What would tech unionizing realistically look like in the US? Lets say, at some FAANG company?
Kickstarter’s staff is unionizing
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Re: Kickstarter’s staff is unionizing
#322Earlier quoted context omitted.
>Why not take power that is available to you? I see your point but at the same time this can create an adversarial dynamic between managers and junior employees, which is toxic even if junior employees get what they want. >Management certainly exercises every bit of power that they are able to. I'm a manager and my proudest moments have been those of restraint, not force. Regardless of whether or not unions can and s…
"organizations with employees feeling compelled to unionize should be hiring better managers." This is a fantastic observation - and I believe it holds true. I've been in some very demanding technology roles, long hours, with competitive peers. A great leader is worth much more than some Union would have been (anecdotally).
This is true, but my personal support for collective organizing stems from a belief that there's a material constraint on the "quality" of managers, and we can effectively surpass that upper limit only through collective action.
Re: Kickstarter’s staff is unionizing
#323Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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"
At what imaginary time in history did owners and management consider themselves part of an "us" with workers? Maybe in some rare, contained instances. You can't take a step "down" from something that simply doesn't exist.
Re: Kickstarter’s staff is unionizing
#324Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
You're a senior developer and you don't think you're getting paid a fair wage? Ok...
Fair != Good. Fair wages for a given position and circumstance can be anywhere on the spectrum of compensation.
I currently wish I had a union because I think I was unfairly evaluated in my current perf cycle, but there is no one to appeal my argument to which includes significant positive peer and managerial feedback. What I currently make has no impact on that.
Re: Kickstarter’s staff is unionizing
#325Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
I don't think you understand how unions work...
Closed-shop unions are illegal in the US, for starters, so you can't have a closed-shop industry-wide union.
The only industry-wide unions that exist set workplace protections and salary floors but no salary caps...and no indutry-wide union has ever embraced seniority-based pay because, being an industry-wide union, that regime wouldn't work across the very different economic environments of 50 states and their thousands of cities.
Re: Kickstarter’s staff is unionizing
#326I 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…
Having worked in a unionized industry before, I completely agree with this. I was so confused and annoyed when I learned that I wasn't allowed to work at this place unless I consented to giving money from every paycheck to a group of people that basically never did anything for me, were impossible to get a hold of, and just generally complacent.
Re: Kickstarter’s staff is unionizing
#327Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
You're a senior developer and you don't think you're getting paid a fair wage? Ok...
Why shouldn't he? The bigger valley companies got caught in a wage fixing scheme that by some estimates depressed wages by around 20% across the board, and all they did is send out a few checks for a few hundred to some of the employees.
He's almost certainly not getting a fair market wage.
Re: Kickstarter’s staff is unionizing
#328I've been in a union before. The work ethic wasn't good. They had seminars on how to work less and push back against complaints. They directed the members to engage in behavior that was best for the union while bad for the workers and the company. The union itself is a big business, what would they think of unionizing the union? Unions allow substandard work for equal pay. That tends to hold back the major opportunit…
> what would they think of unionizing the union? I've worked for several unions and, at least in my experience, most union staff actually are unionized.
The issue is that the priorities of the unionized union staff are not aligned with the priorities of the unionized workers.
Re: Kickstarter’s staff is unionizing
#329Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 i…
Would be very interested in knowing what Walmart locations those were since Walmart's strictly-enforced corporate policy until about 2 years ago was that they would not pay above minimum wage. Shortly after the Trump tax bill, they announced fairly hefty pay wages nationwide, putting their front-line employees above minimum wage for the first time in company history. It was huge news since Trump tried to use it as an…
>since Walmart's strictly-enforced corporate policy until about 2 years ago was that they would not pay above minimum wage
We both worked for Walmart as cashiers on and off between about 2008 and 2013, in Rapid City, Pierre, and Aberdeen, South Dakota, and the starting wages were consistently above minimum wage. I've never heard of this policy before, especially since different positions always had different starting wages and all were minimum wage or slightly higher.
Again though, even if our Walmart employments were minimum wage jobs:
min_wage * hrs_worked > -union_init_fee + (min_wage * hrs_worked) - (union_due * weeks_worked)Re: Kickstarter’s staff is unionizing
#330Earlier 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…
Well done, one of the more succinct and accurate explanations of the shortcomings of the unions I've experienced and have relayed to me (Teamsters, NEA, CWA) in the US.