Organizers have unionized 5,000 contract workers at Apple, Facebook, Yahoo • Hacker News Board

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

#121

Post by crdoconnor » Thu, Sep 14, 2017, 4:38 PM UTC

dkhenry wrote: post #89

wfo wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If they are smart, they should: right now they have a lot of power in the workplace because there is demand for them. This is a problem tech business owners have identified: programmers have too much power on the job relative to their bosses. They require good wages, they require too many benefits, they complain and sue when they are sexually harassed, they demand equity and to be treated well and refuse to accept th…

Your comment shows the real divide on unionization and its not about someone's political ideology, its fundamentally about how they view the profession. If like you said programmers should unionize before the army of $12/hour programmers arrives then what you are claiming is that software development could be done by someone who was trained and willing to accept $12 per hour. Essentially you are making the claim they…

If the PhDs and postdocs - who are not performing "common labor" either - can get totally screwed (and they are), so can you.

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

#122

Post by tptacek » Thu, Sep 14, 2017, 4:39 PM UTC

bnolsen wrote: post #117

tptacek wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Organized labor has most of the same problems as organized ownership and capital. Ownership and capital has some unique problems. Labor has some other unique problems. This shouldn't surprise anyone. Unless you're arguing for the elimination of the market system, "this structure in a market economy is prone to corruption" isn't a dispositive argument, or really an argument at all.

No. The union leaders have zero interest in making any company succeed. They have a ton of interest in themselves succeeding. In fact unions work very hard against innovation and in keeping status quo.

Labor unions with professionalized management do have a short-termism problem with extracting concessions that can harm the long-term prospects of firms. That's a real problem.

Similarly, ownership and capital has a tendency to view labor as a black-box machine. If the machine, when operated in Indonesia, produces comparable financial results, what's the point in running the machine in the US? And so pretty much ever job that can be outsourced is outsourced.

Management can have the worst of both worlds. Most managers are hired guns. A ten-year stint at the helm of a company is a respectable tenure, but it's a short period of time compared to the life of some firms. Management in large firms routinely harms both employees and the long-term prospects of the firm by optimizing for short-term metric gains that boost their own compensation.

There's no part of the system that works flawlessly, or isn't freighted with obvious problems. It's kind of a miracle that things work at all. Nevertheless, they often do. And they work better for everyone when all the stakeholders are organized and engaged.

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

#123

Post by crimsonalucard » Thu, Sep 14, 2017, 4:40 PM UTC

sageikosa wrote: post #92

crimsonalucard wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Towards a more balanced distribution of corporate resources/wages/profits leading to a more healthy economy.

Balanced by what standard? Don't really need an answer, most of my posts are just to let other individuals know that at one time there were critical thinkers on HN. I've been downvoted so often for asking questions and answering questions (rather than rambling on through rhetorical platitudes and high-school level history lessons) that I actually take perverse pleasure in seeing how many downvotes I can get.

I'm not downvoting.

By balanced I mean if everyone on earth had the same amount of money then the worlds' wealth would be perfectly balanced. I am not talking about fairness or whether or not the wealth was deserved.

At two ends of the spectrum we have wealth inequality and communism. The ideal sweet spot is somewhere in between the two extremes, right now the United States is leaning towards wealth inequality.

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

#124

Post by _bfhp » Thu, Sep 14, 2017, 4:40 PM UTC

tptacek wrote: post #60

If the drivers and cafeteria workers at tech companies can organize, so can the developers. Unlike the developers, the drivers tend to be financially insecure. In this economy, they're eminently replaceable. What they do is outside the core competency of their employers. You'd think they'd have almost no leverage. And yet, in the space of just a few years, they've managed to secure higher wages and health benefits --…

What conditions or events happened for people in these other "professional" unions to start organizing? I think people only take action en masse when clear incentives exist. I can't see what cultural incentives there are to organize, except within the socialist DSA/Chapo crowds and I'm not sure I can be safely optimistic that everyone is there for the right reasons. I hope to be wrong.

I don't know much about labor organizing but I think the base of tech workers is fractured, with the labor-minded in the minority, and centrists and radical libertarians making up huge swaths of junior developers (For example the user that reflexively brought up union thugs slashing tires, as if no corporation has ever conspired to commit crimes in response to competition). Labor organizing, or however you want to phrase it, has a bad "politics smell" to so many.

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

#125

Post by thephyber » Thu, Sep 14, 2017, 4:41 PM UTC

jules wrote: post #91

jwhitlark wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, a truly unregulated market approximates a war. Just look at the early history of trader/pirates. This doesn't mean capitalism is unstable; it's lowest energy state is the state of nature. Unrestricted warfare is bad for profits, as well as general wellbeing. The trick is to add regulation without adding unnecessary friction, and finding an approximate solution to the free rider problem.

An unregulated market doesn't mean that you can shoot people. Each transaction must be voluntary. Capitalism is not the same as anarchy.

> An unregulated market

has never existed in the history of modern civilization for more than 5 minutes. Ironically for your statement, the most unregulated markets are the most violent as they only occur after one government falls before institutions create themselves to deal with the chaotic state of unorganized and fearful humans.

It will be interesting to see if the digital economy brings with it any self-created software companies (purely software companies created and administered by self-writing software) which tries to avoid any attempts to shut it down.

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

#126

Post by pascalxus » Thu, Sep 14, 2017, 4:42 PM UTC

kevmo wrote: post #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 forw…

Given how hard it is to find labor, due to the lack of housing, they might even have some degree of success. Tech giants need to learn this the hard way: the bay area is not a place for cheap labor: housing costs and taxes are way too astronomical for that.

Also, as the article put it, in the short term, I think Google is putting themselves in a very weak position by making their expansion in San Jose. They could've picked a number of different tech hubs in the rest of the US, but instead chose San Jose. They'll be paying a much higher cost of labor for both engineering talent, plus the countless payoffs they'll need to make to local governments. But, I guess, it must all be worth it, otherwise they wouldn't have done.

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

#127

Post by tptacek » Thu, Sep 14, 2017, 4:44 PM UTC

_bfhp wrote: post #124

tptacek wrote: post #60

If the drivers and cafeteria workers at tech companies can organize, so can the developers. Unlike the developers, the drivers tend to be financially insecure. In this economy, they're eminently replaceable. What they do is outside the core competency of their employers. You'd think they'd have almost no leverage. And yet, in the space of just a few years, they've managed to secure higher wages and health benefits --…

What conditions or events happened for people in these other "professional" unions to start organizing? I think people only take action en masse when clear incentives exist. I can't see what cultural incentives there are to organize, except within the socialist DSA/Chapo crowds and I'm not sure I can be safely optimistic that everyone is there for the right reasons. I hope to be wrong. I don't know much about labor o…

The tech labor force skews liberal (simply as a result of demographics), but if you see it as being dominated by either political extreme, that's much more likely to be an observer effect than reality. Contrary to the impression you'd get from message boards, there aren't that many "radical libertarians" or that many "democratic socialists" working in a typical company.

The only way organization will happen is if it's done for the benefit of the median tech employee. That employee might not be totally apolitical, but they are more worried about the practical realities of their career than they are about tech's place among the great labor unions of US history.

My point is just, it's pretty clear that there are plenty of industry-wide grievances that not only could be fixed, but could be fixed to the betterment of the entire industry, making companies stronger, more efficient, and more survivable.

Given the opportunity tech workers have now with market power and large employers presenting clear targets to organize against, I'd argue that conditions are pretty good for organizing today.

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

#128

Post by _bfhp » Thu, Sep 14, 2017, 4:46 PM UTC

apsec112 wrote: post #116

tptacek wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, and you'll be a constituent of one of them, which is the argument for organizing.

Being a constituent doesn't necessarily mean anything. Eg., Eric Garner was a constituent of New York City. NYC is democratically governed, and he had an equal right to vote. It didn't help him very much.

Being a constituent of X (in this context) means means X is expected to advocate for you.

Thus Eric Garner wasn't a constituent of NYC, he was a constituent of his representatives, who may or may not have done a good job advocating for the safety of those interviewed or detained by the police. I don't see how constituency doesn't help here, because now we can hold reps responsible for advocating for better protection, whereas if no representative power structures existed in the US, what happened to Garner would happen all the time and we would still belong to Great Britain

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

#129

Post by mseebach » Thu, Sep 14, 2017, 4:47 PM UTC

tptacek wrote: post #114

mseebach wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My fear for a tech union is whether it will deny someone like me the kind of opportunity I was very fortunate to enjoy roughly 10-20 years ago. At lot of us here got our starts under scrappy circumstances and with lots of hustling. I am very cautious not to support any move that will amount to pulling up the ladder behind me. You mentioned AMA in another comment; will our tech union require eight years of university…

I have effectively no college, and went to work right after high school. Whatever labor organization tech workers come up with doesn't have to be the AFL-CIO and it doesn't have to be the AMA. It can just take the best attributes from all those organizations. Or it can start more modestly! Maybe tech workers will just come up with two or three things --- say, late exercise on options and better IP clauses --- and jus…

So that's a nice optimistic vision, and if I had any faith we could keep it to that, I'd be for it. My vision includes scope creep and lots of greedy ambitious good-at-politics less-good-at-actually-doing-work types grabbing the show once it's successful.

Most organisations meaningfully described as unions has a non-trivial element of excluding people from the trade in one way or another. I will never be a part of any organisation that will prevent any person from (trying to) make a living as a programmer in whatever way.

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

#130

Post by ZeroGravitas » Thu, Sep 14, 2017, 4:47 PM UTC

tedunangst wrote: post #110

tptacek wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You hear a lot of things about city bus drivers burning down houses, or telecom engineers slashing tires? There are a lot more unions in the US than people realize. For some reason (I can think of many), high-status workers in the US are captivated by the drama of a few particular unions, and have extrapolated wildly from it.

Well, the local bus drivers union isn't held in such high regard either, so maybe not the best example. And I seem to recall Verizon experiencing a sudden spike in equipment failure right around the time their telecom union went on strike. (Happy to concede there are unions people like, but if that's your best effort at naming two good ones, I think the problem is worse than you're acknowledging.)

How would you rank sabotage of Verizon equipment by their employees against, say, a coal company transferring all their pension and health liabilities into new company and then letting it go bust, while they retain all the profit making parts?

"Some will rob you with a six-gun, And some with a fountain pen." -- Woody Guthrie "Pretty Boy Floyd"