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Kickstarter employees vote to unionize

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Re: Kickstarter employees vote to unionize

#791

Post by epicureanideal »

duxup wrote: post #556
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…

Athletic unions are generally there because the top leagues are monolithic, there aren't other places to go with similar compensation. It's sort of a different playing field.

In tech the monolithic nature arises differently.

The Top Companies pay X, and that sets the ceiling for most people's wages. The difficulty of getting into Top Companies means that most other companies know they can pay somewhat less than that.

Although it's claimed there's a talent shortage and in theory that would cause engineers to be able to negotiate for large salaries, most businesses just don't think that deeply about it. You can't negotiate with someone who just doesn't care that the math works out in their favor. Many managers in my experience have anchor points on salaries that they just will not go beyond regardless of the quality of the candidate. The salary spread for junior to super-super-senior developer is only about 50% (100k-150k or 120k-200k), whereas the productivity difference may commonly be much greater.

Lastly, there is de facto price fixing. Human Resources Departments do "salary surveys" of what all the other companies are paying and then try to pay their employees around the same amount. Even though this isn't official "collusion", the effect is the same. And if 1 or 2 small companies buck the trend, it doesn't change the overall market.

Re: Kickstarter employees vote to unionize

#792

Post by gamblor956 »

jkingsbery wrote: post #530
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…

It's really not a fair comparison: we think of athletes as making large salaries, but beyond the stars, many who make the highest level professional league will make a league minimum salary over a relatively short career, as opposed to white collar workers who typically make 6 figure salaries over multiple decades. That sports leagues are actually very relevant. See for example from https://theundefeated.com/features…

Anyone who thinks that players' unions are suppressing athlete salaries doesn't remember how little athletes made before the unions negotiated higher scales.

Even the best NFL athletes used to have day jobs. The 2014 minimum base salary for MLS players was just $48,500 (which increased to $7x,xxx in 2019 as a result of the union renegotiating pay scales). On average (median or mode), a professional soccer player will make less than an entry-level programmer in the valley, despite a significantly smaller potential workforce.

Re: Kickstarter employees vote to unionize

#793

Post by maest »

throwaway894345 wrote: post #714
kerkeslager wrote: post #681

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Okay, pay me the money you were going to spend on snacks and the money you were going to pay the person who you pay to fetch the snacks, and I'll go fetch my own snacks or order them off the internet to my desk. It's arguable whether it's actually a perk for me to spend 8 hours in a row at my desk, but even if we accept that claim at face value, it's still not a significant factor in any decisions I make. Perks are t…

> Okay, pay me the money you were going to spend on snacks and the money you were going to pay the person who you pay to fetch the snacks, and I'll go fetch my own snacks or order them off the internet to my desk. Your office manager (or whoever) orders snacks from a contractor in bulk once a month (they don't make N GrubHub/etc individual orders every day). If they give you your fraction of that back, it wouldn't co…

I feel like this conversation got massively side-tracked. Are you arguing in good faith that the amount of value some snacks provide to an employee is meaningful when compared to the other things the GP mentioned?

Re: Kickstarter employees vote to unionize

#794

Post by sokoloff »

yumraj wrote: post #706
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…

> 1. Why do tech workers need a union? 1. Fight ageism (every 20 year old today will grow up someday) 2. Fight open office layout (my opinion, may not be shared by everyone) 3. Fight for equal pay, discriminations of various sorts 4. Fight for reasonable share in success and against the massive differential between CxO and others' pay 5. Resist outsourcing where it makes sense ....... the list goes on ....

Many of the most talented or hardest working engineers might rationally be opposed to equal pay measures.

Re: Kickstarter employees vote to unionize

#795

Post by Igelau »

Herrin wrote: post #677
djrogers wrote: post #667

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

The Screen Actors Guild, and the players unions for most professional sports (NFL, NBA, MLB, etc). They recognize that their members have different levels of talent, and allow the stars to make more, while still ensuring basic rights for every member.

You can't get a job in a SAG affiliated production until enough SAG members are hired, but you can't become a SAG member until you've been in a SAG affiliated production.

I'm not an actor, but on the outside that Catch 22 stinks of Old Boy Network tactics.

Re: Kickstarter employees vote to unionize

#796

Post by gamblor956 »

brianwawok wrote: post #763
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…

A union also tends to mean that you get paid for the # of years you worked your job, not how good you are. This is a good thing for the bottom 50% of workers, and a bad thing for the top 50% of workers. Does this union do anything to address that? Is pay still fully merit based?

This is completely false.

Union wage agreements are based on what union members want.

For blue-collar unions, this usually means seniority-based scales.

For white-collar unions, this usually means experience-based scales (which differs from seniority because it's not job-specific; any job in the field counts).

For talent-based unions like SAG or NFLPA, this means minimum scales with no cap on maximum potential earnings.

Re: Kickstarter employees vote to unionize

#797

Post by manfredo »

hello_moto wrote: post #523
kerkeslager wrote: post #415

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From the workers' perspective, why should we care exactly? That sounds like a you problem. If you aren't able to pay your workers, I'm not sure why you think you shouldn't just go out of business. People aren't obligated to work for substandard wages so you can get rich. I certainly think that there are a lot of ways in which the playing field needs to be evened between small and big companies, so that the playing fi…

I think businesses are able to pay their workers, just not absurd amount of money that FAANG pays their respective workers. We're talking about 85k vs 200k for junior engineers here and probably 150k vs 500k for senior engineers. Are you suggesting that small businesses should just die? > I certainly think that there are a lot of ways in which the playing field needs to be evened between small and big companies, so t…

If they can't afford the price of labor why should the business continue to exist? If the going rate for a plumber is $100 an hour, why should I be surprised if I get no responses when I'm only willing to pay $40?

Re: Kickstarter employees vote to unionize

#798

Post by zpallin »

jariel wrote: post #770
zpallin wrote: post #473

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You should contact Human Agenda and join their Mondragon Trip ( http://www.humanagenda.net/tour-the-mondragon-cooperatives/ ). Mondragon, as you probably know, is the home of the world's largest worker-coop federation's HQ and its namesake. Through Human Agenda you can get a tour of their HQ and potentially a chance to meet worker owners and see their facilities (a number of which are in the town.) You can also check…

Mondragon is an ethnocentric, nationalist organization with strong political orientations. It's not a general example of what anyone would think of as a regular cooperative. If a small part of Vermont where 'its own country' and constantly under threat of economic annexation from the US or Canada, well, people might organize differently than they do in California.

That's an extreme perspective.

Mondragon is about as "nationalist" and "ethnocentric" as Ford, Samsung, or Sony. I'm not sure what "strong political orientations" is supposed to mean; I can easily point to just about any international corporation and find evidence of strong political "orientations" expressed by the board or its corporate executives and evidence of the corporation pursuing their political interests as well.

Also, Mondragon cooperative is regarded as a world leader in worker coops, so unless you're talking about people who know absolutely nothing about cooperatives, I think Mondragon remains a pretty "general" example of what's possible for cooperative business. In any case, it's certainly not clear what you think is a "regular cooperative."

> If a small part of Vermont where 'its own country' and constantly under threat of economic annexation from the US or Canada, well, people might organize differently than they do in California.

Well, Basque is not under threat of economic annexation from Spain; it's already annexed. People in Basque do often oppose the Spanish government for nationalist reasons, but it's just one of many reasons considering that the internal struggle in Spain is a country-wide issue and not reserved to Basque. And nationalism in the region is hardly evidence that Mondragon itself is a nationalistic entity. Lastly, it's very unlikely that a region "under threat of annexation" would choose to develop cooperatives to maintain economic autonomy. The reason Mondragon succeeded was primarily because of the influence of Arizmendiarrieta, and he spent around 10 years trying to convince people to start a cooperative in Basque (in other words, people in Basque did not automatically acclimate to the idea of a worker owned cooperative.) Arizmendiarrieta himself was not from Basque and did not speak Euskera natively, and did not entreat his followers to see cooperatives as a uniquely Basque enterprise, hence why it is now an international organization rather than secluded to the northern Spanish region.

Additionally, worker owned cooperatives aren't unique to Basque, Spain, or even Europe. And it's not like everyone in Basque worships Mondragon either. I am no expert on this, but I've been to Basque, visited Mondragon, and interviewed a number of people on the subject of cooperatives in Spain. From what I can tell, your perspective here is quite warped from reality.

Re: Kickstarter employees vote to unionize

#799

Post by mcantelon »

djannzjkzxn wrote: post #635
thu2111 wrote: post #563

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The article is ambiguous, but I guess those organising the union were taking the side of leaving the project up? Or is the union demanding total freedom of speech in the terms of service? I'm guessing not. Doesn't that bother you, at least a little bit? How can whether or not to leave up "always punch nazis" be the union's signature issue? Unions are meant to fight for the common man against the elites. alwayspunchna…

> Given how many ordinary working class Americans voted for Trump, painting them all as Nazis and then insisting that such a fundraise remains live would seem to be the opposite of what unions historically stood for. The Nazis won a plurality of the popular vote, so it’s not exactly a great distinguishing factor for Trump.

>The Nazis won a plurality of the popular vote, so it’s not exactly a great distinguishing factor for Trump.

The distinguishing factor is that Trump's admin doesn't actually resemble a Nazi regime.

Re: Kickstarter employees vote to unionize

#800

Post by coredog64 »

toasterlovin wrote: post #359
Ididntdothis wrote: post #338

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would think that in well run ethical companies the relationship with unions would also be harmonious. That’s at least how it works in Germany with unions like IG Metall. Seems to me that problems mostly arise when management becomes unreasonable.

Or when the union leadership becomes unreasonable.

Mentioned this before, but I would posit that US law essentially requires a minimally effective union to have an adversarial relationship with the company. Every member has to get equal protection, and unfortunately, not every member deserves it. (Not a knock on unions — every large organization has its share of lackwits)
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