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Kickstarter’s staff is unionizing

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Re: Kickstarter’s staff is unionizing

#501

Post by sokoloff »

dagw wrote: post #376
sokoloff wrote: post #332

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Kickstarter's prime competition is Indiegogo. Kickstarter employees who think their competition is against Kickstarter leadership rather than Indiegogo are at risk to seriously suboptimize, IMO. (The same is true for Kickstarter leadership, of course.)

employees who think their competition is against Kickstarter leadership rather than Indiegogo are at risk to seriously suboptimize Suboptimize what? By what metrics? And why are those the primary metrics I should be using to make extremely important life choices?

The overall success and value they are able to create jointly with their colleagues and take home a portion of for themselves and their family. I also find that to be an interesting, motivating, fun, and financially rewarding game to play.

I support your right to use other metrics as you prefer to make your choices, of course.

Re: Kickstarter’s staff is unionizing

#502

Post by Frondo »

Dig1t wrote: post #326
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…

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.

> basically never did anything for me

Who can say what workers' conditions were like before the union existed? Without knowing the industry, it's hard to say that they did nothing for you, but knowing capitalists and owners in general, it's really hard to say they did nothing for you.

Re: Kickstarter’s staff is unionizing

#503

Post by [deleted] »

bargl wrote: post #223
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…

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…

[deleted]

Re: Kickstarter’s staff is unionizing

#504

Post by Frondo »

hellllllllooo wrote: post #338
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?

Right. It's very hard to organize places where people are not being treated poorly. It's risky to unionize as people can loose their jobs in the process if the bosses find out before they have union protections so people will only take the chance if the conditions are bad. Unions don't try to organize happy work places because they know how hard it is to do even when people are treated poorly. It's not worth the effo…

Just a note: it's illegal to fire someone for trying to organize a union. Not that it doesn't happen, but you often hear about how those people get their jobs reinstated, etc.

Re: Kickstarter’s staff is unionizing

#506

Post by trophycase »

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.

Maybe not yours, but maybe if there was a union at Facebook, Cambridge Analytica wouldn't have happened, or any number of their other scandals...

Re: Kickstarter’s staff is unionizing

#507

Post by frogperson »

tomohawk wrote: post #481
ace_of_spades wrote: post #401

To make this discussion maybe a little bit more solution oriented, what would be your solution to problems of labor mistreatment? Or do you suggest that nothing like that exists? I recently came across an interesting talk by Richard Wolff at Google [1] which suggests that a great solution would be the democratization of the work place in the form of worker coops. It’s actually a tried and true model that works well i…

Start a "consulting" business that provides really good pay and benefits to all of the workers. Be very selective about who you let in. You're now in the business of providing workers for companies that produce stuff. If they want access to your workers, they sign a contract with your company. If some workers don't like working for some particular company, transfer them to places where they like to work. You've now c…

This model already exists and does really well in practice. Both clients and employees love it.

Re: Kickstarter’s staff is unionizing

#509

Post by nerder92 »

As a EU citizen, it always surprise me how the popular retoric about unions is to associate it with lazyness. I think is just undermining of what union actually really are.

I personally found this as a first step toward a perception shift about tech from which we can all benefit.

Unions for instance can help fight this constant non extra paid "after-hours" working culture that force you to do all-nighters and all this kind of crazy shits just because the industry is seen as a bunch of nerds that are that passionate about programming that stay long hours just for the sake of love/passion for the job itself.

Re: Kickstarter’s staff is unionizing

#510

Post by rbg246 »

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…

I think it's one of the big myths of working in a private company that somehow it's super-efficient, that there are major opportunities for success by default.

I've worked at plenty of companies which had huge inefficiencies (meetings 6hrs a day, forty approvals to get anything done etc etc), which held back individual success and were generally not meritocracies.

I think you find that all organisations with many humans involved all have inefficiencies but the media seems to love painting unions as the inefficient ones.

I'm a member of union (Australia) as a web developer, it doesn't interfere with my day to day working, negotiations or my work ethic but it's like having a backup lawyer in case there are problems with the workplace and I need some advice.

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