TikTok tells LA staff impacted by wildfires to use personal/sick hours if they can't work from home

submitted by chobeat@lemmy.ml

techcrunch.com/2025/01/09/tiktok-tells-la-staff…

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Tik Tok staff working from home on their break:

Bunch of assholes. Hope it hits the responsible managers house and the office building.

You can't work from home cuz we have to justify the expense of our office, and if we can't provide the office your home is our office.

I think this is pretty standard for Chinese companies. My friend works for one, and she doesn't get sick days. They must come out of her holiday allowance.

She gets treated better than her Chinese counterparts, though. For Chinese public holidays, they get the day off, but are then expected to give it back to the company at the weekend

Haha, no. This is US branch 100% I can promise you TikTok eu branch would not have had these rules even though they are both ByteDance

I'm afraid I and my friend are both in the EU. Chinese companies will and do find ways...

UK is not the EU, m8.

I know... Even with this information, I can confirm that my friend and I are both in the EU

I work for an American company and we have to use PTO for sick days. Unfortunately.

This is pretty standard for US companies in general.

The problem isn't the Chinese companies the problem is the US doesn't have any kind of employee protection laws. If they did the Chinese companies couldn't do any of that. There was a reason they don't operate in Europe.

So this is the easiest opportunity for the most upvoted comment ever, thanks to Mr.As-Long-As-It's-Not-Illegal-It's-Fine down there!

I would still like to add my opinion: TikTok is an instrument of non-conventional warfare and espionage, why is it still running like it is

Supposedly it's shutting down the day before inauguration.

Task complete

I have agreed for the longest time. But a couple of friends in intelligence are really trying to convince me this is a distraction lately. I haven't gotten a good answer to why status quo should be allowed but those guys don't ever consider "how end users are" when we get into it.

Fuck the CCP and PLA owned companies. Free West Taiwan!!!

Calling China "West Taiwan" undermines Taiwanese independence.

Both the People's Republic of China (China) and the Republic of China (Taiwan) claim to own all of China and Taiwan. Neither has reneged on their claim.

The reason why you see the west dance around Taiwan is because if they acknowledge Taiwan then they acknowledge Taiwan's claim the mainland China (at least as far as China is concerned).

I think it's time for Taiwan to renounce their claim to mainland China and gain full international support.

Of course, internal politics are probably not that simple. And China would definitely use that as an excuse to invade -- er, restore democracy to -- Taiwan.

Taiwanese in Taiwan. It's mostly the corrupt KMT that wants to reunite China and Taiwan.

They are normally super old people that can't let go and turn a blind eye to what's happening inHong Kong

You can't dance in fire like that!

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They have WFH and make 6 figures per year. Explain to me why it's surprising the company converted it to WFH. You take the perks with the disadvantages they entail, unless, we're supposed to be angry with tiktok and don't really care for the workers 🤔

If it sounds bad and it's not illegal, the problem isn't tik tok!

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Quit this bullshit. A lot of tech workers working remotely are contractors, precarious workers. Content moderators, data labelers, and the likes are not paid 6 figures and they are not privileged. Most of the workforce of these companies are not white, rich dudebros. Stuff like this adds insult to injury.

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Is it illegal though? Perhaps start there, with worker protection law. Everyone is happy to help the dudebros exploit the working class as long as line goes up.

Edit: Lol, 1s, immediate downvote. If only you were as assiduously fighting the exploitation...

I'm a union organizer in tech. My downvote was the 8th, not the 1st. I was busy doing a call with striking riders in Greece. Keep up the good work, scab.

I'm genuinely unsure they're a scab, I think they're saying that we cannot expect these parasitic companies to have the workers best interests at heart, and as such strong workers rights should be enshrined in law and enforced.

I could be misunderstanding them though of course.

Pitting different types of workers against each other automatically promotes you to a scab. Purism and sectarianism are much more harmful to labor organizing than union busting.

I think that exactly what they are saying, but it misses the whole point. Yes, either protections would be great to prevent against this and no it's not illegal, but it's heinous and TikTok should be lambasted. The poster is essentially victim blaming because of their assumed jobs, pay, and because their misfortune is not illegal. It's just a really bad take, even if it's not technically wrong.

Precisely this.

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Who cares about the legality?

If somebody's house burnt down, you give them whatever they need. Any company not giving somebody in that situation paid time off is a shitty company. I know for sure my boss would give me whatever I needed and ask if he personally could help in any way.

Employees are humans first and foremost and need to be treated with respect and compassion, not slaves to be exploited and punished.

I've never seen a big company like bytedance give PTO for a death in the family, much less for someone's house burning down.

Any of those companies big enough middle management can hide behind "company policy" and then off their hearts and brains.

It's not even about humanity, it's also the right thing to do from a business perspective: You want your workers to be productive again ASAP, that's worth not just continuing to pay them, but also focussing the collective buzz-bee energy of middle management on finding out what everyone needs and finding ways of providing it so they can actually do work instead of dealing with personal shit. Suddenly have 1000 homeless employees? Get them hotel rooms, find them homes, if need be build apartments. Have the legal department pro-bono the management of their insurance claims. Whatever is necessary, the next useless presentation and the next grand lawsuit you planned can wait. Don't paint your nails while your feet are on fire.

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A public company will 99,9% of the time be shit, that's why you need strong worker protection enshrined in legislation. The fact that all the downvoters didn't get the subtext is one of the reasons you got to this situation in the first place. The average literacy in the US is godawful and the political process only works in easily digestible soundbites, so complex themes like worker protection get relegated to the back seat in favour of who uses which bathroom.

Holy shit take the L.

No one here disagrees with that, or is unaware of the "*sUbTeXt*".

That's just not how subtext works. You don't get to say one thing, then claim you meant something entirely different (the reasonable take) and call it subtext.

We can't take the L they have to be right because... Reasons

God the trolls are out in force today. What did a new round of funding come in from Russia?

Ah, mericans...

You're not doing your home country any favors. Your inability to understand the situation is astounding really. Where are you from that made you so damn smart?

And people mocked Trump for wanting to "rake" the forest floor.

Who's laughing now?

*Cue all of the excuses and blame Trump anyway*

Isn't "raking" the forest part of the reason we have bad first fires?

No. Clearing away underbrush regularly keeps the fireload from building up in the first place.

Did they? I lose track of what trump is mocked for