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Kickstarter’s Year of Turmoil

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Re: Kickstarter’s Year of Turmoil

#171

Post by Nullabillity »

PorterDuff wrote: post #92

re: Unions If a software union only existed to deal with the following: . Pensions . Health insurance I can see the point.

Here in Sweden, engineers are generally unionized (including software engineers) as Sveriges Ingenjörer (Sweden's Engineers).

The union negotiates minimum benefits, such as working hours, overtime rules, vacation time, pension contributions, and so on. The companies are free to offer more.

They also collect salary statistics (which you can slice by industry, age, experience, area, and a bunch of other stuff), to help you decide whether or not an offer is competitive.

Re: Kickstarter’s Year of Turmoil

#172

Post by jacquesm »

ThrowawayR2 wrote: post #144
jacquesm wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> why is collective bargaining any more useful and individual bargaining Because collective bargaining means that the party with the largest resources and the power, in this case the company, will have to at least take into account their ability to operate. > Collective bargaining gives employees leverage over employers by drastically reducing the supply of labor available to the company if their bargains are not met…

> Note that such niceties as workplace safety; medical coverage and 5 day workweeks were in large part due to union involvement. Those things always get brought up but that's history from 50-75+ years ago. Got any more recent examples?

The best 'more recent example' that I can think of is that even 50-75 years later there is still a continuous struggle to get basics such as healthcare sorted out in such a way that the outcome of the lottery does not immediately mean bankruptcy for those lower on the totempole. If unions were to be massively disbanded you'd be back to square one in a heartbeat.

It's a bit like marketing: if you stop doing it your marketshare will dwindle, even if you're top dog.

Re: Kickstarter’s Year of Turmoil

#173

Post by lozenge »

paulddraper wrote: post #130
jaredklewis wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IIRC, Jan didn’t threaten to fire them. She simply asserted that unionization would cause them they would lose their jobs because Dunder Mifflin would close down the branch if the workers unionized, as apparently had happened at another branch. So not advocating that we use The Office (a sitcom) as a reference for American labor law, but I think Jan’s statements might be permissible. As long as her reasoning is that…

That's a pretty fine line to draw: "Due to increased costs (read: unions), we're reducing/eliminating employment." "Due to decreased productivity (read: FMLA), we're reducing/eliminating employment." I guess it works. I don't really understand this stuff.

Closing an entire office/branch for unionizing - legal.

Firing the individuals who are trying to start the union - illegal.

Re: Kickstarter’s Year of Turmoil

#174

Post by [deleted] »

TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #170
ThrowawayR2 wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> " Ignoring for the moment the non-salary benefits of a union: Look at it this way - aren't corporate profits quite high already? Yet they still merge and consolidate and cut costs and try to increase them further. " Imagine your waiter at a restaurant found out that you are a well paid programmer and tried to charge you extra on the bill for your meal because "aren't programmer salaries quite high already". Does th…

It sounds like a ridiculous and misleading analogy. I don't employ my waiter. The restaurant employs my waiter. I would be perfectly fine with a restaurant paying a waiter slightly more in return for happier waiters - especially if it meant that I didn't need to feel that my tips were keeping food on the waiter's table, instead of the restaurant's pay. But imagine this - suppose a waiter at a restaurant discovered th…

[deleted]

Re: Kickstarter’s Year of Turmoil

#175

Post by malandrew »

dehrmann wrote: post #146
SamReidHughes wrote: post #3

Well that is gangsta. It's an unlikely coincidence that these three people had poor performance with such timing that led to firing in the same week or two. You gotta space out the firings to give the cover story more plausibility.

Critics of unions would point out that under-performing employees are more likely to benefit from unions, so they're more likely to try to organize them. I have no idea if this is actually the case. It certainly makes it hard to sort out what's actually going on, here.

The most competent colleagues I've had are always the ones most anti-union.

Re: Kickstarter’s Year of Turmoil

#176

Post by aksss »

scarmig wrote: post #155
dehrmann wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Regarding Moore, > The company told staff that Moore had been on a performance improvement plan He'd apparently been at Kickstarter for six years. Being on a PIP after that long seems unusual. And Redwine, > But current and former employees with knowledge of the firing told me that management didn’t establish a “performance improvement plan” for Redwine, despite her being told she would have one. Not quite sure how t…

I've known several people at different companies who departed because of performance reasons. Every one of them got a PIP. The PIP was pretty much always pro forma, but I've never heard of a company letting someone go without a PIP, unless there's active malfeasance involved. Rookie move on Kickstarter's part, regardless. Even if Redwine had basically decided to stop working, it's probably less costly in reputational…

It just depends on the severity of the problem. Some problems can be fixed (PIP), while others don’t warrant the attempt - just use your imagination. If employer is an at-will, they certainly have more flexibility to fire quickly. They may increase the odds of a wrongful termination suit by doing this, but that’s what insurance is for. Nobody wants to pay a wrongful term suit though, and usually a company dousing an employee will have enough of a reasonable cause they can piece together after the fact. Shit gets dicey if employee age is above the mean or is on FMLA, but generally an at-will employer has a lot of flexibility to drop an employee.

Re: Kickstarter’s Year of Turmoil

#177

Post by aksss »

dehrmann wrote: post #146
SamReidHughes wrote: post #3

Well that is gangsta. It's an unlikely coincidence that these three people had poor performance with such timing that led to firing in the same week or two. You gotta space out the firings to give the cover story more plausibility.

Critics of unions would point out that under-performing employees are more likely to benefit from unions, so they're more likely to try to organize them. I have no idea if this is actually the case. It certainly makes it hard to sort out what's actually going on, here.

Unions raise the base comp for everyone and introduce barriers to disciplinary process so the mediocre benefit. Unions also limit the comp of the best performers and introduce variables such as longevity to the comp structure and lay-off schemes, both of which work against the most competent employees. So yeah, star performers and heroes generally don’t like unions, layabouts do. I admire unions when they are organizing around safety issues, but not many of us are working in a food factory here.

Re: Kickstarter’s Year of Turmoil

#178

Post by aksss »

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.

Yes, but.. if the employee is using work time and company resources to print recruitment material and disrupting meetings, etc., etc., that’s an actionable offense. I mean, an employer has a lot of leeway around disruptive employee behavior. The employee can probably get a settlement in such cases if they’re willing to fight long enough on the wrongful term suit. For example by showing that the company was generally tolerant of company equipment being used for personal stuff, etc. But behavior is a tougher matter.

Re: Kickstarter’s Year of Turmoil

#179

Post by aksss »

TazeTSchnitzel wrote: post #86
tptacek wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you understand the consequences to be?

After months of investigation they may have to re-hire the worker and pay them back their salary.

No, they would pay out a settlement on a wrongful termination claim and send employee on their way. I’ve never seen a forced rehire outside of an existing CBA. And with those, have seen some pretty bad employees get back in the door. IME, most often CBA’s protect the bad more often than protect the ill-treated. Some say it’s a fair trade-off, but I have bags of bad examples and not a single good example. I’m not saying some companies don’t fire in retaliation, etc., but I’ve only ever seen the grievance process on a firing help bad employees IME. So am predisposed to be critical of them.

Re: Kickstarter’s Year of Turmoil

#180

Post by aksss »

busterarm wrote: post #106
jacquesm wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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...

I think pressuring for a vote early is of benefit because another vote can’t take place for some time period afterwards. The organizers want to stall a vote for as long as possible to work up support before this happens. While it’s illegal to fire a worker for trying to organize, it’s entirely legal to fire that same employee if they are violating company policies to further that organizing effort. I don’t know that this is what happened but is often the case I’ve seen. Misuse of company resources, disruptive behavior, not completing tasks, using paid time to do union work, bad for morale of other employees, creating hostile environment for other employees, etc.
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