<story><title>Mercedes-Benz workforce to receive record profit-sharing bonus</title><url>https://group-media.mercedes-benz.com/marsMediaSite/en/instance/ko/Mercedes-Benz-strategy-pays-off-workforce-to-receive-record-profit-sharing-bonus.xhtml?oid=55064985</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>misnome</author><text>Isn&amp;#x27;t there supposed to be a problem with health providers explicitly rejecting insurance companies&amp;#x2F;packages that are possible to buy yourself?&lt;p&gt;You don&amp;#x27;t really have a choice if nobody where you live will take your insurance...</text></item><item><author>ericd</author><text>You can buy health insurance on the marketplaces yourself, it’s not hard, and it’s much cheaper than eg housing in most places that are MCOL and up. The challenge is saving up enough to pay for all your living expenses while you’re choosing not to work.</text></item><item><author>gautamdivgi</author><text>You can’t choose not to work in the US. You will be without health insurance.&lt;p&gt;I don’t know of single US company that allows their workers on their board. I’m not against it. I think it’s an awesome idea.</text></item><item><author>zackmorris</author><text>Allowed? We can choose not to work for companies that ban workers from their boards. Which is pretty much all of the big companies in the US.&lt;p&gt;It&amp;#x27;s funny that we have a dozen different open source software licenses that are all some version of &amp;quot;how can we give this to you even freer&amp;quot; but we have no notion of what an equitable work contract looks like. Until that changes, things will never, ever, get better for workers.</text></item><item><author>NickC25</author><text>&amp;gt;&lt;i&gt;On top of that, Mercedes Benz has a corporate Supervisory Board with 1&amp;#x2F;2 of the members representing the employees.&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;Absolutely love that, and stuff like that would never be allowed to form here in the US.  Labor having an equal seat at the table should be seen as a good thing for the purposes of long-term sustainability, not a bad thing.  Can it have drawbacks?  Sure.  However, the flipside is that currently in most places, such as the US, Capital has &lt;i&gt;all&lt;/i&gt; the seats at the table, or sometimes Labor will given a symbolic place at the proverbial kid&amp;#x27;s table, with no real ability to enact change or make their voices heard.  I applaud what Mercedes-Benz is doing here.</text></item><item><author>digdugdirk</author><text>&amp;quot;The company&amp;#x27;s management and General Works Council have jointly agreed to pay all eligible employees a special lump sum bonus of up to 7,300 euros, a figure that is even higher than the current maximum payment cap of 6,465 euros.&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;This General Works Council seems to be something like a separate &amp;quot;union within the company&amp;quot;, in addition to whatever union represents various workers within the organization. On top of that, Mercedes Benz has a corporate Supervisory Board with 1&amp;#x2F;2 of the members representing the employees.&lt;p&gt;Interesting how this structure has a headline like this one, vs the &amp;quot;&amp;gt;10k workers laid off from giant corporation with record profits for the past two years&amp;quot; headlines that seem to be popping up here daily.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>yamtaddle</author><text>Last I checked there were two companies offering insurance to individuals in my state—yes, two, yes, I&amp;#x27;m serious, no, not just on the marketplace, there were no other providers who will take individual customers &lt;i&gt;period&lt;/i&gt;, yes, I checked &lt;i&gt;a lot&lt;/i&gt; and was repeatedly told, explicitly, by people who ought to know, that those were the only two options and other insurers had pulled out entirely from offering individual plans in this state.&lt;p&gt;Both would only cover one of the four nearest major hospitals to me (though they did differ in which one it was) and only one of the two covered the huge local children&amp;#x27;s hospital that&amp;#x27;s also bought up nearly all the independent pediatrician&amp;#x27;s offices and pediatric urgent cares in the entire city, so if you have kids you actually only have one &amp;quot;option&amp;quot;.&lt;p&gt;So much for the bounty of choice we preserved by not just going single-payer.</text></comment>
<story><title>Mercedes-Benz workforce to receive record profit-sharing bonus</title><url>https://group-media.mercedes-benz.com/marsMediaSite/en/instance/ko/Mercedes-Benz-strategy-pays-off-workforce-to-receive-record-profit-sharing-bonus.xhtml?oid=55064985</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>misnome</author><text>Isn&amp;#x27;t there supposed to be a problem with health providers explicitly rejecting insurance companies&amp;#x2F;packages that are possible to buy yourself?&lt;p&gt;You don&amp;#x27;t really have a choice if nobody where you live will take your insurance...</text></item><item><author>ericd</author><text>You can buy health insurance on the marketplaces yourself, it’s not hard, and it’s much cheaper than eg housing in most places that are MCOL and up. The challenge is saving up enough to pay for all your living expenses while you’re choosing not to work.</text></item><item><author>gautamdivgi</author><text>You can’t choose not to work in the US. You will be without health insurance.&lt;p&gt;I don’t know of single US company that allows their workers on their board. I’m not against it. I think it’s an awesome idea.</text></item><item><author>zackmorris</author><text>Allowed? We can choose not to work for companies that ban workers from their boards. Which is pretty much all of the big companies in the US.&lt;p&gt;It&amp;#x27;s funny that we have a dozen different open source software licenses that are all some version of &amp;quot;how can we give this to you even freer&amp;quot; but we have no notion of what an equitable work contract looks like. Until that changes, things will never, ever, get better for workers.</text></item><item><author>NickC25</author><text>&amp;gt;&lt;i&gt;On top of that, Mercedes Benz has a corporate Supervisory Board with 1&amp;#x2F;2 of the members representing the employees.&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;Absolutely love that, and stuff like that would never be allowed to form here in the US.  Labor having an equal seat at the table should be seen as a good thing for the purposes of long-term sustainability, not a bad thing.  Can it have drawbacks?  Sure.  However, the flipside is that currently in most places, such as the US, Capital has &lt;i&gt;all&lt;/i&gt; the seats at the table, or sometimes Labor will given a symbolic place at the proverbial kid&amp;#x27;s table, with no real ability to enact change or make their voices heard.  I applaud what Mercedes-Benz is doing here.</text></item><item><author>digdugdirk</author><text>&amp;quot;The company&amp;#x27;s management and General Works Council have jointly agreed to pay all eligible employees a special lump sum bonus of up to 7,300 euros, a figure that is even higher than the current maximum payment cap of 6,465 euros.&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;This General Works Council seems to be something like a separate &amp;quot;union within the company&amp;quot;, in addition to whatever union represents various workers within the organization. On top of that, Mercedes Benz has a corporate Supervisory Board with 1&amp;#x2F;2 of the members representing the employees.&lt;p&gt;Interesting how this structure has a headline like this one, vs the &amp;quot;&amp;gt;10k workers laid off from giant corporation with record profits for the past two years&amp;quot; headlines that seem to be popping up here daily.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>ericd</author><text>I’ve never had that issue, or even heard of that issue, but I’ve only bought insurance from relatively large insurance companies, maybe it’s an issue if you try to save money by going with a small one with no network.</text></comment>