Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Kickstarter employees vote to unionize

vice.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

601–610 of 1001 posts

Re: Kickstarter employees vote to unionize

#601

Post by xur17 »

wcfields wrote: post #428
_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…

> About the time I had one PC opened up and was installing the NIC, one of the local IT guys dropped by and told me "You can't do that." 'Why not?', I asked. "That's not your job.", he replies. I say this as a non-union IT Tech who works at convention centers and trade-shows regularly and really wishes at times I could just grab a hole saw to make the mouse-hole to run my cables through: It's not your job. If there w…

> Similarly anyone could pick up a broom and sweep the job floor, but without clear delineation that is ONLY the janitors job then why not make the electricians sweep the floors when they're walking back?

They are not being forced to sweep the floors, sometimes people are choosing to step slightly outside of their role to do something when it is more efficient for them to do it rather than inefficiently finding and having someone else do it.

If I make a small mess, I can:

1. stop working, contact the janitor, and ask them to clean it up, or

2. grab a broom, take 2 minutes and clean it up, and continue working

In most cases 2 is the better option, and most good workers would prefer to just do 2.

Re: Kickstarter employees vote to unionize

#602

Post by sigstoat »

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.

> River boat pilots once could say the same thing.

> As could steam engine operators, the original "engineers".

and to the extent that unions protected those jobs any longer than they were necessary, society as a whole was harmed.

Re: Kickstarter employees vote to unionize

#603

Post by elicash »

jcampbell1 wrote: post #586
elicash wrote: post #566

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Basically every institution in the U.S. has racism in its history. But the reason the civil rights movement has been so aligned with the labor movement historically is because racial and economic progress are linked. That's one reason why there's more pay equity in union jobs. Worth noting that Dr. King was assassinated, he was in the city because he was striking with sanitation workers. https://www.theroot.com/dr-ki…

I am clearly biased based on my experience, and agree with MLK that you can’t make progress if you don’t have a voice. Maybe if the union is setup with parliamentary style representation it would avoid some of the nasty problems I have seen first hand.

Yeah, I think you make a fair point. Unions need to be representative of all parts of the workforce. The first things unions do when they start organizing is try to create a committee that includes all departments, people across race, etc.

But I just don't think you dismiss, say, the concept of banks because of problems that banks have had. Or sports. Or the entertainment industry. Or anything else.

Re: Kickstarter employees vote to unionize

#604

Post by heavyset_go »

whatshisface wrote: post #522
totaldude87 wrote: post #443

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the tech people/artists working on gaming industry , Uber's male chauvinistic culture and the problems associated with that can be a typical examples of "why tech needs to unionize". So far , the medium.com has been the "systematic problems reporting tool" for tech and that just generates the views and small changes.. In the past decade, i hate to see that the word "unionizing" in itself has become a bad word…

> Uber's male chauvinistic culture and the problems associated with that can be a typical examples of "why tech needs to unionize" Why wouldn't the same employees that are setting Uber's culture set the union culture? The union is a collective bargaining unit that acts on behalf of the workers, not the most moral and upstanding workers, or the most progressive workers, or the workers that represent you personally.

> Why wouldn't the same employees that are setting Uber's culture set the union culture?

Company culture comes from the top.

Re: Kickstarter employees vote to unionize

#605

Post by nelsnelson »

hinkley wrote: post #541
rrobukef wrote: post #526

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why? It just raises the bar for the unions: negociating co-pay, dental plan... Plenty of healthcare things will not be covered by Medicare. Unions will negociate about this.

Would nationalized healthcare cover orthodontics? I could see an awful lot of union members being interested in supplemental family dental from employers.

Yes.

"All Americans would have coverage for comprehensive health care services, including hospital stays; emergency room visits; doctor visits; substance use disorder treatment; dental, vision, and mental health services; long-term care; and reproductive health care. Depending upon income, prescription drug cost sharing would be capped at $200 annually." -- https://www.webmd.com/health-insurance/news/20191120/medicar...

Re: Kickstarter employees vote to unionize

#606

Post by Osiris »

throwGuardian wrote: post #590
Frondo wrote: post #528

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Leave money negotiations off the table, and you could have a union establish a single consistent process for firing practices that'd protect someone like James Damore from being arbitrarily fired. I don't agree with what Damore had to say, but that shouldn't matter! I would absolutely support a union-backed fair process for evaluating his or anyone's continued employment, whatever controversial things they write abou…

[flagged]

[flagged]

Re: Kickstarter employees vote to unionize

#607

Post by lasky »

angel_j wrote: post #344

Hipster Local 153

We hereby declare the following as Scabbing:

- drinking starbucks coffee - wearing new clothes that’s not patagonia - owning a car. renting ok. - eating animal products that aren’t wrapped in expensive paper and rope packaging - discussing any views that aren’t first endorsed by a jezebel staff writer or hollywood star.

Re: Kickstarter employees vote to unionize

#608

Post by coredog64 »

throwGuardian wrote: post #590
Frondo wrote: post #528

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Leave money negotiations off the table, and you could have a union establish a single consistent process for firing practices that'd protect someone like James Damore from being arbitrarily fired. I don't agree with what Damore had to say, but that shouldn't matter! I would absolutely support a union-backed fair process for evaluating his or anyone's continued employment, whatever controversial things they write abou…

[flagged]

AIUI, failing to represent a union member would be a short, fast path to getting a union decertified.

This is one of the major differences between the US and say Germany. There, the union can decide someone is a butthead and decline to help. US unions have no such flexibility. This is down to shenanigans in the 50s involving racial discrimination.

Re: Kickstarter employees vote to unionize

#609

Post by jbob2000 »

boomlinde wrote: post #377
_1qd4 wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Because some stress is more justified than others. If somebody was stressed out as a travel blogger, would you favour their unionization over a stressed out retail worker?

That's essentially what I'm getting at, the stress at kickstarter isn't worth their mission. But at other companies, the stress is worth it, so therefore the unionization is worth it.

Re: Kickstarter employees vote to unionize

#610

Post by miscPerson »

ken wrote: post #595
whatshisface wrote: post #522

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Uber's male chauvinistic culture and the problems associated with that can be a typical examples of "why tech needs to unionize" Why wouldn't the same employees that are setting Uber's culture set the union culture? The union is a collective bargaining unit that acts on behalf of the workers, not the most moral and upstanding workers, or the most progressive workers, or the workers that represent you personally.

Sexist/racist people don’t show up to union meetings and volunteer for union committees to push sexist/racist policies. It’s not like national politics where it’s a prestigious and high paying job, and corporations are throwing a ton of money behind candidates. Also, unions are usually not employer-specific. No matter how many jerks you have at one company, they can’t overpower all the voting members at all the other…

Respectfully, plenty of misandrists and anti-White racists do show up to those meetings and join panels to push their discriminatory agenda.

Why do you think we talk about the lack of women in STEM, but not the lack of men in HR, education, social work, psychology, etc?

Because bigots set the agenda.

Having sports programs for one sex has been ruled illegal under Title IX — but how many universities have special tutoring just for women?

That is, programs to help women in majors where they trail but offering no similar programs for men in majors where they trail.

Again, the reason we don’t talk about that illegal discrimination is because bigots set the agenda.

Post reply on HN