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Kickstarter employees vote to unionize

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Re: Kickstarter employees vote to unionize

#811

Post by dang »

aty268 wrote: post #199

Absolutely pathetic for both sides. If you don't like your white collar tech job, go somewhere else. It's not factory work where you're paid way less to do the same thing wherever you go. You make yourselves and your company look weak in doing this. This is why the rest of the United States thinks tech is full of a bunch of entitled pricks.

Please follow the HN guidelines when posting here. Lashing out like this not only damages the commons, it discredits what you're saying, so it's neither in your interest as a community member nor as an individual.

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

Re: Kickstarter employees vote to unionize

#812

Post by PeterisP »

mdonahoe wrote: post #411
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…

"Athletes unionize" is one of the better arguments I've heard for why devs should. I'm curious to learn more about the origins of the players' union.

Hollywood actors and screenwriters are also unionized.

Re: Kickstarter employees vote to unionize

#813

Post by manfredo »

papreclip wrote: post #453
Mvandenbergh wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think most Americans mostly have experience with blue collar unions, often ones that represent relatively unskilled labour. Consider though that even in the US, there are plenty of unions (or things which are effectively unions) which represent highly differentiated and skilled professions. Notably, directors, actors, and writers in American film and television are unionised. That does not mean that everyone is pai…

AMA and ABA are protectionist and "America-first", though. The tech unionization movement is full of people who favor open borders and the like

> The tech unionization movement is full of people who favor open borders and the like

In my experience, tech unionists fall into one of two camps:

* The progressive camp, which is largely what you describe. Likes open border, diversity hiring and the like.

* The protectionist camp. Wants to limit immigration, require CS degrees, and clamp down on H1B hires.

The former seems to care more about influencing the politics of the company. The latter is more the traditional union stance, which is to increase the price of labor by restricting the supply.

Re: Kickstarter employees vote to unionize

#814

Post by prawn »

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…

I'm not familiar with union laws, but couldn't those workers form a union that did exactly what they wanted and none of what they didn't want?

Re: Kickstarter employees vote to unionize

#815

Post by umvi »

jrochkind1 wrote: post #699
umvi wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IMO with companies, the stakes are not so high that democracies (i.e. unions) need to be implemented right from inception. If a company demonstrates repeated abuse of employees, then sure, retrofit it with a union to keep future abuses in check. But unions have several significant downsides too, and for companies with a clean record, strong leaders with a vision, good pay and benefits, high morale, etc. I don't see a…

If you haven't been in a position where workplace tyranny and abuse of power don't seem so high stakes, you are fortunate, but your experience is not universal or necessarily typical.

Not high stakes as in you won't be killed, your family won't be shipped off to a labor camp, etc. if the company president turns out to be a malevolent dictator.

You really think it's worth it to encumber all companies with unions because of a few bad eggs?

Re: Kickstarter employees vote to unionize

#816

Post by yibg »

Gwypaas wrote: post #544
yibg wrote: post #431

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That sounds like a much better relationship. But in that case isn’t the role of the Union almost redundant? I mean what’s stopping the workers and management from just having a dialog without a union? Another thing is I don’t want the same X% increase as everyone else. What if I’m better or worse employee? Why should I get the same output for variable input?

Just to take Sweden as an example. For public companies with more than 25 employees the workers have the right to two members and two substitutes on the companies board. Usually these come from the union working with the company. The goal of this is to create a dialog of how the company is run and similar on every level of the company. Regarding your question about the salaries, that is mostly blue-collar work here.…

Maybe the differences between how unions are implemented. I've worked at a white collar union shop (electrical engineering) where salaries are collectively negotiated. i.e. x% increase per year. The net result at this particular place has been that outside of promotions, salary increases are tied to tenure.

Re: Kickstarter employees vote to unionize

#817

Post by yumraj »

sokoloff wrote: post #794
yumraj wrote: post #706

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Equal pay referred to between equally qualified men, women and other genders.

Not clear why a talented and hard working person of one gender would be opposed that a similar person of another gender get same pay?

It did not refer to people making unequal contributions.

Re: Kickstarter employees vote to unionize

#818

Post by erikpukinskis »

Mirioron wrote: post #391
mason55 wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Unions, in my experience, exist to help keep mediocre, unmotivated employees employed. One has no incentive to excel, as promotions are based on years "served", much like prison. There is nothing inherent in unions that make them operate like that.

There is nothing inherent that makes dictatorships violent. Yet they are. But maybe there is something inherent that makes them violent after all? It's simply not obvious at a glance that they're going to be violent. I'm not sure that there's nothing inherent in unions that makes them promote mediocrity. There could be - the fact that unions add more layers to the bureaucracy and slow things down could very well have…

Violence is inherent in statehood, it’s not specific to dictatorships.

Re: Kickstarter employees vote to unionize

#819

Post by 8note »

sokoloff wrote: post #794
yumraj wrote: post #706

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

*engineers who are the best negotiators, rather than most talented or hard working

Re: Kickstarter employees vote to unionize

#820

Post by herbstein »

chasd00 wrote: post #705
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…

if you want to unionize go ahead, i'm not though. I believe a lot of tech works would prefer not to be union and have to deal with all the BS plus dues. I can negotiate on my own pretty well so knock yourself out but i won't be signing up.

> I can negotiate on my own pretty well

No, you can't. A union can collectively say "no programming will be done on behalf of the company if you don't give us what we want". You can't do that.

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