New Facebook tool allows employers to suppress “unionize” in workplace chat • Hacker News Board

Re: New Facebook tool allows employers to suppress “unionize” in workplace chat

#261

Post by tomatotomato37 » Fri, Jun 12, 2020, 2:28 PM UTC

take_a_breath wrote: post #171

koheripbal wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> ...a union does is balance the leverage. Without them, the employer has all of it. Maybe that's true of low labor jobs, but Employees in six figure jobs have tremendous power. One of the reasons companies try to create anti-potching rules is exactly to try to get back some power. The unemployment rate in the US was 4% prior to covid, and even lower for tech and white collar desk jobs. This issue simply must take a…

== This issue simply must take a back seat to bigger problems in America.== What if labor rights is actually the single biggest problem that drives all the others? I can think of things like a higher minimum wage, paid sick leave, anti-discrimination in hiring, maternity/paternity leave, and guaranteed PTO that could be helped by unionization to make us a stronger country, collectively.

Except it doesn't. Labor rights does not have an appreciable affect on racial discrimination, environmental concerns, infrastructure, immigration concerns, defense against the passive/active actions against other hostile nation-states, or a lot of other things.

And no, leveraging a union to force your company to drop a controversial customer has absolutely nothing to do with labor rights, that's just taking advantage of a organization your tribe happens to control

Re: New Facebook tool allows employers to suppress “unionize” in workplace chat

#262

Post by aspenmayer » Fri, Jun 12, 2020, 2:29 PM UTC

ttwinder wrote: post #233

dijit wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the same argument I see americans make a lot. "Unions are bad!", no, the concept is fine, you have some bad ones. "Police are bad!", no, the concept is fine, yours are just untrained and overburdened. "Public transport is bad, I need a car!", no, the concept is fine, you just have bad public transport and that forms your opinion.

What's sorely missing from this discussion is the understanding that different cultures are differently suited for each system of government. There's simply no reason that what works in Sweden will work in the US, or China, or Zimbabwe, etc. The last two generations of western civilization were raised, out of good intentions, to be culture blind, and now with what's happening in the country we are seeing the result.

This kind of thinking reminds me of biotruths, eugenics, social Darwinism, and other authoritarian concepts which seek to explain why it’s okay to have inequality between and within countries.

We should seek to raise rights and standards of living for all people. The focus on whether other people have cultures compatible with specific forms of government seems very suspect. Such talk keeps people down. Self-determination is a human right; therefore, it is a society’s right to determine government and culture. Your focus on culture is very strange; it suggests that the culture is a thing that justifies itself independent of the people. The culture is a thing people live and do. Your phrasing makes culture seem insidious, seeking to resist changes to status quo. Some monoculture advocates reject alternative cultures and seek to outcompete them. By implying there are singular cultures, you wipe away self-determination.

Re: New Facebook tool allows employers to suppress “unionize” in workplace chat

#263

Post by api » Fri, Jun 12, 2020, 2:29 PM UTC

dijit wrote: post #175

jcims wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For years now I've seen comments like this from Europeans every time unions come up in conversation online. You all need need to come work for a large union in the US. They are just not the same thing. I've had direct or indirect experience with Teamsters, CWA, NEA, IBEW and UBC. You can dress it up however you like but there are definitely 'union jobs' with all of the connotation that brings. Yes there are benefits…

This is the same argument I see americans make a lot. "Unions are bad!", no, the concept is fine, you have some bad ones. "Police are bad!", no, the concept is fine, yours are just untrained and overburdened. "Public transport is bad, I need a car!", no, the concept is fine, you just have bad public transport and that forms your opinion.

I hate to use the most cliche word from California startup culture, but... maybe someone needs to... umm... disrupt unions?

Could you start a new kind of union as a kind of non-profit startup?

If I wanted to do this I'd leverage modern information technology to create covert communication channels for organizing and leverage big data, machine learning, and game theory to drive organization and bargaining strategies. You could apply pressure across supply chains, not just in individual industries, and you could really be quite a pain in the ass. Cambridge Analytica for the working class?

Also ditch the work rules and other antiquated industrial era ideas. Just go for pure financial and quality of life outcome. Work with industries if they're willing to play ball, but be a major pain in the ass when they don't. Negotiate, you know.

Honestly the hacker in me would be tempted if I had the time, skills, background, and connections. It would be a chance to wear a black hat and feel good about it. :)

If you did this you'd also have to be damn serious about opsec and tradecraft. When you threaten to increase labor costs, the gloves come off. I'd be about as worried about security doing this as I'd be running a dark web drug market.

Re: New Facebook tool allows employers to suppress “unionize” in workplace chat

#264

Post by FuckButtons » Fri, Jun 12, 2020, 2:34 PM UTC

jcims wrote: post #164

dijit wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, sorry to be blunt but that's fucking stupid. Contrast that with my experience with Unions in Sweden; and that is that they basically don't exist except to ensure that workers rights are not infringed. So they'll be involved in a termination, or help negotiate overtime pay. There is no such thing as a "union job", it's just having what's referred to as a "collective agreement".

For years now I've seen comments like this from Europeans every time unions come up in conversation online. You all need need to come work for a large union in the US. They are just not the same thing. I've had direct or indirect experience with Teamsters, CWA, NEA, IBEW and UBC. You can dress it up however you like but there are definitely 'union jobs' with all of the connotation that brings. Yes there are benefits…

Here’s the thing, if you set up a new union, you don’t have to follow the same model as the ones that don’t work well in the us, you can follow the ones that do. You also don’t have the same incentives or personnel as the unions you mentioned, an engineering union would look quite different just in terms of the personality types of the people involved if nothing else.

Re: New Facebook tool allows employers to suppress “unionize” in workplace chat

#265

Post by BiteCode_dev » Fri, Jun 12, 2020, 2:38 PM UTC

thesausageking wrote: post #243

BiteCode_dev wrote: post #27

Clearly, they don't play online games with a chat lobby. They would have quickly learned that such features is useless, as it's easily bypassed: - in novembre, we should cost them the electrons. Ionize! - It's time we u_nionize - un10n1z3 people ! - let's fetch the U:\N\I\O\N\I\Z\E file - all go to http://unio.ni/ze - so we should do the u-thingy - what about talking to Mr Ulysse Nionize - never too late to ｕｎᎥｏｎｉｚｅ…

Facebook has one of the strongest AI research groups in the world led by Yann LeCun. They could build models that are quick good at finding all of these and similar versions. And it doesn't need to be perfect. If you're an employee who may face severe repercussions if you mention unions, are you going to risk your job based on whether the filter catches your post?

The best AI in the world cannot currently understand the political and cultural context. Make up a slang and you win.

But the cost to process every single message with a powerful AI just to censor bad words would be way too much.

> And it doesn't need to be perfect. If you're an employee who may face severe repercussions if you mention unions, are you going to risk your job based on whether the filter catches your post?

You are conflating censoring and detecting. This is en different matter entirely which would necessitate a whole new debate.

Re: New Facebook tool allows employers to suppress “unionize” in workplace chat

#266

Post by jcims » Fri, Jun 12, 2020, 2:41 PM UTC

Frondo wrote: post #258

jcims wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results." - Michael Scott We're not going to get different results when we form a union in the US unless we make an attempt to get different results.

Yes, like dijit said, something modeled after the Screen Actors Guild. You rockstars get your million dollar salaries, no one gets overworked.

Great point. Guilds in general are a great way to reboot collective bargaining in the US. That thought occurred to me earlier this year and I completely forgot about it in this thread.

Re: New Facebook tool allows employers to suppress “unionize” in workplace chat

#267

Post by Angostura » Fri, Jun 12, 2020, 2:46 PM UTC

koheripbal wrote: post #61

objclxt wrote: post #25

I used to work at Facebook, and it was always interesting to me to see just how many engineers were actively against - aghast, even - at the idea of unions. Whenever it would come up on the internal boards the arguments were usually along the lines of: * "People who don't deserve to be paid more will get more money under a union" * "I'll be paid less under a union" * "Unions will slow us down, and we'll become more b…

> Unions will slow us down, and we'll become more bureaucratic Anyone who's actually had to deal with a union can agree with this point. At our company, a number of job functions are union-only work, meaning it is a violation of the union contract for any non-union employee to perform that work. In principle, you might think that makes sense, until you need to get something very simple done - that you are willing to…

> At our company, a number of job functions are union-only work, meaning it is a violation of the union contract for any non-union employee to perform that work.

This is known as a 'closed shop' in the UK. Closed shops are not synonymous or required for unions to function.

Re: New Facebook tool allows employers to suppress “unionize” in workplace chat

#268

Post by ttwinder » Fri, Jun 12, 2020, 2:52 PM UTC

aspenmayer wrote: post #262

ttwinder wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's sorely missing from this discussion is the understanding that different cultures are differently suited for each system of government. There's simply no reason that what works in Sweden will work in the US, or China, or Zimbabwe, etc. The last two generations of western civilization were raised, out of good intentions, to be culture blind, and now with what's happening in the country we are seeing the result.

This kind of thinking reminds me of biotruths, eugenics, social Darwinism, and other authoritarian concepts which seek to explain why it’s okay to have inequality between and within countries. We should seek to raise rights and standards of living for all people. The focus on whether other people have cultures compatible with specific forms of government seems very suspect. Such talk keeps people down. Self-determina…

>kind of thinking reminds me of biotruths, eugenics, social Darwinism, and other authoritarian concepts which seek to explain why it’s okay to have inequality between and within countries.

I don't know where to start with this comment. Perhaps you should stop grouping arguments by stereotype.

At an individual level, different people require different interventions, because they have different personalities. Some people can handle responsibility. Some people need financial motivation. Some people respond to love. Others best learn through violence or fear (I was far too smart to listen to my parents until they threatened a spanking, for example).

If you take all of these different personalities and force them to live under together under a single set of rules, regardless of whether their needs are met, they will compete, if not for resources them for social clout. It is human nature. Particularly in a universe where resources are scarce and time is short.

Though large scale human interaction has a normalizing effect, within the high dimensional space of human belief and behavior there is ample room for these same micro behaviors to be reflected by macroscale cultural trends. And, similarly, because the "ideal" form of government depends ultimately on widely varying beliefs, forcing multiple peoples with significant cultural distance will inevitably lead to inequality and clash - this is not a statement of superiority, sand though it can be used as part justification for some of the antisocial beliefs you raised, that doesn't mean it isn't untrue or that these real problems that we are seeing emerge across the world will simply go away if we ignore them. This pattern has been repeated across time and space and is an unnecessary source of unacknowledged strife in the modern world.

Re: New Facebook tool allows employers to suppress “unionize” in workplace chat

#269

Post by willyg123 » Fri, Jun 12, 2020, 2:57 PM UTC

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #226

maxsilver wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The alternative is to force everyone to unionize - and that's got its own problems. Does it really, though? Because literally every one of your complaints above would be solved, if your companies employees stopped actively fighting the union, and just simply joined it instead.

These rules impact the customers, too, not just the employees. Have you ever been involved with trade show setup? The trade show unions have elaborate rules about work attendees can and cannot do for themselves. At low-budget startups, we built our trade show booths ourselves. We had to carefully read the union rules during booth design so we made sure we could install our lighting without the use of a ladder and too…

> Sure enough, on the trade show floor we had a union member watching us to make sure we didn’t get up on a ladder or use tools when installing certain pieces of equipment. Presumably they were getting paid to monitor us and ensure we didn’t actually do any of the forbidden work ourselves.

I'm trying to think of how this is different than how the mob operates but I'm at a loss.

Re: New Facebook tool allows employers to suppress “unionize” in workplace chat

#270

Post by dsjoerg » Fri, Jun 12, 2020, 3:01 PM UTC

mcv wrote: post #114

michaelt wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The union is something the workers create and run. If they think a union they create would be bad, what are they saying about themselves? They think a union would be a bit like a homeowners association - in principle owned and run by them and never acting against their interests, but in practice a threat as much as an opportunity.

US homeowners association are another great example that doesn't match European experience. Why do Americans turn everything that's supposed to be in their own interest, into a vehicle for power abuse? That seems to be the recurring story in American unions, as well as homeowner associations. Are there any other supposedly-good organisations that are toxic in the US? Political parties? News? Boy scouts?

As an American I strongly agree with your insight, and independently arrived at it. It is an underlying cultural issue -- a lack of community spirit that is relatively widespread.

It is a universal human tendency that is strongly in effect here at the current time and place.