Live data from Hacker News

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

theintercept.com

321–330 of 500 posts

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

#321
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…

> Are the various Hollywood unions perfect? No, they're not.

How are they not perfect?

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

#322
post #288

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unions would be much more attractive if US were an open shop country. Instead, we’re closed shop, which means that, once a union is in place, you can’t choose to join a different union. This routinely leads to situations where corrupt unions abuse their own members. For an example of how this works in practice, look at the UAW’s conduct with UC’s grad students. Years ago, they negotiated salary caps for grad students…

I did not think all union contracts where closed shop in the USA. And this case why on earth where professional roles being represented by an Auto workers union.

I don't know, but I go to school at Michigan State and many of my professors are in the UAW.

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

#323
post #316
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…

I don't think it's necessarily based on misconceptions about what unions are, but also their own experience and from what they hear from people they know. We've already seen in this thread very different personal experiences with unions, often based on where they are. e.g. folks in Europe seems to have mostly positive interactions, where as folks in the US negative. I personally don't want an union in my work place.…

It’s usually a symptom more than the cause.

Unions are formed in environments where people feel it’d bad enough to pay the price.

The same way if we looked at jobs hiring bodyguards, most would look pretty dangerous, but we wouldn’t blame the bodyguards.

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

#324
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…

I'll never forget the union at a convention center that forced vendors to pay them to move anything from their own car they couldn't carry. Nothing but extortionist bullies squeezing every cent of protection money they could out of the people there who actually make things and add value to the world. In contrast, these union employees were nothing but parasites. They did nothing the vendors couldn't do themselves, who WANTED to do it themselves and were fully capable of with their own dollies and carts but weren't allowed to for no other reason than greed. They could have just stayed out of the way and still gotten (over) paid by the convention center but that wasn't good enough. Most people including me justifiably hated those selfish monsters. Name and shame, this was at the Baltimore Convention Center.

And you hear about this all the time in other workplaces. Not allowed to move a monitor to the next desk over because the union guy has to be the one to do it. Not allowed to move a piece of equipment out of the way until the union guy finishes his lunch break and does it.

Unions can be good but unions like this are so bad for everyone around them that it cancels out any good.

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

#325
post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

> Are there any other supposedly-good organisations that are toxic in the US? Definitely. > Political parties? Check. There are only 2, and cynicism towards both of them is pretty high, as neither really represents the people. > News? Check as well. See Fox News, which actually delivers "entertainment" disguised as news. > Boy scouts? Probably not, but who knows? Disclaimer: Not an American, just a Canadian that foll…

> > Boy scouts?

> Probably not, but who knows?

Just a long history of homophobia there.

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

#326
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…

I don’t think any of those examples are really misconceptions. You even admit that many people have this experience with “blue collar” unions. Most developers are not foolish enough to think they are immune to these foibles. We have a lot more in common with blue collar workers than big name actors.

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

#327
post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> union is something the workers create and run I just assume that it's almost never going to be the case. It might look like it's created by worker, but it's created by a sub group of workers which is unhappy with a status quo. This effort will be led by even smaller sub group of activists that have a drive and skillset to organise and weasel into a leadership positions. Worker run union seems to be even more implau…

Unions are run by the members

In theory. In practice unions are run by union leadership. Who are elected. But then again so is Congress and the President - and we know how that works out.

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

#328

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not really your main point but there are quite a few US "metro areas" with fairly sparse layout/wide scope, so I think public transit actually is a harder problem in the US than it is in e.g. Europe. That said even the cities that don't have this excuse tend to have mediocre at best transit here (for example Boston).

You would expect that the surplus of space in many US metropolitan areas would make it considerably easier to install and operate metro transit lines, but this seems not to be the case. I suspect the systemic bias towards road users is much more of a problem than geographical scale.

Dedicated lines need density for them to make financial sense. We tend to not have that (except where we do, but those places already have lines)

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

#329

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not just unions though. The IT department in a company I worked for had similar slow processes. I needed more RAM in my desktop, to process really huge log files. "It'll take about a month". I could have gone to Best Buy, bought what I needed, installed it, and been back at work in an hour. Sigh. So I limped along. A month later, along comes the new RAM and gets installed. But I was long done with the project that ne…

This happens in non-union jobs. Your issue is not with unions, but with bureaucracy, which is fair. To blame unions is not.

But there is a direct correlation with unions and an increase in bureaucracy.

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

#330

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don’t get into the Hollywood unions until you put in hundreds of hours of set time, most ADs I know don’t get the corresponding benefits until they are about 30.

Why's that? In the Nordics you can already join an union when you're a student without a job yet, and many people do.

Nordic union != US union
Post reply on HN