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Google Had Secret Project to ‘Convince’ Employees ‘That Unions Suck’

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Re: Google Had Secret Project to ‘Convince’ Employees ‘That Unions Suck’

#221

Post by teddyh »

4ec0755f5522 wrote: post #180

When I was very young I worked a tough job that had a mandatory union and it was quite terrible / weak. Working conditions were pretty bad, physical labor, etc. But it was not until I worked a job with no union that I realized every element of that job that didn't suck was due to the union. For example we had supervisors but they didn't follow you around and micromanage you. You were just expected to do your job. If…

> Starbucks, Google, Amazon, these companies will spend millions to fight unions. This is prima facie evidence to me that unions benefit workers.

Technically, that does not follow. What can be inferred is that companies believe that unions will cost the company money, but this does not necessarily mean that the employees will get any of that money. One could imagine a theoretical evil union which takes all the extracted profit from the company and gives it to themselves, and not to the employees.

Re: Google Had Secret Project to ‘Convince’ Employees ‘That Unions Suck’

#222

Post by [deleted] »

literallyaduck wrote: post #94

Google/Alphabet needs to be broken apart: "The National Labor Relations Act forbids employers from interfering with, restraining, or coercing employees in the exercise of rights relating to organizing, forming, joining or assisting a labor organization for collective bargaining purposes, or from working together to improve terms and conditions of employment, or refraining from any such activity. Similarly, labor orga…

[deleted]

Re: Google Had Secret Project to ‘Convince’ Employees ‘That Unions Suck’

#223

Post by toss1 »

queuebert wrote: post #23

Imputing altruistic morals to profit-seeking entities and then continually being surprised and offended when companies act shady puts employees in a pointlessly weak position. Instead, treat the relationship as adversarial and come ready for battle every day against the legal structure designed to exploit you for the benefit of distant shareholders. There is no shame in fighting for yourself. You are worth it.

Yup

And if there was any doubt, this action by Google — in and of itself — should convince everyone (outside of Google management) that unions would be a good thing.

Re: Google Had Secret Project to ‘Convince’ Employees ‘That Unions Suck’

#224

Post by YXNjaGVyZWdlbgo »

asddubs wrote: post #79
3pt14159 wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What if adversarial systems result in asymmetric arms races and the game theoretic best move is to work for a corporation that is so short sighted as to go to battle against their own employees and to work for them diligently and intelligently? Because I see a whole lot happier employees at Tesla than I do at General Motors. I'm not saying this is an all-or-nothing thing. I'd join a union if I was working for a certa…

>Because I see a whole lot happier employees at Tesla than I do at General Motors. are you just saying that or have you spoken to a number of employees of both companies? It's kind of interesting to me because I would have assumed the opposite to be the case.

My family worked in the automotive industry for over 60 years now most of them for Mercedes some for Toyota and in the newer generation a lot of them for Tesla. Everyone of them who switched from high profile positions at Merc or Toyota said that Tesla is without a doubt the worst employer especially for lower skilled labor. These are all lower or middle management positions not the poor guys on the assembly lines. Merc and Toyota have benefits for all their employees even the lowest skilled among them. From Tesla the only thing you can expect is an email from Elon to force your subordinates to come in over christmas because paraphrasing here from one of those emails "Without extra time Tesla will be in dire financial struggle." or retaliation because you said no.

Re: Google Had Secret Project to ‘Convince’ Employees ‘That Unions Suck’

#225

Post by renewiltord »

gjsman-1000 wrote: post #88
cwilkes wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So … they shouldn’t have run a story on dark patterns? Just sweep it under the rug? It looks like this is the story: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/30/opinion/dark-pattern-inte... Which I found really well done. In fact I think it shows how one part of the company can police the other by putting up articles like this. Your comment is like saying only Olympic level athletes can write articles on exercising.

If I was an ethical journalist, I would not run a story lambasting others for dark patterns until my own house was in order. And if I wanted to run the story anyway, I would at least mention that my own newspaper is guilty of the same thing for full disclosure.

> If I was an ethical journalist, I would not run a story lambasting others for dark patterns until my own house was in order.

I actually think it is unethical to suppress news like this, but fine, let's grant it for argument's sake.

> And if I wanted to run the story anyway, I would at least mention that my own newspaper is guilty of the same thing for full disclosure.

Fine, let's see what the article says:

> The Times requires people to talk with a representative online or by phone to cancel subscriptions, but the researchers did not study it or other publishing sites.

Okay, the paper being discussed didn't discuss the NYT, but the NYT journo decided to bring it up. We're good then.

Re: Google Had Secret Project to ‘Convince’ Employees ‘That Unions Suck’

#226

Post by twox2 »

awb wrote: post #219
queuebert wrote: post #23

Imputing altruistic morals to profit-seeking entities and then continually being surprised and offended when companies act shady puts employees in a pointlessly weak position. Instead, treat the relationship as adversarial and come ready for battle every day against the legal structure designed to exploit you for the benefit of distant shareholders. There is no shame in fighting for yourself. You are worth it.

> treat the relationship as adversarial and come ready for battle every day against the legal structure designed to exploit you for the benefit of distant shareholders Exploit you with industry leading pay and perks? Unions are designed to balance out monopolistic / low pay / highly geographical companies like large auto manufacturers or airlines. There is so much competitive hiring in tech, it’s one of the easiest c…

My understanding is that the point of unions in tech is for people to band together to stand up for those that might be under-represented. It's like the ultimate diversity/inclusion initiative.

Re: Google Had Secret Project to ‘Convince’ Employees ‘That Unions Suck’

#227

Post by fernandotakai »

dogleash wrote: post #144
gjsman-1000 wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The New York Times has had an anti-tech vendetta for a while now. Most likely, in my cynical worldview, because tech has hurt their subscription numbers immensely, not because they want to do the world a service. An example of this is when they published a whole story about a guy who became radicalized from YouTube... and then became unradicalized a few months later without doing anything radical. But someone could h…

>The New York Times has had an anti-tech vendetta for a while now. I believe the news should have a vendetta against anyone and anything that has outsized influence and control in society. I don't think the NYT has the domain experience or insight to present the most damning critiques of big tech. I think that even when they get a chance, they'll prefer hot button topics over than the meatier but less sexy lines of c…

>I believe the news should have a vendetta against anyone and anything that has outsized influence and control in society.

so, should news have a vendetta against news? because one thing i've seen over the past 6 years is how much influence media has on the population.

Re: Google Had Secret Project to ‘Convince’ Employees ‘That Unions Suck’

#228

Post by satsuma »

awb wrote: post #219
queuebert wrote: post #23

Imputing altruistic morals to profit-seeking entities and then continually being surprised and offended when companies act shady puts employees in a pointlessly weak position. Instead, treat the relationship as adversarial and come ready for battle every day against the legal structure designed to exploit you for the benefit of distant shareholders. There is no shame in fighting for yourself. You are worth it.

> treat the relationship as adversarial and come ready for battle every day against the legal structure designed to exploit you for the benefit of distant shareholders Exploit you with industry leading pay and perks? Unions are designed to balance out monopolistic / low pay / highly geographical companies like large auto manufacturers or airlines. There is so much competitive hiring in tech, it’s one of the easiest c…

i remember a post on reddit's sysadmin subreddit a while back of a disillusioned help desk tech asking about unions. the majority response was basically this -- even in help desk, your value is high enough that you can pretty easily find equivalent or better work fast by putting yourself out there. tech corps need the workers more than the workers need tech

Re: Google Had Secret Project to ‘Convince’ Employees ‘That Unions Suck’

#229

Post by busterarm »

jason0597 wrote: post #220
busterarm wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Shh, every time those of us who have been in actual unions and actually had terrible experiences voice our opinions we get downvoted into oblivion. It's not worth it, m8.

So the current arrangement of service workers being paid slave wages and given disgusting conditions is working fine?

My three union jobs were service worker jobs; what are you trying to imply here?

Re: Google Had Secret Project to ‘Convince’ Employees ‘That Unions Suck’

#230

Post by reaperducer »

nix0n wrote: post #195
reaperducer wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Contrary to the shoe-pounding HN rhetoric, there are good companies and bad companies. Which one is often a function of the people running it at the highest levels. Very often companies are founded by good people with good intents, who end up leaving for one reason or another, and are taken over by people with a different set of values. I don't know enough about the internal workings of Google to say that's the case…

> there are good companies and bad companies Are there any large companies, that stayed good?

Are there any large companies, that stayed good?

Yes. However, the complication is that different people have differing ideas of what constitutes "good."

The billion-dollar healthcare company I work for does stupid things sometimes, but overall I still quantify it as "good" because I see that the number of good things it does outnumbers the number of "bad" things it does by about 10,000:1. But if you're that one person, then you might consider it a "bad" company because you don't see the other 10,000 people who ended up with good things happening.

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