61–70 of 229 posts
I'm a SWE at Google, and as much as I love unions, I'm not sure it makes sense for the software industry. Further, the larger tech companies already have a concept of "levels" to ensure some sense of pay equality, we already get better benefits than you can get anywhere else in the states. Realistically, what more will unions accomplish at a place like Google? I'd love 6 weeks of paid vacation as much as anyone. I do…
I'm also a SWE at Google, and speaking only for myself, I might support efforts to ensure that those great benefits are harder to take away. Does that mean unionization ... I don't know, but there's a big spectrum of possible worker organization.
Call me a cynic, but Europe isn't the USA. There are a lot of countries in EU which have, IMO, better work culture and fairness of negotiation as the guiding philosophies behind the work. If Google did this in the USA, it wouldn't be seen as much. However, they have strong laws against this in EU, and this incident would not portray Google in favorable light, IMO. I also feel that it is high time engineers realized t…
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Unions in Switzerland are not very common compared to France or Germany.
More than half of Swiss workers are covered by collective bargaining agreements. That's much higher than in the US at least; not sure about France/Germany.
Call me a cynic, but Europe isn't the USA. There are a lot of countries in EU which have, IMO, better work culture and fairness of negotiation as the guiding philosophies behind the work. If Google did this in the USA, it wouldn't be seen as much. However, they have strong laws against this in EU, and this incident would not portray Google in favorable light, IMO. I also feel that it is high time engineers realized t…
Union busting and retaliation against unionisation efforts is prohibited in most (all?) EU countries. Of course in practice not always easy to prove.
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It will likely stifle my salary, and the salaries of a lot of high earning swes. Or not. Curious what others think.
Since when did unions stifle salaries? They generally get higher salaries for their employees, no? Isn't the typical complaint about union workers that they're "overpaid"?
Yeah, this sounds like more anti-Union FUD than being based in actual data. I'd be happy to be proven wrong though if this can be substantiated through more than just cherry picked examples.
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I don't know about Switzerland, but most European countries have laws that explicitly require companies to permit unions to operate on company property. Many countries even mandate that stewards (union representatives) must be allowed to spend part of their working time on union work.
Unions in Switzerland are not very common compared to France or Germany.
I'm a SWE at Google, and as much as I love unions, I'm not sure it makes sense for the software industry. Further, the larger tech companies already have a concept of "levels" to ensure some sense of pay equality, we already get better benefits than you can get anywhere else in the states. Realistically, what more will unions accomplish at a place like Google? I'd love 6 weeks of paid vacation as much as anyone. I do…
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My experience is that HN often aligns with more Libertarian ideologies in the comment section.
I can't take that claim too seriously, because a real Libertarian would welcome a free, and non-coercive association between employees as much as they welcome the free, and completely non-coercive association between an employee, and their employer... (I am, of course, not at all coerced to work under the conditions my employer sets upon me!) But for some reason, many Libertarians have nothing but contempt for the fo…
I’m simply stating it’s foolish to expect Google to actively work against their best interests. To provide material support and a platform for unopposed speech on a viewpoint they actively oppose.
There’s nothing stopping these employees from doing this on their own free time and with their own resources.
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Union busting and retaliation against unionisation efforts is prohibited in most (all?) EU countries. Of course in practice not always easy to prove.
Isn't it illegal in the US also? Doesn't seem to stop it from happening.
The EU actually enforces it's laws on this subject and they are not as simple to "not technically illegal" them.