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Kickstarter employees vote to unionize

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Re: Kickstarter employees vote to unionize

#81
post #21

Speaking as an IAM union member, congratulations! now comes the hard part. You're probably (still) going to hear a lot of FUD from your employer but dont worry, things really do only get better from here. Once you get a union youll get more quarterly insight into your companies profits, losses, and a MUCH better picture of what the company intends to do in the next six to twelve months. Youll also get a direct say in…

I just formed a company back in December. Super easy to set up an LLC, C or S Corp. But I wanted it to be a worker co-op like Mondragon. And there's no real guidance or help.

Democracy is cool, until we look at companies. Then it's dictatorships as the norm. And trying to do it right from the ground up is high impossible.

As a obligatory comment: are there any other in the HN-sphere that focuses on worker cooperatives?

Re: Kickstarter employees vote to unionize

#82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thankfully, New York is not a right-to-work state.

So you are fine with the majority forcing the minority to support something they don't want to support? Never going to get behind that notion myself.

This is literally how democracies work.

Re: Kickstarter employees vote to unionize

#83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> one man who does absolutely nothing that is useful Assuming all of the risk is useful. I understand the point, but it's undercut by that woefully inaccurate jab.

> Assuming all of the risk is useful. I've never seen a multi-millionaire, let alone a billionaire actually take the cost of failure on personally. Risk externalization is the theme of the era.

I think you may be misunderstanding - "risk" here is a financial thing, not a personal risk of being tossed on the street. If someone is worth $10 billion and will lose $2 billion if their company fails, that's still a lot of risk being covered, even though it won't really change their life to only have $8 billion.

Re: Kickstarter employees vote to unionize

#84
post #35

What's the benefit of being in a union for highly specialized tech workers that are very in demand?

The top earning actors and athletes in the country all have strong union representation, but for some reason it's software engineers who think "nah we are too well paid".

Professional athletes in the US need unions because the leagues are granted a legal monopoly. AFAIK most European soccer professionals (where there is more options and competition between leagues) do not have player unions / Collective Bargaining Agreements.

Re: Kickstarter employees vote to unionize

#85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> one man who does absolutely nothing that is useful Assuming all of the risk is useful. I understand the point, but it's undercut by that woefully inaccurate jab.

> Assuming all of the risk is useful. I've never seen a multi-millionaire, let alone a billionaire actually take the cost of failure on personally. Risk externalization is the theme of the era.

Probably because a lot of that risk was taken before the success and you're looking at a filtered selection of results (the ones who succeeded).

Re: Kickstarter employees vote to unionize

#86

What's the benefit of being in a union for highly specialized tech workers that are very in demand?

There's many benefits but one big one that would apply to tech workers is benefits/working conditions guaranteed by a contract where you have a union negotiating those benefits on your behalf.

For example, the vast majority of employers reserve the right to change benefits at any time, and they liberally do in a minor downturn. I've worked at places where an email was sent saying "as of tomorrow we will no longer match your 401(k)." That's it, one executive decided something, you just have to deal with it or quit. Another example is an email saying "this is the new PTO acquiral schedule." I lost a whole week of PTO that day, no apologies, just a "this is how it's going to be." If you're working under a union contract where the benefits are spelled out in the contract, they have to wait until the contract term runs out and then renegotiate another contract to change the benefits.

Some tech companies are known to demand unpaid overtime without prior warning. A union contract may have a provision where you must be paid for overtime or overtime can't be mandatory, etc.

Another example might be that allegations of misconduct must have a transparent investigation before adverse action is taken and the employee is entitled to be represented by the union during the investigation.

If you've only worked in a bull market environment with a massive amount of free flowing VC money you might not appreciate those sorts of things. I've worked outside SV during the Great Recession, during that time jobs dried up and benefits were dropped like a bad date. I was laid off and had to relocate to get a new job. I'm not saying that a union would have prevented that, I'm just illustrating that jobs might not be so plentiful at some point in the future.

Another thing is when a significant portion of a workforce is unionized then there is a tendency to improve the working conditions of non-union shops because they have to compete with unioned shops for employees.

Professional athletes are some of the the most highly specialized, highly paid, and highly demanded employees and the vast majority of them at the highest level are unionized.

Re: Kickstarter employees vote to unionize

#87
post #68

I worked in a union shop once, as a summer intern. Every day, we were told to be in the break room at 7:59am to begin promptly at the 8am bell. By 4:30 or 4:45pm, everyone was back in there, waiting for the clock to hit 5pm. One day, I needed to connect two PCs together, which was approved by boss as they would be isolated from the network. So, being the diligent type, I went off and found some network cards and a ca…

You worked in a union shop once. Not necessarily a representative unionised workplace, just the one you were in.

Yet 'in your experience' they are not optimal.

Re: Kickstarter employees vote to unionize

#88

Is Kickstarter in a right-to-work state? Because if not, 46 people are forcing 37 to support a union that they might not agree with, which is distasteful in the extreme.

Thankfully, New York is not a right-to-work state.

Why thankfully? Don't workers' rights mean they ought to make their own choices about joining a union or not?

Re: Kickstarter employees vote to unionize

#89
post #68

I worked in a union shop once, as a summer intern. Every day, we were told to be in the break room at 7:59am to begin promptly at the 8am bell. By 4:30 or 4:45pm, everyone was back in there, waiting for the clock to hit 5pm. One day, I needed to connect two PCs together, which was approved by boss as they would be isolated from the network. So, being the diligent type, I went off and found some network cards and a ca…

You Do know that there's more than 1 way to set up a union, right?

There are such things as professional unions (think old European guilds) that also enforce competency and much more.

Re: Kickstarter employees vote to unionize

#90
post #68

I worked in a union shop once, as a summer intern. Every day, we were told to be in the break room at 7:59am to begin promptly at the 8am bell. By 4:30 or 4:45pm, everyone was back in there, waiting for the clock to hit 5pm. One day, I needed to connect two PCs together, which was approved by boss as they would be isolated from the network. So, being the diligent type, I went off and found some network cards and a ca…

That's a cool anecdote. Meanwhile, unions across Europe won massive increases in standards of living for all workers, from better leave, healthcare, safety protections, to even blocking the wealthy from having control over their democracies through militant, labor-backed political parties.
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