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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

#141

Post by jcims »

qbasic_forever wrote: post #119
eru wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not even a new management team: an existing management team can change things, too. But, so what? You can just work elsewhere instead.

As a manager it should be terrifying and strike fear into your heart at the thought that your entire team's last recourse is to just up and leave with no notice. With a union you can bargain, understand the problems, and resolve them.

I was a member of the Teamsters for about a year. That organization seems to thrive on creating a hostile relationship between management and staff. I’m a manager now, there’s absolutely no way I would want to invite that type of operating model into a current workplace.

If the organization that I work for creates an environment that is not conducive to retaining employees then I’m just as likely to leave as my team.

Re: New York Times tech workers vote to certify union

#142

Post by eru »

TulliusCicero wrote: post #134
eru wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are right that free-loading is a problem in theory. But being forced to pay for services you don't actually want is also a problem.

It's being forced the same way any other terms of employment are forced on you, and your option in this case is the same: go somewhere else. We know from history and other countries that broadly speaking, if you weaken unions with right-to-work laws, workers as a whole end up worse off. It tilts the power relationship between employees and employer towards the employer. If you look at peer countries with stronger, mo…

> We know from history and other countries that broadly speaking, if you weaken unions with right-to-work laws, workers as a whole end up worse off.

> If you look at peer countries with stronger, more present unions, you find that workers are usually considerably better off there.

Compare and contrast https://pseudoerasmus.com/2017/10/02/ijd/

Also compare European countries. The more neoliberal ones tend to be richer.

> It's being forced the same way any other terms of employment are forced on you, and your option in this case is the same: go somewhere else.

In some sense, yes. And you can read my comment as an argument in favour of me avoiding union shops.

Re: New York Times tech workers vote to certify union

#143

Post by eru »

qbasic_forever wrote: post #119
eru wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not even a new management team: an existing management team can change things, too. But, so what? You can just work elsewhere instead.

As a manager it should be terrifying and strike fear into your heart at the thought that your entire team's last recourse is to just up and leave with no notice. With a union you can bargain, understand the problems, and resolve them.

> With a union you can bargain, understand the problems, and resolve them.

What keeps you from talking to your team?

Re: New York Times tech workers vote to certify union

#144

Post by djrobstep »

morgante wrote: post #64
djrobstep wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is it bad to be forced to generate revenue for the union as a condition of employment, but ok to be forced to generate revenue for the company as a condition of employment?

The business has customers and pays me a salary. The union is simply a parasite, extracting value from the organization. Objectively, if you voluntarily join a union shop, there's nothing wrong with that. I would never do it, but it's at least a free market transaction. But it's unconscionable that a union might show up at my work and demand I start paying them for the "benefit" of negotiating on my behalf. I would i…

Why is the union a parasite, but not the company’s shareholders? In both cases employees are forced to send them revenue. So why is one good but the other bad?

Re: New York Times tech workers vote to certify union

#145

Post by mianos »

lmm wrote: post #136
0xy wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So it's like buying a lottery ticket every day for decades expecting to win millions. They don't show value and there's no indication they ever will, and it costs a significant amount of money. Often, the unions themselves are corrupt.

> So it's like buying a lottery ticket every day for decades expecting to win millions. They don't show value and there's no indication they ever will, and it costs a significant amount of money. Money has diminishing returns. Paying to gain a small chance of winning big is generally foolish; paying to eliminate a small chance of losing big is often wise. > Often, the unions themselves are corrupt. This seems to be a…

> This seems to be a distinctly American quirk.

Not so much American. They are very corrupt here in Australia. There are union leaders or related staff in court pretty much every working day in court down here.

Re: New York Times tech workers vote to certify union

#146

Post by scarface74 »

the_duke wrote: post #19
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…

That's exactly the time to unionize! The employer has limited leverage to bust any union efforts. When the employment market is weak and you are scrounging for a job it's a lot easier to threaten/scare everyone into submission.

I’ve been a developer for 25 years. The only time I couldn’t just throw my resume in the air and get another job was between 2008-2011. But that was a function of a bad economy and my letting my skills atrophy.

When Amazon developers (I work at AWS in ProServe) saw their compensation not in line with the market, they didn’t talk about “unionizing”, they started interviewing and resigning en masse forcing Amazon to change their entire compensation model.

We will see in April how well that will work - when compensation changes for the year starts.

Re: New York Times tech workers vote to certify union

#147

Post by limelight »

djrobstep wrote: post #144
morgante wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The business has customers and pays me a salary. The union is simply a parasite, extracting value from the organization. Objectively, if you voluntarily join a union shop, there's nothing wrong with that. I would never do it, but it's at least a free market transaction. But it's unconscionable that a union might show up at my work and demand I start paying them for the "benefit" of negotiating on my behalf. I would i…

Why is the union a parasite, but not the company’s shareholders? In both cases employees are forced to send them revenue. So why is one good but the other bad?

I wouldn't consider shareholders good or bad, but neutral. The revenue you send them today is compensation for the capital they provided to get the business to where it is today (or, in many cases, liquidity for earlier employees who built the company). They provided meaningful value to secure that revenue stream.

Meanwhile, the union provides no value to the business.

Re: New York Times tech workers vote to certify union

#148

Post by scarface74 »

woodruffw wrote: post #51
Kalium wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If a union formed when you have leverage doesn't deliver when you do , why would you expect it to deliver when you don't ?

If I understood the parent comment, there are two kinds of leverage being discussed here: there's the leverage that individual tech workers currently have (as high demand, high income laborers in a hot market) and then there's the leverage inherent to collective bargaining. I believe the GP was saying that unions can deliver when circumstances give individuals large amounts of leverage, but they don't need to. But we…

And what’s stopping tech companies from doing the same thing manufacturing companies do when they don’t want to deal with unions - hire cheaper labor overseas?

My hometown use to be booming with multiple manufacturing plants. Every time the union got involved, the plants just picked up and left.

Re: New York Times tech workers vote to certify union

#149

Post by djrobstep »

limelight wrote: post #147
djrobstep wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is the union a parasite, but not the company’s shareholders? In both cases employees are forced to send them revenue. So why is one good but the other bad?

I wouldn't consider shareholders good or bad, but neutral. The revenue you send them today is compensation for the capital they provided to get the business to where it is today (or, in many cases, liquidity for earlier employees who built the company). They provided meaningful value to secure that revenue stream. Meanwhile, the union provides no value to the business.

It does provide value to the business, but to the employees rather than the shareholders. The question is why should interactions with the shareholder reps be compulsory, but not the employee reps? Why is compulsion fine for one but not the other?

Re: New York Times tech workers vote to certify union

#150

Post by scarface74 »

axutio wrote: post #35
Kalium wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This also describes an environment where the union doesn't seem to be offering any significant benefits to developers. If unionizing doesn't improve your working conditions, what's the point of the union?

I think the idea is that you form the union when you have leverage and don't need it so that if you ever lose leverage as an individual in the future (e.g. if the developer labor market becomes oversaturated or demand for developers tanks), you will still have some leverage as a member of the collective. Seems kind of like insurance - you pay for it when you don't need it so that you have it when you do.

If demands for developers sink - aren’t you screwed anyway? How often in the history of labor have unions ever kept companies from just outsourcing? Did it help employees in the car market?

My solution for 25 years as always been to change jobs.

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