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Kickstarter’s staff is unionizing

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Re: Kickstarter’s staff is unionizing

#351

Post by [deleted] »

SilasX wrote: post #275
umvi wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What an odd point of view. Homicides are down; should we loosen the laws? Sure, why not? Why does additional overhead added to systems always need to be permanent? It's like installing Norton Anti Virus and then never being able to uninstall it ever again. Sometimes I think it would be okay to say: "Wow, aviation has been safe for 20 years since 9/11, maybe locked cockpits and increased public awareness are good en…

Earlier you were saying that the optimal move would be for the union to dissolve, and now you're comparing that to loosening air regs after they turn out to have overcorrected. That's moving the goalposts. You should compare "dissolving the union" to "abolishing all air regs" or "easing up on union activism" to "loosening the more onerous regs".

[deleted]

Re: Kickstarter’s staff is unionizing

#352

Post by munk-a »

umvi wrote: post #235
navigatesol wrote: post #225

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." What an odd point of view. Homicides are down; should we loosen the laws? If management are "fair and reasonable", what do they care if there's a union on premises? Everyone just goes about their business.

> What an odd point of view. Homicides are down; should we loosen the laws? Sure, why not? Why does additional overhead added to systems always need to be permanent? It's like installing Norton Anti Virus and then never being able to uninstall it ever again. Sometimes I think it would be okay to say: "Wow, aviation has been safe for 20 years since 9/11, maybe locked cockpits and increased public awareness are good en…

I prefer an analogy of "Nobody in NYC has been mugged in 3 months, let's fire all the policemen." because I think it's much more accurate from the angle that a union existing, but not doing anything other than sitting there, is still adding a pressure that management will keep in mind, a union being disbanded is saying "Welp, go ahead, do your worst." (and probably worse than a union never having existed, because a lack of a union can still retain the threat that a union may form, while a union dissolving is more demonstrative of collective bargaining just failing due to poor social cohesion which means the weaker actors can be picked on freely)

Re: Kickstarter’s staff is unionizing

#354

Post by jessaustin »

navigatesol wrote: post #225
umvi wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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."

> 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." What an odd point of view. Homicides are down; should we loosen the laws? If management are "fair and reasonable", what do they care if there's a union on premises? Everyone just goes about their business.

Homicides are down; should we loosen the laws?

If we can assume you're talking about USA, absolutely we should. We have more people in prison, in both absolute and percentage terms, than any society anywhere in the history of the human race. There is nothing about our situation that makes this a reasonable state of affairs. Reversion to the mean would contribute to justice.

Re: Kickstarter’s staff is unionizing

#355

Post by root_axis »

Veelox wrote: post #341
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 don't think spending years working hard to develop a skill set that is highly sought after counts as privilege...

I regard it as a privilege because most people outside of programming work a lot harder and get paid a lot less.

Re: Kickstarter’s staff is unionizing

#356

Post by soheil »

ahelwer wrote: post #105
soheil wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ab…

As someone who has pushed back against on-call overreach, all it achieved was a negative remark on my next performance review. The company attempted to make an "intermediate-severity" class of incident, where on-call workers were required to respond between the hours of 8 am and midnight (the next-lowest severity required response only during business hours, and the next-highest required 24 hour response - both reaso…

> Individual workers are powerless, only able to bring their own labor to the negotiation table.

What do you mean they are only able to bring their own labor to the table, what else is there that a laborer can bring to the table other than their own labor? If individual workers feel powerless that is probably not because of them possessing something other than their own labor while not being able to negotiate that something.

Re: Kickstarter’s staff is unionizing

#357

Post by nickpsecurity »

adamrezich wrote: post #286
gamblor956 wrote: post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 i…

"Membership was mandatory for employment"

Union membership is optional for Kroger employees in Mid-South. All employees get the union-negotiated benefits but dues are optional. They won't work hard to defend non-union members, though.

What location was this Kroger where union membership was mandatory? I didnt even know that was legal.

Re: Kickstarter’s staff is unionizing

#358

Post by monocasa »

czbond wrote: post #233
magissima wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Inherited wealth, disparities in access to education, racism, and a weak labor movement are a few of the many forces that impede upward social mobility.

Whats wrong with inherited wealth? Literally anyone can pass on wealth to their heirs. It takes no brains, and no special access. Just spending less. People shouldn't be taxed more because they have more foresight or impulse control than others. Yes, maybe it doesn't happen in one or two generations - but it can. Also - lots of people have moved up in the world from nothing - and it wasn't "inherited wealth" keeping…

"Have the poor just considered not being poor?"

Re: Kickstarter’s staff is unionizing

#359

Post by y4mi »

SilasX wrote: post #275
umvi wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What an odd point of view. Homicides are down; should we loosen the laws? Sure, why not? Why does additional overhead added to systems always need to be permanent? It's like installing Norton Anti Virus and then never being able to uninstall it ever again. Sometimes I think it would be okay to say: "Wow, aviation has been safe for 20 years since 9/11, maybe locked cockpits and increased public awareness are good en…

Earlier you were saying that the optimal move would be for the union to dissolve, and now you're comparing that to loosening air regs after they turn out to have overcorrected. That's moving the goalposts. You should compare "dissolving the union" to "abolishing all air regs" or "easing up on union activism" to "loosening the more onerous regs".

It's actually worse. In his examples, nobody profits from a disregard of the rules.

A more similar scenario would be "let's disband the IRS, as nobody does tax evasion anymore"

Re: Kickstarter’s staff is unionizing

#360

Post by adamrezich »

nickpsecurity wrote: post #357
adamrezich wrote: post #286

Earlier 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…

"Membership was mandatory for employment" Union membership is optional for Kroger employees in Mid-South. All employees get the union-negotiated benefits but dues are optional. They won't work hard to defend non-union members, though. What location was this Kroger where union membership was mandatory? I didnt even know that was legal.

Redmond, Washington. This may be relevant, we've both moved away from the area and haven't kept up with local news: https://www.king5.com/article/news/politics/supreme-court-un...
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