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Kickstarter’s Year of Turmoil

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Re: Kickstarter’s Year of Turmoil

#101

Post by moogly »

nickjj wrote: post #70

I know close to nothing about unions or the KS story but I am from the US and myself along with almost everyone I know tend to associate unions with extreme wasting of resources. This is coming at it from a spectator's point of view (ie. not a union worker / not a unionized business owner). For example, I've witnessed an overpass taking over 2 years to finish (it was blocked off / limited access / under construction…

I'm sure a construction worker could write an unflattering paragraph like your second, observing isolated flashes of workdays at a software company from his perspective, and, with equally broad strokes, paint the software world in a (IMO not entirely undeserved) bad light.

Re: Kickstarter’s Year of Turmoil

#102

Post by namirez »

jodrellblank wrote: post #96
namirez wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You need to back up your claim with evidence. In order to establish a union, you'll need at least 30% of the workers signing a petition. Would you sign such a petition if your incompetent colleague put it forward to you in the hope of protecting their job? Honestly, your scenario is far-fetched.

In order to establish a union, you'll need at least 30% of the workers signing a petition Why do you, what's the reasoning behind that kind of law? And to whom do they petition - does the company have to agree, or rather, does the employer have the right to forbid employees from forming agreements between themselves? It sounds counterintuitive when you only need 1 person to start a company, or 2 people to have a cont…

I don't know the answer to your questions, but it is simply the law unless the employer voluntarily recognizes the union. Obviously employers don't have much incentive for doing so.

source: https://www.nlrb.gov/rights-we-protect/whats-law/employees/i...

Re: Kickstarter’s Year of Turmoil

#103

Post by nickjj »

jacquesm wrote: post #82
nickjj wrote: post #70

I know close to nothing about unions or the KS story but I am from the US and myself along with almost everyone I know tend to associate unions with extreme wasting of resources. This is coming at it from a spectator's point of view (ie. not a union worker / not a unionized business owner). For example, I've witnessed an overpass taking over 2 years to finish (it was blocked off / limited access / under construction…

> If I were a company I would be terrified that such inefficiencies are protected by a union. You can't 'be' a company. You can run one, at best. And if unionized employees terrify you in a country where unionization is legal then maybe simply do not start a company? > can someone more knowledgeable in this area explain how a unionized workforce benefits both employees and the business hiring them In theory - not alw…

> Collective bargaining means that employers can no longer reduce negotiations by serially negotiating with one employee at the time, but have the negotiate with all employees at once.

Now I understand why my original comment is the most down voted comment I ever made on HN in about 5 years.

Based on what you wrote it sounds like union vs non-union seems very much related to a political topic of socialism vs capitalism which is usually a good idea to avoid talking about on public forums.

With that said, I'm bowing out on this conversation!

Re: Kickstarter’s Year of Turmoil

#104

Post by freeone3000 »

chroma wrote: post #24
freeone3000 wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So's operating a taxi without a license or running a hotel in a residential area. If you can get enough investor money to ignore the consequences, laws don't stop this.

You are smuggling a connotation in with your denotation. When most people think of "crime", they think of robbery, assault, and other violent acts. They don't think of disregarding various business laws or (to use an example I think you'd agree with) possessing and using certain drugs. To give another example: By the technical definition, Martin Luther King committed crime by violating the racist laws of the south. Y…

Nestlé straight up murdered a worker for unionizing, but sure, the problem is that the flagrant lawbreaking is not representative of corporate conduct, because only unpopular laws are publically broken.

Re: Kickstarter’s Year of Turmoil

#105

Post by jacquesm »

busterarm wrote: post #98
jacquesm wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So you are confirming they were fired for trying to unionize? Thank you. It is interesting that the 'going to the press' bit gets trotted out as if that is something the employees should not have done. Companies go to the press all the time when it suits them, but employees using the press as leverage is beyond the pale. Of course they would go to the press, if retaliation is imminent that is one of the last ways in…

How do you even read that as that? All I said was that 28 people in the company publicly stated their support for a union (there's 42 needed to establish one). 15 of those 28 people were eligible for a promotion or raise. 14 of those 15 received their promotion or raise. Doesn't look like union busting at all to me, but thanks for putting words in my mouth. My comment about the press was because the pro-union group i…

> 28 people in the company publicly stated their support for a union (there's 42 needed to establish one).

It is not unreasonable to suspect that if 28 people are openly in support that there are 42 in total.

> Doesn't look like union busting at all to me, but thanks for putting words in my mouth.

You'd have to show that in the 'control' group of 120 other employees 12 or more got fired; not that 14 of the people in the group that supported unionization got a raise. They are - presumably - not the organizers, which is what matters here.

> My comment about the press was because the pro-union group is having a hard time getting those 14 additional people they needed to support them and in the meantime have created a ton of bad press for the company, which does impact the assets of the very employees they're supposed to be supporting the interests of.

And my point is that if you fire the organizers and get away with it that there won't be any union regardless of how many people would have supported it. If they took a vote and lost then that's that and business as usual, no need to fire anybody.

Re: Kickstarter’s Year of Turmoil

#106

Post by busterarm »

jacquesm wrote: post #105
busterarm wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you even read that as that? All I said was that 28 people in the company publicly stated their support for a union (there's 42 needed to establish one). 15 of those 28 people were eligible for a promotion or raise. 14 of those 15 received their promotion or raise. Doesn't look like union busting at all to me, but thanks for putting words in my mouth. My comment about the press was because the pro-union group i…

> 28 people in the company publicly stated their support for a union (there's 42 needed to establish one). It is not unreasonable to suspect that if 28 people are openly in support that there are 42 in total. > Doesn't look like union busting at all to me, but thanks for putting words in my mouth. You'd have to show that in the 'control' group of 120 other employees 12 or more got fired; not that 14 of the people in…

The company wants the union organizers to vote. It has said as much.

The union organizers don't want a vote, they want Kickstarter to voluntarily recognize them.

This is in the articles, man...

Re: Kickstarter’s Year of Turmoil

#107

Post by mrzool »

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…

> Kickstarter also tweeted, and of course denies this

Of course denies this. I stand with the workers.

Re: Kickstarter’s Year of Turmoil

#108

Post by sushid »

shakezula wrote: post #79
nickjj wrote: post #70

I know close to nothing about unions or the KS story but I am from the US and myself along with almost everyone I know tend to associate unions with extreme wasting of resources. This is coming at it from a spectator's point of view (ie. not a union worker / not a unionized business owner). For example, I've witnessed an overpass taking over 2 years to finish (it was blocked off / limited access / under construction…

That type of inefficiency isn’t exclusive to unions, you realize that right? You realize that maybe there were other factors involved that caused the bridge to take that long? You realize that construction is often a very sequential process that can block other steps from being completed until the first is done? Every part of your comment is completely anecdotal and could be due to myriad other factors. > associate u…

As someone who also hasn’t worked for a union and not an owner of a company, my views are also negative in my experience.

In my opinion, unionizing teachers has created a perverse incentive to fuck around and do nothing once tenured and to screw over the newest members of the union when forced to downsize, regardless of performance for teachers.

For police officers, it’s incentivized understaffing to reward members with overtime as well as an unreasonable amount of legal protection for cops who do horrible things like kill innocent people due to “feeling threatened.”

For public transportation, we also have workers who somehow accrue all of the OT as it’s offered in tenure order. This ensures that remunerative benefits is only a function of time and not skill, and also somehow prevents the most reasonable solution such as hiring another worker.

Re: Kickstarter’s Year of Turmoil

#109

Post by anigbrowl »

busterarm wrote: post #94
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'?

And 14 of the 15 people eligible out of the 28 people backing unionization at Kickstarter got a raise or promotion... Hmm... I know a handful of people at Kickstarter, including some of the union backers. A fair number of employees have concerns about how the folks trying to organize the union have acted. Seems they deliberately have gone to the press as leverage against the company rather than work to get employees…

What of it though? That's like saying only 5 out of 100 employees at a company are in the C-Suite and they've gone straight to negotiating with a bunch of VCs instead of involving all the employees in the financial decision-making.

Re: Kickstarter’s Year of Turmoil

#110

Post by anigbrowl »

busterarm wrote: post #98
jacquesm wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So you are confirming they were fired for trying to unionize? Thank you. It is interesting that the 'going to the press' bit gets trotted out as if that is something the employees should not have done. Companies go to the press all the time when it suits them, but employees using the press as leverage is beyond the pale. Of course they would go to the press, if retaliation is imminent that is one of the last ways in…

How do you even read that as that? All I said was that 28 people in the company publicly stated their support for a union (there's 42 needed to establish one). 15 of those 28 people were eligible for a promotion or raise. 14 of those 15 received their promotion or raise. Doesn't look like union busting at all to me, but thanks for putting words in my mouth. My comment about the press was because the pro-union group i…

Not critiquing you in particular, but it's not strategically unusual to fire one group of people, buy another off, and tell the rest that it's proof unions are nothing but trouble and if they play nice they might get a raise at the right time.

This is how power operates, you can see exactly the same dynamics at work in countries that have been through a military coup.

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