in alignment so some sort of mutual accommodation is the form employment most often takes.

In places where employees have more bargaining power they will achieve more of their goals and expectations. In places where employees have less bargaining power employers will gain more of their goals and expectations.

If goals and expectations come to be seen as impossible by either side workplace problems will ensue.

One tenet of socialist thought is that the alignment of goals and expectations between employers and employees will improve social harmony.

 

How exactly does socialism do that?

 

Vacations have been 2 weeks for the first 5 years, 3 weeks from 5 to 10 years, and 4 weeks thereafter for the 45 years I have been employed. There have been recessions, but employers didn't reduce vacation, and they have booms, and employees didn't lengthen them.

 

In Europe you start with six weeks vacation, I've known guys with 15 weeks.
I saw vacation time go up in the 90's especially to lure programmers to Y2K projects, afterwards it dropped.
Especially with the recession, the leverage is with the employer.

It makes sense to have more vacation, it reduces unemployment, and it creates new jobs in leisure industries.
It reduces stress, this isn't rehearsal, you only have one life to live.

 

I love what I do, and vacation isn't that enjoyable for me. I would rather have the ability to take off when I need to for short periods of time (attend my sons graduation and acceptance into the CA bar, go to my other son's 10 year anniversary of his business, and his wedding, etc.

Weeks off are boring.

 

By granting the workers a say in management. There are many companies in the EU and a few in the US that have considerable employee ownership. In the EU most companies have union representatives on their board of directors. This improves communication between management and workers which goes a long way in awareness of expectations and impetus to find a goal that everyone finds acceptable. It is the heart of the German model of industry.

When the world economy tanked in 2008 employers all over the world dismissed millions of workers. German firms cut back hours and wages and cut management in order to keep as many line workers employed as possible. The government provided subsidies for underemployed workers and increased funding for technical training for young people who were unable to find immediate employment. German companies do not export goods, they export the machines that make the goods and their ability to rapidly increase production as the world economy recovered gave them a huge advantage for years to come.

The model of US industry is different from Germany. When the economic downturn hit US firms made massive layoffs of line workers, shutting down whole plants and production lines. Management made no sacrifices. Some even got bonuses for increasing the bottom line. Many machinery manufacturers never recovered. They could not ramp back up quickly because the skilled workers they laid off had moved away and it took too long to train new ones.

Management did not understand the high level of skill and expertise needed to create the high value goods they were now making. They were managing like they did for 100 years, If demand falls lay off the line workers, they are unskilled labour and anyone can take their place when demand picks up. The biggest manufacturing problem is that decades of anti-union activity have removed a few generations of future skilled workers because many unions were dissolved and many more closed their training programs as opportunities and manufacturing wages declined.

It is a goofy situation. Fox news featured this manufacturer in Toledo who wanted to expand but could not find any workers even though he was offering $13 an hour. As it turns out the only employees he was seeking for that rate were licensed journeyman electricians. The going rate for apprentice electricians in Toledo was $18 an hour, the going rate for journeyman electricians was double what he was offering.

There is no shortage of skilled labour in the US. The only shortage is wages. Management needs to align itself better with the expectations of employees if it expects to hire skilled workers for its highly automated manufacturing facilities.

 

I love what I do too, I do it for fun when I'm not doing it for work.
But spending a couple of weeks in Key West, or a week sailing down to the coast of Maine or up to the Vineyard or Long Island makes life more interesting.

 

I spend my hobby time working on my supercharged Miata, and canyon carving in the local mountains - but that doesn't require weeks off at a time.

 

Most people receiving welfare have jobs. They just don't pay enough to support even a substandard level of living, so the American tax-payer has to bail out companies inability to provide that living for their employees.

 

Yes, Mr.Smith, our Social Contract establishes our form of Socialism, not our form of Capitalism. Simply delegating some of our natural rights in favor of a collective of any Body politic is a form of Socialism, not voluntary trade in markets free from public sector intervention.

 

Capitalism offers advantages in terms of investments. So while one might invent a good idea, it can be very expensive to get the project off the ground. Just a single patent on something can set one back tens of thousands of dollars.