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Google Had Secret Project to ‘Convince’ Employees ‘That Unions Suck’
361–370 of 411 posts
Re: Google Had Secret Project to ‘Convince’ Employees ‘That Unions Suck’
#362Earlier quoted context omitted.
> It's also easy for you to bring up teachers and nurses' unions not being mafia controlled -- jobs predominantly staffed with women. The American mafia literally cannot have women members per its own rules, so of course they couldn't influence those unions. How about the Aerospace Engineer's union, then: https://www.speea.org/ Pretty sure it's predominately male. > If you do your research though, you'll see that the…
> How about the Aerospace Engineer's union, then: https://www.speea.org/ Pretty sure it's predominately male. And up until a decade or two ago had maybe a single-digit number of possible employers you could be working for. Also fucking goombahs don't have engineering degrees. Again, you're talking about another field the mafia, largely uneducated street people, could never penetrate. Let's at least start your argumen…
> Let's at least start your argument from a place of intellectual honesty.
Your original statement:
> Also everyone seems to forget that the history of unions in the US is inseparable from mafia racketeering.
As we've discussed, major parts of union history has nothing to do with mafia racketeering.
Falsely associating all organized labor with the parts that were involved with organized crime is intellectually dishonest.
Re: Google Had Secret Project to ‘Convince’ Employees ‘That Unions Suck’
#363Earlier quoted context omitted.
Everyone has a good relationship with their employer _until they don't._ And when the relationship goes bad it also becomes very, very one-sided.
From what I can tell, a "bad relationship" with employer particularly in competitive tech fields is a direct result of poor performance by the employee, which actually seems reasonable. I don't think it makes sense to introduce bureaucracy with the explicit purpose of covering for poor performance, as that pummels incentives to actually perform well at work. It seems actively unfair to people that are doing their job…
What could you possibly be basing this on, and how are you so sure that this gut feeling is not at all caused by the various campaigns that corporations are provably spending millions of dollars on every year?
Did you really never have a bad manager? Can you truly not believe that bad managers exist? I am really surprised by this comment.
Re: Google Had Secret Project to ‘Convince’ Employees ‘That Unions Suck’
#364Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm with you on this one. But here's the thing: They're all (95+%) fucking terrible. No exaggeration, no drama; they're literally evil and for real killing us and the planet. Rs and Ds, judges and lawyers, Banks, Media Energy, Pharma, Guns, and Big Tech - all of them. People might think this comment isn't helpful - because they don't see the above as scum. But they are.
I don't disagree. The sooner people can get wise to the idea that all relationships with government, employers, etc. are at least moderately adversarial by nature, the better. Power dynamics, etc. The one problem is that people use this "everyone is terrible" argument to justify selfish libertarianism. "All politicians are bad anyway, so I voted for the one that appeals to my personal beliefs." This seems to be more…
Yeah. There is that I don't know how they do it, but I sure hope we can grow more of them somehow.
Re: Google Had Secret Project to ‘Convince’ Employees ‘That Unions Suck’
#365Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is one of the anti-union talking points from documents produced by IRI (the firm Google has hired to fight unionization efforts) in a previous union-busting effort. > “Talk about any bad experience you or others you know may have had with unions,” the document instructs managers. “Also talk about the union’s past. Tell employees about documented history of Mafia influence and corruption of unions. Tell employees…
That doesn’t mean it’s wrong.
That doesn't mean it's right. In this case, it is wrong; collective bargaining goes way back, and while it is true that some unions officers have been crooks (and indeed controlled by Mafia), unions did not come from the Mafia.
It's one of those technically true statements. Like "the history of the web in the US is inseparable from child pornography". Yes, some regulations were put in place because of the existence of child porn, but the implication that the web was created by/for child molesters is wrong.
Re: Google Had Secret Project to ‘Convince’ Employees ‘That Unions Suck’
#366Seems to have worked amazingly well based on all the times I recall reading the comments of stories posted here involving unions.
I was in the UAW for about 6 six years. My dad was a Teamster for about 30 years. My feelings on unions are mixed — there are pluses and minuses — but they're mine. What I hear on HN a lot of the time is a naive belief that unions are an unalloyed good, and I'm not sure where that comes from. I won't accuse anybody of being a shill, I just think they're getting their information secondhand and don't fully appreciate…
> What I hear on HN a lot of the time is a naive belief that unions are an unalloyed good
Where do you read this? It seems to me that every thread about unions is filled with former union members that dislike unions but don't back up their dislike with any information.
I was part of Teamsters Canada for 10 years. I made $25/hr where similar positions at other companies were for $10-$12/hr. Overtime I worked was paid, always, that's literally never happened in software. If we were understaffed, management had to call in extra employees from a staffing firm to bring us to a minimum headcount, no working understaffed. We had guaranteed, mandatory to take, paid time off. When the managers were being idiots, we could tell them such without fear of being fired instantly, the union would back us when the managers were being idiots. Retirement benefits.
That's not to say it was all good though. The union never listened to our shops complaints. They didn't step in for months when things were terribly mismanaged. There was visible grifting by the leadership of the union. They could have done a better job.
That said, without the union, I would have made maybe 50% of the money I did make, the conditions would have been worse, and the chances of fixing things in the workplace would have been reduced.
Re: Google Had Secret Project to ‘Convince’ Employees ‘That Unions Suck’
#367A lot of people seem confused why a lot of tech people aren't pushing for unions. For me it's simple: Tech has brought me from near poverty to pretty darn wealthy. Why mess with that? Could a union help increase wages even more? Maybe. Are we being paid too little compared to our output? Maybe. But at the same time I'm being paid more than I could have possibly imagined before I entered the field.
Not only that (how tech brought you out of poverty), the calculus is also very different for immigrant workers on immigrant visas. I wish their perspective was more represented in the conversation.
Re: Google Had Secret Project to ‘Convince’ Employees ‘That Unions Suck’
#368Earlier quoted context omitted.
In USA if other people form a union at your company then you have to pay their union dues even if you don't like the union. In EU that is illegal, but in USA that is how it works. If you ever wonder why Americans are so anti unions that is why.
That actually varies from state-to-state.
Some more details here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right-to-work_law
Re: Google Had Secret Project to ‘Convince’ Employees ‘That Unions Suck’
#369Earlier quoted context omitted.
It really bothers me that we've all accepted (not you or me specifically, but every time I see unions discussed it's the subtext) that we have two choices: no union or a shitty union. Why can't we work for a union that is good? If the answer is that humans are involved and it'll never be possible, then that could be applied to anything and is an absurd answer. This is not a strawman, I've heard that argument many tim…
In USA, unions mostly represent blue-collar workers who tend to elect low-quality union leaders. A union at Google could end up with better leaders than the company itself.
There's also another factor at play: in many states, the power of unions is quite weak. E.g. public-sector employees in NC cannot collectively bargain, which is why they're able to get away with paying teachers horrendous wages. Want to strike? Go on ahead, pay your sub for the day (or your contract will not be renewed) and go down to Raleigh, where the legislature will recess and most of them will literally just go home and ignore all the people with picket signs.
It's a lot harder to get behind unions when they can't really be very strong.
Re: Google Had Secret Project to ‘Convince’ Employees ‘That Unions Suck’
#370Earlier quoted context omitted.
That doesn’t mean it’s wrong.
That doesn't mean it's right. In this case, it is wrong; collective bargaining goes way back, and while it is true that some unions officers have been crooks (and indeed controlled by Mafia), unions did not come from the Mafia . It's one of those technically true statements. Like "the history of the web in the US is inseparable from child pornography". Yes, some regulations were put in place because of the existence…
I never alleged that though. I just said that you can't separate the existence of unions from racketeering.
Union racketeering still goes on today.