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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.

#171

Post by phpisthebest »

ryandrake wrote: post #170
phpisthebest wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>>Me, me, me, I, me, me. You say that like is a bad thing. One should always look out for their own interests. I am unclear why I should not be? >>I wonder why overtime and crazy hours are then the norm across so many industries Well I know many documented cases where it is not "required" but the employee feels it is. As a manager I have had to prevent employees from working too much even though I have told them many…

If you're not interested in vacation or sick leave, a union could also help negotiate things that you do value, like [I'm admittedly guessing here] better 401(k) matching, after-tax 401(k) contributions, an ESOP plan, a profit-sharing plan, a more aggressive bonus structure, and so on. Companies are not just going to offer these kinds of things one-off to those few "Captains of Negotiation" and besides, workers shoul…

Unions Negotiation based on majoritarian priorities, so if your desires match the majority of your co-workers then you will be represented in the room

If they do not, your individual wants / needs will be the first on the chopping block in favor of wants / needs that match the majority of workers

>>Companies are not just going to offer these kinds of things one-off to those few "Captains of Negotiation"

Some things they will, some things they can't change by law (i.e the law requires all employees get the same ). Unions rarely move the needle much in my experience for the non-Negotiationable things, which are largely set by things way outside the employment Negotiation. Unions will often take credit for things but in reality it is just PR for the union it was going to happen with or with out the union.

>Why do we believe this?

Most commonly because of direct experience of this happening in real unions.

I have worked in and around manufacturing plants my entire life, I have seen lots of shit from both sides

>>besides, workers shouldn't have to individually negotiate all these things. Yuck!

Why not? I dont understand this mentality where by things should just be given to people. I am continually asking for raises, promotions, etc. I advance because I ask to advance and negotiate my advancement.

Expecting things to just happen for you is a terrible idea, employers are not your parents, they are not "providing" for you, you are trading your labor for money. lets not over complicate this relationship

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

#172

Post by Manuel_D »

int_19h wrote: post #167
Manuel_D wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

There are dozens of vacant homes in US for each homeless person. The national vacancy rate is something like 10%.

In the US as a whole, sure. But the housing affordability issues aren't across the whole US: it's in specific metros. Houses in Nebraska don't solve the affordability crisis in San Francisco.

Furthermore, people aren't exactly keen on letting homeless people live in their property for free. Hotels in my city experimented with this: they got small checks for housing homeless people during COVID, when lockdown massacred the hospitality market. It was a complete disaster: the rooms were trashed and they lost more money than they received from the government.

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

#173

Post by tchaffee »

Manuel_D wrote: post #160
tchaffee wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Good thing there isn't a housing shortage. And most countries easily manage to pay for education and healthcare.

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

#174

Post by thebradbain »

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…

I live in Los Angeles, surrounded by people who work in entertainment. There's also a very heavy gaming company presence here. A lot of the companies will cross-hire, in fact, because there's a lot of overlap (voice-work, art, cgi+vfx, post-production, editing, etc).

Every time, if someone in gaming has the opportunity to take a gig in entertainment, they will choose the entertainment gig.

The industries are very similar, but due to how they evolved they are each a mirror image of the other had each taken a different path to labor organizing. Hollywood was (and in many ways still is) THE most exploitative industry when it came to profit sharing, dangerous+stressful+long working conditions, etc. But at least the unions guarantee certain things like breaks and time off, healthy pay floors (e.g. an entry level writer on a tv show will make $120k that year if they work 8 months, $70k if they work 6 months, etc), health insurance between gigs, a pension, etc, even to their minimum wage workers. Gaming workers can have this too if they realize the profitable game studios literally cannot make a profit without their labor, and organize en masse accordingly.

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

#175

Post by mmcdermott »

lukas099 wrote: post #140
RupertWiser wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m not sure it’s fair if the product ends up making a boat loads of money. Games are high risk but a very lucrative industry. Just look at how successful football players were in getting a slice of the pie. I’d still consider that a dream job.

Being an NFL football player means you are in like the top 0.0001% of players in a very popular sport, so it's natural that you'd have some leverage.

With the added ingredient that fans follow players for a mixture of ability and personal brand. In that sense, it shares some similarities to acting. Names act as box office draws in ways that aren't purely about acting talent.

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

#176

Post by ClumsyPilot »

thunky wrote: post #8
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.

> The reason for this dangerous combo? You’re working your dream job. Doesn't that make it a fair trade? Musicians generally don't make a killing either.

> Doesn't that make it a fair trade? Musicians generally don't make a killing either.

What are giving me to make it fair?

My feeling of internal satisfaction is genersted in my body, they are not supplying me drugs and cocaine.

Some musicians make a killing and get royalties - who in gane industry gets millions in royalties?

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

#177

Post by Manuel_D »

tchaffee wrote: post #173
Manuel_D wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Good thing there isn't a housing shortage. And most countries easily manage to pay for education and healthcare.

There is indeed a housing shortage, or more specifically shortages in desirable metros. American cities are refusing to build denser residencies, driving up the cost of housing.

Most countries aren't America. Germany, as a point of comparison, had half the share of it's population enrolled in university. Part of this is because of age distribution: America is younger and has more college age people. Also, about 50% of German high schoolers go on to university as compared to 70% of Americans. People keep pointing to the European education system, but my retort is that following Europe's example would entail reducing enrollment considerably.

Healthcare is indeed one place where administrative changes could solve things. Most European countries, along with Japan and South Korea, work by giving citizens a stipend to spend on a healthcare plan from a marketplace of providers (either directly, or indirectly through subsidizing plans). This is largely what Romney was proposing in 2012, but that effort fizzled out. Unfortunately, the one party in America in favor of healthcare reform seems to be laser focused on a fully nationalized healthcare to the exclusion of anything else.

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

#178

Post by mattficke »

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.

I’m referring to the employment agreements that are in practice signed by basically everyone who works for a tech company (among other industries). Commonly includes provisions such as intellectual property assignment, non-solicitation, non-disclosure, non-disparagement, and occasionally non-compete (outside of California). These all protect the employer, it’s uncommon for anything in the agreement to protect the employee.

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

#179

Post by pixl97 »

derefr wrote: post #158
advisedwang wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 industr…

>The games industry has almost no old talent.

Guess I need to tell all the older people in the game industry I know they need to quit.

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

#180

Post by pixl97 »

mbesto wrote: post #129
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?

Gaming software engineers, relative to a FAANG engineer for example, are willing to work for less money, work in worse conditions due to a tradeoff for working in a field they are fanatically passionate about. It doesn't matter whether they should or should not be, it just is. That's what those engineers are willing to do. Gaming companies exploit this for profit. If you were a for-profit organization you would do th…

>Same thing happens in fashion, media and entertainment.

And many of those industries unionized to prevent the systematic abuse!

If there was a headline

"Abuser abused many girlfriends in a row" you'd excuse their behavior saying there are plenty of other guys out there they could go with instead.

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