well I differentiated between family members and friends. I don't think you can exploit family members in the technical sense since they stand to inherit the business and benefit in myriad ways that "friends" don't. Of course, having worked for these outfits, that doesn't mean squat. I don't know who the friends are, but I am pretty sure that none of them are sharing the profits. My ex-boss's executive assistant was his friend. As she said when she came back to the job, "W's a cheapskate and won't pay me what I'm worth so I'm working a second job." When things got tough, he halved her hours.
He hired a sales director who was a long-time 'friend' and once wanted me to hire a 'friend' as a writer. (The were friends through their kids.) In no case were any of these 'friends' sharing the profit. He wasn't even embarassed enough by the low wages he was offering in general to actually pay her what I ended up paying the writer I _did_ hire--who wasn't a friend. I argued for a better starting wage for the woman I hired. He wanted his 'friend' because she was happy work for less since it was a work-from-home situation. (Of course, we hardly ever considered how much _he_ was benefitting by not having to pay for an office, security system, insurance, etc. etc. since he operated out of his home, too. He just continually reminded us of the great advantages of working from home -- and pocketed the money he'd saved himself.)
In another case, the ex-boss's daughter was hired to write, about 10 hrs a week. It turned out that the daughter was actually farming out the work to a "friend" and paying her less than her father paid her, pocketing the difference. Budding capitalist, eh?
>I guess the whole story would need to be looked at. Sure, like a lot of
>small businesses, they tend to be very exploitative for any random outside
>person who shows up to get a job, but the line between "insiders" and
>"outsiders" might often get rather blurred, I suppose.
yes. I've seen it all. I once worked for a family-run hotel. The head chef was a raging maniac, so much so that she and the line chef (a guy who used to own his own French rest. who filled up the old milkshake machine with red wine every night and got toasted) threw knives at each other one night. Clara even through Chicken Cordon Bleu at me once. Now, the boss was a real ass, but he would never fire Clara no matter how miserable she made everyone's lives, no matter what she did that was bad for business, no matter how miserable she made him. Still, Clara didn't share in the profits, so she was exploited any way you look at it.
:) Tangentially related, I once worked for the Old Gennessee Bakery in
Rochester. Family-run outfit. I'd get there in the morning and they'd
usually be screaming at each other in Italian--or so it seemed to me. One
afternoon, as things grew quiet, we heard the people in the Chinese rest.
next door screaming at each other. The boss says to his son, shaking his
head, "Loud! They argue a lot over there, don't they?"
Like you, though, I wonder how individuals and family members can exploit themselves if they're sharing in the profits or, at least, are likely to do so.
kelley
"We live under the Confederacy. We're a podunk bunch of swaggering pious hicks."
--Bruce Sterling