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

theintercept.com

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

#441

Post by yibg »

hrktb wrote: post #414
yibg wrote: post #333

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps, but even so I still wouldn't want to work at a place that requires bodyguards, even if bodyguards are not the cause of the danger. Without getting into the details of cause and effect, look at it from the perspective of the current employees. Currently it's a nice place to work. Contrasting with previous experiences with unions where they've been terrible experiences to work at. Why would I want this kind of…

> Currently it’s a nice place to work If they’re seriously discussing unionizing, perhaps that assumption is to be revisited ?

Yea could be. But this particular thread started with how some employees are opposed to unionizing. Views on this will be personal, some will support and some will oppose. I’m just giving one perspective on why some (like myself although I don’t work at fb) oppose unions.

eg I would oppose unionizing at my current place of employment because I’m generally happy and feel having an union will make things worse based on past experience with unions.

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

#442

Post by notnap »

starpilot wrote: post #284
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…

Aerospace engineers at Boeing with PhD's are part of the union SPEEA. It seems to work well for them.

I wonder if significant part of their compensation is stock as in FAANG companies

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

#443

Post by notnap »

mcv wrote: post #120
kaibee wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have no doubt in my mind that most programmers would at least listen to the pitch if it was to join a guild.

And yet guilds are traditionally vehicles for monopoly and control. All the things Americans complain about with regards to unions, are actually guild-like behaviour.

The good old game of term switcheroo, Americans like to play it a lot

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

#444

Post by notnap »

eeZah7Ux wrote: post #144
0xy wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If a company isn't meeting your salary expectations then leaving for a better offer is itself a negotiating tactic in a way.

...which only proves the point that people are not rewarded for their skills and efforts. Instead: being good at doing interviews including "looking the part", being strong negotiators, changing jobs often.

Free Society doesn’t benefit much from the hammer that does the nails the best of the best. Society benefits more from the good hammer that finds the right nails to handle. Thus, rewards the latter behaviour more

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

#445

Post by mennis16 »

trowawee wrote: post #429
mennis16 wrote: post #301

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 have your causation backwards there. If you look at virtually every metro area in the US, the history goes: dense core -> policy decisions to favor cars above everything else, usually with a healthy dose of racism tossed in -> suburban sprawl.

That's definitely possible, I don't know enough about the history, but now that there is a lot of established sprawl it does have a causal effect in discouraging public transit.

Also, in the context of comparing to other countries, I would think many did not have the land available to spread out in the same way at the time cars were available? I'm just curious how much of this may be related to the timing of the US

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

#446

Post by username90 »

guerrilla wrote: post #154
koheripbal wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is how unions work in America - and why we hate them. People throw the word "union" around a lot with their support, not knowing that it's not the same everywhere.

Thta's the responsability of the participants. It sounds like they've been complacent and they allowing people to represent them who do not represent them.

> Thta's the responsability of the participants.

No, it is the responsibility of the laws surrounding unions in USA. They give ample of protections ensuring you can't easily oust or change bad unions. Even worse the left is championing anti worker laws like banning "right to work", a right that everyone in EU has which protects workers from bad unions, but somehow in USA "right to work" is anti union.

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

#447

Post by triceratops »

creaghpatr wrote: post #130
triceratops wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> game development...is notoriously abusive and can get away with it because of a fresh supply of enthusiastic young people. Hollywood also has an endless supply of enthusiastic young people. To me this sounds like an argument in favor of unionizing the game dev industry.

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.

Ok...sorry I'm not seeing the relevance of that.

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

#448

Post by boomboomsubban »

appleflaxen wrote: post #418
morpheuskafka wrote: post #411

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In US law, closed shop refers to something different, which is illegal. It means that you have to be a member of the union to be hired in the first place at a certain employer/job site. However, what is allowed is to require people who are hired to join the union, with the exception that if they do not want to join the union, they can opt to pay only "financial core" dues, to compensate the union for its work negotia…

that "lesser amount" is often close to 95% of the union amount, though, so you still end up financially supporting an entity that you disagree with, and not being able to use the full resources they provide. If you are philosophically opposed to unions, you shouldn't have to pay them at all.

>If you are philosophically opposed to unions, you shouldn't have to pay them at all

You don't. Work somewhere else.

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

#449

Post by dependenttypes »

trowawee wrote: post #426
appleflaxen wrote: post #418

Earlier quoted context omitted.

that "lesser amount" is often close to 95% of the union amount, though, so you still end up financially supporting an entity that you disagree with, and not being able to use the full resources they provide. If you are philosophically opposed to unions, you shouldn't have to pay them at all.

If you benefit from the union's work, you should absolutely have to pay for that work.

Chances are that you benefit from open source code that I wrote. Where is my money?

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

#450

Post by claudeganon »

capdeck wrote: post #347
jimmaswell wrote: post #324

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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, wh…

This is an excellent example why unions are wrong solution to a bigger problem - lack of universal healthcare, free education and guaranteed pension. If we had the three above - there won't be a need for unions because you are not loosing _everything_ when you are loosing a job. Until this bigger problem is fixed unions will remain one of the very few things workers can do to improve their odds in life. So you can't…

...but Unions and union-backed political parties are who won all of these benefits in social democracies?

You seem to have the entire thing backwards: the failure to build and grow unions in the US has resulted an absence of power and political representation for working people. Without this counterbalance, the rich and corporations have used the state to enshrine benefits for themselves and total power over workers.

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