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Kickstarter’s staff is unionizing

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Re: Kickstarter’s staff is unionizing

#251

Post by kjdndisneinj »

joejerryronnie wrote: post #118

Well, there goes the high salaries, flexible working hours, and generous RSU grants for tech employees. Have fun fighting and scraping for 2% raises, paying exorbitant union fees for questionable benefits, and dealing with the nepotism and personal politics of your union leaders. And thanks in advance for adding to the unfunded pension liability crisis.

It would be valuable to provide some sources for your claim, because as-is this reads like propaganda.

Perhaps the causation is reversed, and industries with terrible working conditions and low raises tend to attract unions to empower the workers to change those conditions?

Re: Kickstarter’s staff is unionizing

#252

Post by SilasX »

marknutter wrote: post #241
SilasX wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dissolving would be an overreaction, but yes, I would expect a reasonable union leadership to say (in particular circumstances meriting it), "These are great benefits that are above market, and no one's getting cited or dismissed without cause, so we're just going to sit back for the time being and keep you all apprised if that changes."

...while continuing to collect a salary for effectively doing nothing. Sounds about right.

That's like saying that a guard is doing nothing because no one's trying to break in.

No, the guard is a check that deters burglars form taking advantage of you. After a burglary is too late to bring guards on board, and after dramatic unmerited changes in the terms of employment is too late to start a union -- or, at least, later than you'd like.

(Not commenting on whether the union will actually work as I've described, just trying to spec out what a reasonable union would look like here, and refute the idea that it's "doing nothing" when the union has a good deal that lasts.)

Re: Kickstarter’s staff is unionizing

#253

Post by duxup »

naravara wrote: post #239
mlillie wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How would you qualify US style vs non-US style unions? The prevalence of business unionism here?

One of the big problems in the US is that they're organized at the shop level and consituted to represent the interests of their present membership rather than the interests of the workers in the industry more broadly. This leads to some perverse, short-sighted incentives. For example the IBEW, which organizes electrical workers, decided to come out against the Green New Deal even though most of what the GND does wou…

Yeah there very much is a preserve the status quo in US unions.

I've seen a lot of "Feel free to learn new skills" / "But no way are we going to let them be a requirement / judged for advancment because that would be bad for those with seniority who don't want to learn it...." type policies.

And if you're in a related field outside the union... you're just hosed, and unions are surprisingly not interested in growing in to closely related areas at times even if their PR says otherwise. I suspect those areas are dealt away with in the negotiations.

Re: Kickstarter’s staff is unionizing

#254

Post by naravara »

diminoten wrote: post #162
robocat wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And there are way more actors than acting jobs. Yet they have the SAG-AFTRA union which had a strike to force better working conditions from games companies. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016–17_video_game_voice_act...

There are "way more" actors in the sense that there are many people who want to act for a living, but the analogy doesn't hold from an education and experience married to that desire standpoint. Further acting is older than gaming, and those unions were given space to form during a period of time that was very different from today.

>Further acting is older than gaming, and those unions were given space to form during a period of time that was very different from today.

In the 1930s back when union organizing was likely to get you beaten by goons or assassinated by hitmen/the mob? Or in the 1940s and '50s, when active membership in the union put you at risk of getting brought up in front of the House Unamerican Activities Committee and blacklisted from ever working again?

Re: Kickstarter’s staff is unionizing

#255

Post by chrisseaton »

gamblor956 wrote: post #208
chrisseaton wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The way I heard it best explained is no one would try to start a union if it made them less money. People could start a union so _they_ make more money, but _you_ could make less money. For example pay by seniority. Great for the senior people in the union, not so great for you.

Pay by seniority is a thing that developers keep bringing up and not understanding the basic concept that seniority-based pay is a decision that unions can adopt or reject. Hollywood unions, for example, do not use a seniority-based pay scale.

If there’s an industry-wide closed-shop union and it votes for seniority pay then I’m out of luck. It’s replacing tyranny of the employer with tyranny of the majority.

Re: Kickstarter’s staff is unionizing

#256

Post by mrisoli »

criley2 wrote: post #180
gtirloni wrote: post #135

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 s…

(disclaimer: also Brazilian, even if I don't live in Brazil anymore)

I have mixed experience with unions in Brazil, the fact that they are mandated makes it almost like a scam, a part of your wages go towards union contributions but rarely do you get anything out of that. Most directors at unions are in it for political powers as the bigger unions are major players in politics(as seen that our ex-president is a former unionist).

On one hand, unions can provide negotiation power, specially in class action suits, including unfair dismissal. But most of the time I've seen unions collude with companies and associations to provide underwhelming benefits and wages that are below inflation.

In some cases such as medicine and dentistry they are solid credentials of many professionals and I take it as mostly positive.

In the case of engineering it should follow the same as the engineer's union is a very strong powerhouse that requires quite high minimum wages for engineers(IIRC 8.5x the national minimum wage). However this has led many companies to use a loophole where engineers are hired with a different job title, performing the same job, just so that they don't have to pay that minimum, while sometimes even requiring that said engineer is registered with the union. As computer science is not engineering, even though some computer engineers are qualified as such, I've never met a programmer that has a proper engineer contract.

Re: Kickstarter’s staff is unionizing

#257

Post by rexpop »

umvi wrote: post #216
navigatesol wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It always seems to degenerate into an "us vs them" sort of thing whenever I talk to them about where they work. Why would I ever work some place where things are so adversarial? Have you considered that the adversarial workplace is the reason for unionizing in the first place?

Or it's just a symptom of the Shirky Principle: "Institutions will try to preserve the problem to which they are the solution." Even if the workplace is not adversarial, any union will try to preserve the conditions that necessitate its continued existence. No union ever said "Wow, this new CEO and management are super fair and reasonable. We are no longer necessary, let's dissolve and let them take the reigns."

Possibly because we've never yet had fair, and reasonable management.

Re: Kickstarter’s staff is unionizing

#258

Post by minikites »

lsaferite wrote: post #248
minikites wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>No union ever said "Wow, this new CEO and management are super fair and reasonable. We are no longer necessary, let's dissolve and let them take the reigns." Name a company with a CEO and management who are super fair and reasonable (e.g. paying employees the full value of their labor instead of profiting from the surplus value created by the employee)

> instead of profiting from the surplus value created by the employee Why wouldn't the employee work for themselves if they expect the full surplus of their value to go to them? I mean, it's not like the company is a charity, right? It's designed to be profitable for it's owners.

Because people aren't the perfectly rational automatons portrayed in most economics lessons, which has implications for both adversaries.

Re: Kickstarter’s staff is unionizing

#259

Post by gamblor956 »

adamrezich wrote: post #236
enraged_camel wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>>The idea that unions are universally good is just as silly as the idea that unions are universally bad. You are arguing against a strawman. No one is saying unions are "universally good". However, it is an irrefutable quality of capitalism that collective bargaining is superior to bargaining as an individual. If you truly understand how capitalism works, and the way it puts the interests of employers in conflict wi…

Okay so how did the Kroger union help my friend at all? Once again, membership was mandatory for employment, and a cut of each of his minimum-wage paychecks went to it, with him seeing zero benefit in exchange. Is there some hidden benefit both he and I (being his roommate at the time) just weren't seeing? (Trust me, we looked.)

Just because your friend didn't see the benefits doesn't mean he didn't have them.

Kroger union members have health care benefits, dental and vision benefits, and other benefits that they wouldn't normally get with a minimum wage job. Protections against forced and unpaid overtime (while allowing for voluntary, paid overtime).

Hell, the fact he got paid minimum wage in the first place--since unions were, and still are, the big drivers behind minimum wage (and raises to minimum wage) in the US.

Re: Kickstarter’s staff is unionizing

#260

Post by dvdkon »

dec0dedab0de wrote: post #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 ye…

What would be the benefit? I really don't see the point. Employees collectively demamding something from their employer, that I understand, but why create a new directive structure above the whole industry?
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