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A billionaire wrote this letter to Google a year ago. How likely is that Google's layoffs and actions since then are at least partly because of this? (lemmy.world)
submitted 2 years ago by to c/workreform@lemmy.world
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[–] 43 points 2 years ago (1 child)

They've written one like that to every tech company. It's probably just so they can repeat the conditions from before they got sued for colluding to depress employee wages. This has the same effect, except this time it's not collusion, it's doing their fiduciary duty because shareholders are demanding it.

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  • [–] 15 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    the "fiduciary duty" isn't a real thing.

    they can fire and change who governs the board by using their majority share holder votes (which has been selecting short term max profit guys) but it's a myth that they have a legal responsibility to return anything to shareholders

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  • [+] 3 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (3 children)
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  • [–] 3 points 2 years ago*

    Fiduciary duty is real, in many jurisdictions at least. It means that the executives of a company are required to act in the best interest of the shareholders. In 99% of the cases what shareholders want is maximum profit.

    But really, in almost every case where someone is found to be guilty of breaching this duty, it's because they actually actively did something fraudulent. Otherwise it's much easier for the shareholders or board to just fire the problematic people and get new ones. It's not like being incompetent is a crime.

    for source you can look at eg. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fiduciary

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