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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

#251

Post by Clubber »

tomohawk wrote: post #247
Clubber wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Eastman Kodak was a technology innovator. Where are they now? Unions were/are a huge drag on them. In order to 'protect' workers, unions define job functions. This prevents an engineer from being moved over to bathroom cleaner. However, it also locks people into job descriptions that may have made sense at one time, but no longer do. It also makes the business unable to respond flexibly to new conditions. A friend of…

Ya, I've heard stories about people getting in trouble for moving a printer because it's a union job. Like I said before, not all unions are the same, just like not all developers are the same.

BTW, unions didn't kill Kodak. Executives love to blame unions for their own ineptitude.

https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2012/01/what-ki...

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

#252

Post by pyrale »

jules wrote: post #222
TheCoelacanth wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 wi…

> 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? It comes from exactly that, and the system in which that occurred was not a free market. > it was imposed on me with the threat of violence. Absolutely, _the system_ is imposed with the threat of violence. I said that transactions within the system must be volunta…

So you involuntarily participate in a system where you must only make voluntary decisions ?

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

#253

Post by sushid »

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…

Value add is not always how people get paid. For instance, say a GOOG/FB/APPL driver drives 100+ engineers and saves them 100 hours/ride on commuting time. That doesn't mean that the driver reasonably deserves the cost of 100 hours of engineering time per ride even though he does provide that service.

But yes, I do agree that it would significantly raise the wages if we were able to collectively bargain.

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

#254

Post by morgante »

Clubber wrote: post #244
morgante wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I think a tech union would significantly raise the wages of technical people. By what mechanism? Either they engage in collective bargaining, which is filled with problems, or artificially constrict the supply of labor by requiring additional licensing. Considering there is already a shortage of software engineers, constricting it further is unlikely to be net positive. From where I'm standing, the current system w…

>Considering there is already a shortage of software engineers, constricting it further is unlikely to be net positive. Since there is a short supply of software engineers, why do you think wages haven't risen? >every "open salary" calculator I've seen proposes a salary about half of what I make. Formulaic salaries help low performers and hurt high performers. I suspect that's because businesses manipulate that so th…

> Since there is a short supply of software engineers, why do you think wages haven't risen?

They definitely have, at least for the high end of the market. For example, Hired shows a 3.28% increase in salaries for SF engineers this year. [0]

> I suspect that's because businesses manipulate that so they can hire offshore workers cheaper.

I'm positive that open salary initiatives are not an attempt to hire H1B workers. I'm talking about things like this: https://stackoverflow.com/company/salary/calculator

I bet Stack Overflow doesn't even have H1B workers.

> I seriously doubt you are getting a tenth of what you make for the company. There's only so far you can go by yourself.

I know how much my new employer makes per employee, and I make well more than a tenth of that. I'd suspect I capture around 30-40% of my value.

> Also, you wouldn't have to fight for 6 months to get a decent monitor, it will just be there.

You and I seem to occupy very different segments of the tech industry. Every single employer I've ever worked for has given me carte blanche to request whatever equipment I need on my first day of work. Only stupid or nearsighted employers quibble over > Do you think it would be a good negotiation if your company only got 1/100th of the profits of the joint venture? That's probably what you are getting now.

Why would I accept 1/100th of the profits of the join venture? I negotiate very aggressively—in fact, I'd argue that I once captured more than my value from a previous startup which ended up failing. I don't expect to capture 100% of the value, since the company is also providing resources which allow that value to be created (ex. significant existing scale).

If I negotiate in a group, I have to accept the outcome of the outcome of the group. I have no interest in making what the average programmer makes.

[0] https://hired.com/state-of-salaries-2017

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

#255

Post by noobermin »

ic4l wrote: post #166
AlexC04 wrote: post #3

> Eventually, Facebook says, it OK’d proposed terms of the contract, which hiked drivers’ average pay by half, to $27.50 an hour, and for the first time provided fully paid family health care. For those people doing the driving that's pretty great news. I hope they also took care of those working conditions issues too. Split shifts etc...

Won't last long. Few more years, and it will be a autonomous fleet anyways.

You might have missed this discussion from a few days ago:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15116861

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

#256

Post by santaclaus »

logfromblammo wrote: post #230
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…

It wouldn't really be about the pay for me. I'd want my union to crush open plan workplaces, especially the ones that stick software development next to sales. Please put 4.5" of solid wall, and at least one closeable door, between me and all that incessant yapping on the raprod. Also, it would be nice to ban cargo-culting. Like daily all-hands "stand-up meetings" that last 45 minutes. Don't let management make us ta…

> Like daily all-hands "stand-up meetings"

Unions vs Agile?

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

#257

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

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

#258

Post by sangnoir »

ChemicalWarfare wrote: post #228
bnolsen wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Not sure why he's getting downvoted. Unions are only interested in company's existence but even then very often they are willing to see it go to the brink not budging on concessions etc. Not to mention the whole objection to the "right to work" approach.

> Not sure why he's getting downvoted

Because his fact-free attack is demonstrably wrong. The majority of unions are invested in the companies they provide labor for. By way of example, Germany has unions that are evidently committed to the company's existence - to the extent that labor being represented at board level is not unusual. That is the kind of, ahem, synergy that should exist between capital and labor, but is anathema in the US.

In contrast, some executives are effectively mercenaries with no interest in the long-term survival of companies, they work on very short horizons, but I never hear anyone demanding that management is toxic and shouldn't exist.

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

#259

Post by enraged_camel »

xyzzy_plugh wrote: post #232
eutropia wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That's not proof, it's hearsay.

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

#260

Post by krapp »

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.

>Each transaction must be voluntary.

That's a regulation, and for that to be binding, it needs to be backed up by coercion and violence.

In an unregulated market, whether or not one can shoot people, or whether or not transactions should be voluntary, would be decided like everything else by success or failure through competition in the marketplace.

You can't have free market except for this one little rule... that's just a very weakly regulated market.

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