101–110 of 175 posts
Here is a question: Why don't we have more smaller unions in America, but instead these GIANT mega unions? I get collective bargaining is better with more numbers, but it feels like there is no way to have a "new" union exist?
There's an enormous amount of infrastructure behind the big ones. They save up enough money to pay wages during strikes, they lobby heavily on the state and federal level, etc.
The recent flowering of union membership in the tech industry really warms my heart and makes me hope that this is the start of a pro-union resurgence nation-wide that reverses the conservative anti-union backlash that has dominated the US for decades. Unfortunately, conservatives have been mostly successful in gaining control of the courts, so expect union-busting measures to be rubber-stamped by them. There is like…
My concern as a libertarian is that unionizing tech will lead to calcification, decline of agility and innovation, and diversity of business structure. There's no question that the U.S. has been more innovative in tech than other countries over the past few decades. That's thanks to an entrepreneurial culture that encourages risk taking. Unions attempt to limit risk to employees. In doing so, they limit the agility o…
Interesting development. Glitch used to be Fog Creek, where Joel Spolsky talked of treating developers well (latest hardware, private offices etc) and paying them well. I wonder if the culture has changed and that's why the developers felt the need to create a union. [ https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2006/09/07/a-field-guide-to-d... ]
The recent flowering of union membership in the tech industry really warms my heart and makes me hope that this is the start of a pro-union resurgence nation-wide that reverses the conservative anti-union backlash that has dominated the US for decades. Unfortunately, conservatives have been mostly successful in gaining control of the courts, so expect union-busting measures to be rubber-stamped by them. There is like…
My concern as a libertarian is that unionizing tech will lead to calcification, decline of agility and innovation, and diversity of business structure. There's no question that the U.S. has been more innovative in tech than other countries over the past few decades. That's thanks to an entrepreneurial culture that encourages risk taking. Unions attempt to limit risk to employees. In doing so, they limit the agility o…
I know the ideal libertarian corporate structure has a single CEO making a huge salary controlling a vast collection of precariat workers who are paid the bare minimum to avoid them becoming homeless, or slightly less, but this is .. unpopular with everyone else.
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Why not? I would presume that would help with regard to union busting, scabs, outsourcing, etc.
> Why not? The same reason your criminal defense attorney doesn't sell themselves to the public prosecutor's office.
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> Game studios don't need unions, they need better management. If workers unionize [1], they can force bad management out, or curtail its badness, or in extreme cases - replace management with collective ownership. [1] - in an independent, non-corrupt union.
Or game developers can just hire non-union employees. The reality is that game development studios can get away with poor work life balance because there's people who are passionate about making games and are willing to accept poor working conditions to get a chance at their dream job. This Stage Actor's Guild exists, but aspiring actors still have to work second jobs to put a roof over their heads. When a job is a l…
I will say that the horror stories and bad press coming out of the video gaming industry will possibly have a chilling effect for new grads who would otherwise jump straight into it. Eventually management will run out of non-union workers to hire. Or the non-union workers themselves will demand better treatment.
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Sounds like as with our healthcare system and many other major problems in America, the problem isn't purely government vs. industry or liberal vs. conservative, but rather a mess of both.
It is a government problem, the government gave unions special rights that other organizations don't have. It's easy to fix, treat them like any other organization.
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I keep an open mind about unions. I hear they work well in many places (usually in Europe, for whatever reason), but many of us from blue collar American backgrounds only have experience with them protecting laggards and creating ridiculously inefficient working restrictions[^1][^2] which (presumably?) drive jobs overseas. I guess my questions for union proponents are: "Why do unions seem to work so poorly in the Uni…
I’m not sure why you’re getting downvoted, what you’re posting is accurate. I had a former employee who worked as a software developer at a company that had union electricians. One day he got a new monitor, but it had to sit idle on his desk until an electrician could come and plug it into the wall. He had to occasionally adjust controls that were slotted (potentiometers). He had a little screwdriver that he kept in…
The important thing to remember though is that bad experiences in of themselves are no reason to write off a category of organization, or to assume no improvement is possible. Where would our industry be if we just assumed riding taxis would always be a bad experience, or making payments?
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>If games industry is harsh, jump ship. If the industry you work in sucks, jump ship? That's not exactly great advice when you've spent decades honing your craft in a certain industry. Even if someone did genuinely want to switch, game development skills aren't necessarily easily transferable to other kinds of development, even if it helps. That advice makes sense if a company you works for sucks, but if an entire in…
> Even if someone did genuinely want to switch, game development skills aren't necessarily easily transferable to other kinds of development, even if it helps. This needs a lot of qualification. Even someone doing scripting probably has picked up coding fluency at least. Programming game engines and networking code is definitely tackling complex problems and could at least get a mid-level dev role. I think 3d asset c…
Game industry working conditions are generally significantly better than VFX and can be better than design firms looking for similar skillsets.
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Completely disagree. They aren't miners working in horrible conditions where that's the only job in town. Game developers are highly talented, skilled individuals. There is a high demand for such people outside the game industry they choose to stay there. I'm a developer in the finance industry. Worked in a few other sectors too. If games industry is harsh, jump ship. Abused? Get real, the working populations outside…
Unions don't require graded pay scales. You don't have to be a miner to be systemically taken advantage of. If one employer offers an unfair employment contract, you can try another company. If every employer offers an unfair employment contract, you don't have the option of another company. I can name a few clauses that favor only the company that are present at every software employment contract in almost every sta…
This is exacerbated by employers either overtly colluding with each other (as in the lawsuit several years ago over tech companies having an agreement not to hire each other's employees) or simply setting compensation to "industry averages" and following "industry best practices".
To the extent that every big tech company behaves the same as every other big tech company, there's effectively only one big tech employer.