> If the workers had been expected to do this for normal wages, this wouldn't have happened.
I know some people really believe that people are only motivated by monetary incentives, but this isn't the reality of mankind. People do make sacrifice without monetary compensation all the time. (And many, many, did during covid)
Unlike what microeconomics-obsessed people think, workers don't make sophistivated economic calculations, instead they mostly care about being treated fairly.
And I glad people aren't like how microeconomics model them, because the world simply wouldn't work otherwise.
True. The other side of 'fair' in this situation is what was the company earning.
Busting a gut to make some shareholders/managers loads of money isn't exactly fair if you aren't also being rewarded.
On the other hand, in the UK the NHS has traditionally paid people extra on the understanding that these things happen. But when it did happen the staff were asking for even more.
I know this probably comes across as right wing, but my point is how we reward people for black swan events.
> Busting a gut to make some shareholders/managers loads of money isn't exactly fair if you aren't also being rewarded.
Exactly. But it's not a matter of “being paid more than the marginal value of the additional work” as microeconomics tend to frame those things.
Symmetrically, people routinely accept pay cut or degraded work conditions when the company isn't going well, even though it makes no sense from a game theory perspective (it's basically a prisoners' dilemma yet people cooperate most of the time).
I know some people really believe that people are only motivated by monetary incentives, but this isn't the reality of mankind. People do make sacrifice without monetary compensation all the time. (And many, many, did during covid)
Unlike what microeconomics-obsessed people think, workers don't make sophistivated economic calculations, instead they mostly care about being treated fairly.
And I glad people aren't like how microeconomics model them, because the world simply wouldn't work otherwise.