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Kickstarter employees vote to unionize

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Re: Kickstarter employees vote to unionize

#511

Post by SkyBelow »

pathseeker wrote: post #324
zipwitch wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

That's still "union rules". If the union chose to be pedantic and insisted upon these rules in negotiation, then it's really the union's fault.

Why is the result of a negotiation only the fault of one party if both sides had equivalent bargaining power?

Re: Kickstarter employees vote to unionize

#512

Post by elicash »

baron816 wrote: post #498
elicash wrote: post #472

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I brought up professional sports unions in the context of having a highly competitive group of workers who make large salaries, and that a union can still be useful in that environment as far as negotiations. That professional sports are monopolies and monopsonies isn't particularly relevant to this point. The fact that tech workers can find a job elsewhere is even more motiviation to unionize because you have even m…

> That professional sports are monopolies and monopsonies isn't particularly relevant to this point. What are you talking about. That’s entirely relevant. What’s not relevant is that the workers are rich. Market dynamics are the entirety of what determines your compensation and working conditions. Being able to leave for a competitor is pretty all the leverage you’re ever going to have.

If that was true, Kickstarter wouldn't have fought it as hard as they did. The workers just gained additional leverage. What's the evidence that these workers have zero additional leverage?

Re: Kickstarter employees vote to unionize

#513

Post by omegaworks »

yibg wrote: post #469
commandlinefan wrote: post #450

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actors are unionized (or “guildized”, which is basically the same thing), but their pay varies wildly and seems to be more or less relative to their objective value.

That’s a good example. I don’t know much about it, what benefits does the union in this case provide that isn’t achievable without one?

Actors don't die on set any more, so that's nice. From the SAG-AFTRA site:

"SAG-AFTRA members are entitled to a variety of benefits, including contracts/collective bargaining, eligibility for the SAG-AFTRA Health Plan, SAG-Producers Pension Plan, the AFTRA Retirement Fund, the iActor online casting database, and much more."

https://www.sagaftra.org/membership-benefits/member-benefits

Re: Kickstarter employees vote to unionize

#514

Post by SkyBelow »

manfredo wrote: post #490
Goronmon wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unions, in my experience, exist to help keep mediocre, unmotivated employees employed. What's wrong with "mediocre" employees staying employed?

Because now other employees have no motivation to put in anything more than mediocre work. The reality is people are motivated primarily by self interest. If advancement and retention is based on seniority rather than merit, people have no incentive to put in more than the minimum work.

This is assuming they were already based on merit and not on nepotism and favoritism. In comparison to those, seniority might be a reasonable alternative.

Re: Kickstarter employees vote to unionize

#515

Post by thu2111 »

ksr_throwaway wrote: post #418
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…

> In tech, we can generally assume reasonable working conditions and pay, so Kickstarter unionizing screams “toxic management” for me, personally. I can confirm that "toxic management" is the only way to describe the situation when this union drive began. Source: I work at Kickstarter

Is the article's description of why the union was created accurate?

Re: Kickstarter employees vote to unionize

#516

Post by Seenso »

yibg wrote: post #439
elicash wrote: post #379

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 j…

Just in terms of salary isn’t an union somewhat contradictory to the engineering ethos of meritocracy? I mean we’d like to think that the good ideas win and impact and outcome matters. We hold up the 10x engineers and those that make an outsized contribution to the industry / company / product right? Shouldn’t they get higher compensation compared to the rest of the work force? How do we square that with collective b…

> Just in terms of salary isn’t an union somewhat contradictory to the engineering ethos of meritocracy? I mean we’d like to think that the good ideas win and impact and outcome matters. We hold up the 10x engineers and those that make an outsized contribution to the industry / company / product right?

Not necessarily. I'd imagine that a union could negotiate its pay-scales any way it likes, which could take into account "meritocracy" in many different ways. That could include ideas that are totally foreign to existing for-profit company practices, such as a peer-controlled meritocratic bonus implemented via the union itself.

> Shouldn’t they get higher compensation compared to the rest of the work force? How do we square that with collective bargaining that has set salaries and annual increases?

Here's a hypothetical: In a non-union shop, regular engineers get paid $100k, while 10x engineers get paid 120k. In a union shop all engineers get paid $150k. Should the engineers reject a union so the 10x engineers can get paid more than regular engineers, even though that means everyone makes less?

Also: Are the 10x engineers the people management chooses to pay more? Is management good at recognizing merit? When they recognize it, do they choose to compensate it accordingly? Or do they make the good business decision, and pay the meritorious employees the minimum amount of money they'll be happy with. For some 10x engineers, that could be 2x salary. For other 10x engineers, that could be 1.05x salary. For some 10x engineers, that could be 0.75x salary.

Re: Kickstarter employees vote to unionize

#517

Post by omegaworks »

nelsnelson wrote: post #504
paulddraper wrote: post #489

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unions can negotiate things other than salary, like health benefits, paid leave, policy issues, etc. (Though in practice you're correct: unions rarely exist for jobs with more individualized pay.)

It is worth mentioning that if the Senate bill version of Medicare for All becomes the law of the land, then previously employer-funded healthcare becomes one less thing for union leaders to have to negotiate with employers.

Partially. It will take basic medical care off the table, allowing unions to focus their negotiations on better wages and working conditions. M4A entitles everyone to a common set of benefits, but doesn't preclude extended benefits (medical or otherwise) outside that set.

Re: Kickstarter employees vote to unionize

#518

Post by claudeganon »

thefreeman wrote: post #384
lexs wrote: post #349

Earlier quoted context omitted.

NBA players association, actors guild, writers guild etc are famous examples of "rewarding high performing employees"

> NBA player association I disagree. The NBA players association looks out for the mid level role players (who make up a vast majority of the league) over the highest performing players. The top tier of NBA players are essentially "underpaid" compared to their worth due to maximum salaries. This makes room for mid level guys to make 10-15 million per year. If there was no maximum salary there would be a massive biddi…

Judging from this post, I’m not sure you fully grasp how basketball works nor the underlying concept of “team sports.” Even MJ needed 4 other guys on his side to win.

Re: Kickstarter employees vote to unionize

#519

Post by evunveot »

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…

"Wisdom of the crowd" was also a common refrain for a time. Somewhat trendy in the years before Twitter and Facebook blew up. I think it's widely regarded as naive nowadays, though.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wisdom_of_the_crowd#Problems

Re: Kickstarter employees vote to unionize

#520

Post by refurb »

daotoad wrote: post #440
pathseeker wrote: post #328

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That said, they also are one of the bigger drivers of worker pay increasing over time. Not in the tech industry. Salaries in software have outpaced any union environment just through competition for labor and a booming economy rewarding technology.

River boat pilots once could say the same thing. As could steam engine operators, the original "engineers". Conditions change.

Yeah, and look what happened to the auto unions. They made a deal to protect the income of the senior members and hung the junior members/new hires out to dry.
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