131–140 of 378 posts
Along with the unionization at Google, I think it's a good trend to see them happening at big tech companies. As it says in the article: "Unions are a prominent presence at Amazon in Europe, but the company for years successfully fought off labor organizing efforts in the U.S." It's sad that Amazon, along with FB and Google, etc. have managed to squash unions so completely here in the US. There's a lot of propaganda…
I have to imagine unions have a bit of an uphill battle right now, they took some major black eyes in 2020: - Police unions openly declaring war on their own citizens - Teachers unions causing general chaos in school reopening plans I understand that public sector unions are a different beast, but purely from an optics perspective I have to imagine public sentiment for unions can't be very high right now.
I've never fully understood public unions to be honest. Unions used to be the best way to protect yourself from a bad employer...but the employer is the government (and to some extent the people). It used to be that public sector workers made less in exchange for better benefits, but in the last few years the war was waged on the public to increase wages to that of "private companies". Now teachers in my state make m…
They are. A few years ago I still thought they were oeverpaid and then I married a teacher. She's absolutely underpaid. It is very much not a 9-5 job and, that time off during the summer - some of it get used for required continued education and a good deal of it makes up for the fact that teachers generally don't have vacation time remotely comparable to most other industries.
My wife wakes up and goes to school about 2 hours before classes start. She comes home, makes us dinner, then sits on the couch all evening watching tv while she answers student and parent emails, works on her lesson plan for the next few days/weeks, grades papers, tries to figure out how to squeeze kids in around others during her prep hour or before/after school that are requesting help, find time to squeeze in phone calls during those same time slots with parents that are unhappy with a student's grade or want help for their child.
The weekends are more of the same, a lot of grading/lesson planning/creating content for teaching.
This summer she had 2 weeks of full-time college classes in the middle of summer to keep up with her continued education requirements which required her to purchase about a dozen books that weren't textbooks for the class and required a few binders, several papers, then a 20-page paper. Then weeks before the school year started she had to go start prepping her classroom, attending meetings in person, etc.
Just look at babysitting rates. If you look at the cost of daycare and consider any k-12 child at babysitting rates, teachers are extremely underpaid. Last school year she had roughly 185 students she saw daily. So, the average rate for a local babysitter in Indianapolis, IN is $12.75 per hour as of January 2021 according to Care.com's data.
Assume she had each student for 60 minutes a day - as a babysitter she should have earned $2,358.75 a day if my math is right. She was doing a lot more than babysitting, after marrying her I fully joined the stance that teachers are horribly underpaid.
I wonder what percentage of otherwise very liberal Amazon devs read sentences like "The company for years successfully fought off labor organizing efforts in the U.S." and come away thinking "we're definitely the good guys."
Honest question: does the Democratic Party care about labor anymore? It feels like anti-Trumpism, identity issues (race, trans issues, etc.), and immigration have sucked all the oxygen out of the room. I can’t remember the last time I saw a Democrat run with supporting labor as their headline issue.
The Republican Party is for people whose primary concern is one of a theocratic judiciary, paying less taxes if you make more than $400k/yr, white nationalism, extractive industries, military contractors, unrestricted access to any/all classes of firearms.
In both of those groups there are large pro-business, anti-labor contingents.
Hopefully one day we will move to ranked choice voting and other mechanisms that allow 3rd parties to compete and we can have more meaningful and direct connections between parties and specific policies instead of these two loose coalitions.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Unions in the US and unions is Europe are completely different. In one they cooperate to see that the company succeeds...and in the other they seek to drive up the cost of doing business to the point that shitty products are extremely expensive (GM, Ford). Unions used to be for protecting the workers and ensuring that companies were getting the very best skillsets when hiring. Now they protect the lazy, promote the w…
>Unions used to be for protecting the workers and ensuring that companies were getting the very best skillsets when hiring. Labor unions in the US formed primarily to combat exploitation by employers, often in the face of great oppression and cronyism that led to literal bloodshed[0]. This is one of the reasons unions can't be part of the companies their members work for, unlike in Europe. Unions in Europe formed fro…
Its a double edged sword at best - government is properly afraid of the citizens. But overall the economy suffers badly. This is just a small part of overall french 'package' - high social benefits, its extremely hard to fire people, tons of paid holidays days per year, early retirement etc. Result is startups start elsewhere, companies move away whatever they can (even state semi-owned like car industry). Another result is tons of monopolies, which distort the market and make very small amount of citizens profit at he cost of everybody else.
Economy is weak compared to Germany, I would say salaries are 1/2, although there shouldn't be the reason - big smart well educated population. But then comes the french mentality and way of doing things...
Along with the unionization at Google, I think it's a good trend to see them happening at big tech companies. As it says in the article: "Unions are a prominent presence at Amazon in Europe, but the company for years successfully fought off labor organizing efforts in the U.S." It's sad that Amazon, along with FB and Google, etc. have managed to squash unions so completely here in the US. There's a lot of propaganda…
The propaganda unfortunately also comes from folks direct experience with unions. In the US, most unions are public sector. So folks see that Police unions may protect bad apples via union. Teachers unions may care more about teachers including bad ones then teaching kids. We had a famously terrible teacher at my school - unfirable - as kids we thought it was hilarious. As a parent now - not so cool. Non unionized sc…
At my first job, I had a horrible boss. A friend tried to speak up against him and was promptly fired. Turns out he was a relative of the CEO and was thus unfireable.
Just a few weeks ago I also spoke to someone who told his experience of reporting someone for sexual harassment at a major tech company, just to learn that they were well aware of it but refused to do anything because of good performance.
We should absolutely consider the role uninions can play regarding unfirable employees. Being able to push the company to get rid of them can have a huge impact on the well-being of workers.
Along with the unionization at Google, I think it's a good trend to see them happening at big tech companies. As it says in the article: "Unions are a prominent presence at Amazon in Europe, but the company for years successfully fought off labor organizing efforts in the U.S." It's sad that Amazon, along with FB and Google, etc. have managed to squash unions so completely here in the US. There's a lot of propaganda…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Many/most supporters of unions argue that police should not be able to form or join unions. "Cops are not workers" is a common phrase I've seen.
Why only cops and not all public sector employees? I don’t see how you can make an argument that police work isn’t work.
The right to strike is tricky for essential services.
Perhaps a underlying problem is the adversarial nature of many of our social relationships.
Given the multiple reports of deplorable working conditions in Amazon warehouses it seems like they would be ripe for unionization. Unions can be seen as the backpressure on corporations mistreating the workers, which Amazon has become notorious for. It's one of those things businesses have to take into account when trying to compete. You can abuse your employees to gain competitive advantage over your rivals, but in…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Maybe if student unions weren't a complete joke, the situation would improve. As it stands, teachers unions keep terrible teachers employed, against the interest of the students, while the students have no real representation or organization to provide balance by looking after student interests. My mother was a middleschool teacher when I was in highschool, and drove me to highschool in the morning. Because she was a…
> teachers unions keep terrible teachers employed Are there a bunch of would-be teachers clamoring for those jobs? I think the lack of desirability is what keeps terrible teachers employed. There also aren't great ways to measure how good someone is at teaching.
Emphatically yes, particularly at nice well funded schools. I have numerous long-term friends who have become school teachers, many of then had to move quite a distance just to find schools with openings. Most states have teacher certification reciprocity with Pennsylvania, which gave them a leg up in this regard. Even so, searching for open positions was clearly stressful for them. But for them it was worth it; the work is rewarding and socially important. They like working with kids, and they like getting several months of vacation every year. There is no other job quite like it.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Maybe if student unions weren't a complete joke, the situation would improve. As it stands, teachers unions keep terrible teachers employed, against the interest of the students, while the students have no real representation or organization to provide balance by looking after student interests. My mother was a middleschool teacher when I was in highschool, and drove me to highschool in the morning. Because she was a…
> teachers unions keep terrible teachers employed Are there a bunch of would-be teachers clamoring for those jobs? I think the lack of desirability is what keeps terrible teachers employed. There also aren't great ways to measure how good someone is at teaching.
1 https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2009/08/31/the-rubber-roo...