lizard wrote:
> Unfortunately for your theory, the *reality* of the "no volunteers" law
> has been a collapse in customer service in many areas, most noticeably
> online services and games. It USED to be that online services were
> staffed almost entirely by volunteers, people who felt they were part of
> a community and wanted to give something back. Then, someone decided to
> make a big stink about being "exploited" (by *choosing* to work for free
> -- totally free -- no promises of future paid employment, no minimum
> wage, nothing which could remotely be considered a real job) and the
> online volunteers vanished, hundreds of committed individuals replaced
> by a handful of underpaid, non-volunteer, grunts who didn't care about
> the community and didn't consider themselves part of it.
Sad story. But the main culprit for this aberrant event is, in my eyes, the
American lawsuits frenzy regarding everything, not labor laws (I read today
in The Economist - not exactly an union friendly and left leaning paper! -
that two girls expelled from the cheerleaders team started a lawsuit against
their school..).
> Your argument is one in favor of minimum wage laws, not one against
> allowing volunteers to work for for-profit coporations. Hell, it's MY
> life, MY time, MY work -- if I wish to give it away, what right does
> anyone have to tell me I can't? (Or, to put it in a more on-topic
> perspective -- I earn less money, per hour, as a freelancer than I would
> working at a local McDonalds. Does this mean I should sue someone for
> 'exploiting' me?).
Of course not. This is a complex argument, but I'll be brief: people with no
education and no money will always be forced to accept jobs that will make
really hard making their ends meet. Has the government the duty to enforce
rules to make sure that even the 'low' jobs give workers a salary sufficient
to support him/herself and his/her family? For me, yes. Do you agree? Fine.
Do you disagree? Fine too. It's a free world (NATO? 8-]) and we will vote for
different parties...
> Heck, I used to be a volunteer, back in the ealry days of online
> services, late 80s, early 90s, playing forum cop on AOL and CI$.
> "Exploited"? Heck no! I got online comp time, and, when you considered
> time online used to cost twelve smegging bucks an hour, I was getting
> many times minimum wage in equivalent value.
>
> Volunteer means "to do something for free, because you want to do it".
> Going from volunteerism to sweatshops is a logical jump of stunning
> proportions.
What? I NEVER intended to say that volunteering work was the equivalent of
working a sweatshop! A volunteer is of course somebody that works for free
for the time he/she wants to use (I do volunteering work in social causes
myself and I don't consider myself an employee) . My writing: "WotC can use
volunteers on any projects and the choice to do it (or not) rests squarely on
their shoulders, not on labor laws and regulations" meant that volunteering
is NOT a job and so shouldn't be subject to labor laws. But a job shouldn't
be considered 'volunteering' for avoiding labor laws regulations.
> (Also keeping this on topic, doesn't SJG often have unpaid positions
> doing website maintenance? I mean no offense or implication against SJG,
> I'm just marginally certain I've seen such postings on Illuminati
> Online. If I am incorrect in this, I apologize.)
Rest assured that in Statalist Europe we have a huge number of volunteer
organizations for the greates number of causes and they have never been
involved in lawsuits under labor laws and no union never had any thought
about labour laws violations about volunteering. Well, if they did, they
quickly squashed the idea nonetheless.
Bye!
Ciro
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