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Microsoft workers to form company’s first union in the U.S.

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Re: Microsoft workers to form company’s first union in the U.S.

#151

Post by advisedwang »

impish9208 wrote: post #27

The most interesting bit, IMHO, is this: > In June, Mi­crosoft said it was open to work­ing with any la­bor unions that want to or­ga­nize within its work­force, mak­ing it an out­lier in the tech in­dus­try. Last year Ama­zon.­com Inc. con­tested work­ers’ ef­forts to union­ize. Mi­crosoft has said it would sup­port work­ers at Ac­tivi­sion Bliz­zard Inc. who or­ga­nized last year should its $75 bil­lion deal for th…

Microsoft was required to say this by an agreement they made with CWA: https://cwa-union.org/news/releases/cwa-microsoft-announce-l...

Re: Microsoft workers to form company’s first union in the U.S.

#152

Post by jjj123 »

PathOfEclipse wrote: post #132
triceratops wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's exactly my point. There are people who do the same job as you and love it. They may not even feel stress. Should they be paid less than you?

You're reaching into "cosmic justice" territory, which is a really bad place to be. It's not up to you or anyone else to fix the fact that the universe is inherently "unfair" (re: people with different passions, dispositions, and life situations), and certainly giving any entity sufficient power to attempt to solve for cosmic injustice is simply paving a road to tyranny with golden intentions.

Well right now there are existing entities with too much power, unions provide a second (less) powerful entity to balance the unchecked power of corporate leaders.

It’s not about correcting a cosmic wrong, it’s about people wanting more power and using a tool to get it.

Re: Microsoft workers to form company’s first union in the U.S.

#153

Post by robertlagrant »

Quarrelsome wrote: post #75
robertlagrant wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Just look at how successful football players were in getting a slice of the pie. I’d still consider that a dream job. In this case they are the product, and there are a lot of customers. Plenty of people working on the things that make those players valuable, building and staffing stadiums, and filming and broadcasting events worldwide, that don't get a share. Because they aren't the product.

sure but the product is puppets and the devs are arguably the puppeteers.

What do you mean?

Re: Microsoft workers to form company’s first union in the U.S.

#154

Post by giantg2 »

mattficke wrote: post #97
giantg2 wrote: post #57

There are times I wish I had a union working for tech in finance. Although it seems like a real contract would fix most of the issues without unions. These one page "we make the rules and can change them at any time" contracts are bogus. There's no accountability, no fairness. Things become arbitrary. There's no accountability when the company violates it's own policies.

> Although it seems like a real contract would fix most of the issues without unions. It’s hard to disentangle these, unions are effectively the only way for non-executive[0] employees (in the US) to get an employment contract that isn’t one-sided in favor of the employer. The primary function of a union is to obtain a contract. [0] I highly recommend reading the “Executive Severance Plan” section of any publicly tra…

The terms are never fully even. Even a contract with uneven yet clearly defined terms would be so much better. Most places have decent or even good policies, the problem is those policies are not enforced, or are enforced unevenly.

Re: Microsoft workers to form company’s first union in the U.S.

#155

Post by derefr »

speeder wrote: post #137
yakattak wrote: post #4

Game companies need this. It’s one of the “software engineering” adjacent subfields that is extremely exploited. The salaries are low, the work is stressful, crunch is high. The reason for this dangerous combo? You’re working your dream job. This is good, I hope the employees at ActivisionBlizzard can finalize their union if they’re purchased by Microsoft.

I try to work in the game industry when possible. Unions on the game industry would never work, reason why game industry is so abusive is two fold: 1. A lot of young people believe working with games is only fun, providing endless bodies to be hired and replace the previous young that realized how much it suck that they quit. 2. Games market follow a very strong winner takes all model, a few games have all profits, l…

Perhaps we need a different revenue model for games.

Book publishing was pretty winner-take-all, until Kindle Unlimited (and its close relative, the many serial-fiction "unlock new chapters with coins" websites and apps) came along, and basically changed everything for many indie authors.

Before, you needed to woo a publisher, because you needed to be in bookstores, because you needed a certain threshold of word-of-mouth to be stirred up around your releases, in order to get sales that would let you make enough to cover your own advances.

But with the Kindle Unlimited model (users pay a flat subscription fee; authors get paid per page read) it's now practical to earn a living just by writing and maybe talking your book up on your own personal social media — no need to find a publisher, no need to make it into bookstores, no need to advertise heavily, no need to make big-hit releases, etc. Just pump out a constant stream of stuff that some people like enough, and you get money.

Could there be a Kindle Unlimited for games? All games are free under subscription; devs get paid proportional to play time?

A quick Google suggests that Apple Arcade might actually be doing this, but Apple Arcade devs are apparently under NDA not to talk about the revenue model. (Maybe because Apple doesn't want the other bigcorps realizing this is working well and being a fast-follower?)

Re: Microsoft workers to form company’s first union in the U.S.

#156

Post by tchaffee »

Manuel_D wrote: post #148
tchaffee wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The 70s when one earner (even a factory worker) could still afford a house and kids and wealth gaps were way smaller? Better times for sure unless you're very rich.

Being able to afford a house back in the 1970s was less due to factory jobs paying better, and more due to houses being a lot cheaper. Some goods, like computing information systems, have gotten a lot cheaper. Other goods, chiefly housing, education, and healthcare have gotten a lot more expensive. And it's not any easy path to making the latter less expensive: land is finite, a there's a much bigger proportion of pe…

You're forgetting that increases in productivity used to be partially shared with the middle class who enjoyed a rising standard of life as a result. Around that time it changed with the rich keeping all those profits to themselves. If middle class salaries had kept up, houses and education would be affordable.

Re: Microsoft workers to form company’s first union in the U.S.

#157

Post by giantg2 »

surement wrote: post #135
mattficke wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Although it seems like a real contract would fix most of the issues without unions. It’s hard to disentangle these, unions are effectively the only way for non-executive[0] employees (in the US) to get an employment contract that isn’t one-sided in favor of the employer. The primary function of a union is to obtain a contract. [0] I highly recommend reading the “Executive Severance Plan” section of any publicly tra…

> unions are effectively the only way for non-executive[0] employees (in the US) to get an employment contract that isn’t one-sided in favor of the employer If they were actually one-sided then no employees would sign them. It's not like there are no alternatives to finance tech.

But are there good alternatives?

I've become cynical. Every job seems like it's the same shit with the same problems and there isn't anything better.

Re: Microsoft workers to form company’s first union in the U.S.

#158

Post by derefr »

advisedwang wrote: post #150
speeder wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I try to work in the game industry when possible. Unions on the game industry would never work, reason why game industry is so abusive is two fold: 1. A lot of young people believe working with games is only fun, providing endless bodies to be hired and replace the previous young that realized how much it suck that they quit. 2. Games market follow a very strong winner takes all model, a few games have all profits, l…

> 1. A lot of young people believe working with games is only fun, providing endless bodies to be hired and replace the previous young that realized how much it suck that they quit. > 2. Games market follow a very strong winner takes all model, a few games have all profits, literally thousands games are released yearly that nobody ever heard of or bought. These are both true of movies, but that is a heavily unionized…

The film industry has a lot of young talent trying to break into the industry, but the industry is mostly composed of older people with better sense of their own worth.

The games industry has almost no old talent. There are many non-trivially-sized game studios where nobody working there is over 30.

Presumably, on the film-industry side, this is in part a work of the unions, acting as barriers-to-entry to the industry and thereby limiting the supply of (⇒ increasing the demand for) their existing membership.

Not knowing much about the history of film, I would guess that film-industry unions — besides the blue-collar labor unions, that likely arose organically just as they did everywhere — originally arose out mostly from the natural limited supply of "famous actors" who thus already formed an implicit power bloc within the industry.

The games industry really doesn't have a natural power bloc equivalent to "famous actors." There are some famous directors, but they just go found their own studios if they don't like working conditions elsewhere (since business/people management is already their comparative advantage.)

Re: Microsoft workers to form company’s first union in the U.S.

#159

Post by SinParadise »

lettergram wrote: post #7
yakattak wrote: post #4

Game companies need this. It’s one of the “software engineering” adjacent subfields that is extremely exploited. The salaries are low, the work is stressful, crunch is high. The reason for this dangerous combo? You’re working your dream job. This is good, I hope the employees at ActivisionBlizzard can finalize their union if they’re purchased by Microsoft.

Have you ever worked in a company with a union? Look what just happened to the railroad workers. The US government forced them back to work and gave everything to the companies. Unions are effectively a corporation running labor. So you go from working for the company to working for your union rep. They then pimp you out and get kick backs. Wanna leave your job for another company or role? Good luck, you drop in seni…

The railroad worker is not representative of the average union. It is an extreme outlier.

Re: Microsoft workers to form company’s first union in the U.S.

#160

Post by Manuel_D »

tchaffee wrote: post #156
Manuel_D wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Being able to afford a house back in the 1970s was less due to factory jobs paying better, and more due to houses being a lot cheaper. Some goods, like computing information systems, have gotten a lot cheaper. Other goods, chiefly housing, education, and healthcare have gotten a lot more expensive. And it's not any easy path to making the latter less expensive: land is finite, a there's a much bigger proportion of pe…

You're forgetting that increases in productivity used to be partially shared with the middle class who enjoyed a rising standard of life as a result. Around that time it changed with the rich keeping all those profits to themselves. If middle class salaries had kept up, houses and education would be affordable.

Higher salaries don't solve shortages. If there's 200 buyers for 150 homes, higher salaries would just let those buyer make larger bids. In order to let the poorest 50 people get homes, we need 50 more homes.
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