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Kickstarter employees vote to unionize

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Re: Kickstarter employees vote to unionize

#211

Post by SpicyLemonZest »

dsr_ wrote: post #153
SpicyLemonZest wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure that last part is really a recommendation. What if I don't agree with the political positions of my union's leadership?

Then you vote to change the positions, and if necessary the leadership. When you work for a contractor working for a corporation, you work for the contractor. When you work for a union working for a corporation, you work for the union. The difference is that the contractor isn't even notionally on your side, and the union is, at least in theory.

I wouldn't work for a corporation that organized "militant, corporate-backed political parties" either.

Re: Kickstarter employees vote to unionize

#212

Post by Jweb_Guru »

jamiequint wrote: post #147
Someone1234 wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're misquoting. I was explaining a union's purpose, I didn't claim tech workers were underpaid. Plus "fairness" could also refer to inter-employee compensation at the same company (e.g. men and women). Additionally if the union expands beyond highly compensated tech' workers (e.g. Customer Service, QA, janitorial, etc) it could help them negotiate better pay and benefits.

Re: enforcing fairness, that argument is still asinine, if women were underpaid relative to men at the same company surely they could find many other companies willing to pay them a fair wage (and hopefully they would sue their former employer as well)

It might behoove you to read a bit more about the well-documented nature of employment discrimination in the tech industry. Women are systematically underpaid and denied raises and promotions compared to men, which tends to make their cases weaker when going to a new company as well.

Re: Kickstarter employees vote to unionize

#213

Post by cactus2093 »

_sbrk wrote: 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…

> One has no incentive to excel, as promotions are based on years "served"

I really dislike any kind of system that more tightly couples people's well-being to their employer. Government regulations on industries like safe working conditions can be great and really help to protect people. No matter what company you work at, they'll protect you. But a company union, where I am only protected as long as I work in this one place, just isn't appealing to me. If I get transfered to a bad manager, or any number of other things happens that makes the job a little worse, now I have to worry about leaving the union, maybe throwing away the number of years I've been working towards my next promotion, etc. Similarly, I really dislike employee healthcare plans for being a huge hurdle to anyone who wants to leave a job and work for themselves, or work part-time to spend more time with their kids, or take on any number of other flexible work options.

I don't buy that the only possible choices are either to have no protections and continue to erode the middle-class standard of living, or force everyone to work 40-hours a week full-time at a big corporation the rest of their lives to have decent conditions. I really hope other alternatives like UBI start to catch on more.

Re: Kickstarter employees vote to unionize

#214

Post by Frondo »

jdkee wrote: post #157
nosefrog wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why don’t you contribute to the conversation by talking about your own experience with unions?

I’ll bite. My colleagues and I ran a IBEW union shop for about a dozen years up through the dot-com bust. We had over 150 union electricians building out data centers, running fiber optics along railroad tracks, installing low-voltage datacom, etc. We had a few electricians from the local pool who: 1. Would not show up on time. 2. Did sloppy work. 3. Lied about their work hours on timesheets. 4. Refused to stay updat…

I can't get too worked up that there are some bad electricians (and I'm imagining that this is true for any field) who are also union members.

My brother in law's a solo residential electrician who occasionally does a little commercial work. Been doing this for 20+ years. He works hard to keep up with codes, always spends the time on the job to do the work to good standards, etc. His observation is probably 80% of the homes he's come into, whether done by the homeowner or by a previous electrician, the work is shoddy to the point of being dangerous.

I'm honestly not at all surprised if there are bad union electricians, it seems like there are a LOT of bad electricians out there.

Sucks that they're rotating through the union hiring pool, though. I'm sure that was super frustrating.

Re: Kickstarter employees vote to unionize

#215

Post by aty268 »

ChuckNorris89 wrote: post #207
aty268 wrote: post #199

Absolutely pathetic for both sides. If you don't like your white collar tech job, go somewhere else. It's not factory work where you're paid way less to do the same thing wherever you go. You make yourselves and your company look weak in doing this. This is why the rest of the United States thinks tech is full of a bunch of entitled pricks.

Just because you work in tech doesn't mean you can't get exploited. And just "go somewhere else" isn't possible for everyone.

And why would it not be?

If I don't like my job, I get another one. It's easier to do this as a software engineer than almost anything else.

Re: Kickstarter employees vote to unionize

#216

Post by mempko »

NhanH wrote: post #171
mempko wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Democracy is also a system that produces BETTER decisions. Sure tyranny can make decisions "efficiently" but that's not that great when those decisions are terrible. Democracy: Fewer macro, more micro, better decisions Command-Control: More macro, fewer micro, terrible decisions. EDIT: Another way to think of democracy is "distributed decision making" vs command-control which is "centralized decision making". When I…

Non action is a decision. In general, I don't think there is even a possibility to ever make less decisions. A situation happens, and a decision needs to be made to resolved it, non-action is also just one of the possible decision. I don't think I have ever heard, study or read about the claim of democracy making better decision (at the least, the common refrain about tyranny of the majority comes to mind), so I will…

First, most people misunderstand democracy. Democracy is that people have a say over in proportion to how much a decision affects them. Command-control hierarchies don't have this property. I like to call democracy 'distributed' decision making vs centralized like command-control.

Have you read studies that command-control hierarchies make better decisions?

Re: Kickstarter employees vote to unionize

#218

Post by lexs »

cameronbrown wrote: post #192
wellthisisgreat wrote: post #117

Wow this really sad, provided Kickstarter is one of the nicest places to work at and their public benefit corporation was not empty words. These people ruined a really nice NYC company for everyone around. Anyone running their company who thought of making the workplace a bit different will expect the kind of crowd from this photo to show up and implode it. One thing is if the conditions were bad, there was insane ov…

I'm just annoyed because there are so many people out there working in supermarkets treat like dirt, yet 'software engineers' who are paid huge amounts still want to unionise? Where exactly is the struggle here? I am not anti-unionist by a country mile, but I can't sympathise with this group.

You can only unionise if you struggle?

Re: Kickstarter employees vote to unionize

#219

Post by WilliamEdward »

zip1234 wrote: post #190
mason55 wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Unions, in my experience, exist to help keep mediocre, unmotivated employees employed. One has no incentive to excel, as promotions are based on years "served", much like prison. There is nothing inherent in unions that make them operate like that.

I had a uncle that was a bricklayer and moved somewhere that bricklayers were in demand so that he could get paid more. He was not a union member. When the union found out he was doing the same work for slightly less, they sent some people over to threaten his life if he didn't join union or leave. He left.

What's with the anecdotes on this thread? The OP was trying to make substantive statements about unions in general and why anecdotes are ineffective in describing them, and your counter was to provide yet another anecdote?

Re: Kickstarter employees vote to unionize

#220

Post by Goronmon »

_sbrk wrote: 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…

Unions, in my experience, exist to help keep mediocre, unmotivated employees employed.

What's wrong with "mediocre" employees staying employed?

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