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eBay will lay off 1,000 employees — 9 percent of the company (www.theverge.com)
submitted 2 years ago by to c/technology@lemmy.world
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[–] 9 points 2 years ago (1 child)

Maybe look at this another way:

The government should represent the interests of the people. If the people have shown interest in curbing these layoff behaviors, where thousands of people lose their jobs while management remains in place with no apparent cuts to the top billing, then why would lawmakers not want to translate these interests into legislation?

I get a reasonable wariness of keeping the government out of private business, but if you have a town of 10 people, all employed by local business owner, and that business owner lays off two people, you have a large percentage of the population affected. If the townspeople enact a local ordinance to prevent this kind of behavior in the future, would they be in the wrong?

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  • [+] -6 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    To prevent ... what kind of behavior exactly? Firing people? I'm for the government protecting peoples interest, but also a business needs the freedom to hire and fire as they see fit, without beuaracy involved. Maybe you're more referring to a union?

    how do you know management is not also being fired? Should the 'people' be given a list of potential fires and they vote on who the business can fire?

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  • [–] 2 points 2 years ago

    This breaks down as a business grows. When your business employs a significant portion of the local economy, it accumulates soft power that can rival that of local governments, all while having little to none of the accountability or representation that one would otherwise expect.

    Management is likely being fired to an extent, but one used to expect those with the authority and responsibility to be in such a position of power to be held accountable. We’re long gone from the days where a leader would personally take accountability and step down while making unpopular or harmful decisions.

    I don’t have a perfect solution to this but I clearly think something needs to change.

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