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Kickstarter’s staff is unionizing

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Re: Kickstarter’s staff is unionizing

#281

Post by asark »

crumpets wrote: post #221
asark wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you do when all the best-paying companies in your industry lobby for things you don't like, leaving you few, poor, options for employment? If we must solve this problem for unions, it's surely at least as important to solve it for companies. As for closed shop: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Union_shop#United_States It's illegal, so's the similar "union shop", and you can opt out such that you still pay dues b…

> "I'm being forced to support the only viable political party that wants to make anything whatsoever better" Wow, I can tell you evaluate statements in an unbiased manner. What happens when you realize the idea of "better" turns out to depend on some pretty big assumptions that you no longer believe are true? Additionally, if the only two "viable" political parties are abhorrent like the ones in the US, giving any m…

Wasn't trying to be unbiased there and it's not especially relevant to the broader point—I just find the "I want to be free to keep punching myself in the face!" POV funny and couldn't resist a poke. As for evaluating statements, I evaluate everything with bias, of course. FWIW I'm pretty much single-issue on fixing our healthcare system until that's done, and only one viable party's even sort-of trying to do that. Anyway, the post that started this thread was written by one "mises" so I'm not worried about ruffling feathers—that was inevitable.

At any rate, the two-party thing's how our (the US's) system's structured. It stabilizes there. A third party replacing one of the big two, as has happened occasionally in the past, would assuredly acquire a good bit of distasteful cruft along the way. Effective political action revolves around trying to help a 3rd party replace one of them despite that likely outcome (and accepting an even smaller voice in policy than most voters have, in the meantime); participation in one of the big two parties themselves (much, much large effect than just voting in elections, though still usually tiny); or working to reform our system to break the two-party stability point. Or some combination of those things.

Re: Kickstarter’s staff is unionizing

#282

Post by root_axis »

scrumbledober wrote: post #273
root_axis wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is senior engineer privilege speaking. A union seems strictly worse when dozens of companies are falling over themselves to pay you in the 90th percentile income bracket.

I see no reason for any workforces at any of the companies I have worked for as a developer to unionize. In my short career before that, however, I thought it would be very helpful for the valet company I worked at to unionize.

I certainly have. They were mostly the places where if you weren't perceived as the type who is willing to stay till 8PM a few nights a week peppered with the occasional weekend PR, you were relegated to the "poor work ethic" caste. Unions aren't perfect, but they certainly stomp out this type of abuse and force the company to either hire more people or pay fairer wages.

Re: Kickstarter’s staff is unionizing

#283

Post by scotch_drinker »

enraged_camel wrote: post #242
nichos wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You mean the American 5 day work week, brought to us by Henry Ford and not unions?

The truth is a bit more nuanced than that. Henry Ford did not institute a 40-hour workweek out of the goodness of his heart. In an interview to World's Work magazine in 1926, he said: "Leisure is an indispensable ingredient in a growing consumer market because working people need to have enough free time to find uses for consumer products, including automobiles." In other words, he understood that a consumer-based ec…

Louis Brandeis had similar beliefs. Leisure was important for workers and his battles against the monopolies of the day were often focused on this belief. Though his focus was on self-growth and learning in the leisure time provided.

Re: Kickstarter’s staff is unionizing

#284

Post by Animats »

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.

If you think they were "given space", read up on the history of the labor movement in the US.

IATSE Local 728 has an article about their own history that doesn't gloss over the bad stuff.[1]

[1] https://www.iatse728.org/about-us/history/the-war-for-warner...

Re: Kickstarter’s staff is unionizing

#285

Post by sokoloff »

Nikkau wrote: post #194
tomohawk wrote: post #169

I wish them well, but having family members and friends work in unionized workplaces, it's not something I would ever do. 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? You also end up with this 3rd party involved in everything, creating all kinds of "rules" to make things "fair". Want to…

> It always seems to degenerate into an "us vs them" That's the point, "us vs them" is pretty good upgrade from "me vs them"

And a clear downgrade from "us and them vs our actual competition"

Re: Kickstarter’s staff is unionizing

#286

Post by adamrezich »

gamblor956 wrote: post #259
adamrezich wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ar…

None of these things applied to him. He did not get medical or dental benefits because he was employed there for less time than their minimum to begin receiving benefits (or maybe he had just qualified when his teaching license finally got through? I can't remember now). Membership was mandatory for employment, so anyone who works there part-time for less than whatever the minimum amount of time to receive benefits is (six months or a year I think?) is literally paying money to a union that will do nothing for someone who shows up to work, does what he's paid to do, and goes home without incident. It's like a mandatory tax on temporary hires that benefits long-term hires that means temporary hires make less than minimum wage as a result! EDIT: Oh and I forgot, they also took a fat chunk of his first paycheck as an additional fee, too.

Previously my friend and I had both worked at various Walmart stores in our home state and not only were we paid above minimum wage starting salary, but there were no hidden mandatory fees of any kind. I know Walmart's famously anti-union to the point of absurdity (the propaganda in the training materials is outright laughable), but from the point of view of a couple of young guys looking to work part-time at a grocery store, Walmart treated us both far better than Kroger treated him, and without unions.

Re: Kickstarter’s staff is unionizing

#287

Post by [deleted] »

WillPostForFood wrote: post #164
praptak wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

This is a problem everywhere, but it is worse when you are stuck with unionized employees. Compare public school teachers to private school teachers. Higher pay (thanks to unions) for public schools, and lower quality (thanks to unions).

[deleted]

Re: Kickstarter’s staff is unionizing

#288

Post by InTheArena »

Nikkau wrote: post #194
tomohawk wrote: post #169

I wish them well, but having family members and friends work in unionized workplaces, it's not something I would ever do. 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? You also end up with this 3rd party involved in everything, creating all kinds of "rules" to make things "fair". Want to…

> It always seems to degenerate into an "us vs them" That's the point, "us vs them" is pretty good upgrade from "me vs them"

> That's the point, "us vs them" is pretty good upgrade from "me vs them"

But a huge step down from "Us"

Re: Kickstarter’s staff is unionizing

#289

Post by egypturnash »

diminoten wrote: post #55
ForHackernews wrote: post #50

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.

There's a lot more kids who grow up wanting to be animators than there are animation jobs, and yet they have a successful union.

Re: Kickstarter’s staff is unionizing

#290

Post by kjdndisneinj »

wmil wrote: post #207
czbond wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Two questions: 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)? Management has the right at a workplace to make any decisions, whether someone in non-management sees fit. Can't people who are frustrated with the company just go pursue a position elsewhere?

The official reason listed is to "promote our collective values: inclusion and solidarity, transparency and accountability; a seat at the table" and Kickstarter describes itself as a "Public-benefit corporation". So it comes off as just the usual lefty political signalling, not the start of a real movement.

It's a ton of work to start a union, one that can and has absolutely cost people their jobs, both historically and recently. It seems unlikely that it's just "lefty political signalling". Perhaps you can point to specific reasons why you think this is the case?

Furthermore, articles published on this topic indicate that their motivations included well-established and reasonable on-call hours, slightly more vacation days, and more collaborative decision making with management. All of those are real, tangible benefits that most of us would value and enjoy.

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