71 What current controversies surround the employment relationship?

Employment law is an ongoing creation as technology and the world change. Some current controversies include:

• The state of CEO compensation. In the United States, CEOs make around three hundred percent of the wages for the average employee at their company. This multiplier is much higher in the United States than in other countries. These kind of pay gaps may help retain very talented CEOs, but they may also cause comparison problems for other employees at the firm.
• What constitutes an employee has been the subject of much debate. Gig-economy work through services such as Uber have changed the nature of work for many people. While working for this kind of company, the traditional tests for employee versus independent contractor are not particularly helpful. For instance, Uber controls an app without which their drivers cannot work. The drivers, on the other hand, own their vehicles and work when they please. Thus, this relationship has some of the elements of a traditional employee relationship and some of the elements of a contractor relationship.
• Much of the United States does a significant amount of their shopping online, but the efficiencies involved in expedited shipping for thousands of products may come at the cost of employee welfare. Amazon has been widely criticized for treatment of employees in its warehouses, where monitoring and heavy scheduling lead to higher than average employee turnover.
• Finally, the relationship between employee and company politics has been a source of great friction for companies. When employees desire the company take a political stance, yet the company feels such a stance may not be in the interest of shareholders, a conflict exists. At times, companies may feel pleasing employees is in their long-term interest. At other times, companies may come down on the side of shareholders. For instance, as of this writing controversy at Netflix had occurred because employees felt the company was supporting discriminatory content. Ultimately the company issued a memo which said “While every title is different, we approach them based on the same set of principles: we support the artistic expression of the creators we choose to work with; we program for a diversity of audiences and tastes; and we let viewers decide what’s appropriate for them, versus having Netflix censor specific artists or voices.” And, “If you’d find it hard to support our content breadth, Netflix may not be the best place for you.”