311–320 of 448 posts
I sort of shocked contractors at Google want a union. Typically contractors make more in total comp than full time employees. I suspect this is not the case there, but in general it’s true.
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Those are nice anecdotes, the data says otherwise. There will always be slackers, they exist in every job and industry.
I'd be interested in that data - I have colleagues with wives / husbands doing union shift work - even if you are 100% gung-ho it seems to be 100% seniority based still or has that changed? Things like UBI, higher minimum wage, reduce exempt classification loopholes etc all seem like ways that rules could change to benefit everyone. I would LOVE to see the data that says a seniority based union system results in bett…
I was on a systems engineering team at this studio, and our union counter parts were nothing but incompetent pains in the ass.
Unions don’t have to be this way, and I think they serve an important roll, but people should really be careful what they are asking for as the results might not be what are expected.
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The question is not about whether it crosses the line of legality, but whether it crosses the standards set by Google. Would Google admit to treating their own employees in this way? If not, it's reasonable to demand the same from their suppliers, legality aside.
> Would Google admit to treating their own employees in this way? Isn't this exactly what companies want to avoid doing? They need to treat employees and contractors differently or risk getting sued. https://www.reuters.com/article/businesspropicks-us-findlaw-...
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The NYT, a fairly left-leaning paper in a left-leaning city, wrote about how the union is causing cost explosion building the second avenue subway. As to the funding—New York’s MTA has a significantly larger budget than London’s very similar system. London, meanwhile, covers 100% of its operating costs from fares, while New York covers just half.
The rhetoric goes that the union is enforcing expensive outdated work to be kept to keeps their members employed. However I don’t buy that rhetoric. If that is the case, it is not the union’s fault, but the governments fault for hiring a corrupt contractor.
Unions always enforce expensive, outdated work. The taxi cab unions fought Uber and Lyft, a vastly superior taxi system, all to prop up an existing outdated system.
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You can demand all you want, and your manager can respond with 'LOL no you're not worth that much'.
Then if you think you are worth that much, you can call their bluff and go somewhere else. And what happens in the union scenario? The manager hires an unproductive person for exactly the same wages?
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This is nonsense. You're arguing that being a punching bag is the only valid moral course. In the case I mentioned the perpetrator was arrested by police, but you're waving aside the deaths as 'life is tragic, rest in peace.' Police were called out the evening previous to the attack when the same guy was verbally abusing a black woman, Demetria Hester, on the same transit line, but they didn't arrest him and seemed t…
> This is nonsense. You're arguing that being a punching bag is the only valid moral course. The points you're arguing against are ones I never made, so I will not go to any effort to defend or disavow them. I get the impression you're making no effort to find sense in what I'm saying, and looking for an excuse to call it "nonsense". I don't appreciate that and I won't keep it going.
It's not "fair" or "right", it's just a reality that causes are advanced by those who care about them. Life is tragic that way. [..] If he was ready to stab this woman, it is what it is. The lunatic who did the stabbing didn't get his way for free either. May they rest in peace.
All I did was summarize your comments above for the sake of brevity. I do think it's nonsense, and callous nonsense at that. What sort of sense am I supposed to have found that I missed?
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well, USPS has an IT union and I can tell you first hand it is no good for employees, the things you mentioned happening absolutely happen and the place is just a disaster
We have a contract with the USPS IT department and let me tell you, it is absolutely awesome for their employees. They do about half the work we do in twice the amount of time, get paid more, have more holidays (2 weeks + every single federal holiday) and have pensions. Every worker there clocks in at 9, and clocks out at exactly 5, not a single minute past. If you want a meeting or them to get you something, it need…
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I think it has to be framed against the baseline of pervasive anti-union ideology in the US. When people have been inculcated all their lives with the idea that labor organizing is bad, they’re all just temporarily embarrassed corporate execs, it doesn’t take too much to push them back towards this baseline. Or at least enough to quash the union.
I’ve spent 30 years in the US, many of those in red states, and I’ve heard the “temporarily embarrassed millionaire” canard way more often than I’ve heard anti-union rhetoric. In fact, I’m not sure I’ve ever heard anti- (private sector) union rhetoric. Have you considered that maybe peoples’ reactions are based on bad experiences with unions? In particular, public sector unions. Even liberal areas are pretty anti-uni…
In other words:
Google won't be violating the law if the company fired workers for forming a union because they will be doing so using a proxy organization as a scapegoat. This in effect allows them to circumvent the law referenced above.
Complete horseshit