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Major union launches campaign to organize video game and tech workers

latimes.com

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Re: Major union launches campaign to organize video game and tech workers

#301

Post by unapologetic »

snarf21 wrote: post #166
friendlybus wrote: post #155

Here is a direct example of unions slowing down the little guy in the entertainment industry: https://youtu.be/LRVwlif6th0?t=171 Niko has to cut costs to make low budget films and the union mandates someone watch the camera feed for the director, completely unnecessarily in the modern era. The film industry is notorious for the boundaries around union and non-union work. Gary Oldman's decline of a role in Star Wars u…

I generally agree. What we do need is better worker protections and consumer protections. Get rid of no-competes. Get rid of right to work statutes. Add mandatory retirement contributions. Add mandatory and standard severance packages.

That will just drive more employers towards part time employees and outsourcing.

The latter, I agree with the former reforms.

You also aren't getting this sort of top down reform without obtaining more political power than the upper class. That's not going to happen without better organizing (Union, political movements, whatever).

Re: Major union launches campaign to organize video game and tech workers

#302

Post by friendlybus »

reaperducer wrote: post #48
bob1029 wrote: post #5

I read all of this as "Major union seeks to extract rent from an additional sector". I agree that putting developers on death marches is antithetical to everything that is human, but it's not like you don't have options in this industry... Tech work isn't like coal mining where your health is legitimately at risk on a daily basis, and where the number of alternative options available to the average worker is low to n…

I read all of this as "Major union seeks to extract rent from an additional sector". All the video game industry has to do is to give its workers better treatment than they would get under union stewardship. Problem solved. But I expect video games will follow the path of many other industries, and keep beating their mules until the mules revolt. It's a lesson that has played out publicly hundreds of times over the l…

The same lesson that unions have learned about killing machine shops by locking down production and employee ownership to the point where no growth can happen. Unions tried to stop the progress of new technologies and save jobs and failed. Thousands of years worth.

Humble overlords are required, that doesn't make the entire industry necessary for unionization.

Re: Major union launches campaign to organize video game and tech workers

#303

Post by unapologetic »

friendlybus wrote: post #243
jgon wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The industry has had roughly 4 decades to make those self-regulating adjustments, how much longer should we wait?

Who is waiting? Most people I know that didn't like the conditions got better jobs in other industries. Finance pays well and is cushy in comparison. Architecture visualizations, media jobs, programming roles are easier to find after obtaining the ability to outperform the norms for other industries. For most of gaming's history it has been a niche product without mainstream appeal. Do you unionize every fledgling in…

> The majority of bad sentiment has come in the past five years

Literally the first 3rd party gaming company was because workers were unsatisfied with Atari.

Re: Major union launches campaign to organize video game and tech workers

#304

Post by RHSeeger »

unapologetic wrote: post #274
ApolloFortyNine wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are making seriously sweeping allegations, could you not? It's hard to have a serious discussion when someone goes generalizing 300 million people and all of their jobs. >* No vacation. >* No parental leave. >* No sick leave. All three of these are provided, I don't have a union. >At-will-employment (which inherently causes massive under-reporting of things like sexual harassment in the workplace due to the fear…

> you simply call out all Americans as being anti-union Obviously not all, but there are millions of rabidly anti-union people like you.

Honestly, OP's comments didn't come across as anti-union at all to me. They came across as not blindly pro-union (ie, they're always the right answer), but they also said that a union might be right for the game develop industry.

Re: Major union launches campaign to organize video game and tech workers

#305

Post by SauciestGNU »

forrestthewoods wrote: post #224
snarf21 wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I generally agree. What we do need is better worker protections and consumer protections. Get rid of no-competes. Get rid of right to work statutes. Add mandatory retirement contributions. Add mandatory and standard severance packages.

> Get rid of right to work statutes I would not call taking away a worker’s right to work a benefit for a skilled worker.

"Right to work" is one of those legal principles that follows a dystopian naming scheme. It was lobbied for by the owner class because it allows freeloaders to benefit from collective bargaining without paying membership dues in the union representing them. This weakens the union, with the eventual goal of eliminating the union (and the benefits it negotiated for workers) altogether.

Re: Major union launches campaign to organize video game and tech workers

#306

Post by 0x5f3759df-i »

friendlybus wrote: post #191
tomtheelder wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We live at the absolute _extreme_ of capital power over labor power. Unions can certainly do harm, and you are right that they shouldn't be seen as a pure and irreproachable force for good, but small anecdotes about individual bad decisions made by unions are not useful in discussions about this. In fact, they play to the already ridiculously anti-union sentiment that the vast majority of Americans (this article is a…

This is a weird claim to make in the games industry. The vast amounts of cash Fortnite made for Epic is being poured back into buying up indie games and supplying a better store for game sales and creating a better game engine that anyone can pick up and use for 5% of sales. It is empowering the little guy way more than could be imagined in the past. Is that 100% of their revenue? No, but it is well above what anyone…

>The vast amounts of cash Fortnite made for Epic is being poured back into buying up indie games and supplying a better store for game sales and creating a better game engine that anyone can pick up and use for 5% of sales.

For the sole reason of trying to replace Steam as the dominant store platform on PC. Epic isn't just doing this out of the goodness of their hearts. This will not continue once Epic achieves their goal of buying their way into being the middleman between developers and gamers.

Re: Major union launches campaign to organize video game and tech workers

#307

Post by unapologetic »

forrestthewoods wrote: post #224
snarf21 wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I generally agree. What we do need is better worker protections and consumer protections. Get rid of no-competes. Get rid of right to work statutes. Add mandatory retirement contributions. Add mandatory and standard severance packages.

> Get rid of right to work statutes I would not call taking away a worker’s right to work a benefit for a skilled worker.

We can always go back to physically preventing scabs from working instead.

Personally I think we should just get rid of anti-union laws.

Re: Major union launches campaign to organize video game and tech workers

#309

Post by [deleted] »

unapologetic wrote: post #239
reaperducer wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I read all of this as "Major union seeks to extract rent from an additional sector". All the video game industry has to do is to give its workers better treatment than they would get under union stewardship. Problem solved. But I expect video games will follow the path of many other industries, and keep beating their mules until the mules revolt. It's a lesson that has played out publicly hundreds of times over the l…

Apparently if you just pay people a bit more and give them free lunch that's enough to placate people to the point they regard the very notion of collective bargaining as 'childish'.

[deleted]

Re: Major union launches campaign to organize video game and tech workers

#310

Post by mc32 »

reaperducer wrote: post #295
mc32 wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My experience is that new members subsidize veteran members as junior non-full time pay in but don’t get a lot back.

That applies to pretty much everything in life — The more you put in, the more you get out.

Hmm. Ok, but let’s not sell it as an egalitarian organization where we all have similar benefits from the get go.
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