With the costs as they are in SF how can these people even afford to live in that area? Is there like low income housing like NY or rent control?
Organizers have unionized 5,000 contract workers at Apple, Facebook, Yahoo
231–240 of 450 posts
Re: Organizers have unionized 5,000 contract workers at Apple, Facebook, Yahoo
#232Earlier quoted context omitted.
To paint a wall in an individual office on Market St, San Francisco, with whiteboard paint, is upwards of $10000 in labor, because of union regulations. Unions are ripe to be used as instruments for abuse.
I can't believe this. Do you have proof?
I was present when a facilities manager explained why we shouldn't use spray-cleaner to clean whiteboards, because it wore down the paint faster, and repainting it cost $10k, and that they had already paid to repaint them twice.
Re: Organizers have unionized 5,000 contract workers at Apple, Facebook, Yahoo
#233Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
"There is no reason why a union has to do anything in particular at all if you don't want it to."
Yes there it. If a union takes over the workforce of your company, now you have to follow the union rules.
If unions were just opt in, them yes you'd be right. But unions are NOT opt in for many states. One you are a union shop, you are screwed if you disagree with the union.
Re: Organizers have unionized 5,000 contract workers at Apple, Facebook, Yahoo
#234Earlier quoted context omitted.
Labor seems to have some unique "challenges" that don't affect other organizations. If I buy a Dodge, nobody from Ford is going to come slash my tires. If I hire a non-union electrician, well, maybe my house burns down. "Shoddy craftsmanship", right? Always hire union to be safe. If anybody is arguing for the elimination of the market system, I'd start by looking at the unions.
This is approximately as rigorous an analysis as suggesting that if you hire an Italian, his mob buddies might come by later on to shake you down for protection money. How many AMA members have slashed the tires of a noncompliant doctor?
> How many AMA members have slashed the tires of a noncompliant doctor?
Why slash their tires when you can have the police arrest them, the local prosecutor press charges, etc.?
Similarly, lots of professions use police power to prevent outsiders from competing with them. Even hairstylists!
Re: Organizers have unionized 5,000 contract workers at Apple, Facebook, Yahoo
#235If 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…
> 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.
If the tech giants paid even more than they do already, wouldn't that hurt everyone else even more than they already because of the competition over housing?
Re: Organizers have unionized 5,000 contract workers at Apple, Facebook, Yahoo
#236Earlier quoted context omitted.
An unregulated market doesn't mean that you can shoot people. Each transaction must be voluntary. Capitalism is not the same as anarchy.
There is no such thing as a market with no involuntary transactions, as all externalities are involuntary transactions. When your factory is producing noise pollution around it, is that a volutary transaction you have entered into with your neighbours? What about when it pollutes the air, or the water? What about transactions where both sides don't have perfect information? How can you voluntarily agree to a transact…
Strictly speaking there is indeed no such thing as a completely voluntary transaction, as every transaction affects a third party, even if in a minuscule way. Similar criticisms can be made of any system, or any word (such as "voluntary") for that matter. The original point of discussion was whether "unregulated market" includes shooting people. As I said above:
> Capitalism is by no means a perfectly well defined system that you can deduce from a set of axioms. You can have a discussion about which property rights the government should enforce, such as whether it should enforce intellectual property. But certain systems are clearly fall outside of the bounds of what constitutes a free market, such as systems in which I am allowed to put a gun to your head to make you give me your wallet.
In order for language to be useful we have to assign a reasonable range of meaning to a word. The word "voluntary" becomes completely useless with the meaning you describe. You can do the same to any word, even words such as "apple". If you let an apple rot it eventually becomes compost. Somewhere in between it stops being an apple. By the same type of reasoning you can conclude that "apples are pure fiction". These kind of language games are not very useful.
Re: Organizers have unionized 5,000 contract workers at Apple, Facebook, Yahoo
#237If 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 --…
Im tech historically and in a union now and I see this difference.
I dont think any developer believes they will stay a developer and retire after 30 yrs from the company they now work. Whereas a laborer does believe they have a lifelong right to stay and retire.
Re: Organizers have unionized 5,000 contract workers at Apple, Facebook, Yahoo
#238With the costs as they are in SF how can these people even afford to live in that area? Is there like low income housing like NY or rent control?
Long ass commutes from Contra Costa County. KQED had an interesting series on the changing demographics of the bay area's exurbs. [1]
[1] https://ww2.kqed.org/forum/2017/02/07/kqed-looks-inside-the-...
Re: Organizers have unionized 5,000 contract workers at Apple, Facebook, Yahoo
#239If 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…
Since the capital and ownership sectors of our economy are all trained to operate businesses rationally and to not leave value on the table, it seems pretty clear that anything that labor doesn't take will be traded away. To me, in that light, neither the "depredations" of owners and investors nor the "coercion" of labor unions is really a problem; it's just the natural give and take of the market at work. The real p…
> [...], it seems pretty clear that anything that labor doesn't take will be traded away.
You forgot the real reason anyone is paid more than nothing: because they could go somewhere else or do something else.
Also pay in different countries differs by productivity level much more than by any measure of unionization.
Re: Organizers have unionized 5,000 contract workers at Apple, Facebook, Yahoo
#240Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
> 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. If the tech giants paid even more than they do already, wouldn't that hurt everyone else even more than they already because of the competition over housing?
Indeed, everyone but bay area landlords loses.