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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

#211

Post by jules »

s73ver_ wrote: post #207
jules wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you disagree with this definition of voluntary, that's fine. Let's choose another string of letters to denote what I wrote in the previous comment, and change my other comment and replace the string "voluntary" with that new string of letters. > Maybe not, but the idea that I will be fired if I don't do what you say means that it's not entirely voluntary. Being fired is simply no longer engaging in the transaction…

"If you disagree with this definition of voluntary, that's fine. Let's choose another string of letters to denote what I wrote in the previous comment, and change my other comment and replace the string "voluntary" with that new string of letters." That won't make it any better. You're still hand waving away a lot of exploitation. "Being fired is simply no longer engaging in the transaction where one party trades the…

> That won't make it any better. You're still hand waving away a lot of exploitation.

I'm not hand waving away any exploitation. I did not pass any moral judgement, for or against. I described what an unregulated market is. To do so I used the word "voluntary", and I explained what I meant by that word in that context. In particular, it does not include the use of a gun to make somebody give you their wallet.

I'm seriously amazed that we are having a whole discussion as a result of me saying that "unregulated market" doesn't mean that you can shoot people.

> Which is a threat of force often used when the employer wants the employee to do something that may be unethical, or simply wrong (like making someone work 20 hours a day).

Only if your definition of "threat of force" is so broad as to include not giving you money. Is it also a threat of force if an employee says that they will quit their job if they don't get a raise? It may be a threat, but a threat of _force_?

> But the way you're phrasing things, and focusing on them, indicates that you believe that physical force is the only force that matters.

That is not what you said. You said "_Guns_ are not the only expression of force. Failure to see that is a huge fallacy."

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

#212

Post by tptacek »

chimeracoder wrote: post #204
tptacek wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's misleading to suggest that professional associations require the NLRA to operate. Without the NLRA, employees can simply be fired for attempting to organize. Sorry, I should have been clearer earlier.

> Without the NLRA, employees can simply be fired for attempting to organize. Sort of, but not really. The NLRA does prevent the right to organize, which is mostly (though not exclusively) used in the context of labor unions. The NLRA was passed with the expectation that organization would generally take the form of labor unions. The ability to organize outside of a unionized workplace was specified largely to solve…

I think you're just factually off here. It's the NLRA that federally prohibits the termination of employees for protected concerted action. Without the NLRA, you can indeed be fired for organizing --- any kind of organizing. Employment in the US is at-will.

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

#213

Post by unionagitprop »

Animats wrote: post #136
wyldfire wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The real problem is the late 20th century stigma labor organization has acquired. I think the stigma is well-deserved. Indeed they are rife with corruption and often create very odd incentives. Unfortunately unions suffer the same fate as other "invisible" benefits: everyone takes them for granted and doesn't recognize their value. People focus on the drawbacks and it's much easier to convince them that we're all b…

Unfortunately unions suffer the same fate as other "invisible" benefits: everyone takes them for granted and doesn't recognize their value. Unions - the folks who brought you the weekend. (That's a button and bumper sticker.) Also the 8-hour day and the 40-hour week, which the US somehow lost.

unions certainly like to rest on those century-old laurels, but the acts themselves were performed by long-dead capable individuals. crediting unions in the abstract is progressive cargo-culting

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

#214

Post by viridian »

Animats wrote: post #136
wyldfire wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The real problem is the late 20th century stigma labor organization has acquired. I think the stigma is well-deserved. Indeed they are rife with corruption and often create very odd incentives. Unfortunately unions suffer the same fate as other "invisible" benefits: everyone takes them for granted and doesn't recognize their value. People focus on the drawbacks and it's much easier to convince them that we're all b…

Unfortunately unions suffer the same fate as other "invisible" benefits: everyone takes them for granted and doesn't recognize their value. Unions - the folks who brought you the weekend. (That's a button and bumper sticker.) Also the 8-hour day and the 40-hour week, which the US somehow lost.

This reads like one of those really lazy appeals to things that happened forever ago to defend the modern organization.

Republicans call themselves The party of Lincoln, Bell labs reminding people they invented the semiconductor, etc. Hearkening back to something you did a long time ago seems like a purposeful hand wave away from the present or recent history.

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

#215

Post by walshemj »

gok wrote: post #70
mc32 wrote: post #65

This is a bit misleading. Union power is putting pressure on service economy companies which in turn service tech companies. Tech workers are not unionizing -and I can't imagine they would, given their pay compared to other sectors. I could see an AMA type organization perhaps. On the other hand, unfortunately, companies no longer staff vertically. When they can outsource their non core competencies they do. They don…

> Tech workers are not unionizing -and I can't imagine they would, given their pay compared to other sectors. Unions needn’t be only for the middle class. See professional sports players unions for example.

In the UK for example BALPA (airline pilots), Prospect (M&P grads in many industry's) and the FDA (v senior civil servants plus MI5 and MI6)

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

#216

Post by stale2002 »

Clubber wrote: post #200
mc32 wrote: post #65

This is a bit misleading. Union power is putting pressure on service economy companies which in turn service tech companies. Tech workers are not unionizing -and I can't imagine they would, given their pay compared to other sectors. I could see an AMA type organization perhaps. On the other hand, unfortunately, companies no longer staff vertically. When they can outsource their non core competencies they do. They don…

I think a tech union would significantly raise the wages of technical people. A past job, I automated away jobs at $0.10 on the dollar and made a healthy salary, but it obviously was 1/10th of what I was worth. I left that company and all those jobs are still automated away and the more the company grows, the more they save. Also a tech union could push for perks like developer offices, remote work, better work equip…

This isn't really a good thing.

Unions do things like engage in age discrimination by favoring senior members over all else.

They do things like throw up oppressive barriers to entry, and limited licenses, in order to F over everyone who is not already in the club.

Unions are only a good idea for exceptional 1 size fits all situations.

For example, there are only a couple major airlines in the industry, and if you get fired or leave, your career is permanently messed up, even though you spent a decade training to be a pilot and getting the necessary flight hours.

In this kind of situation, where an airline has excessive bargaining power, and workers have no other option, a pilots union makes sense. Even though a pilot job is a high skilled position.

But for tech? No way. Engaging in collective bargaining to get the small amount of negotiation power just isn't worth the drawbacks of a 1 size fits all solution.

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

#217

Post by astrange »

CryptoPunk wrote: post #141
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…

Any wage gains that are derived by unionisation are zero sum. They are economic rent extracted by reducing the competitiveness of labour markets, and advantaging unionized workers working for big employers at the expense of those without such jobs. In the long run, the reduced profit margins caused by wages that are artificially high (above the rate that would be established by the free market) results in less invest…

Wage redistribution isn't zero-sum, because it means less for a rich person to lose a dollar than for a poor person to earn one.

Also, I recommend rereading your post with "labour" as "proletariat" and "investor" as "bourgeoisie". Hopefully you'll discover class consciousness.

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

#218

Post by TheCoelacanth »

jules wrote: post #186
TheCoelacanth wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But if I put a gun to your head and tell you to get off "my" land that is voluntary? Property rights don't exist without some form of regulation.

You already broke the property rules if you went on my land without my permission. If I agree to let you on my land and then put a gun to your head, that is against the rules. > Property rights don't exist without some form of regulation. If by regulation you mean any law whatsoever, certainly. That's not what people usually mean by unregulated market. When people say "unregulated car market" they don't mean a market…

Where does your ownership of the land originate if not from someone at some point in history using the threat of violence to keep other people off of it?

The concept of an unregulated market that includes land ownership is already nonsense because the system of land ownership is inherently non-voluntary. I never opted into the system where people can exclude me from certain parts of the earth; it was imposed on me with the threat of violence.

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

#219

Post by sologoub »

scarmig wrote: post #209
zjaffee wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It 100% would raise the wages of tech workers, but it could also hurt the stock price of many tech companies from which many senior employees make such kinds of wages anyways. Additionally, there is complexity around where goods are produced and where they are sold in regards to taxes, so some of these numbers I will list aren't exactly simple. But anyways, Apple makes 600k in profit a year per employee, meaning they…

> a revenue per employee that is well over 1 billion dollars ...

These figures are from 2015 numbers, so a bit old. No billions per employee, but still not too terrible: http://www.businessinsider.com/revenue-per-employee-at-apple...

Apple is listed at $2.1 mil/employee, Google at $1.2 mil, FB at $1 .4 mil.

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

#220

Post by TheCowboy »

tptacek wrote: post #43
School-Cotton wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How would a union help me at all?

One way to look at Hacker News is as a part-time ranked inventory of labor grievances for tech workers. Open offices. Draconian IP clauses. Opportunities for developers to become founders. Work-life balance. Remote work. People get hung up on this because most developers feel like their profession is well-compensated. And, they are. But so are doctors and lawyers, who also belong to professional associations. There's…

Adding another couple that are popular: better hiring and interviewing practices that don't over-burden applicants. Eliminating the number of rounds, better transparency about the overall hiring process, avoiding tests that are completely irrelevant to job performance. Better transparency regarding salary offerings, and a framework for individual negotiation that doesn't disadvantage certain groups.

There are plenty of things a professional organization could excel at that don't require full-blown unionization.

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