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Google Contractors Say Their Work Is Being Shipped to Poland After Unionizing

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Re: Google Contractors Say Their Work Is Being Shipped to Poland After Unionizing

#41

Post by cynusx »

syspec wrote: post #3

> A year ago, 80 Google contractors employed by HCL America in Pittsburgh voted to unionize with US Steelworkers—a historic victory for white collar tech workers in the U.S. According to who? My wife is a nurse, in a union, and the stuff she tells me about some of her cohorts getting away with then leveraging the union to avoid being reprimanded/ let go is insane. Additionally there is no incentive to improve, your s…

I agree that unions have been an important player for worker rights and in some countries even the advent and enforcement of democracy.

However, unions really make sense when workers are a "commodity" and easily replaceable to the point that they are ground down into poverty. Steel workers and drivers would be a good example of such jobs.

In software engineering, you have plenty of options to change jobs and go to a better company. The market demand for software engineers is massive and you are definitely not in a job where you have to suffer through bad management.

A company in tech that unionized can only mean one thing

1/ The management is really crap

2/ The workers are so unskilled they can't find jobs elsewhere

Would you outsource work to such a company?

Re: Google Contractors Say Their Work Is Being Shipped to Poland After Unionizing

#43

Post by jxramos »

s3r3nity wrote: post #29
tclancy wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don’t want what, a leg to stand on? A seat at the table to bargain with your betters? How is some random data point about your wife’s experience evidence against collective bargaining? What do you see as the downside? “Gee, sure we have a say in our benefits and my salary is way higher, but there’s this one coworker who doesn’t pull their weight.” As opposed to life in a non-union shop, where it’s a workers paradise…

Last I checked doctors, who aren't unionized in the US and are more essential than nurses, are doing just fine.

Makes me think about Milton Friedman's talk about airline pilots and the American Medical Association, rebranded as a union, and his question of

    Who are the strongest unions in the United States. Which unions in the United States are strongest in the sense of having been most successful in raising the wage rates, the earnings of their members?
https://youtu.be/_L69YcXsdEg?t=478

Re: Google Contractors Say Their Work Is Being Shipped to Poland After Unionizing

#44

Post by idrios »

s3r3nity wrote: post #29
tclancy wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don’t want what, a leg to stand on? A seat at the table to bargain with your betters? How is some random data point about your wife’s experience evidence against collective bargaining? What do you see as the downside? “Gee, sure we have a say in our benefits and my salary is way higher, but there’s this one coworker who doesn’t pull their weight.” As opposed to life in a non-union shop, where it’s a workers paradise…

Last I checked doctors, who aren't unionized in the US and are more essential than nurses, are doing just fine.

Yeah but doctors are a unique entity. There's little need for doctors to do collective bargaining because there's barely anybody who could take their job, so they already have a lot of bargaining power.

If doctors didn't require a medical license, alleviating the need for 4 years of medical school + residency, suddenly there would be a glut of competition and doctors would surely need to unionize.

Conversely, if software development required an arduous, expensive, hyper-restrictive license, there would be no need for software developers to unionize either

Re: Google Contractors Say Their Work Is Being Shipped to Poland After Unionizing

#45

Post by bnjms »

pjmlp wrote: post #31

Good luck, most European countries have unions, and for us the laws negotiated with them usually affect everyone on the building, not just the union people like on US. Even if Poland unions aren't fully there (no idea), I bet they are more effective and in use than on US. Google will be surprised.

> Google will be surprise.

Probably not.

If you look at the way most Americans argue against unions they always argue against something about how they are implemented here. Then someone points out that unions don’t have to have the referenced property as if that was a gotcha. But here there are big unions and for some reason they always try to grow. For instance, why did they join US Steel instead of consulting with them to start their own union?

Re: Google Contractors Say Their Work Is Being Shipped to Poland After Unionizing

#46

Post by joshuamorton »

s3r3nity wrote: post #29
tclancy wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don’t want what, a leg to stand on? A seat at the table to bargain with your betters? How is some random data point about your wife’s experience evidence against collective bargaining? What do you see as the downside? “Gee, sure we have a say in our benefits and my salary is way higher, but there’s this one coworker who doesn’t pull their weight.” As opposed to life in a non-union shop, where it’s a workers paradise…

Last I checked doctors, who aren't unionized in the US and are more essential than nurses, are doing just fine.

Doctors have the AMA, which provides accreditation and artificially limits supply. This provides some of the value that unionization provides, although it technically isn't.

Re: Google Contractors Say Their Work Is Being Shipped to Poland After Unionizing

#47

Post by djur »

syspec wrote: post #3

> A year ago, 80 Google contractors employed by HCL America in Pittsburgh voted to unionize with US Steelworkers—a historic victory for white collar tech workers in the U.S. According to who? My wife is a nurse, in a union, and the stuff she tells me about some of her cohorts getting away with then leveraging the union to avoid being reprimanded/ let go is insane. Additionally there is no incentive to improve, your s…

Would you accept a similar anecdotal argument against solely management-controlled labor that cited examples of companies with bad or abusive management practices? Or would you suggest that not all corporate management teams can be judged by the worst examples?

Why are unions specifically a bad idea for software engineering?

Re: Google Contractors Say Their Work Is Being Shipped to Poland After Unionizing

#48

Post by pjmlp »

bnjms wrote: post #45
pjmlp wrote: post #31

Good luck, most European countries have unions, and for us the laws negotiated with them usually affect everyone on the building, not just the union people like on US. Even if Poland unions aren't fully there (no idea), I bet they are more effective and in use than on US. Google will be surprised.

> Google will be surprise. Probably not. If you look at the way most Americans argue against unions they always argue against something about how they are implemented here . Then someone points out that unions don’t have to have the referenced property as if that was a gotcha. But here there are big unions and for some reason they always try to grow. For instance, why did they join US Steel instead of consulting with…

In Germany, IG Metal is the biggest union on the IT sector, they also started from the steel industry as you can get from their name.

So actually that doesn't surprises me.

Re: Google Contractors Say Their Work Is Being Shipped to Poland After Unionizing

#49

Post by djur »

stale2002 wrote: post #27
tclancy wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don’t want what, a leg to stand on? A seat at the table to bargain with your betters? How is some random data point about your wife’s experience evidence against collective bargaining? What do you see as the downside? “Gee, sure we have a say in our benefits and my salary is way higher, but there’s this one coworker who doesn’t pull their weight.” As opposed to life in a non-union shop, where it’s a workers paradise…

> What do you see as the downside? The downside is being forced into a collective bargain agreement, if I wanted to work at whatever company was a union shop. I would much rather negotiate for my own contract. Which is something that I currently do, right now, regarding my tech job employment contract. It has worked out pretty work for me. I've received significant pay raises, that I do not think I would get if I wer…

The vast majority of engineers are not making anywhere near what you are making. The fact that you know a lot of other very well-paid engineers does not actually disprove that.

Re: Google Contractors Say Their Work Is Being Shipped to Poland After Unionizing

#50

Post by dragonwriter »

deanCommie wrote: post #25
tclancy wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don’t want what, a leg to stand on? A seat at the table to bargain with your betters? How is some random data point about your wife’s experience evidence against collective bargaining? What do you see as the downside? “Gee, sure we have a say in our benefits and my salary is way higher, but there’s this one coworker who doesn’t pull their weight.” As opposed to life in a non-union shop, where it’s a workers paradise…

This is going to be controversial and slightly classist, but... There is work that is utility work and there is work that isn't. I don't mean skilled or unskilled. A common dunk on the distinction between the two is something like "I'd love to see the CEO of try a day on the line of and see if they still want to call it unskilled labour." No, where I differentiate is jobs where ANYONE can learn the skills, and others…

> I want to be able to promote quickly people who succeed and show an aptitude, and maturity. I want to encourage and incentivize those people to keep reaching for the stars.

> I am 100% against unions for software development

I'm not sure what you think the first has to do with the second. Outside of public sector unions (where the actual limiting factor is civil service law more often than union preferences), union arrangements for non-blue-collar jobs often support exactly what you describe. I mean, you don't seen any cap to the capacity for differential and sometimes meteoric progression in film/tv acting despite the dominance of SAG-AFTRA, an AFL-CIO-affiliated union, in that space, do you?

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