Clickbait title for a highly opinonated piece that would never see the light of day in a respectable publication like the Washington Post, WSJ, NYT, Economist, etc. WilmerHale is a well-known top-100 law firm with a long history -- it's definitely not a "notorious union-busting firm." I'm flagging this story because it doesn't belong on the front page of HN, IMHO.
A quote from the article: '"Wilmerhale’s own site advertises its expertise as "union awareness and avoidance."' Therefore, yes, it is accurate to define them as a "union-busting firm". They fulfill other roles than just that, but they do act as union-busters, and they even describe themselves as such.
Activision Blizzard Hires Notorious Union-Busting Firm WilmerHale
301–310 of 379 posts
Re: Activision Blizzard Hires Notorious Union-Busting Firm WilmerHale
#302Earlier quoted context omitted.
I am out of the loop, could you elaborate?
Blizzard has been under a lot of bad press because they have screwed game releases lately (mostly because of shitty management?). They've also had bad press on political issues like the hong kong esports things and others iirc. for warcraft3: https://www.bnnbloomberg.ca/blizzard-botched-warcraft-iii-re...
>Blizzard also faced widespread criticism and calls for a boycott after banning a player who .
>In lieu of official support, a group of fans began writing their own patches for the game, building a service called that aims to add back missing features.
Re: Activision Blizzard Hires Notorious Union-Busting Firm WilmerHale
#303Earlier quoted context omitted.
> they just advise...where to hire said external resources [mercenaries] Do you have some evidence for that allegation or are you just making things up? That would be quite serious, and illegal, if it's true. If it's true.
Modern companies rarely use [mercenaries] as you put it. Instead it's reputation management firms for the alleged perpetrators and investigators that dredge up personal info about the victims who reported abuses. It's a well known approach.
Re: Activision Blizzard Hires Notorious Union-Busting Firm WilmerHale
#304Clickbait title for a highly opinonated piece that would never see the light of day in a respectable publication like the Washington Post, WSJ, NYT, Economist, etc. WilmerHale is a well-known top-100 law firm with a long history -- it's definitely not a "notorious union-busting firm." I'm flagging this story because it doesn't belong on the front page of HN, IMHO.
Your assessment is a decade out of date.
Re: Activision Blizzard Hires Notorious Union-Busting Firm WilmerHale
#305Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't really understand this attitude, or line of reasoning, or whatever you want to call it. Sure, if a company does something that you find reprehensible, not giving them further money (or attention) is certainly a reasonable -- and honorable! -- thing to do. But if you've already purchased a standalone[0], non-subscription product from that company, and that company doesn't gain any benefit from your further use…
Some of the best fiction was written by people with absolutely despicable opinions like Francois Céline or Knut Hamsun. You can see it in their art, but their art isn't limited to it, and still holds a lot of value. Friedrich Nietzsche's opinions on women and politics are plain dumb, yet his other thought can be extremely compelling, and he is rightfully one of the most influential thinkers of modern times. Going bac…
Opinions of celebrities don't exist in some sort of extra-dimensional cloistered thought bubble; they influence other minds and affect society in very real and measurable ways. Amplifying the celebrity status of these individuals by cherry-picking their acceptable works will in turn, unavoidably, also amplify their less-acceptable opinions -- though probably not by the same magnitude. But in general the masses are terrible at sorting out "oh, this is a righteous opinion that I should listen to" vs "this is a despicable one by the same person, but I have the intellectual & emotional maturity to be able to compartmentalize it". We're too tribal a species, on the average, for that. Our brains, societies, and cultures have not evolved to effectively handle multiculturalism well, ivory-tower internet freethinkers notwithstanding.
The flipside of cancel culture is moral nihilism, in which speech has no consequence and exists purely as a form of harmless intellectual exercise. But that's just not how it works in the real world. Speech has consequence, and for those wishing to prevent those consequences, sometimes ignoring the speaker and refusing to amplify their voice is the only realistic option they have, if they have no power to censor them outright or sufficiently amplify contrary opinions of their own. A canceled author isn't really very different from a boycotted company; it's a moral vote by a like-minded mass of humans who together value their version of morality more than that author's impacts. It's really not that difficult to not be an outspoken asshole.
Saying "I don't want to read this book" or "I don't want to play this game" because you don't like the author's values is a perfectly reasonable thing to do. It's very different from, say, government ban lists. So what if someone doesn't want to read Harry Potter or watch Weinstein movies anymore?
Back to the first question: why ought greatness be the measure of a person, instead of righteousness? Our species is largely full of mediocre apes with mediocre thoughts who nonetheless manage to coexist and thrive to some degree, yet are all too often led astray and into peril and evil by the "great" Machiavellian few among them. How does that help anything at all?
Re: Activision Blizzard Hires Notorious Union-Busting Firm WilmerHale
#306Earlier quoted context omitted.
A quote from the article: '"Wilmerhale’s own site advertises its expertise as "union awareness and avoidance."' Therefore, yes, it is accurate to define them as a "union-busting firm". They fulfill other roles than just that, but they do act as union-busters, and they even describe themselves as such.
But are they notorious for that? Are they notorious at all?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haymarket_affair
Edit: wrong Pinkerton massacre.
Re: Activision Blizzard Hires Notorious Union-Busting Firm WilmerHale
#307Earlier quoted context omitted.
Collective bargaining is not at all incompatible with a "free market." It's just a smarter way to negotiate (more power collectively) and the end result is a contract between a company and a group of workers. It's not like, say, a minimum wage where government sets a price.
I actually elaborated on that in another comment in this thread. Unions are bureaucracy. Adding politics, people and power to any structure inherently adds inefficiencies. If individual bargaining is working just fine in an industry, then I would not push for collective bargaining. Because, it is tradeoff is between 'bridging the information asymmetry between how much power you think you command, vs what you actually…
Workers can find the same value in consolidating their interests by unionizing.
Re: Activision Blizzard Hires Notorious Union-Busting Firm WilmerHale
#308Earlier quoted context omitted.
That paragraph calls it "one of the worst oil spills in American history," and links to an entire article about it. What underhanded editing do you think has happened here?
The decision to only have three sentences about it. The decision to hide those three sentences under the "History" heading so there is no hint of it in the table of contents. The decision to not even have a "Controversies" section to the page. The decision to not have any photographs of the aftermath. Don't be so credulous. Wikipedians have been caught selling their PR services numerous times before, and doubtlessly…
They're both awful companies doing terrible things to the earth. I don't need to believe in your wikipedia conspiracy to have a low opinion of them.
Re: Activision Blizzard Hires Notorious Union-Busting Firm WilmerHale
#309Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Collective bargaining takes away my right to bargain for myself But it doesn't, you can choose to not be part of the union
In the US, unions fight hard to take that choice away from people. "Right to work" laws in many states allow people to opt out of union membership and fees. Unions hate these laws and fight relentlessly to get them overturned.
The truth is that no one is forcing you to work a union job.
Re: Activision Blizzard Hires Notorious Union-Busting Firm WilmerHale
#310Earlier quoted context omitted.
A quote from the article: '"Wilmerhale’s own site advertises its expertise as "union awareness and avoidance."' Therefore, yes, it is accurate to define them as a "union-busting firm". They fulfill other roles than just that, but they do act as union-busters, and they even describe themselves as such.
There's nothing "notorious" about a maintstream legal practice representing corporations against unions, and "busting" is pejorative. It's opinion click-bait.