Quote:
Originally Posted by Samoht
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In the 2000's, I worked for five years for one of the wealthiest companies in the world - a true conglomerate. When I started, they were listed as one of the top companies in the world to work for. I got good ratings on my reviews, several raises and promotions as I watched them slowly cut benefits and raise costs of insurance. Stock options? Gone. Employee stock purchase program? Gone. 401k matching? Cut in half. Hiring was frozen. Morale was shot. They were no longer a top company to work for.
Yet they continued to flaunt record profits.
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This idea that your job should pay for your insurance or offer you stock options is just laughable. Why in god's name should your employer be responsible for YOUR health? Their job is to compensate you for the work you do for them. You agree to work for them at a wage (or you don't) and then they pay you that wage assuming you continue doing the work to an acceptable standard. This is a free agreement you enter into with a company.
This notion of benefits comes directly from the existence of payroll tax. By offering you compensation in the form of healthcare and other benefits, the company is not forced to pay as great a penalty on using those funds. So the entire existence of employer based healthcare is a DIRECT RESULT of capitalistic desires to reduce cost and increase profit. Now, you must look at healthcare and other benefits as a portion of your entire compensation. Cutting benefits is no different than cutting pay - cutting payroll would actually benefit the company more than cutting benefits, but could you imagine the outrage if your salary was cut by $1,500 instead of your benefits increasing in price/being cut?
Finally, companies do not answer to their employees. Employees are free to quit and find other employment (they don't because employment has been made hard due to other economic factors) - but all a company owe an employee is the compensation for the work that employee provides. Profits however, are how a company must answer to it's owners (share holders). If you hold stock in a company, it is that companies job to maximize your profits. So a company does own something to someone - it is just the share holders, and not the employee as you seem to think.