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Kickstarter’s staff is unionizing

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Re: Kickstarter’s staff is unionizing

#581

Post by vonholstein »

thelasthuman wrote: post #577
jdavis703 wrote: post #529

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Its unreasonable to say that individual exceptionalism is all that matters for success. There needs to be a way for hard work yo matter as well. Perhaps have both union and non-union shops and let employees vote with their feet.

Re: Kickstarter’s staff is unionizing

#582

Post by barry-cotter »

dragonwriter wrote: post #536
barry-cotter wrote: post #535

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s not how unions get board seats in countries where they’re on the board; they don’t own significant parts of the company. They have board seats because that’s legally mandated. This can help with short and long term planning but it’s not a free lunch. A worker owned business is either a partnership or a co-op. The forms have been around for centuries. They’re not generally competitive with firms where ownership…

> They’re not generally competitive with firms where ownership and employment are separated or they’d be far more common. That logic doesn't actually follow; even if they performed equally, capital owners get more return in conventional firms (because they get all the returns, not just partial returns from lending capital), so they will favor conventional firms. So, all other things being equal, employee-owned firms…

That’s a consequence of the fact that diversification is good. You don’t want your investments and your employment in the same place unless the greater productivity is enough to offset the added risk.

I don’t see any disagreement between what you wrote and I did outside of companies with explosive growth trying to dominate an industry, i.e. VC.

If your aim is to build a cooperative supermarket chain like the Coop in the U.K. banks will happily lend once you have a proven business plan. So someone does need to put up the initial capital but once you have a proven business model you’ll be able to borrow from banks and capital markets in the same way as conventional firms.

Your argument fails to address the sectors where partnerships and cooperatives dominate, law, accounting and management consulting. I’m sure there are others but the fact that every twenty years or so the Big 4 all spit out a giant services company but they don’t change their own corporate structure is suggestive that a partnership model works. And McKinsey, Bain or BCG would have no trouble accessing capital if they wanted to stop being a partnership.

Re: Kickstarter’s staff is unionizing

#583

Post by Animats »

diminoten wrote: post #391
Animats wrote: post #284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

See the link, which is entirely about the film industry union movement.

Re: Kickstarter’s staff is unionizing

#584

Post by chillacy »

lacey wrote: post #573

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…

You can already achieve rest and vest at some of the big companies. I hear stories of 20 hour weeks if you’re good at managing perceptions. Salaries aren’t bad either.

Re: Kickstarter’s staff is unionizing

#585

Post by dismalpedigree »

omegaworks wrote: post #435
dismalpedigree wrote: post #431

There are 2 types of unions (in general). There are skilled trade unions (plumbers, electritians, etc) and strictly labor unions (TSA, agriculture laborers, etc). If they are unionizing as a skilled trade union and the union is thus ensuring training and quality of the labor, then i think it is a great idea. If they are unionizing as a strictly labor union, then i see no value to either management or the employees in…

> i see no value to either management or the employees in the long term. The term for this "class consciousness." It's not that the value isn't there, it's that you don't see it.

Perhaps you could enlighten us all as to what the benefits are to either management and/or employees rather than just making vague comments that have little to no meaning.

Re: Kickstarter’s staff is unionizing

#586

Post by subway »

lacey wrote: post #573

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…

The rules certainly drive me up the wall. An event I attend annually in a conference hall has an ongoing joke about being sure you know which chairs in the venue are union chairs, and which aren't.

As an attendee, nobody minds if you move the non-union chair, but if you so much as move a union chair a few feet to join an adjacent table, expect to be reprimanded.

Re: Kickstarter’s staff is unionizing

#587

Post by philipov »

plainOldText wrote: post #578
zaksoup wrote: post #572

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 softwar…

I don't know what those numbers mean. As a programmer, I am a salaried employee whose compensation doesn't fluctuate with the amount of time I spend working. Working fewer hours and working from home are direct improvements to my compensation which don't get quantified in my earnings.

Re: Kickstarter’s staff is unionizing

#588

Post by chillacy »

root_axis wrote: post #472
sgregnt wrote: post #448

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

There are jobs which are extremely chill. Think slower growing but still profitable companies, and then mobile or desktop development so there’s no on-call. 20-30 hour weeks, depending on how good you are at managing work perception and saying no.

Re: Kickstarter’s staff is unionizing

#589

Post by flukus »

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…

> Because of previous labor violations teachers were not allowed to show up before class started

So the school was expecting teachers to come in early to setup, not paying them for those hours and punishing those that didn't. This isn't a problem created by labor unions, it is a problem created by exploitative companies. And when the company decided how they would address the issue they decided that pre-class preparation wasn't worth paying for.

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