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Kickstarter’s staff is unionizing

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Re: Kickstarter’s staff is unionizing

#391

Post by diminoten »

Animats wrote: post #284
diminoten wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

Labor movement != film industry union movement. A lot of the issues other labor movements experienced simply didn't happen nearly to the extent in film.

Re: Kickstarter’s staff is unionizing

#392

Post by shawnz »

cpursley wrote: post #379
shawnz wrote: post #374

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Or you can go work for a normal company that treats its employees well. If a union is in the best interest of the employees, then it's in the best interest of any company that respects their employees. Companies which employ union-busting practices don't treat their employees well by definition. And promises of good will from management hardly compare to having a dedicated infrastructure in place to support employe…

So go work for another company. My company treats me like an adult and pays me well to boot. There's way more to tech than the valley sweat shops...

I wouldn't say they treat you like an adult if they reject unions. They pay you well and treat you with politeness because they understand the value they can extract from you. That is much different than a unionized environment where you as an employee have a much more real kind of safety that goes beyond the good will of people in management.

Re: Kickstarter’s staff is unionizing

#393

Post by diminoten »

egypturnash wrote: post #289
diminoten wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

"A lot" is not nearly as many as there are competent programmers who want to break into the games industry.

The concept is similar, the volume of people is vastly different, however.

Re: Kickstarter’s staff is unionizing

#394

Post by chrisseaton »

ken wrote: post #390
chrisseaton wrote: post #378

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> would it be reasonable for you to benefit from the work the union does for all employees without also contributing to that union? If I never asked for the union or their collective bargaining, then yes. It's like cleaning my windows when I never asked you to and then demanding cash for it.

No, it's not like that at all. You are legally allowed to opt out of paying union dues.

So you'll pay 'fees' instead of 'dues'. Pretty meaningless difference isn't it?

Re: Kickstarter’s staff is unionizing

#395

Post by jessaustin »

soheil wrote: post #356
ahelwer wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 so…

...what else is there that a laborer can bring to the table other than their own labor?

It's as if we're rediscovering the stated purpose of unions, right here in this thread! The union can negotiate with everyone's labor, not just that of an individual worker.

Re: Kickstarter’s staff is unionizing

#397

Post by adamrezich »

nickpsecurity wrote: post #349
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.)

"Okay so how did the Kroger union help my friend at all?" Ive read their contract. The union negotiated great health/dental, paid vacations, time to sleep between shifts, no sit shifts for food workers, and most important: due process. At union companies like Kroger, they have to either prove you weren't doing what they said to fire you or laying you off cost something. The unions also act as private lawyer represent…

My friend was a temporary part time cheese monger at a QFC (Kroger). He had no prior cheese mongering experience and was trained over the course of a few months. He could have taken any part-time job but we lived close to a QFC and they had a cheese monger opening, which sounded interesting to him, as far as part time jobs go. If they spontaneously laid him off, he would have had little trouble finding another part-time job opening elsewhere, but within driving distance instead of walking distance. As I said elsewhere in the thread, he was not receiving benefits because he did not work there long enough to do so. When you put all of these things together, and factor in the costs of paycheckly union dues and the up front "union join" fee, the union did more for its own existence than it did for him by taking money from his minimum-wage paycheck.

I posted a link elsewhere in the thread but apparently the SCOTUS has ruled that mandatory union membership and/or fee paying is not constitutional, so perhaps the situation has improved for temporary, part-time employees of WA state QFCs, but at the time it was pretty shocking to see my friend lose hundreds of dollars to a union that did nothing for him at all.

Re: Kickstarter’s staff is unionizing

#398

Post by bobwaycott »

fastball wrote: post #353
matthewowen wrote: post #337

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean... they kinda _were_

Henry Ford invented the 40 hour work week. Without Unions.

Where did you get that idea? That is so very far from true about either Ford or the 40-hour-week.

Are you of the opinion that more than a century of labor fighting for reasonable working hours and conditions meant nothing, or are you just wanting to give Ford all the credit, despite him drawing on decades of increased movement toward an 8-hour workday before he ever decided to try it as a company policy?

Re: Kickstarter’s staff is unionizing

#399

Post by dlp211 »

fastball wrote: post #311
gamblor956 wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hollywood unions set wage and salary floors and generally focus on work-place conditions. Individuals are allowed to and encouraged to negotiate their salaries above that floor if they're talented enough to have the market power to do so. Programmer unions could copy the Hollywood model--salary floors, with no caps on salary negotiated by so-called "superstar" programmers.

I'm still paying Union dues for a floor I don't come near.

Unions are not just about wages. They give you an advocate in cases where you would otherwise be on your own.

Re: Kickstarter’s staff is unionizing

#400

Post by mverwijs »

jessaustin wrote: post #368
standardUser wrote: post #323

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Many family businesses are "us", at least in the good times. Non-family employed by those businesses are seldom under any illusions about being included in that...

> at least in the good times

Exactly.

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