771–780 of 1001 posts
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Boeing has software engineer unions. They start at like, ~$70k and after a few years can get up to ~$90k (someone correct me if I'm off, but I don't think I'm very far off).
So like half what Google pays? How much does their Union take?
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Seems to me that the organizers are using a union to push their own personal agendas (which they otherwise don't have the power to push) which seems like the perfect way to form a corrupt union that harms workers.
What agendas would a union push, other than the personal agendas of its members?
edit: I don't think I've ever seen environmentalism come up as a desirable goal from proponents when people discussed tech unions. Pay, benefits, working conditions, abusive management and so on but environmentalism????
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Sounds like the cart before the horse. Tell me I'm signing up for something that I have no idea how it will turn out, and then present me with a take it or leave it contract months later. And I'm stuck.
You would have a part in shaping the contract, though. And if you don't like it, yeah, leave the union, you're no worse off than you were before.
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A company is nothing without leadership. A company is nothing without the initial investors. A company is nothing without the it's initial idea. It takes a lot of people in different roles and a lot of different resources (be it people, money, opportunity) to make a company work. While there are successful employee-owned companies after, many companies today would not exist if you didn't have the motivation there for…
You can have a thousand investors all chip in to build a factory, but without workers in that factory you have nothing. I'm not sure what this comment is trying to accomplish other than pointing out that the value of initial investment ultimately hinges on the ability to hire and retain workers, and ultimately the value of the labor produced by those workers. The workers have the power.
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> 6. Yes, you’ll have to join the Communist Party of America and pledge allegiance to AOC in order to even join the zoom call, of course. Because that’s how unions work You might say that as a joke but Unions have a long history of heavily pressuring or forcing members to vote one way and in turn using these "guaranteed" votes to extract "favors" from politicians.
Don'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.
Teachers unions are extremely important. They are “problematic” only in the sense that they are one of the few unions that have genuinely strong bargaining power these days.
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Sounds more like a political party than a labor union.
This is a common criticism of teacher unions in the USA [0]. They donate dues money to left-leaning political causes against the wishes of many of their members. In a union shop, dues-paying employees have no choice in the matter. It is compelled political speech. I expect this will be a big issue in tech unions also. [0] https://www.detroitnews.com/story/opinion/2019/10/16/opinion...
Union shop, not closed shop. Closed shops have been illegal for over 70 years.
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>When I talk to colleagues in tech about unions I hear a lot of misconceptions Because everyone talking about unionization refuses to get into the nitty gritty of what I might gain, what I might lose, and the structural changes to the workplaces that are inherent with unionization. And if/when I/others start spitballing about what those might be we're treated like dolts uneducated on organized labor, and should just…
What do you think the software industry will be like 20 years from now? Do you think the cushy salaries and relative lack of gate keeping will stay around? I sure as hell don't. Unionize now, even if you earn a little less, while you have the most bargaining power, so that later you don't have to fight through pinkerton detectives just to get a seat at the table. There's a reason companies like Google suppress initia…
If something was bad, why would you take the existence of opposition to it as evidence of it being good?
Suppose unionization was bad for both employers and employees. You would certainly expect employers to oppose that. Even if it was totally neutral for employers and bad for employees, they would oppose unionization at their own company because it would make it more difficult for them to attract and retain quality employees.
Some of the most highly paid, privileged and marketable individuals in our industry, easily in the top 5% of income in the economy... what’s the point of this? Google employees are a far cry from the romanticized proletariat fighting against the bourgeoisie.
>Everyone at Alphabet — from bus drivers to programmers, from salespeople to janitors — plays a critical part in developing our technology. But right now, a few wealthy executives define what the company produces and how its workers are treated. This isn’t the company we want to work for. We care deeply about what we build and what it’s used for. We are responsible for the technology we bring into the world. And we recognize that its implications reach far beyond the walls of Alphabet.
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The schools are sanitized nightly and those who go in literally don't have to see anyone else, and by policy are not supposed to. "Unified front" That is not the purpose of the union. The union exists to serve it's members. If serving it's members might be slightly more difficult if it actually accommodates the choices of the members it serves, well that's it's job. It's job is not to make it's job easier, it's to se…
Is the union preventing teachers from going into the school? Is it not OK for the union to have a position on the matter and communicate it to their members? Why is it ok for the administration to say "we prefer but don't require you to come in" but not ok for the union to say "actually, we prefer but don't require you to stay home"? A unified front is EXACTLY the purpose of a union. The threat of collective action b…
If I prefer to work from the building, and the union is pressuring[1] me to stay home, that tells me the union is not working for me.
If the union were working for me, it might demand that work from home be allowed for those who prefer or need it, and that work from the building be done in safe conditions.
This is my problem with unions; it's fine if you fit with the majority, but if you don't you're paying a portion of your salary to prop up an organization between you and your employer that's actively pushing for things you don't want. It's just a different windmill to tilt at.
[1] When the union expresses a preference, and people are worried about the union hearing that they didn't follow the preference, that's pressure.