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Kickstarter employees vote to unionize

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Re: Kickstarter employees vote to unionize

#301

Post by pathseeker »

notJim wrote: post #289
echelon wrote: post #3

I really don't understand this. A career in software is one of the most pampered and lucrative ones I can think of. Due to the shortage of software engineers, we can go anywhere and get a job instantly. The only downside I can think of is ageism, but then again, I have colleagues in their 50s and 60s where I work. But I suppose this isn't universal. (I'm in Atlanta and we have a lot of older workers. Age doesn't seem…

As others say, one reason is that busts happen. I was reading the union contract for one of the local government unions (like you do…) the other day, and noticed they had a lot of provisions related to lay-offs. How much severance people get, how it's calculated, how it's decided who gets laid off, etc. This kind of thing would be very valuable if there's ever a tech bust. The other thing is that not everyone experie…

>This kind of thing would be very valuable if there's ever a tech bust.

Not if you're a top performer who switches jobs to find new interesting things. If you look into the details of the "who gets laid off", it's very frequently just all of the newest members of each department.

Re: Kickstarter employees vote to unionize

#302

Post by aty268 »

claudiawerner wrote: post #268
aty268 wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Being easy to do does not mean that it should be expected or usual to do - and even then, if it wasn't easy to do for just a single person in the company, they now have another layer of protection against that. Not every employee lives in the same personal circumstance.

Their headquarters is in New York, not some island in the middle of nowhere.

Ignoring that point, if the employees really are working from somewhere there are NO other tech jobs, then that would be their fault. They took the risk in moving / raising a family in that area relying on a single company to pay them the salaries they want.

The price is slightly below average industry pay. Is that a call to unionize? Nope.

Re: Kickstarter employees vote to unionize

#303

Post by username90 »

wanderingjew wrote: post #198
nosefrog wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

While not the grandparent post, I can add some of my own experiences with unions: Once, when workers in Chicago supported a general strike in support of an eight-hour workday, police shot and killed a number of workers. [1]. Someone threw dynamite into a crowd. A lot of people died, but we got that eight hour workday. Another time, workers protested for higher wages, but the company owners hired private security and…

> I can add some of my own experiences with unions

Are you really over 130 years old and personally experienced these historical events?

Re: Kickstarter employees vote to unionize

#304

Post by pathseeker »

lexs wrote: post #248
technotony wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't get to decide who leaves. If people don't like a companies dictator then they are free to go join another company. It's this competition in the free market for labor that helps prevent the abuses of tyranny.

That is a terribly naive perspective on the "free market for labor"

Not in software.

Re: Kickstarter employees vote to unionize

#305

Post by majormajor »

pathseeker wrote: post #291
lyrr wrote: post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know how you can fail to see how an organised and unified workforce will always benefit all workers in a firm. Pitting 'top performers' against the rest, scaremongering about 'lazy workers' etc. just divides the workforce and allows management/owners to exploit/underpay workers as a whole. The company would not be able to function/make as good a profit as it does without ALL workers contributing. If a worker…

>I don't know how you can fail to see how an organised and unified workforce will always benefit all workers in a firm. Because historically it hasn't in the US. Unions end up implementing a seniority-based compensation/benefits scheme and there is nothing given to employees who outperform everyone else. This even fosters an environment where top performers are discouraged by their peers for "making everyone else loo…

> This even fosters an environment where top performers are discouraged by their peers for "making everyone else look bad".

You don't need a union for this. Most large companies that do software (not the FAANGs, but the non-tech-first ones) generally don't know what to do with top performers, because consistency and predictability is more valuable to them. Especially a top performer who's bad at politics so they come off as attacking whole other departments or teams.

A union won't fix it, but probably won't make it worse, in those places.

Re: Kickstarter employees vote to unionize

#306

Post by jkaplowitz »

ApolloFortyNine wrote: post #63
dangus wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just look at their employee reviews. The management there seems toxic. I implore you to also think twice about the way in which you are demonizing unions. Sure, some unions aren’t the best, but what you’re saying is 100% discounting the benefits that a union can bring to employees. Union dues can more than pay for themselves in wage negotiation. They can restrict overwork, unpaid overtime (see the special salaried ov…

>junior graphic designer I don't think anyone says tech employee and is referring to graphic designers/anyone in that area. 99% sure anyone who hears tech employee is thinking software development. EDIT: How on Earth can anyone downvote this statement? If you ask 10 people to name 10 tech companies, not one of them is going to pick a game studio.

Graphic designers work at most tech companies I've worked at, and I've never worked at a game studio. They definitely can be classified quite reasonably as tech employees.

Also, here in Montreal, most people's list of well-known local tech employers would absolutely include at least one or two of the many game studios here.

Re: Kickstarter employees vote to unionize

#307

Post by HeroOfAges »

spa3thyb wrote: post #278
calderarrow wrote: post #235

Coming from a public accounting background, I’ve seen a variety of businesses. Somewhat obviously, I’ve seen some be successful with unions and others be successful without, which makes sense, as unions are neither inherently good nor bad. They are a tool which can change the power dynamic and incentive structure of workers and employers throughout an organization, but there is nothing inherent about having a union t…

I'm with you on the theory, up until your last statements - the vote to unionize was 46 to 37; 55% in favor with no breakdown in the roles means we can't be sure the dissenting voice wasn't the development staff. It could be the support and community management roles (or any other 'soft skill' role which is less scalable and no less valuable but perceived as more easily replaced) carried the vote.

"...support and community management roles..." are less scalable? Does this mean companies are finding it more difficult to fill community management roles than developer roles? Also, what do you mean by "no less valuable"? I don't think you can have a company who's product is software without developers. You do not, however need community managers. You make an interesting point: I do wonder if those in "soft skill" roles perceive their roles as equally valuable as software developers. I personally do not.

Re: Kickstarter employees vote to unionize

#308

Post by archagon »

crankylinuxuser wrote: post #81
nimbius wrote: 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 cooperative…

I’ve been wondering recently to what extent the political structures of the most successful corporations may influence those of politics at large...

It’s funny that we value democracy in name, but still enforce a rigid, top-down, and winner-takes-all hierarchy in most of our businesses.

Re: Kickstarter employees vote to unionize

#309

Post by pathseeker »

frenchyatwork wrote: post #238
rafaelvasco wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not necessarily. Democracy could only work effectively if most of the population is very well educated. Which is not the case, specially in under developed countries; Most of the time, the ignorance and lack of a more developed consciousness in a country citizens benefits those that are in power, as ignorant people are much easier to manipulate so that it stays that way;

> Democracy could only work effectively if most of the population is very well educated. Certainly if you're looking at tech jobs, the "population" is reasonably well educated.

For business decisions, no. You'd be surprised at how many employees at Google don't really understand the process of how Google makes money. They offer little internal seminars so they can learn how.

The last thing you want is a bunch of smart engineers voting on business decisions they don't have the background to fully grok.

Re: Kickstarter employees vote to unionize

#310

Post by dmix »

asdfasgasdgasdg wrote: post #280
calderarrow wrote: post #235

Coming from a public accounting background, I’ve seen a variety of businesses. Somewhat obviously, I’ve seen some be successful with unions and others be successful without, which makes sense, as unions are neither inherently good nor bad. They are a tool which can change the power dynamic and incentive structure of workers and employers throughout an organization, but there is nothing inherent about having a union t…

It's also possible that some organizations have a high concentration of folks who have a particular viewpoint on unions, regardless of whether they're being treated poorly or not. For example, Vox's newsroom unionized, even though I would suppose that they are likely treated better than most journalists -- at least to the extent the business' economics allow. I'm not saying this is necessarily the case with Kickstart…

I get the impression a lot of tech companies aren't doing it out of particular absolute need for such a strong a hammer, but because they can and it suits their ideology for legitimately bad stuff they see happening in other industries.

It always made 100x more sense to me on some factory floor in the early 20th century than it does in a tech startup like environment in 2020, plus some labour jobs in between.

I can just imagine the thousands of additional mandatory meetings across the entire company, the needless costs, and hoop jumping that will be added for very little ROI. But because they see gig delivery workers facing shitty conditions under weak contractor and unemployment law designed for a past century, so they think it's justified and want to start it somewhere.

The laws that get passed that make non-union members pay dues even though they volunteer not to be part of the union is the kind of stuff that drives me crazy. Or how they make it impossible to fire egregiously bad workers. Or how in the small town I grew up in these union jobs were coveted and hiring was super nepotism driven, you had to know the right people to get the job - which to me is the opposite of "diversity and inclusion", which is (unsurprisingly) the 2nd bullet point on their political union website, right after "equal pay for equal work" which is a statement riddled with mythology over data.

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