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New York Times tech workers vote to certify union

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Re: New York Times tech workers vote to certify union

#121

Post by eru »

limelight wrote: post #110
onion2k wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have an in-demand set of skills and could easily find a new job if I wanted to. Let's imagine someone makes an AI project that can turn requirements into code, and it actually works. Copilot has shown it's not impossible to generate working code with some machine learning but it's definitely a hard problem. There are hundreds, maybe even thousands, of founders working on this problem right now and maybe one will ge…

If an AI can do my job, an AI should be allowed to do my job. I don't want a union to "protect" me doing a job which can be automated. That's a waste of human talent and potential. It is terrible to hold back progress just to provide "make-work" jobs protected by unions. Should we still employ elevator operators? In a scenario where my job is obsolete, a union would simply delay the inevitable. It might keep the comp…

Yes. Developers have always worked on automating developers' jobs. Both their own and other developers' jobs.

Re: New York Times tech workers vote to certify union

#122

Post by thaumasiotes »

ralfd wrote: post #106
vmception wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes but it is time to revisit that logic. Software engineers are well compensated relative to the rest of the population but that should not be a factor at all. Its all about value delivered relative to that organization, in aggregate. Wages have stagnated for 30 years. There is a lot of catching up to do: Until a single earner can afford a family home outright, in 5 years of compensation, down the street from where…

Houses are positional goods. If you earn five times as much, your colleagues will too, and there will be a bidding war until the price matches your earning power again. See also: The absurd real estate prices in the Bay area. Elizabeth Warren made that argument in her book "The Two-Income Trap". The economic gains from switching from the traditional bread-winner/house-wife household to double-income-households were e…

> Houses are positional goods. If you earn five times as much, your colleagues will too, and there will be a bidding war until the price matches your earning power again.

This requires the assumption that additional houses can't be constructed.

> See also: The absurd real estate prices in the Bay area.

See also: the Bay area.

Re: New York Times tech workers vote to certify union

#124

Post by eru »

vmception wrote: post #47
CSMastermind wrote: post #7

I'm surprised they weren't already in one. I worked at a competitor (the Wall St. Journal) years ago and all software engineers there had to be part of the union. Unions in the news industry are extremely common and powerful. My subjective experience with it was that union membership was mostly inconsequential for developers. The market for programmers is so strong that people would just leave if they weren't treated…

Yes but it is time to revisit that logic. Software engineers are well compensated relative to the rest of the population but that should not be a factor at all. Its all about value delivered relative to that organization, in aggregate. Wages have stagnated for 30 years. There is a lot of catching up to do: Until a single earner can afford a family home outright, in 5 years of compensation, down the street from where…

Wages have not stagnated. What inflation measures do you use to come to that conclusion?

You are right that real estate has become more expensive over time in many places.

A big part of the problem (in the US) is that new construction of housing is almost illegal. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Missing_middle_housing

Re: New York Times tech workers vote to certify union

#125

Post by eru »

ralfd wrote: post #106
vmception wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes but it is time to revisit that logic. Software engineers are well compensated relative to the rest of the population but that should not be a factor at all. Its all about value delivered relative to that organization, in aggregate. Wages have stagnated for 30 years. There is a lot of catching up to do: Until a single earner can afford a family home outright, in 5 years of compensation, down the street from where…

Houses are positional goods. If you earn five times as much, your colleagues will too, and there will be a bidding war until the price matches your earning power again. See also: The absurd real estate prices in the Bay area. Elizabeth Warren made that argument in her book "The Two-Income Trap". The economic gains from switching from the traditional bread-winner/house-wife household to double-income-households were e…

Well, a big problem for the US is that building most types of new housing is illegal.

See eg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Missing_middle_housing or your favourite articles on the evils of Euclidean zoning and minimum parking requirements.

Re: New York Times tech workers vote to certify union

#127

Post by eru »

dgrin91 wrote: post #75
CountSessine wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course they can - unless you live in a jurisdiction with a so-called “right to work” statute. If you weren’t forced to join then, in theory, management could subvert and then break the union by hiring lots of new employees who are compensated to “opt-out”.

> compensated to “opt-out”. Didn't you basically just describe the goal of a union? Better conditions for their workers?

Well, the theory is that management will make the conditions worse after breaking up the union.

Very similar to the myth of 'predatory pricing'.

Re: New York Times tech workers vote to certify union

#128

Post by dehrmann »

morgante wrote: post #65
zorpner wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The company can hire you. Your unionized coworkers can decline to work with you, or for the company, if they do so. Would you deny them that right?

No. Some union agreements specifically forbid the company from hiring non-union employees. That's what makes it a closed shop. "Right to work" states have it right here. A union should never forbid you from voluntarily transacting directly with an employer. If they do, they're just a protection racket.

I wonder if there have been situations where someone was banned from a union, but then couldn't find employment in their trained profession and home state because of the closed shop contract.

Re: New York Times tech workers vote to certify union

#129

Post by eru »

approxim8ion wrote: post #103
morgante wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, I always have the option to quit. Which I had in the first place. It's just as possible (in fact, probable) that the union negotiates a worse contract than what I could have gotten myself and I'd be forced to quit a job I liked. That's a strictly worse outcome. > At least in the union situation you’ve had an advocate in negotiating the contract. They're not an advocate for me. They're an advocate for the union .…

At the end of the day these arguments always come down to people thinking they're superior than the peasants who "need unions", possibly because they can't imagine organizations where people work for the welfare of people other than themselves.

Careful. You are fighting a strawman here.

First, I don't think there are 'peasants who "need unions"'.

Second, there are people who might want a union to negotiate for them. Just like there are people who prefer having a lawyer represent them in court. Having such preferences (or not) doesn't make anyone superior or inferior. But it also doesn't mean that we should all have the same preferences.

> [...], possibly because they can't imagine organizations where people work for the welfare of people other than themselves.

Eh, lots of organisation, including companies or political parties or charities, do that kind of stuff all the time. Doesn't mean that I want that I automatically want to hire the services of any such organisation.

Eg I'm fairly sure that most churches are run by basically altruistic people who only have my salvation in mind. Understanding that doesn't make me into a Christian.

Re: New York Times tech workers vote to certify union

#130

Post by eru »

lmm wrote: post #90
morgante wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, because it is monopolistic/anti-competitive behavior. In isolated cases, it doesn't seem so bad. But you eventually end up with entire industries dominated by unions where you can't work at all without paying their protection money. We have laws against corporations using market power to force monopolies. Unions also should not be able to legally monopolize the labor market.

I would agree that if unions were significantly larger and more powerful than corporations then there might be an issue (just as corporations being significantly larger and more powerful than individual workers is an issue - that is after all what unions exist to address). But I highly doubt this union is bigger and more powerful than the NYT, and I rather doubt that any union is as big and powerful as Google/Faceboo…

Many unions are active in entire industries (or more). Many companies are much smaller than that.
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