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Kickstarter’s Year of Turmoil

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Re: Kickstarter’s Year of Turmoil

#31

Post by download13 »

comex wrote: post #21
paulddraper wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> give the cover story more plausibility Do they need to? Many employers would rather publicize it: we don't tolerate a union.

Retaliating against someone for trying to unionize is a violation of the National Labor Relations Act, as well as New York state law (Kickstarter is headquartered in New York) – hence the need for a cover story.

Yeah, but for legal purposes it doesn't matter if "everyone knows" about the real reasons.

The company gets to have it both ways. Send a message that unionization isn't tolerated, while saying in court that unionization had nothing to do with the firings.

Re: Kickstarter’s Year of Turmoil

#33

Post by WillPostForFood »

jacquesm wrote: post #30
djrogers wrote: post #25

Not a big fan of this headline - it's inflammatory and incomplete. This is one (unproven and completely unsubstantiated) accusation from one side of the story, made in a handful of tweets. Kickstarter also tweeted, and of course denies this: https://twitter.com/kickstarter/status/1172230162588536833 The problem with this type of link on HN is that it's not a 'story' - there's no investigative reporting - heck there's…

What are the chances of three people trying to unionize in a company being fired in a very short span of time for 'performance' reasons? Are you holding out until the company says 'Ok, caught, yes, we did fire them for trying to unionize'?

Pretty likely that the kind of person trying to unionize at a company isn't fully focused on doing their work for the company.

Re: Kickstarter’s Year of Turmoil

#34

Post by monocasa »

baron816 wrote: post #18

Why are American companies so afraid of their employees unionizing? Because American unions have a history of creating an adversarial relationship between managers and employees. They’re self serving and have a zero sum game outlook where they try to grab as much as they can from a company. The unions were a major contributor towards the collapse of the American auto industry. European unions differ in that they are…

The unions are so adverserial because in the past capital sent literal paramilitaries to murder union members. See the crap the Pinkertons pulled. So many of the labor rights we have are because brave men and women were literally willing to risk their and their families' lives to speak out against management.

And it's not somehow magically different now; the woman responsible for the Panama Papers got car bombed and it was just swept under the rug. Capital is more than willing to use extralegal lethal force to protect itself, to this day.

Re: Kickstarter’s Year of Turmoil

#35

Post by pathseeker »

jacquesm wrote: post #30
djrogers wrote: post #25

Not a big fan of this headline - it's inflammatory and incomplete. This is one (unproven and completely unsubstantiated) accusation from one side of the story, made in a handful of tweets. Kickstarter also tweeted, and of course denies this: https://twitter.com/kickstarter/status/1172230162588536833 The problem with this type of link on HN is that it's not a 'story' - there's no investigative reporting - heck there's…

What are the chances of three people trying to unionize in a company being fired in a very short span of time for 'performance' reasons? Are you holding out until the company says 'Ok, caught, yes, we did fire them for trying to unionize'?

>What are the chances of three people trying to unionize in a company being fired in a very short span of time for 'performance' reasons

Pretty good. The type of person looking to form a union in software dev where there isn't one is usually someone very unhappy at the company which as a very high correlation with not performing well (at least in the eyes of their manager).

Re: Kickstarter’s Year of Turmoil

#36

Post by stefan_ »

djrogers wrote: post #25

Not a big fan of this headline - it's inflammatory and incomplete. This is one (unproven and completely unsubstantiated) accusation from one side of the story, made in a handful of tweets. Kickstarter also tweeted, and of course denies this: https://twitter.com/kickstarter/status/1172230162588536833 The problem with this type of link on HN is that it's not a 'story' - there's no investigative reporting - heck there's…

Of course they didn't go on Twitter and declare "we broke the law". I flagged this comment.

Re: Kickstarter’s Year of Turmoil

#37

Post by bsamuels »

jacquesm wrote: post #30
djrogers wrote: post #25

Not a big fan of this headline - it's inflammatory and incomplete. This is one (unproven and completely unsubstantiated) accusation from one side of the story, made in a handful of tweets. Kickstarter also tweeted, and of course denies this: https://twitter.com/kickstarter/status/1172230162588536833 The problem with this type of link on HN is that it's not a 'story' - there's no investigative reporting - heck there's…

What are the chances of three people trying to unionize in a company being fired in a very short span of time for 'performance' reasons? Are you holding out until the company says 'Ok, caught, yes, we did fire them for trying to unionize'?

I could definitely a envision a theoretical situation where three poorly performing employees decide to unionize to protect themselves, then eventually get fired for poor performance.

Is that what happened? I don't know, but I'm not going to trust two tweets from two parties whose interests are against one another.

Re: Kickstarter’s Year of Turmoil

#38

Post by jacquesm »

WillPostForFood wrote: post #33
jacquesm wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What are the chances of three people trying to unionize in a company being fired in a very short span of time for 'performance' reasons? Are you holding out until the company says 'Ok, caught, yes, we did fire them for trying to unionize'?

Pretty likely that the kind of person trying to unionize at a company isn't fully focused on doing their work for the company.

> Pretty likely that the kind of person trying to unionize at a company isn't fully focused on doing their work for the company.

Right. So anybody trying to unionize should be fired for non-performance, got it. /s

Re: Kickstarter’s Year of Turmoil

#39

Post by wernercd »

baron816 wrote: post #18

Why are American companies so afraid of their employees unionizing? Because American unions have a history of creating an adversarial relationship between managers and employees. They’re self serving and have a zero sum game outlook where they try to grab as much as they can from a company. The unions were a major contributor towards the collapse of the American auto industry. European unions differ in that they are…

> Why don't American's like unions?

Unions are a layer of bureaucracy, red tape and an entity that cares more about the Union than anything else.

Add to that, as a conservative and right leaning individual, the last thing I want is be forced to donate to left leaning organizations that go against my best interests.

Color it for what you will... I think there are cases where Unions do important things. But most of those cases are long in the past and most unions today are Yet Another Bureaucratic Mess that is useless and leaches off of society as a whole.

Re: Kickstarter’s Year of Turmoil

#40

Post by markbnj »

jacquesm wrote: post #30
djrogers wrote: post #25

Not a big fan of this headline - it's inflammatory and incomplete. This is one (unproven and completely unsubstantiated) accusation from one side of the story, made in a handful of tweets. Kickstarter also tweeted, and of course denies this: https://twitter.com/kickstarter/status/1172230162588536833 The problem with this type of link on HN is that it's not a 'story' - there's no investigative reporting - heck there's…

What are the chances of three people trying to unionize in a company being fired in a very short span of time for 'performance' reasons? Are you holding out until the company says 'Ok, caught, yes, we did fire them for trying to unionize'?

I don't know. Are you saying the odds can be calculated? Presumably it's not impossible, and so it's fair to object to the post on the grounds that it's one-sided and doesn't fairly expose other viewpoints on what happened.
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