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Kickstarter’s staff is unionizing

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Re: Kickstarter’s staff is unionizing

#571

Post by joejev »

Retra wrote: post #457
cc439 wrote: post #450

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How many companies are located within such close geographic proximity to their competitors that employees can choose to work for the competition without moving to a completely separate place? Outside of natural resource extraction, this kind of thinking only applies to nascent eras of new and flourishing industries such as the late 19th century steel industry, early 20th century automobile industry, and current SV-ce…

None of that is relevant to the employer-employee relationship. My employer's competition is not my competition. Even if there were no hiring competitors, they would still not be my competition. I would still want equitable bargaining power with my employer. And regardless of that, if my employer is willing to pay our CEO over 20x what they pay their average employee, they are not in a position to niggle over the kin…

> And regardless of that, if my employer is willing to pay our CEO over 20x what they pay their average employee, they are not in a position to niggle over the kinds of systemic inefficiencies they would suffer under a union.

Do you not believe that a CEO could have at least 20 times the impact on the value of a company than the average employee, and if so, should they not be compensated accordingly?

Re: Kickstarter’s staff is unionizing

#572

Post by zaksoup »

yibg wrote: post #559

I'm not against unions in general or in principle, but some implementations are not great. I suspect like some folks here, my personal (negative) interactions with unions have turned me off of unions in general. I worked at an unionized shop when I first graduated and while I recognize some of the positives the union brought, there were also many downsides. Some examples: - Nepotism. We had an open position we couldn…

> Nepotism. We had an open position we couldn't fill for over a year because one of the union leader's son was graduating soon and that position was reserved for him.

I don't know of any industry where this doesn't happen. Certainly in tech there's plenty of anecdata about nepotism in hiring, no unions required.

> General complacency. Raises and promotions for the most part weren't based on performance, but rather tenure. Many people start off ambitious but end up just doing the minimum over time because there is no reward in trying too much.

Again, this doesn't differ much from non-union industry. Anecdotally (I know) almost every silicon valley tech company seems to have poor ratings in their internal polls for "we fire/retrain low performers". This isn't a problem that is unique to unions, nor can I see any evidence that it's worse in unionized workplaces.

Here's a fact about unions: Average union wages are 18% higher than non-union wages. [1]

[1] https://www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/2013/04/art2full.pdf

Re: Kickstarter’s staff is unionizing

#573

Post by lacey »

I haven’t had a large number of interactions with unions but I have seen some things that definitely turn me off of them, e.g. requiring two or three people from as many different unions to set up a booth at a conference because multiple skills are required and the unions negotiated with the venue to have each step done by union employees with those specific skills. So eg the people assembling the structure couldn’t plug in computers and the people who plugged in computers couldn’t assemble the booth structure.

What I have heard a couple times now from relatives of union members is that senior people who know union leadership sometimes end up on “disability”, meaning there is nothing wrong with them but they don’t work and get paid. They have doctors in the loop to certify the disability. I have no idea if this is actually widespread.

My own personal reluctance with joining a union is that I feel like I do pretty well negotiating for myself.

Having said that, perhaps a tech worker’s union could result in 30-hour four-day workweeks with reasonable minimum vacation, and that would be worthwhile if it became the industry norm.

Re: Kickstarter’s staff is unionizing

#575

Post by [deleted] »

SlowRobotAhead wrote: post #499
naravara wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What about unions do you think magically makes it impossible to fire someone who isn't doing the required work? The only thing that changes is you have to actually do the requisite paperwork and monitoring to validate that you're firing them with cause instead of for arbitrary reasons and pretending it's with cause. The "we can't fire someone who is honestly slacking" is just as much a consequence of bad bookkeeping…

Just a quick question... But do you have any personal experience with the UAW (United Auto Workers Union)? Because while on it's face, I'd agree with your comment... but in experience I've seen things closer to what the other guy was implying.

[deleted]

Re: Kickstarter’s staff is unionizing

#576

Post by danShumway »

msghacq wrote: post #45

It will be interesting to see what this does for developer salaries at Kickstarter. If, as a top performer, I get penalized by joining the union then obviously Kickstarter looks less attractive to me. For unions in our industry to work they are going to have to be very explicit about how they are going to raise developer salaries.

Agreed. I think Kickstarter employees jumping out and trying this is a good thing for the overall industry.

The majority of information I see online about software unions tends to be either anecdotal, or generalized across every industry rather than focused on a specific one (ie, on average, unions across all industries get X% higher pay).

This is being applied to a single company, so people who think it's terrible have no shortage of other places to go. It's high profile enough that Kickstarter trying to shut it down will get public blowback, so there's a better than average chance that they end up taking its demands seriously. It'll give at least one very tangible data point of, "here's what a software union in a software company looks like." And even if it does crash and burn, maybe we'll get some Kickstarter competitors out of it from prior employees.

I see very little downside. Let's have at least one trial somewhere, even if it's not perfect, that gives us at least some preview about what a US-based software union will look like.

Re: Kickstarter’s staff is unionizing

#577

Post by thelasthuman »

jdavis703 wrote: post #529
nerder92 wrote: post #509

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 thi…

My sister worked at a charter school. Because of previous labor violations teachers were not allowed to show up before class started (they could only be there for the official class hours). They also were not allowed to stay late after class. My sister thought this was ridiculous, how was she supposed to setup her classroom and answer questions afterwards? Unfortunately her boss warned her that coming early and stayi…

You can go above and beyond during designated work hours.

To allow work outside of these hours is a race to the bottom in a rat race to see who can no-life it the hardest for the least money.

If you can't make yourself stand out with the same amount of hours as your coworkers, then maybe you should come to terms with the fact that you just aren't exceptional.

Re: Kickstarter’s staff is unionizing

#578

Post by plainOldText »

zaksoup wrote: post #572
yibg wrote: post #559

I'm not against unions in general or in principle, but some implementations are not great. I suspect like some folks here, my personal (negative) interactions with unions have turned me off of unions in general. I worked at an unionized shop when I first graduated and while I recognize some of the positives the union brought, there were also many downsides. Some examples: - Nepotism. We had an open position we couldn…

> Nepotism. We had an open position we couldn't fill for over a year because one of the union leader's son was graduating soon and that position was reserved for him. I don't know of any industry where this doesn't happen. Certainly in tech there's plenty of anecdata about nepotism in hiring, no unions required. > General complacency. Raises and promotions for the most part weren't based on performance, but rather te…

> Here's a fact about unions: Average union wages are 18% higher than non-union wages.

According to the paper you referenced, from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, in private industries and under the category "Management, professional, and related occupations" employees earned more actually – $35.70/h – compared to workers represented by unions, who earned an average of $32.95/h.

I would assume the majority of software engineers work in private industries, thus would fall under the aforementioned category, and as a result would actually earn more by not joining a union. Am I missing something here?

Furthermore, it's unclear whether those wages include other types of compensation, such as stock grants and bonuses for example, in which case the difference would be even greater.

Re: Kickstarter’s staff is unionizing

#579

Post by mattknox »

Toine wrote: post #565

I'm astonished by the reaction of some people here. They seem to live in a alternate reality where every CEO is kind, doesn't try to reduce labor costs at every opportunity, doesn't treat his employees like cattle, etc. 20th century unions had their issues of course, but using extreme cases of dysfunctional unions is not a argument to totally disregard unions as a concept.

I've actually been treated exceptionally well by the half-dozen or so CEOs I've worked for. This is pretty common in tech, at least in SF and NYC, in my experience.

Re: Kickstarter’s staff is unionizing

#580

Post by sethammons »

soheil wrote: post #345
sethammons wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not irony. Irony is when something happens that is explicitly not expected to happen.

I disagree, I think you're describing what a surprise is.

> Typically, the expression of one's intended meaning through language which, taken literally, appears on the surface to express the opposite—usually for humorous effect (http://www.oxfordreference.com/view/10.1093/oi/authority.201...)
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