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Stingray
..I am trying to find A a name of S-K- backed Armed Medical Service provider operating in allied german states..could some1 help?...
bannockburn
BuMoNA - Bund für Mobilen Notfall-Arzteinsatz.

It's not SK, though, but AG Chemie, later independent, then taken over by Ruhrmetall.
scarius
I just had a quick flip through my corprate guide from 4th and it doesn't look like S-K are in the medical game.

Now I'm not saying that you couldn't just make something up, it just seems like it's not something that they are doing
Stingray
TU for your efforts! whole point is moot due GM realizing a that mistake, changing his mind and couple new players coming in..
..Grumpling....Grumpling... P.I. 'firm in Berlin...Sure...
that Image of Bruce Willis-look a like Ork looks promising ... biggrin.gif
Sascha Morlok
BuMoNA became independent (A-corp) in 2070 and was aquired by Ruhrmetall in 2076. Another big player (in fact the bigest player) is Euromedis, wich is owned by Z-IC.
Moirdryd
That doesn't mean there's not a stack of armed medical response services owned by S-K.
bannockburn
It does mean that exactly.
Stingray didn't ask for what kind of armed medical services anyone made up for the game, he asked for a specific one, which does not exist in official material. So far, that is.

In fact, I am pretty sure that you're right and SK has at least one of those services at hand, but it has not been fleshed out for now. Why there would be a "stack" of them mystifies me, though, except if you mean for different countries or areas of operation.
Sascha Morlok
They own at least one clinic (https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfried_Krupp_Krankenhaus) in Essen, which will have a special emergency service. But this service is for corporate citizens only (or other special persons). They are not operating in that field.
Moirdryd
Probably for the same reason that Walmart owns 2-3 branded Supermarket chains in Germany as well as having their Own supermarket presence there too.
It feels very much that in 4th and 5th that Megacorps have forgotten how BIG they are in the information we get for them. In SoE BuMoNa coverage was 70% for AGS which means there's going to be a bunch of smaller corps trying to snap up some of that coverage as well as grabbing for part of that remaining 30% or simply sharing part of the umbrella.
Sascha Morlok
The 70% number just refer to the area covered, not the overall market dominance. In fact - as I've already stated the Top 3 (or Big 3, as I named them in the German addon for Chrome Flesh) are BuMoNA (Ruhrmetall), Euromedis (Z-IC) and CrashCart (Evo). After that there is Shiawase Omnicare (mostly Retirement Homes and Leonization Clinics), Wuxing Prosperity (mostly Harbor Cities in the north), Info-Santé (in the West/Francophile ares), DocWagon (clinics close to international airports) and the polish BioMed corp in the east.

Note that this list mainly refer to actual clinics and pharmacies, not just (armed) ambulance service. You see, Germany privatized it's whole health sector in SR (like in the real world), so all clinics are now corp owned (except for some small clinics run by the Bundeswehr (armed forces) and Universities). So, S-K has his own token clinic in Essen, but they don't operate a ambulance service - at least none for non-S-K-citizens.

PS: Walmart withdraw from business in Germany in 2006 and sold all their stores to local competitors (METRO and Real). Walmart Germany ceased to exist in 2007.
Moirdryd
Yes they did, my point was that at one point they owned 3 major supermarket chains all together at the same time in the same place.

I'm also aware that 70% is physical coverage not market dominance but that means almost 1/3 of the AGS isn't covered by the premier ambulance service, so there's going to be others looking to squeeze some nuyen but providing coverage where thy don't as well as coverage where they do, just like break down rescue services or you could also see subcontracting too, again just like breakdown recovery today.

I certainly think its disingenuous to make a blanket statement that a Megacorp (especially one rated 7 in Biotech and 6 in Services) doesn't have anything nibbling on that part of the market. Don't forget that S-K doesn't have any holdings in Tir Tairngire, they're absolutely forbidden to. They're also banned from most of the NAN and CalFree (and a couple of other places too) and yet they absolutely still have large interests and investments there operating under the umbrella of an A and B rated corporations that are just shell holdings for S-K. and America isn't even S-Ks primary market region Europe and the Middle East are with Africa and Asia secondary and America in third.
Sascha Morlok
I can`t find anything about Walmart owning 3 major chains in Germany - except you meant they got owned by three major chains wink.gif

When they arrived in Germany in 2997, they acquired 95 stores from other chains, but not the big ones. Later, as you not gained a strong foothold they withdraw. When they entered they had about 2% market share and mostly stayed at that level (while it's biggest competitor Aldi had 19%).

In the mid-1990s, Walmart tried with a large financial investment to get a foothold in the German retail market. In 1997, Walmart took over the supermarket chain Wertkauf with its 21 stores for DM 750 million and the following year Walmart acquired 74 Interspar stores for DM 1.3 billion. The German market at this point was an oligopoly with high competition among companies which used a similar low price strategy as Walmart. As a result, Walmart's low price strategy yielded no competitive advantage. Walmart's corporate culture was not viewed positively among employees and customers, particularly Walmart's "statement of ethics", which restricted relationships between employees and led to a public discussion in the media, resulting in a bad reputation among customers. In July 2006, Walmart announced its withdrawal from Germany due to sustained losses. The stores were sold to the German company Metro during Walmart's fiscal third quarter. Walmart did not disclose its losses from its German investment, but they were estimated to be around €3 billion.

So I don't know where you got this "3 major brand stores", as they not only failed, but also just used the "Walmart Supercenter" brand.

But back to topic: Those ratings you mentioned are very old and did not influence me, when I wrote the S-K chapter for Market Panic. Also, the broad term "biotech" can mean many things: Like Siemens or various other corps under the S-K umbrella producing cyberware or meditech (MRTs, etc.). So I can freely say: Yes, S-K does not any major AMS, besides one that may be available for it's corporate citizens in specific ares of the world.

PS: S-K was granted business, after Lofwyr left the Prince Council in the early 2060s. He used this moment to acquire Willamette Compustat Corporation (Shadows of North America). They where allowed to make business in the NAN in the late 60s or early 70s, so this is way you can find them in the Sioux PDFs.
Moirdryd
The point was more to illustrate that corporations tend to own multiple varieties of the same product and I went with the quickest info available on a well known corp. You could look at maybe the newspapers and news channels in a similar light or breweries that own pubs of multiple different (yet massively similar) brands and so on.

Yes, he gets access in the 2060s but again the point is that they already HAD access before that and not in any small measure.

I don't own Market Panic, haven't read it so cannot critique anything to do with it and obviously your work there is edition canon. But across the 5th edition items that I do own (which is the core stuff and a few side bits) again the corps feel massively smaller in 2075 than they did throughout 2050's and 2060's where theme has gone from saying if a GM needs a corp own entity of a type in a region; "sure they've probably got some even if it's 3rd or 4th party owned and maybe even share ownership with other corps of a few entities too" to "Outside of a corp enclave definitively no".

In answer to the OP, there is no named Armed Medical Response service owned by SK but the GM is well within their rights to invent just such a subsidiary of S-K as it's highly likely they own, or have a controlling interest, in just such an operation. If you're going by Hard Canon this is supplement supported in 1-3rd, not sure about 4th and they do not have any such interests in 5th.
Sascha Morlok
I pretty sure even in 1st and 2nd Edition there is no Armed Medical Service owned by S-K (I would have read about it at one point), and there is certainly none in 3rd to 5th Edition. And again: the term "biotech" is very broad and can mean multiple things and does not automatically include an armed medical service.

So the answer to the Op is: no directly or indirectly owned AMS by Saeder-Krupp. You are free to come up with one, but this would be non-canon.
Jaid
perhaps another way to look at it:

S-K prime owns a bunch of subsidiaries, most of which also own a bunch of subsidiaries, many of which will also own a bunch of interest in other companies or have subsidiaries, etc. as should all the megas.

the organization chart for one of the megas should be like wikipedia. corp A (a subsidiary of a subsidiary of a main S-K branch) owns 20% of corp B and thinks that the rest is all other corporations, but actually corp C also owns 12% and corp D owns 19% and it turns out they're also S-K property at some point along the line.

and it just so turns out that corp B is some small corporation that offers armed medical service in a couple of small cities in some country that you've probably never heard of, didn't exist 5 years ago, and may not be on the maps 5 years from now.

it is fair to say that S-K, practically speaking, doesn't have control of any armed medical services, because they likely don't often work together, it probably isn't officially be designated as S-K controlled (and for that matter the subsidiaries may not be visibly owned by S-K), and even the companies that own it may not be S-K controlled and the control may be in the hands of different branches at various levels of organization that generally don't even know they're part of the same company, and frankly, the total assets of corporation B are probably so small in comparison as to be nearly indistinguishable from nothing, but in all probability somewhere along the way you'll find something like that *somewhere* if you dug through enough information for every mega.

that's the kind of thing that happens when you have companies that own companies that own companies that own companies that own companies, and by the way half of those companies own parts of companies further up or down the chain, or own parts of companies that own parts of companies that own parts of companies further up or down the chain, etc.

or, alternately.... if you were to ask whether, say, toyota owns any food service businesses, it would be fair to say no. but it wouldn't surprise me even a tiny bit if they had at least some form of cafeteria in one of their facilities somewhere in the world which, technically, is a food service business. you wouldn't describe them as owning one, the people in the head office probably don't know about it and would answer no if you asked them if they owned something like that, but somewhere they probably do, just because (hypothetical example) toyota of andorra, inc has a plant somewhere that ships hand-made gear-shifters for limited edition vehicles where the plant manager decided they don't like employees leaving the facility and spending their lunch money somewhere else so they set up a sandwich shop or something and don't allow employees to leave the facility for lunch breaks.

shadowrun megas are kinda like that, except they own a company that owns a company the size of toyota and also 200 other properties of various sizes.
Sascha Morlok
Toyota may have a cafeteria and they may own the building the cafeteria is in. But if you look closer the cafeteria is run by a outsourced sub-contractor, that has nothing to do with Toyota (besides running the cafeteria). S-K is like that, while there is the greater S-K Macrocosmos (which works like you described), S-K use local health companies for their operations where it is necessary. They don't work in the health sector, as in they don't run hospitals (except the exceptions already mentioned), and thus don't need a AMS on their own.

While Megas do "every type of business of some sort" S-K in general is not a service corporation. They are the industrial juggernaut that produces everything all the other corps need. They don't run hospitals, they make the MRT's, medical drones, and even the syringe and scalpels. They don't make food, they produce the greenhouses, tractors, pollination drones, and provide the water, fertilizer and small loans for the farmer. S-K is not the type of corps that put his name on everything and operate "in the front row". They stand some rows further back and make their deals in the dark. They produce the factories Ares build their guns or cars in. They produce the generators Shiawase or Geatronics use to produce energy, when they don't do it themselves. S-K's influence and power does not come from their diversification in every business field imaginable, but from being the biggest employer, controlling critical infrastructure (energy, heat, water, matrix) and being the biggest deptor of other corps or countries via their banks.

This all enables them to control cities, regions or even whole governments and countries. But this approach also makes sure there is enough place for other corps to "shine" in the front row (until they challenge S-K's influence), like local AMS and so on. They will do business with S-K anyway, so why do they need to own one?
Moirdryd
What Jaid is saying with the Toyota example is, especially if they are a Megacorp, may own shares and stock in the company they employ (or they may wholly own in through subsidiary interests) to run the cafeteria. The reason they do this is they can actually make a ton more money this way and they are not really paying anyone anything while showing write off able expenses on their balance sheets. Corporate Shadowfiles and Corporate Security handbook (to a lesser extent) go into this in great detail on how massive Corporate entities work and why they even own competing brands and so forth.
Jaid
QUOTE (Sascha Morlok @ Jun 21 2018, 06:55 AM) *
Toyota may have a cafeteria and they may own the building the cafeteria is in. But if you look closer the cafeteria is run by a outsourced sub-contractor, that has nothing to do with Toyota (besides running the cafeteria). S-K is like that, while there is the greater S-K Macrocosmos (which works like you described), S-K use local health companies for their operations where it is necessary. They don't work in the health sector, as in they don't run hospitals (except the exceptions already mentioned), and thus don't need a AMS on their own.

While Megas do "every type of business of some sort" S-K in general is not a service corporation. They are the industrial juggernaut that produces everything all the other corps need. They don't run hospitals, they make the MRT's, medical drones, and even the syringe and scalpels. They don't make food, they produce the greenhouses, tractors, pollination drones, and provide the water, fertilizer and small loans for the farmer. S-K is not the type of corps that put his name on everything and operate "in the front row". They stand some rows further back and make their deals in the dark. They produce the factories Ares build their guns or cars in. They produce the generators Shiawase or Geatronics use to produce energy, when they don't do it themselves. S-K's influence and power does not come from their diversification in every business field imaginable, but from being the biggest employer, controlling critical infrastructure (energy, heat, water, matrix) and being the biggest deptor of other corps or countries via their banks.

This all enables them to control cities, regions or even whole governments and countries. But this approach also makes sure there is enough place for other corps to "shine" in the front row (until they challenge S-K's influence), like local AMS and so on. They will do business with S-K anyway, so why do they need to own one?


S-K is big enough that S-K prime wouldn't even own toyota though, that's the thing. modern toyota isn't big enough for them to own, they would own a business that would own toyota (well, not toyota, i don't know offhand which one but i'm sure it belongs to one of the japanese megas... but volkswagen anyways). and not just one business big enough to own toyota-sized corporations (as in, multiples of them), but multiple businesses that big.

somewhere along the way, S-K most likely owns controlling interest in some minor medical services corporation. it is probably too small to even consider when examining the megacorporation as a whole. S-K prime is certainly unlikely to care enough about that tiny corporation to do anything with it, and may not even be particularly aware that they have controlling interest (it might be spread across several companies that even consider each other to be competitors). certainly it wouldn't have the S-K logo on it. but it probably exists somewhere, simply because that is a way to make money and so some subsidiary of a subsidiary of a subsidiary owned by S-K through a bunch of shell corporations will own one because they like making money and nobody cares enough to tell them to stop making money by owning some tiny medical company somewhere just because if you follow the leads far enough you'll eventually find they're owned by a corporation that "doesn't own any armed medical services". that twenty-times removed corporation never received a directive to avoid any industries, they just got a directive to own profitable companies that will give them a good return, and they don't care if that company is an armed medical service or makes frozen soy-based TV dinners to be sold in the equivalent of a stuffer shack.
Sascha Morlok
Wasn't it the reason, to make "a ton more money" corporations started to outsource things like cafeterias, cleaning and various other this to sub-contractors, because this is cheaper, as when you run the stuff yourself? And, even if you run a cafeteria on your own, it is - as far as I know - only for your own workers and not open for the general public. So, even if you run a cafeteria, you don't become a food service business. Otherwise, every one who set up a snack machine in their office would be a "food service business".

I'm confused when you use the term "S-K prime". Are you referring to the main S-K corporation, or to the actual entity called "S-K Prime". Because the later one is an intelligence service and not a company.

And you don't have to explain S-K to. As I've said before, I wrote the S-K chapter in Market Panic, which explains a lot of the stuff you two mentioned ("The S-K Macrocosmos", p. 161-166). And - as you explained - there may be, in some tiny fringes of our Planet, some sort of medical outfit in some way connected to S-K. Either directly owned - as I said about the Alfred-Krupp clinic in Essen, close to S-K's Main Arcology -, or because various other S-K subsidiaries owning shares, or because S-K is their main subcontractor and supplier and thus have them by the balls.

Maybe....

But this don't change the fact, that S-K's business strategy looks slightly different from other corporations. It follows a long term goal, imagined from a dragons mind, that has nothing to to with short term "shareholder value" or otherwise "profit" humans strife for. And in this business strategy medical service as a whole, and AMS in particular does not play any role, besides providing them in key areas for their own corporate citizens.

So, again the answer to OPs question is: No, there is no official, already established AMS owned by S-K. You can make one up, based on the things we discussed here for your own table. But it would definitely be small and non-canon.
Moirdryd
Companies and the smaller corps outsource, massive ones (like MegaCorps) don't, because it's not any cheaper in fact it costs money.

To look through the Shadowrun lens Ares owned facilities tend to use Knight Errant as a premier security provider, however Knight Errant are not the only (or first) private security company that Ares owns, just the fancy flagship and biggest one (and so the one that gets written about). However say Ares acquires "Mystic Method" a small UCAS company that does magical research with offices in New York, Boston and a lab in Seattle, not cutting edge stuff but more taking the most recent advances into a more consumer focused level. Mystic Method needs security but it doesn't want to or cannot afford Knight Errant rates (which come with a premium for branding and that KE are actually pretty good) so they investigate other options, these other options will typically pass through an Ares Macrotechnologies filter (given the company is now part of the Ares Macrotech family, this is also something that happens for real) which will bounce back acceptable results of reliable contractors for Mystic Method to use, these results are likely to be security providers that are also owned by Ares.

Mystic Method chooses Orion Security Solutions as fitting with their spending desires and security requirements. This means that any funds that Mystic Method pay to OSS for security goes through as an expenditure and cost for the asset and can be written off vs UCAS taxation and business costs and yet the money itself is staying within Ares controlled assets not leaving the corporate umbrella. Now OSS is going to equip itself via the Professional/Business option of Weapons World and they spend, yet the money simply flows through Ares. One asset is secure, one asset is showing business growth a second asset gets a small bump due to the expanded contract of the asset they are supplying, simply with the acquisition of Mystic Method the market value of two other assets and the marks on the balance sheets go up.

Now Mystic Method wants to keep it's personal onsite when they're working at the lab so they hire out another floor of the building they are in (this is NOT Ares owned) so that's a money drop and get a catering firm in, again the options are filtered and they plumb for something that Ares holds a majority share in (without realizing this fact most likely) RetroCafe! that does classic American style diner. It's not as neat as the security connection but Ares sees a value rise for those stocks over a period, so even as Mystic Method is spending Ares is benefiting. RetroCafe! buys the majority of it's raw foodstuffs outside of the Ares umbrella but around 1/5 -1/4 of their expenditure still trickles through Ares owned or part owned, (albeit maybe through a Shell corporation down into a holding company).

So with all the costs and money flow you have several Ares interests increasing in value with very little actual expenditure outside of the massive entity of the Megacorp.

Now to further muddy the waters. Aztechnology (who we all know are a major FMC player) decide that RetroCafe! of which they own the third largest shares seems to be growing quickly as both a private and public brand. They want that. So the Azzies hit them with a Shadowrun that makes some of that share stock available and grab the controlling share and by doing so change the supplier lists for RetroCafe! to all Aztechnology owned producers. This formerly good Ares asset is suddenly bleeding money out of the MegaCorp, not massively but after a couple of quarterly reviews its noticed by some low level exec. RetoCafe! has a locked in contract with Mystic Method and it would cost to break that early, so now someone at Ares hires some Shadowrunners to mess with RetroCafe! on the premises of Mystic Method the result of which allows an ending of the contract (at cost to RetroCafe! with hurts Aztech more than Ares at this point) and opens the door for a different corp friendly caterer.
Sascha Morlok
This discussion is going in circles. You don't have to explain SR to, as much as I don't have to explain it to you. S-K is different from all other corps, it has no direct affiliate AMS. This was the question OP had and it was answered multiple times.

I guess we have reached a dead end. Nonetherless OP has his answer. Case closed.
Moirdryd
The above was directed more for those folks who are reading the thread and wondering about the differences between outsourcing, subsidiaries etc and why Mega's own the sheer amount of stuff that they do instead of being highly focused and how that may apply to the game table.
Jaid
QUOTE (Sascha Morlok @ Jun 24 2018, 06:07 AM) *
This discussion is going in circles. You don't have to explain SR to, as much as I don't have to explain it to you. S-K is different from all other corps, it has no direct affiliate AMS. This was the question OP had and it was answered multiple times.

I guess we have reached a dead end. Nonetherless OP has his answer. Case closed.


except it probably does have a direct affiliate. somewhere. that's the point. you're correct in saying that there isn't anything official we can look up to find one, but there very likely is something at some point along the line that is, in fact, an AMS and is, in fact, owned by S-K.

because while lofwyr's plans are not limited to just making a bunch of money, they most assuredly do include making a bunch of money.

(on a side note... i find it odd that anyone would suggest that having someone else run your cafeterias etc is cheaper than doing it yourself, as that would imply the company being outsourced to must be losing money)
Sascha Morlok
QUOTE (Jaid @ Jun 24 2018, 11:08 PM) *
except it probably does have a direct affiliate. somewhere. that's the point. you're correct in saying that there isn't anything official we can look up to find one, but there very likely is something at some point along the line that is, in fact, an AMS and is, in fact, owned by S-K.

because while lofwyr's plans are not limited to just making a bunch of money, they most assuredly do include making a bunch of money.


Yeah.. we also can't rule out the fact that Elvis is still alive, Big Foot is real, Roswell happened, Trump didn't collude and 2+2 is 5. And maybe Lofwyr isn't Lofwyr... maybe he is Manuel Neuer </sarcasm>

QUOTE (Jaid @ Jun 24 2018, 11:08 PM) *
(on a side note... i find it odd that anyone would suggest that having someone else run your cafeterias etc is cheaper than doing it yourself, as that would imply the company being outsourced to must be losing money)


They don't loose money, they making a shitload.... by paying their employees next to nothing. You don't seem know the terms (or don't know them well enough) Hartz 4, Aufstocker, Leiharbeiter, Niedriglohnsektor and so forth... not every country works like the US (although you often get associated with inhumane turbo capitalism). In Germany it's a business model to even not pay minimum wage and by that keep al earning for yourself. There are always enough loopholes, to avoid certain laws or you can exploit certain laws to base you business model to pay trinkets for an otherwise normally paid job.

In the beginning of the century Germany became one of the biggest low-pay sector in the western world, it dramatically cut it's social security system, wages weren't raised in ages (beside inflation compensations) and various laws introduced to battle economic crisis are still intact and are being used to have a cheap, or cheaper working force at disposal. Minimum wage was just introduced in 2015, which stopped he most stupid business models. But there are enough loopholes to avoid it. Polish day laborer, picking asparagus from the field, certainly don't get payed minimum wage.

If the business run that cafeteria themselves they would certeinly not just have to pay minimum wage, but also would open the opportunity, that the new personnel join the Betriebsrat and/or a union. They would not just earn trinkets, but would get/demand "Tariflohn" and thus a "Sozialversicherungspflichtiges Anstellungsverhältnis" - meaning a payment that is high enough that the company has to include to pay in the social security system. In Germany your healthcare, unemployment benefits, old age pension, long term care insurance and so on are organized by the state, and by law it is required that the employer and employee pay about 50/50 of the monthly cost (which is included into your wage, and automatically collected by the state). But you can avoid this by making your job a "mini-job". This is paid with about 420 € a month and (officially) only work half a day.

Bam... problem solved.

This is just Germany, but I assume there are equal methods to run a profit outsourced cafeteria businesses in the US or any other country in the world.
Jaid
so we're assuming that somehow the company that wants to have a cafeteria is not capable of abusing the loopholes in the law to make money but the company that they pay to set up the cafeteria is? frankly, i have my doubts about that.

as to all those other things, there's a rather significant difference... SK is so big it almost certainly does have an AMS of some form or another somewhere, but it's only when you look at it as having millions of just barely higher than 0% chances. all those other "examples" you gave hinge on one point, which there is every reason to presume an average human could comprehend, but nobody is going to properly grasp the full extent of a megacorporation, there is simply too much going on.

it may not be large. it may be extremely limited in coverage. it may not have an SK logo in sight or even be aware that it is owned by SK, but if there is any type of reasonably common business, a megacorporation very likely has ownership of that type of business somewhere. it isn't necessarily going to be anywhere near big enough to be worth reporting when describing the megacorporation as a whole, any more than a financial report for a regular corporation is going to break down the office supplies cost into pens (of each colour), pencils, paper, staplers, staples, paperclips, whiteout, erasers, markers (of each colour and purpose) and so forth... if i ask you to look at a financial report and tell me whether a company owns a red pen, you may not be able to directly tell, but you could make a pretty good guess that a company with a $200.00 per year budget for office supplies likely does not, while a company with a $200,000,000 office supply budget probably does... somewhere. it isn't going to help you find that red pen, but it's a fair guess that if they're spending that much on office supplies they own at least one, even if it's just because someone somewhere in the organization bought a pack of pens with company money rather than ordering some in from a specialized office supplies business to get pens when it was urgently needed, and the package had a mixture of colours that included red.

same with a mega. unless we're talking about some absurdly specific businesses, they very likely own one... somewhere.

it is implausible that 2+2 = 5. on the other hand, it is implausible that a shadowrun megacorporation doesn't own any given kind of common business, simply because they reach into everything. major interests can reasonably be listed; every single detail of what they're into is simply not going to happen, but very likely includes anything that is remotely common, at least to some small extent.
Sascha Morlok
QUOTE (Jaid @ Jun 25 2018, 10:16 AM) *
so we're assuming that somehow the company that wants to have a cafeteria is not capable of abusing the loopholes in the law to make money but the company that they pay to set up the cafeteria is? frankly, i have my doubts about that.


Dude, this is capitalism, not Disneyland. The company make use of this loopholes by using a subcontractor. That's the whole point. Their loophole is to avoid all the good stuff by subcontracting certain unneeded work of their company to some other company, which again uses different laws and different loopholes to pay their employees less. In the end they all pay less, earn more and everyone is happy - except for the actual women who has to clean the toilets, serve in the kitchen or has to clean your office. And of corse it works, otherwise corporations wouldn't do it. When I went to school, they began to organize a cafeteria (for some reasons only on Wednesdays, AFAIK), which was at fist staffed with mothers from the pupils. Later they build a proper cafeteria, which was then staffed by normal employees. But they were certainly not employed by the school, or the education office of Hamburg. They were part of an catering company, and they were certainly not paid the same as those who are directly employed by the city (teachers are in most cases public officials, but they try to change that, so they save some money).

As I said. When you work for the main company you have certain advantages. When you work for a "Zeitarbeitsfirma" you are not part of the main personnel. You work for an entire different company. You have less rights, you get payed less and you are not part of a union, a working council, or whatsoever. A very different set of laws is applied to you, which could not be applied if you would have a regular working contract. There are labor protection laws, that prohibited certain behavior in companies, but it does not prohibit that you subcontract a whole different company, who gives a shit about if you can feed your family from your wage, because you "just" employ "part time unemployed", "temporary worker" and whatever they are called, so they don't count as unemployed for the statistics. Or you employ foreigners or citizens, not educated enough to know their rights.

Organize yourself into unions often is a question of education. Highly paid, highly educated jobs like pilots, have strong unions, do strikes and often get their demands when it comes to higher wages in new labor agreements (they earn some 73.000 to 225.000 € pre-tax a year, depending on your rank). People working in the low-pay sector are not organized, there are no agreed wages - or at least none on industry level, as in industries where there is a higher level of worker organization. They are all paid ~ 420€ or even less and thus have to get Hartz 4 in addition.

PS: Under certain circumstances in computer science there are cases where 1 + 1 does not equal 2. So, yeah we can't rule out anything.
Jaid
or, you know, the giant multitrillion dollar corporations have a "different" company that runs cafeterias and such, as has already been pointed out. not to mention that in a lot of places, the multitrillion dollar corporation is the one that makes the laws (either officially, as is the case in extraterritorial land, or unofficially, as is the case when a megacorporation has control of the government by various means - blackmail, bribery, being aztechnology in mexico, etc - and since none of the megas benefit from stronger labour laws, it often won't matter *which* mega is in control, because you don't want to be *too* obvious about who actually runs the government or it could create bad press for you).
Iduno
QUOTE (Jaid @ Jun 25 2018, 12:01 PM) *
or, you know, the giant multitrillion dollar corporations have a "different" company that runs cafeterias and such, as has already been pointed out. not to mention that in a lot of places, the multitrillion dollar corporation is the one that makes the laws (either officially, as is the case in extraterritorial land, or unofficially, as is the case when a megacorporation has control of the government by various means - blackmail, bribery, being aztechnology in mexico, etc - and since none of the megas benefit from stronger labour laws, it often won't matter *which* mega is in control, because you don't want to be *too* obvious about who actually runs the government or it could create bad press for you).


That, and governments are cost centers. Why control the government when you can just write yourself a law for the government to pass when it's convenient, and have the government do the work of maintaining the infrastructure the rest of the time? You don't even need bribery to get the law passed, just threaten to pull your company out or build your new office in another city. I can't imagine the world Shadowrun is in is significantly better than ours in that respect.
Jaid
QUOTE (Iduno @ Jun 26 2018, 11:56 AM) *
That, and governments are cost centers. Why control the government when you can just write yourself a law for the government to pass when it's convenient, and have the government do the work of maintaining the infrastructure the rest of the time? You don't even need bribery to get the law passed, just threaten to pull your company out or build your new office in another city. I can't imagine the world Shadowrun is in is significantly better than ours in that respect.


well, mostly because it's cheaper to bribe (or blackmail, etc) someone than it is to cease all business operations in the area, i suspect. not to mention withdrawing all presence from the area is a highly visible move, one that is likely to draw attention to who is pulling the strings. you don't want people complaining that your corporation obviously forced the government into less generous labour laws, you want people blaming the government (but preferably not the specific person you already bribed, because that would mean you need to bribe someone else and future politicians will be harder to bribe if they expect it to cost them their job).

i suppose in extreme situations a mega might threaten to pull out, but most of the time it really isn't a threat you want to make good on. there are going to need to be some *really* nasty laws in the process of being made for that to happen. on the other hand, if you follow through on blackmail threats and destroy the politician's reputation such that they will never be able to work again, not only do they serve as an example (benefit), and get to continue operating in that area (benefit), you also get to make a ton of money through the media branches of your corporation (benefit).
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