I always like it when I can upvote and disagree :)
I think you have to be in VERY far mode, and still squint a bit, to think of that as “alignment” to the degree that distinguishes socialist from conventional organizations. Sure, employees as a group will prefer higher median wages over more profits (though maybe not if they’re actual owners to a great degree), but I have yet to see a large organization where workers care all that much about other workers (distant ones, with different roles, who compete for prestige and compensation even while cooperating for delivery).
Conventional org owners/leaders care a lot about worker retention and productivity, which is often summarized as “satisfaction”. I have seen no evidence in my <mumble> years at companies big and small, including both tech and non-tech workers that office workers care more about warehouse workers than senior management does. There is probably slightly more for warehouse workers caring about workers in other warehouses, but even then, there’s cut-throat hatred for closing “my” warehouse rather than someone else’s.
Without the qualifier “different roles” I had in mind that you can privately not like peeing into to a bottle to be pretty well correlated with your coworker also not liking it without you considering each other.
And then when I apply the same about office workers thinking about warehouse workers peeing in bottles it seems they would not be ambivalent but slightly against.
While it is quite easy to see a manager wanting a policy that has 10% number increase and no numeric effect on any other number to be default in favour.
In reverse this can be seen that a worker is unnaturally insulated about the meangingfulness of their task. Moving boxes day in day out probably feels very samey, while a manager can see that now we are serving this nationality people and now that. Or indeed that with no increase customers per worker might be 10 and with 10% increase we have 11 customers per worker. And offcourse customers have a difficult time telling whether their packages were done pee-bottle-free.
While workers are not especially knowledgeable they are uniquely situated for certain kinds of information. So even if they are not especially homogenous the dimensions on which they base opinions on are probably the same. Also if you know you are powerless it is easy to not care. If you are an office worker and know you do or could have a say, “pee bottles in my company” activates accountability differently. If you are not so situated you will probably frame is as “their company”, “company I work at”, “Big dude that breaths into my neck is equally asshole to those guys too”.
I always like it when I can upvote and disagree :)
I think you have to be in VERY far mode, and still squint a bit, to think of that as “alignment” to the degree that distinguishes socialist from conventional organizations. Sure, employees as a group will prefer higher median wages over more profits (though maybe not if they’re actual owners to a great degree), but I have yet to see a large organization where workers care all that much about other workers (distant ones, with different roles, who compete for prestige and compensation even while cooperating for delivery).
Conventional org owners/leaders care a lot about worker retention and productivity, which is often summarized as “satisfaction”. I have seen no evidence in my <mumble> years at companies big and small, including both tech and non-tech workers that office workers care more about warehouse workers than senior management does. There is probably slightly more for warehouse workers caring about workers in other warehouses, but even then, there’s cut-throat hatred for closing “my” warehouse rather than someone else’s.
Without the qualifier “different roles” I had in mind that you can privately not like peeing into to a bottle to be pretty well correlated with your coworker also not liking it without you considering each other.
And then when I apply the same about office workers thinking about warehouse workers peeing in bottles it seems they would not be ambivalent but slightly against.
While it is quite easy to see a manager wanting a policy that has 10% number increase and no numeric effect on any other number to be default in favour.
In reverse this can be seen that a worker is unnaturally insulated about the meangingfulness of their task. Moving boxes day in day out probably feels very samey, while a manager can see that now we are serving this nationality people and now that. Or indeed that with no increase customers per worker might be 10 and with 10% increase we have 11 customers per worker. And offcourse customers have a difficult time telling whether their packages were done pee-bottle-free.
While workers are not especially knowledgeable they are uniquely situated for certain kinds of information. So even if they are not especially homogenous the dimensions on which they base opinions on are probably the same. Also if you know you are powerless it is easy to not care. If you are an office worker and know you do or could have a say, “pee bottles in my company” activates accountability differently. If you are not so situated you will probably frame is as “their company”, “company I work at”, “Big dude that breaths into my neck is equally asshole to those guys too”.