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0 pointsjerf11y ago0 comments

"How true. So they paid $40k in back wages - also trivial."

I think the "triviality" of paying the back wages and the "triviality" of the fine are directly related to each other. $40K / (7.25-1.21) = 662 underpaid hours [1], or put into probably an even better unit for comprehension, 16.5 man-weeks or 4.25 man-months.

This is bad, and in particularly bad in a very revealing way. However, it's not like this was a sweatshop employing hundreds for months without detection, which I suspect the mental model people are reading into this story. While I suspect 3.5K is a bit low, the millions upon millions that I suspect many people are emotionally calling for would also be inappropriate.

[1] Forgive me if I don't fully spell out the units here.

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anigbrowl11y ago· 1 in thread

I'm sure it's just an oversight, but that's actually 6622 underpaid hours, not 662. In other words 165 man/weeks or slightly over 3 man-years. I think people are annoyed about the fine because it basically sends the message that you can pay people only 15% of the minimum wage and if you get caught the fine will be just about 50 cents an hour, or ~8% of the amount stolen from the employee. That's less than what I pay in sales tax when I purchase goods from a store.

Now you're right that it's better than large sweatshops where hundreds of people may be underpaid. And it may well be that these employees were put up by the company and din't have to spend anything on rent or food, so while they were only being paid $100/week to work here they might have been coining it by Indian standards. But as I said above, even after the payout and fine the firm got a bargain! How much would you budget for 6600 hours of IT department grunt work?

jerfOP11y ago

"I'm sure it's just an oversight, but that's actually 6622 underpaid hours, not 662. "

Yes it was, it shreds my entire point, and add my pitchfork to the crowd. Whoops. Thanks for catching that. Can't delete or edit the message now, or I would.

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