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Kickstarter’s staff is unionizing

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Re: Kickstarter’s staff is unionizing

#471

Post by dang »

anth_anm wrote: post #422
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…

> the propaganda in the training materials is outright laughable You say that, as you spout anti-union propaganda that would bring a tear to the eye of the walmart CEO.

Please don't take HN threads further into flamewar, regardless of how wrong another comment is or you feel it is.

Especially not political/ideological flamewar, which tends to burn hotter.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Re: Kickstarter’s staff is unionizing

#472

Post by root_axis »

sgregnt wrote: post #448
root_axis wrote: post #282

Earlier 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.

Find a different work place.

That's pretty good advice for a flippant one-liner, but the overworking of engineers is pretty common across the industry.

Re: Kickstarter’s staff is unionizing

#473

Post by crankylinuxuser »

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."

According to the labor theory of value:

When an individual negotiates and works for a company, they make the company X$/yr. And they only pay the person YX$/yr where Y is a value from 0-.99 . That's because the company relies on this imbalance across its workforce to extract money from employees' labor. Your value may be X$/yr, but you are compensated for .2X$/yr . The .8X/yr goes to the company as their profit.

In unions, the workers align themselves together in order to exert more fair (read YX$/yr where Y is closer to 1) wages. They do this because, as a group, they can effectively strike and threaten to cut the life-blood (extracted labor value) from the company for a time. In the end, the company still retains a significant amount of percentage from laborers and maintains the bulk of the money. And since there is still a monied interests vs workers condition going on, propaganda and laws can be affected by the owner class to disenfranchise the laborers. Example: look where the US is now, with anti-union, anti-worker, and "right to work" laws.

In a worker owned cooperative, the labor value is closer even than that of a union/company. There still exists a need to keep the organization going on (maintenance, upkeep, hiring), however the aforementioned strife is combined into the same group of people. And when profit is paid out, it is paid to the very people who worked for it. In other words, the labor theory of value approaches 1 under worker owned cooperatives. We have organizations like Mondragon to look at how they implemented this.

Re: Kickstarter’s staff is unionizing

#474

Post by dwild »

navigatesol wrote: post #189
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" 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?

> Have you considered that the adversarial workplace is the reason for unionizing in the first place?

It's just anecdotal but my SO was involved at her union because she wanted to make a difference. It was at our provincial government, thus it represent 43 000 members in that case, which to me make it pretty much needed to have a union.

Once at a reunion for the representative, they still had a bit of time left scheduled, so some of them suggested to go do an impromptu manifestation in front of a bank. In case it wasn't clear, the bank isn't government owned. From what she told me, a big majority of them went.

Have you considered that union representative may be an interesting place for adversarial people to go, thus pushing an adversarial relation?

Re: Kickstarter’s staff is unionizing

#475

Post by megy »

edoo wrote: post #153

I'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…

> They had seminars on how to work less and push back against complaints.

Work less? Or work 8 hours a day, 40 hours a week? There are plenty of examples out there of people who think that is the bare minimum.

> They directed the members to engage in behavior that was best for the union while bad for the workers and the company.

Of course, that is what a strike is, but a necessary evil.

Re: Kickstarter’s staff is unionizing

#476

Post by dwild »

geofft wrote: post #210
WillPostForFood wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You do best when your colleagues do the best, for sure. Do you think the union is going to help or hurt when you have underperforming or disruptive colleagues?

There's a wide spectrum in "a union" just like in "management". I've had good management and bad management. There are good unions and bad unions. So, a priori, I don't have an expectation of whether "the union" - some arbitrarily picked union - will definitely help or hurt, any more than I have an expectation that arbitrary "management" will definitely help or hurt. But there are a few things: - Just like I evaluate…

> If I don't think the union will force management to deal with brilliant assholes, or properly equip people for success who have aptitude but the wrong background, or acknowledge that poor management is the reason certain of my colleagues are underperforming, I won't join the company.

The issue is not that the management will defends the bad employee, it's that the union will.

How can you know if the union will?

I got a friend that right now have to deal (ask re-do the work of someone else constantly) because they can't fire her because the union don't want to do anything about it. How could she have known that the union would be ready to not protect one of their member?

Re: Kickstarter’s staff is unionizing

#477

Post by megy »

conanbatt wrote: post #462
bargl wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this means we need to re-think how unions work. It should be used to create fair workplaces. My concern with the anti-union rhetoric in the USA is that we then turn to the government to protect workers. I think it's a lot better to have a union vs government as long as that union isn't protected from competition like they are today. If we can introduce competition into unions then they might better serve the…

> It should be used to create fair workplaces. You can't get good results through bad means. Unions are fundamentally a destructive endeavor. Their use is practical but limited: the best thing unions ever fought was the state, not employers.

> You can't get good results through bad means.

Like a 5 day work week from 6 days? Like 8 hour work days? Like safe conditions for workers. All things unions helped deliver.

Re: Kickstarter’s staff is unionizing

#478

Post by ahelwer »

soheil wrote: post #432
ahelwer wrote: post #380

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many workers putting their labor on the table is a much, much stronger negotiating position than a single worker putting their labor on the table. This is the entire thesis of unions.

I am asking whether it is legitimate or not, I can't help but think how incredibly well it also applies to gangs when I hear that argument. If more money is paid to individual employees just because they demanded the added cost to the employer makes them inherently less competitive and therefore able to earn less and therefore pay said employees lower wages over time or go out of business.

It would help here if you clarified what you mean by "legitimate"; do you mean morally?

The workers are responsible for creating almost all the value, since they do the work. Any money not going to the workers ought to be justified, rather than the negation. So to turn the question around: why are management & shareholders entitled to such a large share of what the workers produce? The answer is because management & shareholders are more powerful than any single worker, and this is abused to take more than their share. No moral justification is given or even considered. To unionize is to relatively equalize this power relation.

Re: Kickstarter’s staff is unionizing

#479

Post by tomohawk »

drugme wrote: post #437
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" sort of thing whenever I talk to them about where they work. Why would I ever work some place where things are so adversarial? Maybe because the employer... made things "adversarial" by creating unhealthy / untenable / inadequately compensated working conditions in the first place? You also end up with this 3rd party involved in everything, creating all kinds of "rul…

There are lots of reasons people may think unionizing is a good idea. Maybe they think the grass will be greener. Maybe they think it will get the man off their back. Maybe they think they're engaged in some sort of class warfare, and this is their duty. Maybe they are people who focus on what they don't have instead of what they do have.

All I know from friends/family is all a union does is put another group of people over you to tell you what to do. Only, these guys don't really have anything to do with the business. Their interests are not aligned with the business or even with yours. As time goes by, they just use their position to further their own other interests and power.

These are the lessons we already learned about unions, and why they're so unpopular these days.

Re: Kickstarter’s staff is unionizing

#480

Post by criddell »

jononor wrote: post #456
edoo wrote: post #361

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having competing unions is an interesting concept. It may be a hard sell because technically the primary legal ability of a union is prevent competition among the workers. If you are a rock star you can't get hired at a greater wage. If you are a nepotism cling on you can't get fired or demoted.

In Norway, each employee freely chooses their union. It is common in some industries that people belong to several different unions, and that some are not part of union. And usually they are based on particular profession, like engineering or economics. Unions then have more a passive role, offering services like free legal representation, better insurance deals, and training. Only some areas like teachers seem to ha…

Why does there have to be standard working terms? In the US professional baseball, hockey, and football have player unions and things like salary are negotiated per person.
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