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Kickstarter employees vote to unionize

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Re: Kickstarter employees vote to unionize

#661

Post by Frondo »

shadowgovt wrote: post #557
carapace wrote: post #407

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 1. Why do tech workers need a union? I don't know if a union is the answer, but tech workers aren't immune to management hi-jinks: "Apple and Google's wage-fixing cartel involved dozens more companies, over one million employees" https://pando.com/2014/03/22/revealed-apple-and-googles-wage...

This is an excellent example, because the key thing is: the companies involved weren't even thinking of it as wage-fixing. They were thinking of it as avoiding disruption to launch schedules by not churning people with low bus-factor. Employees and management have different perspectives on the work agreement and management's is over-represented because they set most of the company policy. An amplified employee voice…

The companies can call it whatever they want, but it reflects the power imbalance between worker and employer that unions exist solely to re-balance.

Some managers in a board room somewhere made a decision that depressed the wages for how many thousands of workers, and what can those workers do about it? Jump ship to...the other companies that colluded to depress their wages?

This whole "you're paid enough so don't unionize" thing is so weak, when obviously people could be paid a lot more, but aren't, because, surprise, the companies still hold all the cards.

Re: Kickstarter employees vote to unionize

#662

Post by triceratops »

pathseeker wrote: post #301
notJim wrote: post #289

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

By your own logic, if you frequently switch jobs to find new interesting things, don't the odds of you ending up on a layoff list go up?

Re: Kickstarter employees vote to unionize

#663

Post by piva00 »

bearmcbearsly wrote: post #618
carapace wrote: post #407

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 1. Why do tech workers need a union? I don't know if a union is the answer, but tech workers aren't immune to management hi-jinks: "Apple and Google's wage-fixing cartel involved dozens more companies, over one million employees" https://pando.com/2014/03/22/revealed-apple-and-googles-wage...

I dunno... I was a victim of this wage-fixing scheme, as were all of my coworkers at the time. And I don't know of a single one who would have preferred to have a union collectively negotiating wages. The whole scheme was that the companies stopped their recruiters from cold-calling each others' employees. That kept wages down by reducing the opportunities for people to get a better salary by moving between companies…

Why do you think that strong unions will fight for collective negotiation of wages?

Sweden has one of the strongest union system in the world and at the same time is one of the most entrepreneurial nations with high wages and lots of billionaires, salaries are lower than the US but they are still negotiated and not fixed by the union. The minimum wage for a specific job might be but apart from that I'm free to negotiate my salary. At the same time I have more days of vacation than the minimum 25 because of collective bargaining. I have requirements for minimum amount of natural light by my desk while at the same time can negotiate bonuses, shares, stock options or whatever because those aren't regulated by a collective agreement.

Kollektivavtal[0] are one of the backbone of how Swedish entrepreneurship works, to help society as whole and to give power to the weak link of the chain, it's an interesting model and one of the reasons why I chose to live here.

One of the ways it work is that by covering so many people the few companies that aren't covered by a collective agreement are naturally forced by the labour market to match the minimum, be it wages or benefits. Because unemployment is low people can shop around if there are better places to work.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collective_agreement

Re: Kickstarter employees vote to unionize

#664

Post by Bedon292 »

Seenso wrote: post #594
Bedon292 wrote: post #551

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While I agree if the 10x is making 120 and it moves to 150 that is good for everyone. But what if there is a 10x who actually makes 200. Would you ask them to take a pay cut so everyone is on that same 150? I think people will have a hard time with that. I feel people will always want more money for performing better, or get incentivised to perform at the exact right level of that compensation and not more. I am curi…

> While I agree if the 10x is making 120 and it moves to 150 that is good for everyone. But what if there is a 10x who actually makes 200. Would you ask them to take a pay cut so everyone is on that same 150? I think that one key aspect of your comment is that you're taking about a 10x. Which can be generalized into a question: should a solution be rejected if it leaves a well-off minority less well-off than they are…

Generally I think I agree. The well-off minority should not hold back changes for the betterment of the majority. I just wonder how that gets executed cleanly.

And you are right, compensation is definitely a form of recognition, and perhaps there are better ways to do it. Just not sure how you bestow that recognition in some reasonable way. So what other form of recognition conveys your actual value to a company? What else can be done here?

Re: Kickstarter employees vote to unionize

#665

Post by Pfhreak »

ancarda wrote: post #420
Pfhreak wrote: post #14

Congrats to the Kickstarter folks. Here's hoping this is the turn towards increased workers rights in the tech sector. Yes, this sector tends to pay fairly well, but that doesn't mean there aren't other areas to improve. From IP restrictions to overtime, oncall to transparency in promotions, there are countless workplace conditions I hear about needing to improve constantly.

transparency in promotions?

In a lot of companies there's a sense that the promotion process is secret, unfair, or doesn't evaluate everyone equally. Especially at big tech companies (at Amazon, for instance, I often heard a sense that it was 'impossible' to get to L6. Additional transparency can help people understand why they are/are not moving to the next level.)

Re: Kickstarter employees vote to unionize

#666

Post by biztos »

_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…

But doesn't the "not your job" thing exist in order to protect actual jobs worked by actual people from being arbitrarily "rationalized" out of existence, because hey someone else can do that? Potentially your job as well?

I get that it would be frustrating to not do your own hardware setup as a techie.

Just like it must be frustrating sometimes to not do your own lighting as a camera operator in Hollywood. But in Hollywood they've collectively decided they want an industry that supports actual lighting experts, and that there should be a career path from "junior lighting person" to "sought-after lighting expert" that isn't constantly at risk from self-appointed jacks of all trades and also bean counters.

Sure there are other negative aspects: it's hard to get started, a lot of production gets moved to other places (countries) where they don't have unions, etc.

But in principle it looks to me like unionized Hollywood does a pretty good job, considering the challenges, of enabling careers for a lot of the people who are necessary for good filmmaking but by themselves wouldn't have, say, the power of Brad Pitt (a member of the Screen Actor's Guild of course like almost all famous actors).

Re: Kickstarter employees vote to unionize

#667

Post by djrogers »

freeone3000 wrote: post #630
bearmcbearsly wrote: post #618

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I dunno... I was a victim of this wage-fixing scheme, as were all of my coworkers at the time. And I don't know of a single one who would have preferred to have a union collectively negotiating wages. The whole scheme was that the companies stopped their recruiters from cold-calling each others' employees. That kept wages down by reducing the opportunities for people to get a better salary by moving between companies…

Collective bargaining does not necessarily include collective negotiation of wages.

Can you point to an example of a large US union that doesn't collectively bargain wage scales?

Re: Kickstarter employees vote to unionize

#668

Post by awb »

dv_dt wrote: post #98
awb wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But the point is this part: "for one man who does absolutely nothing that is useful to amass a fortune of hundreds of millions of dollars" is irrelevant. Who has done this besides criminals? It all depends on your definition of "useful", but anyone who's made that much money legally has probably put in a bunch of work (or put in work to educate themselves to be able to make good decisions), or assumed a lot of risk i…

We also should not lionize wealth. There are many people who inherit a lot of money, have a family that has a business network, that have really contributed nothing but are massively wealthy. There are massively wealthy individuals who have collected value in one area, and use that wealth to negatively influence many other areas. We really should not give money that much of an advantage.

> We really should not give money that much of an advantage.

What do you suggest as an alternative?

Re: Kickstarter employees vote to unionize

#669

Post by sjg007 »

Hospital doctors are unionized. Professors are unionized. Plumbers are unionized Dirt movers are unionized Police are unionized Figherfighters are unionized Public employees are unionized Teachers are unionized Actors are unionized the NBA is unionized the NFL is unionized the MLB is unionized the NHL is unionized And yet, software engineers should not be ?

Re: Kickstarter employees vote to unionize

#670

Post by vangelis »

jcampbell1 wrote: post #549
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…

Unions have a terrible reputation when it comes to helping people in the minority. They have elections and tyranny of the majority is the natural outcome. Unions and Labor parties have a nasty history of racism. About 15 years ago I was present when a UAW rep called a gay salaried coworker the f-word at 150 decibels and the company could do nothing. He is now the plant union chairman. I am sure this union will start…

What's to stop the bros from running management where they have all the power?
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