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Kickstarter’s staff is unionizing

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171–180 of 724 posts

Re: Kickstarter’s staff is unionizing

#171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The supply of jobs is much lower in the games industry relative to the demand.

Don't know why you're downvoted; that is exactly right. There's nothing particularly unusual about game dev jobs or companies compared to other areas of tech (especially including startups); it's just that there are a lot of people who want to work on games. It's been that way for at least a couple of decades now.

I think people assume I'm anti-developer or anti-union, but I was just trying to remind people stuff they seem to be discounting (but already know -- nothing I said was innovative at all). It really isn't that complicated, I don't believe. :/

Re: Kickstarter’s staff is unionizing

#172

Maybe the US has a different experience with unions but in Brazil, they are simply hated. They were made mandatory by law and very rarely (never?) step in to help employees. It's only at big factories that they show up when more than X number of people are fired and do a big show out of that. Meanwhile, all the employees not working for big factories paid their union fees and saw nothing back. It's often a platform t…

Not everyone in the US likes unions. Union-driven high labor costs are one of the reasons why lots of auto manufacturing left Michigan for various points foreign and domestic. Some unions do a great job negotiating benefits for workers. Others do a great job only for union leadership, to the ultimate detriment of companies' profitability and workers' salaries and job security.

If tech unions are new organizations by, for, and of tech workers, they might result in positive change for tech workers. If they fall in line with AFL-CIO et al., stand by for trouble.

Re: Kickstarter’s staff is unionizing

#173
post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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."

> Seems no worse than an employer doing the same, directly or via interest groups. Well, in one scenario it's their money being spent. In the other, it's yours . You don't draw a pretty clear distinction there?

The managers of the corporation are not spending their money either, unless they own the corporation.

Re: Kickstarter’s staff is unionizing

#174

Maybe the US has a different experience with unions but in Brazil, they are simply hated. They were made mandatory by law and very rarely (never?) step in to help employees. It's only at big factories that they show up when more than X number of people are fired and do a big show out of that. Meanwhile, all the employees not working for big factories paid their union fees and saw nothing back. It's often a platform t…

I'd be interested to learn more about the German system, where the union sits on the board of the company. They would seem to then have an actual interest in the success of the enterprise as a whole, rather than just trying to extract as much as they can from it. Of course in other places they have no power and just extract fees from workers.

Re: Kickstarter’s staff is unionizing

#175
post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a top performer: 1. I do my best work when my colleagues are also doing their best work. It doesn't matter how good I am at my job if I can't use the leverage of having teammates. I will be happier if the company can compensate all of my coworkers well and make them happy and hire good coworkers - both in terms of intrinsic motivation / happiness and in terms of whether the company is profitable enough to compensa…

You do best when your colleagues do the best, for sure. Do you think the union is going to help or hurt when you have underperforming or disruptive colleagues?

I think these two questions can be separated

Regarding disruptive employees: Why would a union restrict a company's ability to fire disruptive employees? (excepting the corrupted union that has irrational favorites)

Regarding under-performing employees: Are you talking about the person who is just a bit slower than others or the person who's lack of aptitude causes other employees to lose unreasonable amounts of time to assisting that employee? I'd count the second type in the same class as being disruptive.

Also, at your current workplace is everyone equal in terms salary when when normalized by performance? Is it a problem if you're a bit more efficient than a co-worker and earning the same salary as them?

Re: Kickstarter’s staff is unionizing

#177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They _could_ require that _after_ joining Kickstarter either join the union or pay equivalent dues. That sounds like exactly the same thing as a closed shop. How is that practically any different?

I suppose it means that you wouldn't even be able to get a job at a closed shop unless you were already a member of the union.

That doesn't seem practically any different. I still have to support the union if I want to work.

Re: Kickstarter’s staff is unionizing

#178
post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a top performer: 1. I do my best work when my colleagues are also doing their best work. It doesn't matter how good I am at my job if I can't use the leverage of having teammates. I will be happier if the company can compensate all of my coworkers well and make them happy and hire good coworkers - both in terms of intrinsic motivation / happiness and in terms of whether the company is profitable enough to compensa…

You do best when your colleagues do the best, for sure. Do you think the union is going to help or hurt when you have underperforming or disruptive colleagues?

Will the union help or hurt when you have colleagues being treated unfairly by management?

Re: Kickstarter’s staff is unionizing

#179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why not? The US film industry is mostly unionized, and there's tons of people who love movies, too.

The supply of jobs is much lower in the games industry relative to the demand.

I suspect not. My family hosted a couple aspiring actors in LA as boarders. They left because they couldn't get enough work. There's a lot of people out there trying to break in to Hollywood.

Re: Kickstarter’s staff is unionizing

#180

Maybe the US has a different experience with unions but in Brazil, they are simply hated. They were made mandatory by law and very rarely (never?) step in to help employees. It's only at big factories that they show up when more than X number of people are fired and do a big show out of that. Meanwhile, all the employees not working for big factories paid their union fees and saw nothing back. It's often a platform t…

In the US, it is illegal federally to mandate that an employee join a union as part of their employment, and it's illegal to force them to pay dues.

Some of our states go a step further and have introduced measures that seek to directly attack the ability of employees to collectively bargain, to remove the power organized labor has against management. These are called "right to work states".

Generally speaking, RTW states have lower pay on average, they are less educated on average, and their workers have less benefits from their businesses (parental leave, vacation time, healthcare benefits, etc), they have less recourses against employer bad behavior (both as a function of RTW attacking collective bargaining, and from the reality that the same politics that are against unions also are very anti-labor, anti-minimum wage, anti-regulation of labor marketplace all together, so there are far less public resources and regulators to assist with claims). If you're an employer, this probably sounds great. Labor is cheaper and you can fire them whenever you want for no reason at all on the drop of a dime AND there is no pesky government regulator to come waste your time and money investigating. "Easy come easy go" is one of the most common management philosophies from small and medium business owners in my RTW state, from my experience.

From the perspective of an American: you choose a liberal/blue/union state when you want good infrastructure, highly educated and competent staff, and little turnover. You choose a conservative/red/anti-union state when you're planning to take advantage of your staff, you don't care about higher turnover, you want to pay below-national-market rates as a rule, and you don't care as much about the individual quality of each employee. There's a reason why tech companies don't pick the South and when they do they require billions in literal free cash to do so.

It is what it is, but the slow death of the union in the United States correlates quite perfectly with the slow death of the American middle class in terms of wealth and income gains per year.

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