Sounds like pre-unionizing to me. Wonder where this will lead to...
Google staff walk out over women's treatment
131–140 of 471 posts
Re: Google staff walk out over women's treatment
#132Wouldn't it be easier to create an algorithm for compensation which clearly didn't involve gender (i.e. no deep learning stuff). Something which boils down to base salary + experience factor + google service factor. Honestly, I can imagine that being less troublesome even outside of attempting to be fair an equitable regardless of race / gender / sexual orientation.
Amazon used software to try and hire people without discrimination, instead they unintentionally discriminated against women https://www.businessinsider.com/amazon-built-ai-to-hire-peop...
Re: Google staff walk out over women's treatment
#133Earlier quoted context omitted.
So you think all claims should be dismissed as false and people who are actually subjected to sexual harassment and coercion at work should have no recourse.
> So you think all claims should be dismissed as false Why would you think that? I think the majority of claims need to go into the “not really sure” bucket where they belong. Acknowledging this basic truth does not mean you have to then do nothing.
Which is why they merit investigation. For which there should be a process. Without an investigation process, what alternatives would you suggest for avoiding treating all claims as true or all claims as false?
Re: Google staff walk out over women's treatment
#134Earlier quoted context omitted.
Your line of thinking is alien to people in the UK and Europe. > You don't change things by striking In the UK, the 1970 Equal Pay Act was triggered by the Ford sewing machinists strike of 1968.
>In the UK, the 1970 Equal Pay Act was triggered by the Ford sewing machinists strike of 1968. And 1970 might as well have been 1870. The 21st century is an entirely different world. Most of the jobs that triggered actual labor reform in the 19th and 20th centuries just don't exist any more. The factories of the 1800's wouldn't survive a single day of business today because modern, largely automated, equipment would…
A lot has changed. What hasn't changed is that corporations are often motivated by profit over employee well-being, and that strikes can put pressure on them to change.
> Fact is, unions are dying in the western world. Union membership is free-falling.
Again, quite US-centric. In the UK it's been slowly increasing over the last few years. Finland, Sweden and Denmark have something like 70% trade union density.
> If you strike now, especially if you aren't in a union, you should be fired. For each of those people that strikes over this, there's probably 50 people that would ecstatically take their job in the city they are in.
The first line doesn't follow from anything you've said. The second line is the most convincing argument for trade unions in this entire thread.
Re: Google staff walk out over women's treatment
#135Earlier quoted context omitted.
Those two lines of logic don't go together. If in your opinion it's a big mistake to believe they're rational, you are saying they're not being rational. There's no neutrality there. You can assume that there is unknown information being acted upon. Unless there's proof otherwise that the protest is lying you infact can and should assume it's authenticity. Or at the least not be involved without clear knowledge.
>Unless there's proof otherwise that the protest is lying you infact can and should assume it's authenticity. Thank God that's not the way justice system works.
"Innocent until proven guilty."
One could reasonably assume that the protestors are innocent until proven guilty.
Re: Google staff walk out over women's treatment
#136Re: Google staff walk out over women's treatment
#137Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Shouldn't employees have the right to collectively strike to get better conditions at work? There's a lot more at stake here than "drama for the company". Doesn't the employer have the right to fire them for any reason in any "at will job"?
I dont think that "at will" exists in all countries - e.g. in Europe I have been told by managers I've had in various employments that it is almost impossible to fire someone in Europe without either some serious misconduct (e.g. sexual harassment), or without first going through a lot of steps to try and not-fire the employee (e.g. performance improvement plans). I am not sure if that is true or not or if it applies…
In Germany sexual harassment earns you at least an adhortatory letter (the first step to a dismissal), and depending on the severity the options go up to an instant dismissal like in US at will states.
While it's harder to get fired here, it is by no means impossible. The law just provides what's basically a three strike system (one to two adhortatory letters for the same reason, then the third time the employee can be dismissed) to give the employee a chance to change behaviour.
Re: Google staff walk out over women's treatment
#138Sounds like pre-unionizing to me. Wonder where this will lead to...
Hopefully to more people in tech joining unions. Plenty of other well-paid professions are unionised (eg. doctors). For full disclosure I've been a member of Prospect, a non-affiliated union in the UK, for a few years. One of the advantages is free access to legal advice about employment issues.
Re: Google staff walk out over women's treatment
#139All of their demands seem pretty reasonable. It looks like the big gripe is that basically there's no real process in place for situations of misconduct in the office. To draw an analogy, this would be like Google not having a process to investigate and resolve site outages - it would be unthinkable, so why aren't they treating their organisation with the same rigor they treat their website.
> there's no real process in place for situations of misconduct in the office. There shouldn't be a "process" set by Google when it comes to sexual harassment, employees should be able to sue, that's the process,sexual harassment is a crime, they can't sue because Google force them into arbitration, which should be illegal for an employer to do that to an employee IMHO. this is a denial of justice.
> There shouldn't be a "process" set by Google when it comes to sexual harassment, employees should be able to sue, that's the process,
Except that, under the law, the company’s response (including the absence or inadequacy of any process) to certain situations is part of what determines if they are sexual harassment.
> sexual harassment is a crime
No, it's not, and if it were the process would not be for employees to sue, because crimes are prosecuted exclusively by the government in the U.S. legal system.
Re: Google staff walk out over women's treatment
#140Sounds like pre-unionizing to me. Wonder where this will lead to...
This is the most under rated comment in this thread.
Don't know what the Google management is thinking at this point in time. But I'm damn sure, unless you are making it rain hundreds of millions in dollars, and you are a part of these pre-unionizing exercises- You are very likely getting marked up as a trouble maker, and may be already a part of purge lists.
This is also a small industry. You don't want your name to smeared as a person who comes with a high trouble/contribution ratio. Nobody wants to hire people to do their jobs, and get employees running their part time political projects with their fellow colleagues in paid office time, on office issues.
There are also a huge range legal landmines you are likely to step over even without active knowledge that you are.