Will Alphabet’s Unionization Effort Spread to Other Big Tech Companies? • Hacker News Board

Re: Will Alphabet’s Unionization Effort Spread to Other Big Tech Companies?

#31

Post by Groxx » Fri, Jan 08, 2021, 9:57 PM UTC

Retric wrote: post #11

csense wrote: post #7

I predict within 5-10 years, any tech company with an activist union will have moved most of their operations to countries where workers don't have rights. They managed to do this in the manufacturing sector. And a car factory or a steel plant is a lot harder to move than a mere office building filled with developers and sysadmins who all work remotely already.

You mean like how the actors union killed off Hollywood? After literally decades of outsourcing software development to other counties it isn’t much of a threat to the remaining US jobs at this point. There are various arguments about why this is or what might change over time, but unions aren’t going to change the landscape over a few years. Change like this takes decades.

I'm not sure that's a valid comparison tbh. I assume it'd be rather hard to do Hollywood acting remotely, but remote (even other-country) engineering teams are fairly common.

Broadly I agree / hope so too, but I don't find hollywood to be a convincing example at all.

Re: Will Alphabet’s Unionization Effort Spread to Other Big Tech Companies?

#32

Post by Clubber » Fri, Jan 08, 2021, 10:01 PM UTC

Retric wrote: post #11

csense wrote: post #7

I predict within 5-10 years, any tech company with an activist union will have moved most of their operations to countries where workers don't have rights. They managed to do this in the manufacturing sector. And a car factory or a steel plant is a lot harder to move than a mere office building filled with developers and sysadmins who all work remotely already.

You mean like how the actors union killed off Hollywood? After literally decades of outsourcing software development to other counties it isn’t much of a threat to the remaining US jobs at this point. There are various arguments about why this is or what might change over time, but unions aren’t going to change the landscape over a few years. Change like this takes decades.

>it isn’t much of a threat to the remaining US jobs at this point.

There's 12 million US tech jobs currently in the US, and Eric The Executive gets a bonus every quarter for cutting costs (read jobs). I'd say as long as that dynamic holds, it's always a threat. I mean it would be ugly if we only lost 1 million.

https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/us-tech-employment-...

Re: Will Alphabet’s Unionization Effort Spread to Other Big Tech Companies?

#33

Post by d1zzy » Fri, Jan 08, 2021, 10:45 PM UTC

Retric wrote: post #27

saiya-jin wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's see in couple of years, I wouldn't be so optimistic. There might be a push back after covid is somehow managed and people start coming back to cities, but maybe not

People working from home due to covid are still operating in the same time zones and culture etc. If you want top talent in India or China they don’t want to work the night shift which means communication with the rest of the organization becomes difficult, even ignoring culture. The real impact IMO is going to be the erosion of the SV salary premium to other US workers. This might actually raise minimum US salaries…

> However, the real losers from that will be property owners in SV not programmers.

Those aren't necessarily exclusive categories.

Re: Will Alphabet’s Unionization Effort Spread to Other Big Tech Companies?

#34

Post by yosefjaved1 » Fri, Jan 08, 2021, 10:47 PM UTC

It looks like a lot of people misunderstand that this isn't a union with collective bargaining power over pay.

The union that has been formed is called a minority/members-only union. You can read more about them below.

>> https://workercenters.com/labors-loophole/what-is-a-minority...

The article posted points this out, but unlike most unions this one wasn't formed due to economic reasons. It was formed for social issues that Google isn't addressing or is purporting.

The current HN discussion seems to all veer towards collective bargaining rights, but that's too early to discuss. Don't get me wrong that this is a first step to collective bargaining; however, that will only ever be if current membership gets big enough and they get certified by the NLRB. That isn't an easy feat in the US and will probably take years to happen!

Right now, it would be more interesting to discuss if this type of union will allow employees to have a a real say in Google's direction as a business on what projects they will work on and which clients they will accept.

Google can't do anything about this union because it's considered protected concerted activity.

>> https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protected_concerted_activity

Re: Will Alphabet’s Unionization Effort Spread to Other Big Tech Companies?

#35

Post by d1zzy » Fri, Jan 08, 2021, 10:49 PM UTC

cactus2093 wrote: post #29

This is a really interesting experiment. It kind of seems more like an Employee Resource Group than a union, except that the members have to pay dues. ERG's are usually run by volunteers, and often get a nominal budget from the company itself to pay various costs (much less than 1% of each member's salary). Why couldn't this use that structure instead? And why do the dues need to be so high? Is the idea to have more…

1% yearly income dues... which for a highly payed Alphabet engineer amounts to some significant money.

Re: Will Alphabet’s Unionization Effort Spread to Other Big Tech Companies?

#36

Post by e9 » Fri, Jan 08, 2021, 11:04 PM UTC

foolmeonce wrote: post #24

greatgirl wrote: post #10

I will one day write a piece about how the tech industry accidentally invented the superior business model. Pay workers higher and they're less likely to unionise. They're more productive (lest they lose their jobs). They don't want to leave. This works for the tech industry because technically they're not paying workers higher to be generous, it's just a different way to invest the profits back into the business, li…

I don't think that is the case. Tech companies engaged in illegal collusion to keep salaries down, as usual the penalty for doing so was far less than their benefit.

Now it will be easier to do that. With unions you only need to bribe several people who are already political by nature(who else would want to run the union?).

Re: Will Alphabet’s Unionization Effort Spread to Other Big Tech Companies?

#37

Post by alisonkisk » Fri, Jan 08, 2021, 11:13 PM UTC

cactus2093 wrote: post #29

This is a really interesting experiment. It kind of seems more like an Employee Resource Group than a union, except that the members have to pay dues. ERG's are usually run by volunteers, and often get a nominal budget from the company itself to pay various costs (much less than 1% of each member's salary). Why couldn't this use that structure instead? And why do the dues need to be so high? Is the idea to have more…

In USA, ERGs are a management tool to "divide and conquer" and prevent employees from uniting into powerful legally protected groups.

Dues are mostly used to pay members who are fired or striking over union issues.

Re: Will Alphabet’s Unionization Effort Spread to Other Big Tech Companies?

#38

Post by alisonkisk » Fri, Jan 08, 2021, 11:16 PM UTC

greatgirl wrote: post #17

RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote: post #8

My guess is that the “unionization effort” will spread to other companies but it won’t get anything more than a few percentage of the workforce to join. Most workers at the big tech companies are fairly happy and comfortable and not nearly as politically vocal as the organizers of the union. I suspect that it will be limited to a small vocal minority.

Not on a long term scale. Tech's revenue is eventually going to dry up, regulations will become tighter and the low hanging fruit will be picked. They'll be less willing to pay engineers a senator's salary and there will be more engineers to go around too. With this comes discomfort if you're a software engineer. Your job begins to become less thinking and more maintenance. Your salary isn't what it was, or you get o…

Big companies are already almost entirely maintenance.

Re: Will Alphabet’s Unionization Effort Spread to Other Big Tech Companies?

#39

Post by alisonkisk » Fri, Jan 08, 2021, 11:17 PM UTC

trhway wrote: post #18

we've got the fads like open floor offices, puzzle interviews, etc. "because Google". Similarly once the management takes hold of unionization as one of the tool in the management toolbox, the unionization will spread like fire.

Huh? Management almost everywhere opposes unions to the maximum extent permitted by law.

Re: Will Alphabet’s Unionization Effort Spread to Other Big Tech Companies?

#40

Post by cactus2093 » Fri, Jan 08, 2021, 11:21 PM UTC

This really isn't a union though. I mean even the union expert they interviewed for this article calls it "groundbreaking" in that it looks nothing like a union, since it has no economic goals or worker protections in mind and it's all about social issues.

So it's a charity that you donate 1% of your salary to, with the goal of impacting Google's policies. That's interesting in its own right, and it's not out of the question that this could end up being a good use of donations from an effective altruism perspective depending on what they can accomplish. But this is not unionization in tech.