LMG forbids their workers from discussing wages, not just with outsiders but even amongst each other. Clarification needed.

[Omni-Owl]

14 minutes ago, jeo said:

It is not as clear cut as that, rights which are laid in the Canadian charter of rights and freedoms superseded. The main example of this is freedom of movement.

Section 2 of the charter covers fundamental freedoms, which includes freedom of expression.

There is case law which clearly states that this freedom of expression is not protected in the workplace, however it is protected outside.

 

LMG would be well within their rights to banned conversations on pay transparency inside the workplace (assuming BC labor law does not prohibit this action), however what employee do outside is less clear. I am not aware of any cases which test this theory however I suspect the courts would side which the employee.

I guess the problem is that even if a court sides with an employee in that case, it would still mean employers would retaliate if they hear tell of employees talking about their wages outside of work. They wouldn't fire you over that talk of course, they'd set you up for failure and then terminate you, or find a different reason to terminate you.

It's quite sinister.

[Volbet]

5 hours ago, leadeater said:

My work place is the same, I am on an induvial contract however the union here is very strong and anything they negotiate gets applied to all individual contracts (so long as you agree to the change). We also have pay scales and bands and your job role is points assessed and each scale band has a points requirement. Every year our pay has a standard increment as well as the pay scale band incrementing, the standard increment is higher than the scale increment (inflation adjustment basically). So basically after a while you will hit the top of your pay scale band and your salary pay will only increase with the scale increment.

That's actually very interesting. 

We have a similar system in Denmark, where even salaried employees are often covered by a collective bargaining agreement, but here it's also rather common to negotiate a supplement to the guaranteed salary in the collective bargaining agreement. 

For example, I've worked a couple of jobs covered by bargaining agreement, both as a contractor and as an actual employee, and I've never gotten the rate in the collective bargaining agreement. Say I was to receive a $1.000 a week in my pay band, I would negotiate a fixed supplementary pay to that pay band. So I might have a $1.000 in base pay every week, with an addition of $250 a week. The base pay would then be regulated alongside the collective bargaining agreement, while the additional pay would be regulated via individual agreement with my employer. 

 

[Sauron]

It certainly doesn't look great... it's true that in such a diversified work environment people might get significantly different wages and it might cause interpersonal issues but that should be down to personal judgment. If someone is being an asshole about their wage, i.e. making fun of coworkers with a lower wage, that should be dealt with according to their being an asshole and not the mere fact that they shared their wage. Are LMG workers unionized? Because in that case it would be especially important to be able to know what each other's wages are.

13 hours ago, SansVarnic said:

Seems to me there is no case to be made against LMG on this subject. Also, this is not the first time LMG has been accused of this, and the practice is very common to protect the employer and employee. People need to stop watching the very misinformed and so-called tiktok pay (non)experts.

I doubt anything illegal is going on here, I would generally agree however that for any form of worker organization knowing at least roughly what others in the company are making is pretty important. If it is just standard practice then I would encourage LMG to think about it and maybe change it, if they are in fact favorable to unionization etc.

[jeo]

28 minutes ago, Omni-Owl said:

I guess the problem is that even if a court sides with an employee in that case, it would still mean employers would retaliate if they hear tell of employees talking about their wages outside of work. They wouldn't fire you over that talk of course, they'd set you up for failure and then terminate you, or find a different reason to terminate you.

It's quite sinister.

If an employer did that it would be considered constructive dismissal, which is really bad (the courts will assign large damages against the employer).

What is more likely is that employer would terminate the employee without cause, paying full severance. In reality this is how most large companies fire under-preforming staff, since it removes the risk of legal action against them.

 

I think it is important to give LMG management the benefit of the doubt here. I don't believe they introduced a policy like this to screw over their staff.

I can absolutely understand why management would want to prevent pay transparency, it helps to avoid the perceived drama of staff feeling mistreated.

However these policy ultimately hurt the most vulnerable, and I am confidant that LMG will do the right thing once they are aware of the issue.

 

Edit:

It should be noted that pay transparency does not mean releasing a list of each employee and the amount they make. Instead it can allows for employees to speak freely about their compensation (or not, no should feel pressed to share if they are no comfortable), and even publishing anonymized data which allow the staff to understand themselves in comparison to their peers.

[Omni-Owl]

17 minutes ago, jeo said:

I think it is important to give LMG management the benefit of the doubt here. I don't believe they introduced a policy like this to screw over their staff.

I might have been too unclear. My comment about employers retaliating was not about LMG specifically.

[MrStonedOne]

What LMG needs to understand, is that a large portion of their userbase is American, and in America, laws prohibiting wage secrecy is basically one of the few union protections we have. Discussing wages is assumed to be a requirement for ad-hoc collective bargaining.

 

in the last 3 years this fact has gotten more publicity from r/workreform and has entered the public zeitgeist such that any rules forbidding or even discouraging wage discussion is seen as union busting by a much larger amount of people then before the pandemic.

 

I get that this can come off as a culture shock but I do want to note that excusing this behavior with "everybody does it" or the like isn't gonna placate anybody.

[IkeaGnome]

17 minutes ago, MrStonedOne said:

What LMG needs to understand, is that a large portion of their userbase is American, and in America, laws prohibiting wage secrecy is basically one of the few union protections we have. Discussing wages is assumed to be a requirement for ad-hoc collective bargaining.

 

in the last 3 years this fact has gotten more publicity from r/workreform and has entered the public zeitgeist such that any rules forbidding or even discouraging wage discussion is seen as union busting by a much larger amount of people then before the pandemic.

 

I get that this can come off as a culture shock but I do want to note that excusing this behavior with "everybody does it" or the like isn't gonna placate anybody.

LMG doesn't need to understand it. They just need to understand and follow Canadian law. If they are currently, great. If Canadians don't like it, go vote. If they're not following the law, then shame on them. 

People need to not assume that just because something is legal in one country it's legal in all. American laws aren't laws in the land to my east and south. 

[dogwitch]

4 minutes ago, IkeaGnome said:

LMG doesn't need to understand it. They just need to understand and follow Canadian law. If they are currently, great. If Canadians don't like it, go vote. If they're not following the law, then shame on them. 

People need to not assume that just because something is legal in one country it's legal in all. American laws aren't laws in the land to my east and south. 

you be surprise how bad people assume something.

[MrStonedOne]

51 minutes ago, IkeaGnome said:

LMG doesn't need to understand it. They just need to understand and follow Canadian law. If they are currently, great. If Canadians don't like it, go vote. If they're not following the law, then shame on them. 

People need to not assume that just because something is legal in one country it's legal in all. American laws aren't laws in the land to my east and south. 

If LMG wants to forgo money, views, and support from their american customer base sure.

 

But as long as LMG has american viewers they will have to deal with american viewers holding them to american standards.

 

We live in a society type shit.

[IkeaGnome]

1 hour ago, dogwitch said:

you be surprise how bad people assume something.

I'm not surprised one bit.

20 minutes ago, MrStonedOne said:

If LMG wants to forgo money, views, and support from their american customer base sure.

I can't tell if you're trying to speak for all Americans or not. 

 

20 minutes ago, MrStonedOne said:

We live in a society type shit.

Mind explaining?

[leadeater]

31 minutes ago, MrStonedOne said:

If LMG wants to forgo money, views, and support from their american customer base sure.

 

But as long as LMG has american viewers they will have to deal with american viewers holding them to american standards.

 

We live in a society type shit.

Viewers don't have any right to pry in to private and employment matters of those who they watch on YouTube. Unless it's actually something serious and egregious it's none of their business. Hence the issue here is someone trying to drum up drama and not any country's standards or people from that country.

 

I can have my opinion that openness in wages is best and is the case in my country but I do not care to argue about it with a company and employees from another country when there isn't actually a problem. Nothing I can say will change Canadian law so 

Edited February 19, 2023 by leadeater

[MrStonedOne]

1 minute ago, leadeater said:

Unless it's actually something serious and egregious it's none of their business.

To the people mad about this, it is "something serious and egregious"

 

LMG doing the bare minimum as legally required is not the defense you think it is. People are allowed to hold them to higher standards then the law. The US law is just WHY its entered the culture zeitgeist, it doesn't limit it to just the US, morality and ethics don't work like that. 

 

7 minutes ago, IkeaGnome said:

28 minutes ago, MrStonedOne said:

We live in a society type shit.

Mind explaining?

People are perfectly fine deciding what businesses they want to support based on how they treat their employees. They are also perfectly fine expressing their anger at unethical treatment of employees. Being on youtube doesn't change that, it only enhances it. if you want to benefit from society (like a large international audience that makes you money) you can't just ignore that society exists when its inconvenient to you.

[leadeater]

9 minutes ago, MrStonedOne said:

To the people mad about this, it is "something serious and egregious"

No they think it is without actually knowing what is happening. Someone having a dump on a company that may or may not be a past employee with unverified company policy documents which may or may not be real, may or may not be current is sorely lacking in information to go around having a massive whine and attack at a company.

 

Do we actually know anything at all? Nope. Without a direct complaint from an actual person laid out properly we have nothing so there is nothing to complain about so nothing is serious and egregious.

 

As I said basically everyone here has huge gaps in knowledge about Canadian employment laws and if even if company policy is to not discuss wages that doesn't actually mean it's not happening and effectively encouraged in the right situations and it doesn't mean that with such a company policy it can actually be leveraged against an employee unfairly because like I mentioned nobody here is likely to be a Canadian employment law expert.

 

There is very serious problems with people unable or unwilling to recognize their own ignorance about situations and perfectly happy to go off the rails attacking people or companies without any warrant to do so. That actually causes harm, more than their perceived harm which may in reality be none at all.

 

Do no harm or you are the problem, fairly simple.

Edited February 19, 2023 by leadeater

[Blue4130]

14 minutes ago, MrStonedOne said:

. 

 

People are perfectly fine deciding what businesses they want to support based on how they treat their employees. They are also perfectly fine expressing their anger at unethical treatment of employees. Being on youtube doesn't change that, it only enhances it. if you want to benefit from society (like a large international audience that makes you money) you can't just ignore that society exists when its inconvenient to you.

You almost make it sound like they are a sweatshop that make employees piss in bottles. Personally, asking employees to not discuss $salaries if a far stretch from being unethical. But that's just how I feel. According to past employees and linus, they are paid enough to live in British Columbia on a single salary. Many many people can not do that.

[MrStonedOne]

  

14 minutes ago, leadeater said:

Do we actually know anything at all? Nope. Without a direct complaint from an actual person laid out properly we have nothing so there is nothing to complain about so nothing is serious and egregious.

yes we do!

 

This is a common fallacy i keep seeing, but you can't just split up the two pieces and pretend that together they don't push the story from potentially true to likely true. The merch message on its own could be joke or a flat out misunderstanding, the employee handbook on its own could be fake or a misunderstanding of what it doesn't allow, but both together paint a different picture. 

 

edit: also enforcement is not required for this to be unethical, merely having the policy is unethical.

[IkeaGnome]

1 minute ago, MrStonedOne said:

People are perfectly fine deciding what businesses they want to support based on how they treat their employees. They are also perfectly fine expressing their anger at unethical treatment of employees. Being on youtube doesn't change that, it only enhances it. if you want to benefit from society (like a large international audience that makes you money) you can't just ignore that society exists when its inconvenient to you.

I don't dare share the article since it in it's entirety straddles the line of politics and more than likely is against the rules. However, if you want to see what our society looks like front the point of view of someone who is in it now, but didn't used to, have a look at Yeonmi Park. Specifically her time in college, and what she went through in her previous countries. 

Quote

"It's really funny to this day to me that somehow not having a problem is a problem."

 

26 minutes ago, MrStonedOne said:

LMG doing the bare minimum as legally required is not the defense you think it is. People are allowed to hold them to higher standards then the law. The US law is just WHY its entered the culture zeitgeist, it doesn't limit it to just the US, morality and ethics don't work like that. 

Just because we do something one way in this country doesn't make it morally or ethically correct either. I won't expand on this once again to avoid going into politics, but I'm sure you can draw your own bridges to current and recent past events. 

27 minutes ago, MrStonedOne said:

People are perfectly fine deciding what businesses they want to support based on how they treat their employees. They are also perfectly fine expressing their anger at unethical treatment of employees. Being on youtube doesn't change that, it only enhances it. if you want to benefit from society (like a large international audience that makes you money) you can't just ignore that society exists when its inconvenient to you.

You know what's interesting about cancel culture? Look at how well it's working out for the crowd that is currently against anything Harry Potter. Echo chambers really are interesting when you stop and look at them, and figure out who made the first noise that started the echo. But 99.9% of people wont take the time to look into what happened to lead up to this thread or those Twitter posts. 99.99999% of people don't have access to that information and saying you were able to draw factual opinions based on what 2 people have said is laughable. I could get on Twitter today, say I make $150k a year at LMG and make it look like facts. I could also get on Twitter today, say I make $10k a year at LMG and make it look like facts. None of those three statements would be anywhere near facts, but someone would take it that way and after enough people say it it will become "facts" built on a massive fallacy. 

Spoiler

 

 

[leadeater]

1 hour ago, MrStonedOne said:

yes we do!

No you do not. See now you cannot admit you are lacking proper information about the situation and are only going on your assumptions about it.

 

1 hour ago, MrStonedOne said:

also enforcement is not required for this to be unethical, merely having the policy is unethical.

Ethics and ethical to you.

 

You and everyone prying in to private matters you have zero business doing to me is also unethical. You being unable to recognize that actions can and do cause harm and playing off your assumptions to do so is far more unethical than your opinions about a company policy in country you likely know little about when it comes to employment relations and laws.

 

Having a discussion about something like this is fine and one thing, but to make the decision that there is actually a problem and to demonize a company and demand change or actively discredit the company is a very different thing.

 

The story here that I see is someone actively trying to discredit a company and has an axe to grind getting to frame the situation how they like knowing that a proper rebuttal from LMG is likely not possible or itself improper to do so for a lot of legitimate reasons. So they and everyone else gets to complain and attack with impunity with all the self satisfaction they want to feel about it while refusing to acknowledge the harm they are doing.

 

You will get no objection from me that openness about wages is best and proper, what you will not get from me is agreement that LMG need to change their company policy if it's in there at all because I lack the knowledge about Canadian employment law and the working environment at LMG to do so. If LMG/Linus wishes to comment about this then great but I suspect it's not going to be a satisfactory response other then "Keep out of it" so I would actually prefer nothing.

Edited February 20, 2023 by leadeater

[MrStonedOne]

1 minute ago, IkeaGnome said:

cancel culture

Spoiler

cancel culture is when you harass people for not having the same values as you do for not supporting somebody for xyz reasons. Nobody is doing that here. Also the whole point of talking about why a entity has made you mad is to give them a chance to reform, something absent from cancel culture.

 

[IkeaGnome]

Just now, MrStonedOne said:

  Hide contents

cancel culture is when you harass people for not having the same values as you do for not supporting somebody for xyz reasons. Nobody is doing that here. Also the whole point of talking about why a entity has made you mad is to give them a chance to reform, something absent from cancel culture.

 

I'm just impressed you read and replied to my post that fast.

[Ultraforce]

28 minutes ago, IkeaGnome said:

You know what's interesting about cancel culture? Look at how well it's working out for the crowd that is currently against anything Harry Potter. Echo chambers really are interesting when you stop and look at them, and figure out who made the first noise that started the echo. But 99.9% of people wont take the time to look into what happened to lead up to this thread or those Twitter posts. 99.99999% of people don't have access to that information and saying you were able to draw factual opinions based on what 2 people have said is laughable. I could get on Twitter today, say I make $150k a year at LMG and make it look like facts. I could also get on Twitter today, say I make $10k a year at LMG and make it look like facts. None of those three statements would be anywhere near facts, but someone would take it that way and after enough people say it it will become "facts" built on a massive fallacy. 

  Reveal hidden contents

 

 

By that are you saying that current attempts to discourage people from making purchases that financially support the Harry Potter creator have not been effective in which case that is definitely arguably true. On the other hand it has kind of helped to reveal the company she keeps which has probably helped some people to let go of nostalgia since they don't want to support people who work with certain organizations that want to remove human rights. Basically, I don't really get the point of comparison.

I don't know about people on the subreddit but I think for most people in the forums they'd be happy if in a merch message this coming week responds that it's fine to discuss pay with fellow employees or ideally if pay scales were available somewhere in the process of applying for a job at LMG and the other Linus and Yvonne owned companies at least by the time of the interview.

[IkeaGnome]

2 minutes ago, Ultraforce said:

Basically, I don't really get the point of comparison.

I could have been much more clear about the comparison. It's one thing to say "I don't like this company's policies and therefore I'll no longer be giving it my money" It's another thing to cross that line into "cancel culture" and say things that are factually false. Repeating something that is not fact many times does not magically make it fact. I AM NOT SAYING ANYONE HERE HAS DONE THAT, THEY HAVEN'T. 

Libel laws are a real thing both here in the states and down there in Canada. I'm fine with people disagreeing. I'm fine with people not liking what other people do. It's how we create change. Just be careful with how far you go. Current echo chambers make it all too easily to go too far, make things that aren't facts seem like facts, and cause more problems for others than we should. 

15 minutes ago, Ultraforce said:

I don't know about people on the subreddit but I think for most people in the forums they'd be happy if in a merch message this coming week responds that it's fine to discuss pay with fellow employees or ideally if pay scales were available somewhere in the process of applying for a job at LMG and the other Linus and Yvonne owned companies at least by the time of the interview.

There is some more recent legislation down there in BC that is worth giving a read for both LMG and other people in this thread and Twitter. However, research is key and I'm not going to quote something that could get spun into something else. 

[Guest]

36 minutes ago, leadeater said:

The story here that I see is someone actively trying to discredit a company and has an axe to grind getting to frame the situation how they like knowing that a proper rebuttal from LMG is likely not possible or itself improper to do so for a lot of legitimate reasons. So they and everyone else gets to complain and attack with impunity will all the self satisfaction they want to feel about it while refusing to acknowledge the harm they are doing.

 

 

I see it the same way...

 

In all honesty even though I do not work for LMG, nor know any of the employess there personally, thank you for the level headed responses.  It's nice to see individuals like you among this mess.

 

All I've seen thus far are would be keyboard laywers who have little to know idea what the actual state of LMG is and how their employees are actually compensated. Many of the responses thus far are trying to apply US law to Canadian Law and while probably very similar in may respects, there are differences as well. 

 

Truth is no one really knows for sure other than LMG and their employees. The so-called ex-employee...no offence but it's hard to say if they trutly are an ex-employee. Posting a so-called employee hand book that none of us can actually verify is not enough evidence...sorry, but it's not. Even if it is true, how does anyone know they didn't obtain it by other means? Assuming true, the general sense I got from their post was a very disgruntled ex-employee that was complainging about having to write a video once a week...which IMHO seems reasonable considering that is their job (assuming ex-writer). Most importantly people seem to forget there are always two sides to every story...I feel that this so-called ex-employee is embelishing the truth a little, as they've seen this an oppertunity to pile on...on a already riled up community. There will always be individuals that will take advantage of a situation, yet many people cannot take the time to critically think, as they are believing eveything in front of them and accepting it as fact. 

 

I am sure this will be discussed on the next WAN show unfortunatly, however like you said I am sure Linus cannot go into very much detail either, as he cannot talk about personal wages, compensations and even verify the "ex-eomplyee" due to simple privacy laws. He can only talk about so much, but yet people will come out and say.."see he is lying and is a terrible boss," ignoring the fact that he cannot  talk about certian aspects due to other laws, or simple business practices.

 

If LMG was that terrible to work at, I am 100% confident that there would significantly more staff turnover. They employ some very smart talented individuals that would have no issues finding jobs elsewhere, so it cannot be as bad as it's being made out to be...

[Arika]

Classic forum response.

 

2 hours ago, MrStonedOne said:

But as long as LMG has american viewers they will have to deal with american viewers holding them to american standards.

And those Americans will be laughed at for thinking they are the centre of everything. In Australia such a clause would also be illegal, but couldn't care less about a company in a different country restricting it. you know what could actually be illegal? an ex-employee leaking internal company documents.

 

2 hours ago, MrStonedOne said:

People are perfectly fine deciding what businesses they want to support based on how they treat their employees. They are also perfectly fine expressing their anger at unethical treatment of employees.

LMG is not holding their employees hostage, LMG is not the only place people can work, hell it's not even an entry level job (like amazon). These policies (assuming they are true) only affect 1 group of people: LMG employees.

 

But i guess the "they are a private company" only works some of the time.

[Guest]

39 minutes ago, Arika S said:

Classic forum response.

 

you know what could actually be illegal? an ex-employee leaking internal company documents.

 

Yup very true...a fact that so many peole forget.

39 minutes ago, Arika S said:

LMG is not holding their employees hostage, LMG is not the only place people can work, hell it's not even an entry level job (like amazon). These policies (assuming they are true) only affect 1 group of people: LMG employees.

 

But i guess the "they are a private company" only works some of the time.

 

I agree...they are very skilled/talented people, they dont need LMG to find a good job. Another factor to consider, is do the LMG employees even care? What I mean is, so far we have people on the internet getting riled up, pretending to be lawyers/CEO's etc... acting almost like they are speaking for LMG employees, or indirectly telling them how they should feel. Quite frankly, maybe they don't even care and are happy at LMG. While no one knows for sure, they do seem to be a like a large happy family to a good extent...based on what I've seen in videos, but again I do not know for sure. 

[Blue4130]

2 hours ago, Ultraforce said:

 if pay scales were available somewhere in the process of applying for a job at LMG and the other Linus and Yvonne owned companies at least by the time of the interview.

Do you know that they are not?