I think a lot of the back and forth in this thread is dancing around the edges of a couple questions. Who really owns a company? I know legally who owns it. But a company is nothing without the people that work in it and who generate the ideas who keep it going. Shouldn't the majority of people in that company benefit and have a say how its run? Why should a handful of people who don't run the day to day operation or generate the majority of ideas, big and small get to own everyone else's ideas and benefit from them in perpetuity?
A group of Google workers have announced plans to unionize
231–240 of 1001 posts
Re: A group of Google workers have announced plans to unionize
#232Earlier quoted context omitted.
Employees can ask for better, but when you already work at the company that pays and treats their employees like Google, I'm not sure what more you are entitled to. It seems clear to me that these are people who are unwilling to sacrifice some of the money they earn to follow their ideals and principles, so they are trying this instead. There are very few perils of leaving Google - a top tier company in an industry t…
> I'm not sure what more you are entitled to. You're entitled to as much as you can negotiate. Isn't this a founding principle of capitalism? If collective bargaining allows employees to negotiate more, then shouldn't they negotiate more?
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Re: A group of Google workers have announced plans to unionize
#233Earlier quoted context omitted.
Apple used to have easter eggs in its software, crediting individual engineers. Steve Jobs banned them, saying it would be unfair to give credit to individuals instead of the whole company, would make it easier for competitors to poach key engineers, etc. At the time, Jobs was also running Pixar, which never seemed to have problems in its movies to credit everybody down to the hairstylist of the second unit's caterer…
Credit everyone by name or credit no one by name. It is inherently unfair to only credit key talent.
Isn't the moral right of every (software) author that his name is mentioned next to the authored intellectual property (software)? This is even written in copyright laws of some countries...
Re: A group of Google workers have announced plans to unionize
#234Don't think we've ever seen Hollywood in the modern era without unions, so not sure how you can claim it's "undeniable" the industry is better off. We basically have no clue if it's better off or not. Unions are intended for industries where a worker doesn't have a marketplace of options as there is a single or just a few employers (e.g. Hollywood, teachers, coal mining towns, hospital staff, etc.). Unionizing at Goo…
You list teachers, who in my opinion are the poster children of how problematic unions are. And there are some phenomenal teachers out there. There are teachers that change lives profoundly. But they don't need the unions, and the terrible teachers who should be fired /are/ protected. It's really messed up, most people have first-hand experience with it, and they are a corrosive factor in the end.
This is complicated, because public schools (and police departments, mentioned by another replier) are not for-profit entities. I don't think we can treat public employee unions and private employee unions the same.
Public schools, police departments, etc., are usually "political" entities, run by elected officials such as school boards and city councils. I would say there's no guarantee whatsoever in these cases that the leadership of those entities are even interested in compensating/promoting the "top performers" among teachers, or police. There's no direct financial incentive. The "outcomes" of a school — student education — don't provide much of a feedback mechanism to the financial performance or governance of the school. Likewise with police departments, etc. If anything, poor performance by these public entities may lead to calls for increased funding, standing the incentives on their heads.
Part of the reason for public employee unions is to protect the members specifically from political interference. The alternative is not necessarily "merit" based compensation but rather political favoritism and retribution.
Re: A group of Google workers have announced plans to unionize
#235Earlier quoted context omitted.
My union membership more than paid for itself this year. My employer wanted to defer merit increase due to covid and all the uncertainty. The union called them on the bluff.
Was it really a bluff? How do you know if growth projects or other company investments had to be canceled?
If a company defers a merit increase of their own employees for “other company investments” then I as a worker would absolutely want a union to call them out on it. A company wouldn’t even have money for those investments without the merit of the employees.
Re: A group of Google workers have announced plans to unionize
#236Don't think we've ever seen Hollywood in the modern era without unions, so not sure how you can claim it's "undeniable" the industry is better off. We basically have no clue if it's better off or not. Unions are intended for industries where a worker doesn't have a marketplace of options as there is a single or just a few employers (e.g. Hollywood, teachers, coal mining towns, hospital staff, etc.). Unionizing at Goo…
>>engineers can "collectively bargain" with Google by simply leaving and working somewhere "better". This "if you don't like it here, go work somewhere else" kind of reasoning disproportionately balances the power towards the employer. Instead of fixing problems, it leads to removing those that are affected. This is exactly what unions are for.
The traitorous eight leaving Shockley because they didn't like their boss is foundational to the valley.
Re: A group of Google workers have announced plans to unionize
#237It seems incredibly significant that only 230 people are officially involved with these plans to unionize. As of 2019, Google had nearly 120,000 employees.[0] That seems quite small, relatively speaking. Legally (I think, just learning about this now), to form a union, a majority of workers must show their willingness to form a union. Alternatively, to choose an existing union to join, an election with 30% of the wor…
Keeping something secret amongst 230 people is not an easy task. At some point the campaign has to become public, and it's better to do that in a planned, coordinated manner, than have it get leaked to the press.
Re: A group of Google workers have announced plans to unionize
#238Earlier quoted context omitted.
Reading the article, it sounds like they do need to find ~40,000 votes. The article mentions that now they've announced the unionisation attempt, they're gonna starting doing lots of public campaigning to collect the votes they need.
Yeah, they definitely need to gather support of some sort, I'm just curious about the scale. 40,000 people from within the 120,000+ organization seems huge. If that's really the case, the coverage so far would seem fairly sensationalist - 0.25% of employees signing on to unionize is a drop in the bucket next to a required minimum 30% of the workforce signed on.
I think the article is pretty accurate, the title looks pretty spot on
> Google workers announce plans to unionize
I agree that the number involved is quite small at the moment, but given how hostile Google has been to any unisation effort, the fact the 230 people have organised anyway, and now put their jobs on the line, is quite a big thing.
I suspect that there are many at Google that would happily join a union, just look at how high the attendance of Google's walk outs have been. This announcement clearly indicates that union organisers believe they have enough support to come out of the woodwork, and start some serious campaigning.
Re: A group of Google workers have announced plans to unionize
#239Earlier quoted context omitted.
While not union myself watching how IBEW (international brotherhood of electrical workers) works, it ends up working well for all involved parties. For workers pay is kept higher, benefits stay active between jobs, and benefits stay unchanged between jobs at different companies. Companies also gain the ability to support surges/drops in manning requirements (without ruining life's of workers), and know workers have a…
>I also see the best workers rising through the ranks, and bad ones either never actually entering the union or quitting when they realize they're not going anywhere. This doesn't sound like an advantage for software engineers. Surely unions can't decide on someone's competency. It kind of raises a red flag about potential gatekeeping methods (e.g. the tax status where you have to join or else).
Arguably, unions are the best judge of someone's competency, because its supposed to be a group of peers. It's already how it works in tech, software engineers evaluate the skill of prospective software engineers, not management.
But yes, there are gatekeeping effects, as the union is incentivized to prevent increases in membership or decrease in collective skill. It typically works out great for those in the union (and things like the Bar or Medical Association), not so great for those kept out.
Re: A group of Google workers have announced plans to unionize
#240Earlier quoted context omitted.
Genuine question as I don't know that industry at all. How does being a member of a union imply more experience?
The unions (edit: film industry) require a certain amount of work experience to join and some have different levels of membership depending on how much work you do after joining. Because everyone prefers union workers, it creates a situation where the non-union worker has to get noticed somehow (nepotism or exceptional work) to convince someone to take a risk and hire them to earn enough work to gain union membership…
I look forward to a future where bright young engineers spend their twenties bussing tables while trying to get into the software guild.