[whinvik]

> In particular, the companies purchase financial information from a data broker before offering a nurse a shift; if the nurse is carrying a lot of credit-card debt, especially if some of that is delinquent, the amount offered is reduced. "Because, the more desperate you are, the less you'll accept to come into work and do that grunt work of caring for the sick, the elderly, and the dying."

I think this should be made illegal.

But I also think judging from how bad people are at making laws, what we will get is something that will make it worse for everyone.

[bootsmann]

It's really funny to me that with both the AI act and GDPR, you will see swathes of threads of people on HN bashing the law only to then later discover the purpose of this legislation from first principles.

[octo888]

The same could come to Europe (lowballing broke people), because you can just make employees give their consent by baking it into all employment contracts. Just like the working time directive opt-out (HR say "take it or leave it" to 99.9% of people).

It probably already happens where it's already acceptable to request financial checks such as the finance industry.

[actionfromafar]

You could try, but that would most likely be illegal and also fought tooth and nail by unions, which aren't as neutered as American unions. In Europe, sympathy strikes aren't Verboten like in the US.

[octo888]

Many countries in Europe have weak unions (eg Estonia, Lithuania, Latvia, Poland, Hungary, Bulgaria, Portugal, Czech Republic, Greece).

And there is no real EU (did you mean EU by "Europe"?) wide labour law

[Mindwipe]

It depends on the territory, there's no pan-Europe regulation on it.

Even when the UK was in the EU sympathy strikes were illegal (to a much greater extent than the US).

[bootsmann]

The problem is the party selling that data actually. The nurses would need to consent that whomever the data broker got that data from to share their data with the broker and for the broker to share that data with the nursing service.

[croes]

That would violate privacy laws. They could put it into the contract but they would be void

[octo888]

I don't agree. Which laws? Putting it in the contract is giving your permission. You're allowed to give your permission under GDPR.

A similar thing happened with the Working Time Directive - almost all contracts in my country make you agree to opt-out and that's been like that for over 15 years

[gampleman]

That's not how European courts have been interpreting it. When they say "free consent" they do mean free as in beer, so a "consent or loose your job" provisions would almost certainly be thrown out.

[octo888]

What job is being lost when you are applying for a new job?

> That's not how European courts have been interpreting it

Any particular relevant cases I can lookup?

[fsflover]

> Putting it in the contract is giving your permission. You're allowed to give your permission under GDPR.

AFAIK the company must make it opt-in, non-mandatory and provide a way to change your mind at any moment.

[octo888]

Yes, as I said, by putting it in the employment contract when applying for a job.

Honestly it's hilarious how some people view GDPR. They think CEOs lose sleep at night worrying about it, that they might go to jail for it, or have to pay 100M Euro fine for a breach of it. It's simply not the case.

The reality of EU directives and regulations are very different to how they are sold. Many people fall prey to the marketing

[aitchnyu]

15 years back, I was subscribed to EU official blog which presents their side of tabloid headlines like "Overpaid French suits want to ban blue stickers on only freckled apples". Did they publish ones for AI Act and GDPR, especially as more countries elect manly commonsense billionaire sympathizers?

[amiga386]

They stopped in 2017, sadly. https://web.archive.org/web/20200131192225/https://blogs.ec....

Edit: their very last entry was on GDPR: https://wayback.archive-it.org/11980/20200131184218/https://...

[aredox]

Well, you wanted a "free enterprise" society, why do you complain now? Isn't that freedom? Of expression, of commerce, of association...

...Oh, you are worried about power asymmetry? What are you, a communist?

[lupusreal]

In communist countries, labor unions are controlled by the party and serve the interests of the state, not the workers. Strikes are illegal and any pretense of collective bargaining is a farce.

Worker rights only exist in free societies.

[philipallstar]

> Oh, you are worried about power asymmetry? What are you, a communist?

If you were in a communist country you are definitely worried about the power asymmetry, and rushing to go to West Germany or just out of the USSR, or to the USA from Cuba or out of pre-capitalist China if you could.

[aredox]

I should have gone with "socialist" to avoid all you "ackchually" people who try to educate me on the evils of Soviet Communism while the discourse in the USA is that anything slightly to the left of Pinochet is "COMMUNISM"

[philipallstar]

> I should have gone with "socialist" to avoid all you "ackchually" people who try to educate me on the evils of Soviet Communism

Socialist the same in practice. Still state-controlled economy in the name of fairness and starvation soon following.

[sneak]

Why should it be illegal?

Seems to me that the illegal part would be the cartel of the 3 apps that cornered the whole market.

An app that doesn’t do this could eat their lunch.

Nurses work at hospitals, the supply of which is constrained artificially by the state, so once you sell all of the ones in a region on your app, you have a monopoly. It is a type of regulatory capture.

[whinvik]

To clarify, what I think should be made illegal is to take advantage of people by using information about how much debt that they have to lowball them.

[sneak]

Yes, why? This is the market working as it should. Market participants should be free to use all available information.

The lowballing should be counteracted by competition. There isn’t any competition because the number of hospitals is artificially constrained by the state and a cartel can go to all of them in a region (usually a single digit number) and capture all of them, cornering the market for purchasing labor in that field.

The problem is not that the bidders have the information. The problem is that there is effectively only one bidder: the cartel.

An app that doesn’t do this (and thus pays more) would quickly have access to the entire labor pool by offering higher wages. It doesn’t exist because of illegal activity. That’s not caused by the cartel having access to, or using, information.

You are addressing the symptoms of the cartel, not the root cause.

[biorach]

Exploitation of the indebted is a symptom that should be addressed regardless.

Plus I think your diagnosis is simplistic.

[whinvik]

IMO cartels are inevitable. Almost all sectors end up with 1 or 2 players.

However, I am curious to know how you think we can avoid the problem of cartels.