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Kickstarter’s staff is unionizing

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Re: Kickstarter’s staff is unionizing

#91
post #45

It will be interesting to see what this does for developer salaries at Kickstarter. If, as a top performer, I get penalized by joining the union then obviously Kickstarter looks less attractive to me. For unions in our industry to work they are going to have to be very explicit about how they are going to raise developer salaries.

Companies in general are crappy at recognizing top contributors anyway. Tech companies are no exception.

Re: Kickstarter’s staff is unionizing

#92
post #47

Why are tech company staff wanting to unionize? For the most part, aren't tech staff reasonably to well paid - with good working conditions and moderate hour expectations (say 40-50)?

Reasonably well paid doesn't alway hold compared to the cost (and supply) of housing in the bay area; new grads are often forced to share bedrooms even though they make $110k+. (This isn't entirely tech companies' fault -- homeowners are not incentivized to allow housing growth to match new jobs, and California has been through many booms and busts in the past, so it is conservative in building out new capacity.)

Moderate hour expectations don't always hold during "crunch time"; Facebook and Google have large swaths of their employee base who are subject to the schedules of the large annual developer conferences (F8, Google Cloud Next, Google I/O). There have been internal mandates where employees were forced to work weekends for entire quarters.

Re: Kickstarter’s staff is unionizing

#93
post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know how unions work in the US, but most unions in the UK fund a single political party, which means you could be forced to pay to support a party with views you find abhorrent in order to work, so I hope not.

Completely correct. Three of the top 10 election cycle 2018 contributors were unions. * Carpenters & Joiners Union gave $38,366,262 with $37,822,215 to democrats and $529,000 to republicans. * Service Employees International Union gave $28,224,658 with $28,219,509 to democrats and $132 to republicans. * Laborers Union gave $27,538,080 with $26,810,870 to democrats and $708,100 to republicans. Source: https://www.open…

Seems no worse than an employer doing the same, directly or via interest groups. Though they do tend to be more equal-opportunity in their support.

In both cases the answer to "how do I stop supporting this political action I don't like?" is "Quit. Hope your skills are marketable."

Re: Kickstarter’s staff is unionizing

#94
post #73
post #45

It will be interesting to see what this does for developer salaries at Kickstarter. If, as a top performer, I get penalized by joining the union then obviously Kickstarter looks less attractive to me. For unions in our industry to work they are going to have to be very explicit about how they are going to raise developer salaries.

Salaries aren't the only thing unions are good for. I'd be very interested in a job that had cast-iron guarantees about working hours, on-duty overtime, no open offices, stuff like that.

Why can you not ask for those things directly for the company you want to work for? I’m not getting my office? no thank you. I have to be on page duty in the middle of the night? No thank you. There are companies that offer all those maybe you sacrifice salary a bit. Someone has to pay the cost, I don’t think unions magically can give you the same salary or more at the same time you getting everything you wish for above. And if they do promise that maybe at best it’s their marketing PR and at worst look what communism did in Russia.

Re: Kickstarter’s staff is unionizing

#95
I think there needs to be an overall IT union, with apprenticeships and the whole thing. Make new people do QA testing, or tech support as they work on their other skills and level up. Get mandatory overtime to finish a project, then get laid off and collect unemployment until the Union needs you again. Just like carpenters and glaziers and all.

EDIT: Instead of replying to everyone individually. Over the last ~15 years I've held jobs from tech support to network engineer to full stack developer. In each of them I have noticed that recent college grads are almost always clueless, and basically have to start from scratch. These are kids with massive student loan debt that could have started working earlier and learned through an apprenticeship.

Re: Kickstarter’s staff is unionizing

#96
post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Has being in the news as an organizer significantly harmed your job search?

Here's an interesting question: The NLRB says you can't fire someone for union organizing, but does it say you can't refuse to hire someone for union organizing?

Yes. A friend of mine in college (who had the highest LSAT score of anyone I knew, and went on to become a lawyer) joked that his strategy would be to announce during an interview that he planned to organize, and if he didn't get the job that he would sue them on the grounds that they rejected him for this.

Re: Kickstarter’s staff is unionizing

#97
post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Has being in the news as an organizer significantly harmed your job search?

Here's an interesting question: The NLRB says you can't fire someone for union organizing, but does it say you can't refuse to hire someone for union organizing?

Good luck proving that though

Re: Kickstarter’s staff is unionizing

#98
post #74

Is anyone aware of an example where (a) a really small company unionized and/or (b) a workforce unionized without any real demands? I run a 17 person company and I've heard employees mention that they think all companies should be unionized even if there aren't currently any problems that the union would seek to address. I strongly support the big tech companies unionizing and so it would be hypocritical of me to be…

As the owner you wouldn't be part of the union so there would be no "overhead" for you anyway. Do you understand how unions work?

Not as well as I'd like which is why I'm asking about this. I meant this as a discussion starter about unions at smaller companies, so even if I'm not the one paying the overhead, it's still relevant to the topic of whether or not a union makes sense.

Re: Kickstarter’s staff is unionizing

#99
post #67

> America’s political climate is changing; among other things, the 2016 presidential election brought up the issue of wealth inequality in this country and made people consider more closely the structural forces that define class here. What is a structural force that defines class in America?

Most rich people stay rich, most poor people stay poor: https://www.forbes.com/sites/aparnamathur/2018/07/16/the-u-s...

Racism is structural in a number of ways:

https://www.nber.org/papers/w9873

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/School-to-prison_pipeline

Re: Kickstarter’s staff is unionizing

#100
post #93
post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Completely correct. Three of the top 10 election cycle 2018 contributors were unions. * Carpenters & Joiners Union gave $38,366,262 with $37,822,215 to democrats and $529,000 to republicans. * Service Employees International Union gave $28,224,658 with $28,219,509 to democrats and $132 to republicans. * Laborers Union gave $27,538,080 with $26,810,870 to democrats and $708,100 to republicans. Source: https://www.open…

Seems no worse than an employer doing the same, directly or via interest groups. Though they do tend to be more equal-opportunity in their support. In both cases the answer to "how do I stop supporting this political action I don't like?" is "Quit. Hope your skills are marketable."

> Quit. Hope your skills are marketable.

What do I do when there is an industry-wide closed-shop union, as some people seem to want?

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