[Vanderson]

Privately owned companies have the direct responsibility to care for their employee's and view their employee's as necessary partners to the company's success helps avoid _some_ of what you are describing. This is reliant on decent ownership of course.

[becquerel]

Unfortunately, even private companies have an ultimate obligation to maximize profit (or else they're overtaken by another business which will). This means that employers and employees ultimately remain opposed.

[dreamcompiler]

One reason for this is that it's hard to measure the value of an individual employee's contribution to the company [0], but it's easy to measure their cost. Since things that are easy to measure get weighted more highly [1], companies tend to see employees as costs rather than assets.

[0] except sometimes for salespeople who bring in big accounts, which is why salespeople in many companies are better compensated than engineers.

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/McNamara_fallacy

[moate]

"Be careful what you measure because that's what gets managed" or some such.

[Vanderson]

Nothing is in a vacuum, and employees (myself included) feel the opposite responsibility. I want a paycheck and to get that I need my employer to stay in business. There is a synergy there.

Maybe this is a scale issue. As a single owner of a business I feel personally responsible, and my actions in business are the same as in my personal life. But with a business I share ownership with, I have less personal responsibility, therefore by default I am simply not responsible (and feel less so) about the effects the business has.

Multiply this out to thousands of shareholders, where this connection of ownership -> responsibility towards employees dilutes to the point of non-existence.