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Organizers have unionized 5,000 contract workers at Apple, Facebook, Yahoo

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Re: Organizers have unionized 5,000 contract workers at Apple, Facebook, Yahoo

#21
post #6
post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Working in a union would be terrible. Can you imagine having to deal with seniority rules?

A union is whatever the members want it to be. Just because traditional unions operate a certain way does not mean a union for tech workers has to operate the same way.

All unions, nay all power structures, naturally evolve to serve the interests of the _current_ members.

Because of this, seniority-based benefits and insulating bad apples from termination are traits that almost always show up in every union through convergent evolution.

Re: Organizers have unionized 5,000 contract workers at Apple, Facebook, Yahoo

#22
post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A union is whatever the members want it to be. Just because traditional unions operate a certain way does not mean a union for tech workers has to operate the same way.

How would a union help me at all?

Legal support if your company does something unpleasant to you.

Pushing for better conditions/pay for you as part of improving them for everyone where you work.

Re: Organizers have unionized 5,000 contract workers at Apple, Facebook, Yahoo

#23
post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A union is whatever the members want it to be. Just because traditional unions operate a certain way does not mean a union for tech workers has to operate the same way.

How would a union help me at all?

I don't know if a union would help you specifically because I don't know who you are or who you work for. But in general, a union could negotiate the development practices you and your co-workers want. As an example, if you and your co-workers wanted one week per quarter devoted solely to paying back technical debt, your union could demand it.

There is no reason why a union has to do anything in particular at all if you don't want it to.

I'm not trying to tell you to join a union or not, just saying that a union as a legal structure does not require any of the tactics or goals as 20th century manufacturing or public sector unions.

Re: Organizers have unionized 5,000 contract workers at Apple, Facebook, Yahoo

#24
post #7

Appears to be free and non coercive negotiation until you get to the actual coersion: "In San Francisco the coalition persuaded the city transit authority to make it easier to deny permits to companies facing labor strife." If your negotiations rely on the monopoly that the state provides, is it really a negotiation?

Is that not the exact point of the state? A large, unified actor is working against a bunch of individuals, those individuals are having problems organizing themselves into a large, unified actor so they ask the state for a little help, the state provides it, labor organizes and boom, workers and their bosses are on a little more level footing. All's well that ends well.

no.

Re: Organizers have unionized 5,000 contract workers at Apple, Facebook, Yahoo

#25
post #7

Appears to be free and non coercive negotiation until you get to the actual coersion: "In San Francisco the coalition persuaded the city transit authority to make it easier to deny permits to companies facing labor strife." If your negotiations rely on the monopoly that the state provides, is it really a negotiation?

The tech giants negotiations are relying on the monopoly that the state provides. Just to pick one piece of legislation, the 1947 Taft-Hartley Act, the government disallows various worker/employer agreements that benefit those doing the work. Meaning corporate America generally outlawed certain deals that could happen, when the workers were in a good position, that the corporation was willing to do. That is relying on the monopoly the state provides.

The Taft-Hartley act also bans secondary strikes, so unions are further restricted (this restriction was increased more with the Labor Management Reporting and Disclosure Act in 1959).

The Taft-Hartley act also allowed the president to ban strikes in the case of a "national emergency". Of course, national emergencies were seen all over the place since then, including in 2002 on the west coast docks with the ILWU.

There are the people doing all the work and creating all the wealth, then there are the heirs and such who feed off their expropriation of the surplus labor time of those doing all the work. The idle class relies on the monopoly that the state provides.

In fact, if you look to history and the creation of the first states in Sumeria thousands of years ago, the raison d'etre of those states were to use violence and propaganda so that an idle class could expropriate surplus labor time from their slaves doing all the work.

Re: Organizers have unionized 5,000 contract workers at Apple, Facebook, Yahoo

#26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The downvotes speak volumes of the cognitive dissonance. Everone is fully in control of their destiny through their rugged individualism and bootstraps until they're laid off and packing up to head back home from SFBA because they have no worker protections. I suppose everyone has to learn the hard way (again) during the next downturn.

Have you ever thought that programmer pay is as high as it is because of the lack of those protections? It's pretty well established that programmer interviewing is hard for businesses and when they get it wrong everybody needs to be able to part ways. The speed at which this field moved is almost entirely due to the lack of encumbrances. That includes having to pay a state licensing group to say you are professional…

> It's a long, inefficient and useless money grab who's costs far outweigh the benefits.

Everyone's entitled to their opinion. Perhaps some people want the worker protections other industrialized countries have? And if those people are the majority, they can get it.

EDIT:

> The speed at which this field moved is almost entirely due to the lack of encumbrances.

Maybe this field needs some encumbrances and its time its no longer the wild wild west. Credentials aren't bad, peer-review isn't bad. Maybe I want my software built like my bridges? To standards and reliable.

Re: Organizers have unionized 5,000 contract workers at Apple, Facebook, Yahoo

#27
post #4

Question for the HN crowd: do you think tech-workers will begin to unionize? It seems to me that (in general) they've got such a nice position in the economy there's probably a bit of an "if it ain't broke don't fix it" mentality. Is that correct?

Working in a union would be terrible. Can you imagine having to deal with seniority rules?

No. But I can imagine a union without seniority rules.

Re: Organizers have unionized 5,000 contract workers at Apple, Facebook, Yahoo

#28
post #7

Appears to be free and non coercive negotiation until you get to the actual coersion: "In San Francisco the coalition persuaded the city transit authority to make it easier to deny permits to companies facing labor strife." If your negotiations rely on the monopoly that the state provides, is it really a negotiation?

> If your negotiations rely on the monopoly that the state provides, is it really a negotiation?

Patents, copyright, law enforcement. All provided by the state and used by tech giants in their interactions with others who use tech they've produced.

Re: Organizers have unionized 5,000 contract workers at Apple, Facebook, Yahoo

#29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you ever thought that programmer pay is as high as it is because of the lack of those protections? It's pretty well established that programmer interviewing is hard for businesses and when they get it wrong everybody needs to be able to part ways. The speed at which this field moved is almost entirely due to the lack of encumbrances. That includes having to pay a state licensing group to say you are professional…

> It's a long, inefficient and useless money grab who's costs far outweigh the benefits. Everyone's entitled to their opinion. Perhaps some people want the worker protections other industrialized countries have? And if those people are the majority, they can get it. EDIT: > The speed at which this field moved is almost entirely due to the lack of encumbrances. Maybe this field needs some encumbrances and its time its…

If it took as long to build a web app as it did to build a bridge, and as much bureaucracy to go through, tech would be dead. Not every application should be built using NASA-like standards, which is the closest analog I can think of.

Re: Organizers have unionized 5,000 contract workers at Apple, Facebook, Yahoo

#30
If there is one thing I've learned from two decades of reading about labor history, it's: Every gain labor has ever made has been taken. Every gain the working class (i.e. the overwhelming majority of people) has achieved has come from organizing their majority of low-power workers and then standing strongly against the empowered minority at the top.

Good for these people. They are essentially moving our society forward.

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