Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Corporate Spies Are Watching Organized Labor

truthout.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–80 of 94 posts

Re: Corporate Spies Are Watching Organized Labor

#71

Post by cmdshiftf4 »

mandelbrotwurst wrote: post #39
ggambetta wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ve yet to see any rational or coherent defense of why these (or any) companies should function like democracies. Company X offers to pay me to do job Y. My two options, as I see it, are taking the job and doing Y, or refusing to do Y and therefore not taking the job. I don't understand the logic of "I'll take the job but then refuse to do Y", except if I assume ill-intent from the person taking the job.

It is better for both individuals and society at large if we are able to not only generate material wealth, but also do so within systems of our own design which allow us to generate said wealth through voluntary cooperation. You are of course correct that any person is technically free to reject any particular job, but someone with an interest in both continuing to be able to provide for themselves and their family…

>It is better for both individuals and society at large if we are able to not only generate material wealth, but also do so within systems of our own design which allow us to generate said wealth through voluntary cooperation.

There's absolutely nothing stopping people, especially a collective of people who might want to form a union, from pooling their own funds and starting an enterprise based on the values of their own collective design.

>You are of course correct that any person is technically free to reject any particular job, but someone with an interest in both continuing to be able to provide for themselves and their family as well as in bringing about structural shifts that would allow for much truer freedom might refuse to perform a particular function for reasons other than ill intent.

And someone, or a group of people, who've created an enterprise of their own values, are generating value from it and are providing labor opportunities and value to others are free to fire people who outright disagree with said values, or attempt to form an entity of power to dismantle or disorientate those values.

It is incredibly dishonest, and certainly of ill intent, to join or remain within a company or group whose values you strongly disagree with for the purpose of financially benefiting from that group's activities and trying to undermine said values from within.

Re: Corporate Spies Are Watching Organized Labor

#72

Post by carapace »

ggambetta wrote: post #13

OK, unpopular opinion follows, bring the downvotes. 1) All of my experiences related to unions have been negative. Things become more bureaucratic and inefficient ("oh no, you can't move that box, we need to wait for the union person whose job description is to move the box"), people are promoted because of seniority and not because of merit, bad performers up to and including flagrant criminals can't be fired becaus…

First, downvoted as requested, you're welcome.

Second, consider that Google, Apple, and "dozens more" effectively stole billions of dollars from their own devs?

https://pando.com/2014/01/23/the-techtopus-how-silicon-valle...

https://pando.com/2014/03/22/revealed-apple-and-googles-wage...

Their jobs are cushy, yes, but they were actually exploited.

Re: Corporate Spies Are Watching Organized Labor

#73

Post by rayiner »

claudeganon wrote: post #67
rayiner wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They are and have always been about changing workplaces from top-down, authoritarian models to ones where workers have a say in their company’s work and overall direction. They’re about acknowledging that none of these structures function or accomplish anything without labor and shifting their relations of power to reflect this reality. I’d encourage younger folks who have an idealized view of American unions to ch…

Yes, a Hollywood dramatization of a specific incident in the history of American organized labor is definitely the best place to glean this understanding, as opposed to, you know, reading any of the numerous academic works about the history of US or world labor struggle... Here, by contrast, is a great podcast on the subject spanning many incidents and movements: https://workingclasshistory.com/podcast/ And another r…

Academic works like this one by an NYU law professor? https://muse.jhu.edu/book/10740

> Nowhere in the world has organized crime infiltrated the labor movement as effectively as in the United States. Yet the government, the AFL-CIO, and the civil liberties community all but ignored the situation for most of the twentieth century. Since 1975, however, the FBI, Department of Justice, and the federal judiciary have relentlessly battled against labor racketeering, even in some of the nation's most powerful unions.

> Mobsters, Unions, and Feds is the first book to document organized crime's exploitation of organized labor and the massive federal cleanup effort. A renowned criminologist who for twenty years has been assessing the government's attack on the Mafia, James B. Jacobs explains how Cosa Nostra families first gained a foothold in the labor movement, then consolidated their power through patronage, fraud, and violence and finally used this power to become part of the political and economic power structure of Twentieth century urban America.

Re: Corporate Spies Are Watching Organized Labor

#74

Post by turk73 »

ggambetta wrote: post #13

OK, unpopular opinion follows, bring the downvotes. 1) All of my experiences related to unions have been negative. Things become more bureaucratic and inefficient ("oh no, you can't move that box, we need to wait for the union person whose job description is to move the box"), people are promoted because of seniority and not because of merit, bad performers up to and including flagrant criminals can't be fired becaus…

I mostly agree. My dad was in a union and it was terrible and sometimes even violent. However, if knowledge workers don't change something soon, we're looking at a low wage future. We already lack a seat at the table as management treats developers as fungible commodities to be used up, tossed out, and more hired. They are importing as much cheap labor to the states as possible and undermining quality and even just our middle class lifestyle. I don't hate people from India, but god damn, could some of you please grow a fucking spine, please? We need you to say "no" to something, somewhere, sometime. You badly want our way of life and I don't blame you, but accepting low wages and 1800s style working hours does not help you achieve that. You will just make the next generation the working poor. There are few enough opportunities for Americans these days, why undermine the few that are left? Do the rich truly have to have it all?

It's not that I got into software development because of money, but I want to point out that I made a ton of sacrifices in order to get educated, worked hard to secure the jobs I did with the quality I did them at, and continue to sacrifice to stay current with technology so as to remain employed into my 40s.

In this business, if you are young, you don't know what you don't know--the longer you are in, the harder it is to stay in. It's great in your 20s and 30s with all the disposable income and then all of a sudden you've got a wife and two kids and bills to pay and things start to falter right when you need them to be stable--and that is why we need representation of some kind. We need bargaining, or some kind of tenure, or something, so that when you're mid-career and late career you aren't just a throwaway non-person. Because I just watched it happen at my own company: My firm laid off 3000 people, mostly men in their 50s. Of course some "dead wood" got let go, too, but any fool can see what is going on when they lay off the older workers while still hiring the H1Bs and growing the "offshore" teams and what I keep wondering is "why are foreigners involved in AMERICAN health care at all?"

Re: Corporate Spies Are Watching Organized Labor

#75

Post by threatofrain »

seibelj wrote: post #22
ggambetta wrote: post #13

OK, unpopular opinion follows, bring the downvotes. 1) All of my experiences related to unions have been negative. Things become more bureaucratic and inefficient ("oh no, you can't move that box, we need to wait for the union person whose job description is to move the box"), people are promoted because of seniority and not because of merit, bad performers up to and including flagrant criminals can't be fired becaus…

College-educated people who make good salaries have this vision of unions as the silver bullet solution for the working class. I don’t think they know any working class people with union experience, as unions are unquestionably a mixed bag. For some anecdata, my dad’s a musician and a guy he plays with is a janitor for his full time job, and he is diehard anti-union out of life experience.

I agree, the teacher union strikes in Chicago ground the whole system to a halt with 300,000 kids not in school. If prolonged it could've seriously hampered childrens' progress in education.

Re: Corporate Spies Are Watching Organized Labor

#76

Post by claudeganon »

rayiner wrote: post #73
claudeganon wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, a Hollywood dramatization of a specific incident in the history of American organized labor is definitely the best place to glean this understanding, as opposed to, you know, reading any of the numerous academic works about the history of US or world labor struggle... Here, by contrast, is a great podcast on the subject spanning many incidents and movements: https://workingclasshistory.com/podcast/ And another r…

Academic works like this one by an NYU law professor? https://muse.jhu.edu/book/10740 > Nowhere in the world has organized crime infiltrated the labor movement as effectively as in the United States. Yet the government, the AFL-CIO, and the civil liberties community all but ignored the situation for most of the twentieth century. Since 1975, however, the FBI, Department of Justice, and the federal judiciary have rele…

You can litter this thread with as many comments about organized crime and labor as you like, but it no way describes the entire history of labor struggle in the US and elsewhere or it’s overall bent (you admit this yourself in relation to European unions). And is it actually your supposition that a union at a place like Google is going to be taken over by the mob? Who do you expect to believe this line?

If you want to actually unwind the history of organized crime and unions in the US, you would have to also get into their long-standing ties with intelligence and federal police services, especially as a means to disrupt and purge communists from the labor movement. A good chapter to examine might be what drove Hoover’s odd, counterfactual insistence that the mafia more or less didn’t exist for a good part of his tenure at the FBI. Or the CIA’s Operation Gladio and it’s involvement with the Italian mob.

Re: Corporate Spies Are Watching Organized Labor

#77

Post by deogeo »

civilian wrote: post #45
deogeo wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> All of my experiences related to unions have been negative. Except the 8 hour work-day and weekends, I guess? https://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2015/sep...

So, just because politifact rated the "Henry Ford created the 40-hr workweek" false, doesn't mean that unions were the ones to create it. As a society, employers were trending towards 40-hr workweeks and weekends. That was already where society was going voluntarily, so the fact that unions got legislation near the end of the trend (when voting it through would've been so much easier) isn't that much of a victory. It…

> As a society, employers were trending towards 40-hr workweeks and weekends. That was already where society was going voluntarily,

You write as if this happened on its own, 'voluntarily', by 'society' as a whole, when in fact it was driven mainly by one part of society - workers:

> "Demands for the five-day week began to proliferate in 1919, a year in which 4 million American workers went out on strike," said Priscilla Murolo, a professor of history at Sarah Lawrence College. "That was about 20 percent of the industrial labor force."

Re: Corporate Spies Are Watching Organized Labor

#78

Post by friedman23 »

abdullahkhalids wrote: post #70
friedman23 wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I buy a sewing machine and hire someone to operate it, outside of basic safety rights why should the employee have any say in what I decide should be created with it?

Let's flip the scenario. Someone comes to you and pays you to borrow your sewing machine. Then by your logic, you should not have any say in what they do with the sewing machine. It seems you are claiming that if A pays B, then A has complete say in what happens. From a third party perspective, this is just weird. Society sees two people associating, one providing labor, that other capital, no matter how money is flo…

> Someone comes to you and pays you to borrow your sewing machine. Then by your logic, you should not have any say in what they do with the sewing machine

Yes, generally there is a contract that stipulated what can and can't be done with the sewing machine so that the machine is not completely destroyed.

Generally employment contracts do not give employees the right to do whatever they want with the sewing machine.

Re: Corporate Spies Are Watching Organized Labor

#79

Post by friedman23 »

whatawaste wrote: post #47
friedman23 wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm paying them, if they don't want to be exploited by me don't accept my money. > because if you don't let them have a say, and exploit them, you might end up in a gulag, on guillotine or in wherever mass grave Mao put landlords It always comes down to violence with you people.

If you don’t want to be on the receiving end of violence, how about not exploiting people?

So let's have a thought experiment.

I own a sewing machine and I choose to sew clothes on it myself then sell it. Am I exploiting myself?

I own a sewing machine and I choose to not hire anybody to operate it and it sits unused. Someone that could operate it is sitting unemployed and unable to eat even though I could hire them. Am I exploiting someone?

I own a sewing machine and offer someone an amount of money if they operate it and produce the clothing I ask them to produce. Am I exploiting them?

I'm glad fringe maniacs that consider employment exploitation aren't taken seriously.

Re: Corporate Spies Are Watching Organized Labor

#80

Post by friedman23 »

claudeganon wrote: post #38
ggambetta wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ve yet to see any rational or coherent defense of why these (or any) companies should function like democracies. Company X offers to pay me to do job Y. My two options, as I see it, are taking the job and doing Y, or refusing to do Y and therefore not taking the job. I don't understand the logic of "I'll take the job but then refuse to do Y", except if I assume ill-intent from the person taking the job.

The broader condition of wage-labor is (in the absence of unions) of course though that you agree to some form of top-down power relation or starve and die. Unions contest this broader premise as opposed to your specific one.

> or starve and die

Or start your own business and find your own way to provide for youself outside of the existing system?

The broader condition of society is that you need to produce something of value for them if you desire others to provide things of value to you.

Post reply on HN