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Kickstarter employees vote to unionize

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Re: Kickstarter employees vote to unionize

#371

Post by pathseeker »

iandanforth wrote: post #132
big_chungus wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Comments like the above fascinate me. The emotional appeal of "choice" seems to have no end. You can employ it to fight unions, health care, public schools anything you want. Similarly if you can successfully attach "right" (as in "a right") to your rhetoric you can draw out pride, anger, indignation, all sorts of powerful emotions. I recently learned that Frank Luntz ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_Luntz ) is…

Comments like the above fascinate me. They dehumanize someone else by implying they are just spreading propaganda while never directly addressing the point they were raising.

Re: Kickstarter employees vote to unionize

#372

Post by dd36 »

rukittenme wrote: post #231
dd36 wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An easily solved problem.

Please solve it then. Start with AT&T's union. I await your results.

The employees can request it be fixed in the next contract. Of all things though, I'm not sure that it's worth the effort relative to other things.

Re: Kickstarter employees vote to unionize

#373

Post by dang »

apexalpha wrote: post #357
_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…

This seems like a cartoonishly simple respresentation of what a union can do. Why would one have no incentive to excel? Our union creates entire promotion matrixes for excelling employees. Comparing it to a prison... Are you a worker or a shill for corporate?

Please don't cross into personal attack, and please don't insinuate shillage or astroturfing on HN. I know you probably didn't mean it literally, but it's still against the guidelines.

Your comment would be fine without the last sentence.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Re: Kickstarter employees vote to unionize

#374

Post by [deleted] »

crmrc114 wrote: post #208
ditonal wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do people on HN constantly claim that companies are right to consider “a false negative is better than a false positive”, act like insane interview gauntlets are normal and desired, AND claim that people can easily change jobs? It’s not true. I live in the SF Bay Area, have worked as a SWE for 10+ years including at top companies like Google, and changing jobs is NOT easy and I’m sick of the implication it is. Th…

Having family who worked with the UAW as well is IBEW I can tell you that Trade Unions in general are much better at 'holding a standard' and truly keeping their trade-craft respectable. However the UAW, the most worthless crap joke of a union that makes other unions look bad. Basically just protects people who show up to work drunk or drive forklifts into walls. Forces companies to do insane things to fire people wh…

[deleted]

Re: Kickstarter employees vote to unionize

#375

Post by frandroid »

crmrc114 wrote: post #208
ditonal wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do people on HN constantly claim that companies are right to consider “a false negative is better than a false positive”, act like insane interview gauntlets are normal and desired, AND claim that people can easily change jobs? It’s not true. I live in the SF Bay Area, have worked as a SWE for 10+ years including at top companies like Google, and changing jobs is NOT easy and I’m sick of the implication it is. Th…

Having family who worked with the UAW as well is IBEW I can tell you that Trade Unions in general are much better at 'holding a standard' and truly keeping their trade-craft respectable. However the UAW, the most worthless crap joke of a union that makes other unions look bad. Basically just protects people who show up to work drunk or drive forklifts into walls. Forces companies to do insane things to fire people wh…

That's the thing with Germany, they have a management-labour relations regime that is collaborative rather than combative... Management has accepted that they can improve their productivity if they work with their labour unions rather than against them. Employees get treated better and management gets good productivity out of their workers. Everyone wins. I wonder what it would take to introduce this model to North American companies without state coercion...

Re: Kickstarter employees vote to unionize

#376

Post by zpallin »

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…

> Generally speaking for well run, ethical companies, whose management actively try to do the right thing, unions add unnecessary redundancy and bureaucracy.

The only type of "well run, ethical companies" where unions are redundant are worker-owned cooperatives. Otherwise, an employer, regardless of how ethical they are, can never replicate the most critical aspect of unions: collective bargaining rights. Sure, an employer can essentially just implement the kind of benefits that would be negotiated by a union, but it does not replace the fact that until a union exists employees have essentially no means to collectively demand changes to compensation and working conditions unless they unionize.

Re: Kickstarter employees vote to unionize

#377

Post by boomlinde »

_1qd4 wrote: post #252
jaredtn wrote: post #221

I would love to understand the dynamic better, so please correct me here or chime in. Tech is has one of the best combinations of (lucrative + meritocratic) I've seen. Fields that pay similarly or better (law, medicine, investment banking) require either significant time-consuming credentials or significant time investment as an underlying (like IB analyst). The interview process does require intensive preparation to…

Just to add to this comment; It's one thing for software developers in the government or a large "essential" corporation like a bank or telecom company to unionize. Those places get toxic because the work has to be done and gets very political because of the sheer number of people's lives they affect. I understand the labour issues around working for those organizations. But kickstarter? You mean the funding apparatu…

Workers' unions represent workers, not consumers or society as a whole, so why should they care about whether the workers they represent work at "essential" corporations?

Re: Kickstarter employees vote to unionize

#378

Post by rpiguy »

The most fascinating thing to me about tech worker unionization is that it is less about working conditions and more about input on moral decisions made by company management.

At Kickstarter the moral divide started with the Punch a Nazi incident. You see this at other technology companies as well, as employees agonize over free speech, what to censor, whether or not to work for China, whether or not to deploy surveillance tech, etc.

This is a new era for union organizers. Ideology has become a "workplace condition" that people are organizing to change. It is an interesting concept.

I am not for it or against it, I need to think about it more.

Re: Kickstarter employees vote to unionize

#379

Post by elicash »

1. Why do tech workers need a union?

If you want to improve your workplace, you have additional leverage to fight for changes if you're in a union. There's often very little you can do alone. This might be things like pay, or it might be something else entirely.

2. But aren't tech workers elite coddled rich kids who are lucky to make what they receive?

I mean, no. But even if so, high pay doesn't stop athletes from joining a union. Folks who run these companies are even more elite than the person who codes. Why not negotiate for a better workplace? Why be a weak negotiator? Isn't that especially important to do when you have flexibility to go somewhere else?

3. Why don't they just leave their job?

Some issues are systemic across an industry. Additionally, some people like to improve their jobs rather than just leave. People are wired differently. Creating lasting change at a company can be rewarding. Some also care about the mission of the company they work for.

Re: Kickstarter employees vote to unionize

#380

Post by Uhhrrr »

zipwitch wrote: post #172
nradov wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A friend of mine worked as a developer at defense contractor with mostly union employees. One time they moved him to a different cubicle. Due to union work rules he literally had to wait two days for a union electrician to come by and plug his desktop computer into the wall socket. Just ridiculous.

Was that "union rules" or "the way the company had agreed to comply with their agreement with the union"? Because 'work to rule' can be a double-edged sword, and in my experience companies just love to blame their own chosen behavior on the union. "We have to fire you if you're late five times this quarter, because the union" really means "after we frequently and arbitrarily abused employees under the excuse of 'atte…

Think about where the company's interest lies. Without the union, of course they would want their employee to just plug the thing in. They wouldn't agree to such a silly stricture if it wasn't forced upon them by the union.
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