Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Google Urged the U.S. to Limit Protection for Activist Workers

bloomberg.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

121–130 of 473 posts

Re: Google Urged the U.S. to Limit Protection for Activist Workers

#121

Post by pc86 »

typon wrote: post #90
josephv wrote: post #79

These comments read like a bunch of low-income retail shoppers defending Walmart because they provide something they otherwise couldn't get. I think these types of debates are bellwether for programmer/IT professional unionization. These are the exact types of lawsuits brought against organized labor as it was trying to get organized to prevent exploitative behavior. It's disturbing to see these same anti-organizatio…

Programmers, maybe ones on HN especially, are super conservative and anti-labour for some reason. I don't know the history of Silicon Valley enough to figure out exactly why

Almost every programmer I've met in real life, and certainly most of the folks on HN, are very liberal yet are largely anti-organized labor. Don't conflate a general disdain for one policy with an entire political ideology.

Re: Google Urged the U.S. to Limit Protection for Activist Workers

#122

Post by tivert »

typon wrote: post #90
josephv wrote: post #79

These comments read like a bunch of low-income retail shoppers defending Walmart because they provide something they otherwise couldn't get. I think these types of debates are bellwether for programmer/IT professional unionization. These are the exact types of lawsuits brought against organized labor as it was trying to get organized to prevent exploitative behavior. It's disturbing to see these same anti-organizatio…

Programmers, maybe ones on HN especially, are super conservative and anti-labour for some reason. I don't know the history of Silicon Valley enough to figure out exactly why

> Programmers, maybe ones on HN especially, are super conservative and anti-labour for some reason. I don't know the history of Silicon Valley enough to figure out exactly why

That's not quite right, HN is full of anti-labor libertarians. And I think it has something to do with startup culture, which is a lot about working to get a golden ticket to join the capitalist class. That causes a lot of people to identify with that class and its interests, despite actually being laborers themselves.

Re: Google Urged the U.S. to Limit Protection for Activist Workers

#123

Post by [deleted] »

SolaceQuantum wrote: post #102
malvosenior wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You succeed at programming by spending countless hours on your own with a computer. Your career is a direct result of your own hard work and passion. From that perspective, organized labor seems like an unnecessary dependency. Programming is a form of extreme independence many will be hard fought to give away. Developers (some) aren't super-conservative, they're libertarian.

I don't know if this is true. My career is also a result of the excellent mentors I have and continue to have, the wonderful peers I cooperate with, the selfless professors who taught me fundamentals, the excellent technology already built by those who came before me, etc. I really can't say that my career is a result of my own hard work and passion as if my own hard work and passion is the primary thing that allowed…

[deleted]

Re: Google Urged the U.S. to Limit Protection for Activist Workers

#124

Post by danharaj »

austincheney wrote: post #118
advisedwang wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It isn't nearly as easy to connect to people outside the workplace. You have to reach out to people to get their personal contact details, and doing this en-masse could be construed as organizing activity by itself. They could even argue you are ex-filtrating confidential information (list of employees).

> It isn’t nearly as easy to connect to people outside the workplace. I think this is absolute core of the discussion. Like nearly all bad decisions ultimately it comes down to convenience . If this form of political discourse were as important as people claim they would find a way.

You know, unless the difficulty of doing without it makes it infeasible.

Mobility impaired people lobbied for curb cutouts waybackwhen because it would make it easier to use sidewalks. I think that situation obviously shouldn't be belittled by saying it's about convenience. Ugh, if going to the grocery store were as important as they claim they would find a way /s.

I'm not convinced this particular situation isn't also about feasibility.

Re: Google Urged the U.S. to Limit Protection for Activist Workers

#125

Post by Rylinks »

pdpi wrote: post #63
koboll wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, I wrote a contrived example. But the onus, I think, is on the critics in this thread to provide the theory of legal ethics under which attorneys should refrain from advancing the most effective defense of their clients if doing so might cause public relations concerns. It's my understanding that zealously defending their clients within the bounds of the law is among an attorney's highest obligations.

To use an equally contrived example of my own — there's plenty of jurisdictions where arguing something along the lines of "look at how she was dressed, she was asking for it" will get you off the hook on rape charges. Would you still argue that an attorney who makes that argument is merely "advancing the most effective defense of their clients"? Or would you find that conduct reprehensible both for the attorney, and…

there's plenty of people who think defending a criminal at all is ethically dubious. Depriving criminal defendants of the most effective defense by applying social pressure to their attorneys is not a good road to walk down.

Re: Google Urged the U.S. to Limit Protection for Activist Workers

#126

Post by anticensor »

Ericson2314 wrote: post #114
anticensor wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the employee side is numerous enough to unionise, the employer side should also be numerous enough to establish an employer organisation.

The whole point of unionization is the employer side has the advantage of being way less numerous.

Employer organisations also consist of multiple employers. In a fully unionised bargaining, both employer and employee unions attend bargaining process.

There are sufficient number of software and database companies to establish an employer organisation for software.

Re: Google Urged the U.S. to Limit Protection for Activist Workers

#127

Post by [deleted] »

mcv wrote: post #111
village-idiot wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because a lot of programmers on HN are at the upper edge of their field’s income distribution for a variety of reasons, location definitely being one of them. When a field unionized, the people near the top typically stand to lose the most, even if everyone as a whole are more enriched. I would bet money that the most elite members of car manufacturing were also not particularly enthused about unionization, although…

> When a field unionized, the people near the top typically stand to lose the most, > even if everyone as a whole are more enriched. Not necessarily. From what I understand, some pilot unions do the exact opposite.

[deleted]

Re: Google Urged the U.S. to Limit Protection for Activist Workers

#128

Post by pmiller2 »

yourbandsucks wrote: post #66
rjf72 wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would never judge a company based on their words. Most corporations spend immense amounts of money on public relations firms, and these firms are pretty decent at their job. And words can be faked - lies, deception. If you want to see what a company truly is judge them by their actions, particularly ones that are not obvious PR efforts. Google in recent times: - looking to move into China and create a censored sear…

Funny detail, it turns out the complaints were filed against conservative ex-googlers alleging that they were discriminated against by the progressive activist majority inside Google. The people filing NRLB complaints probably disagree with you about the morality of all your bullet points above, and they're claiming they were discriminated against for disagreeing with the consensus. I wonder if that changes progressi…

Not my opinion. These rules are in place for the good of all workers. We need to hold on to what power we have, the right not to be retaliated against for attempting to organize being one of the most basic.

Re: Google Urged the U.S. to Limit Protection for Activist Workers

#129

Post by 0x262d »

typon wrote: post #90
josephv wrote: post #79

These comments read like a bunch of low-income retail shoppers defending Walmart because they provide something they otherwise couldn't get. I think these types of debates are bellwether for programmer/IT professional unionization. These are the exact types of lawsuits brought against organized labor as it was trying to get organized to prevent exploitative behavior. It's disturbing to see these same anti-organizatio…

Programmers, maybe ones on HN especially, are super conservative and anti-labour for some reason. I don't know the history of Silicon Valley enough to figure out exactly why

HN especially attracts people who think like "I'm a super smart 10x hacker and deserve the fact that I earn 5x median salary and poor and dumb people can starve". it's sad. reverse class consciousness.

Re: Google Urged the U.S. to Limit Protection for Activist Workers

#130

Post by mmsimanga »

josephv wrote: post #79

These comments read like a bunch of low-income retail shoppers defending Walmart because they provide something they otherwise couldn't get. I think these types of debates are bellwether for programmer/IT professional unionization. These are the exact types of lawsuits brought against organized labor as it was trying to get organized to prevent exploitative behavior. It's disturbing to see these same anti-organizatio…

I am not against unions but having spent a career trying to get business to tell me what exactly they want I tend not to put too much faith in large organisations. I feel the administrative overhead of getting all us programmers to agree on specific principles as part of a union is literally going to be impossible. Try putting some developers using electron, PHP, Java and Postgresql in a room and see if you can get past the introductions without a flamewar.
Post reply on HN