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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.

#181

Post by bigbillheck »

phpisthebest wrote: post #60
dmitriid wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If unions were effective I’d expect at least somewhat comparable wages… but that’s not the case. Because wage is all you care for. How about: maternity leave, paid sick leave, child support, paid vacation days, wage protections, etc. etc.? And not just for software engineers, but for everyone? > that also means as a union worker you can’t work more and make more. You’re stuck with what the union negotiated. That al…

>>Because wage is all you care for. yes.. >>How about: maternity leave, paid sick leave, child support, paid vacation days, wage protections, etc. etc.? I have no children, I will never have children, and I rarely get sick, and I hate to travel so none of that matters to me. I am forced by my employer to take the vacation I do get, and my "vacation" is me sitting around my house doing chores or gaming which I do with…

> I rarely get sick

You have rarely gotten sick thus far in your life.

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

#182

Post by dmitriid »

phpisthebest wrote: post #121
dmitriid wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I have no children, I will never have children, and I rarely get sick, and I hate to trave Ah yes. Because it's only people with children who get sick, need time off work, wage protection or pay for overtime, how could I forget. > Has a highly compensated employee that knows their value to the organizations I work for I have never been forced for work overtime with no pay. Me, me, me, I, me, me. I wonder why overti…

>>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…

> I am unclear why I should not be?

Because yours is a very narrow view that makes you blind to reality and externalities. You, and individual, don't exist in a vacuum.

- when you go to your favorite restaurant or a burger joint, you don't want to be served by an underpaid overworked staff who has been battling pneumonia for two weeks

- when you end up in the hospital, you don't want to be looked after by an underpaid overworked nurse

- when you go to get your car fixed, you don't want the people fixing it to be sick, tired, or worrying about things like whether they have enough money to feed their kids

- ditto for the ground crew servicing the plane you're flying on

- ... the list is endless

> As a manager I

> I have negotiated more vacation time for

> people that need those things should negotiate them.

People can't really negotiate these things because they don't come into these negotiations from a position of power. You, as a manager, and the company you represent have all the power in these negotiations.

You may view yourself as a good benevolent manager and you consider yourself lucky to have worked in companies that are good for some definition of good. This does not scale. You can't expect everyone to be lucky with their work and you can't expect everyone to have a manager who will magnanimously decide you're worthy of an extended vacation time.

You will also not going to be young and healthy forever.

> I prefer individualism

No. You prefer to be an egoist in a society, and reap the benefits that society gives you

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

#183

Post by dmitriid »

phpisthebest wrote: post #115
toomuchtodo wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We wish them well! Are those greener pastures the vast majority of startups that fail? Or enormous agile, nimble enterprises I’ve heard so much about (he said with a hint of sarcasm)? Lying to others is one thing, but don’t lie to yourself. A vocal minority is best served by the status quo, and they’ll do fine as consultants. Unions to protect the majority (and the evidence very clearly demonstrates these workers nee…

Neither, I normally work for privately held companies with between 200-1000 employees and revenues between 500million and 1 billion per year That seems to be the sweet spot to not get abused, either by management nor unions. Startups suck, Huge enterprises suck

> That seems to be the sweet spot to not get abused, either by management nor unions. Startups suck, Huge enterprises suck

In Europe I've worked for startups, I've worked for corporations. Everywhere I had the same situation: sick pay, vacations etc.

It's amazing that you assume that "getting abused" is the norm and you have to find yourself in some sweet spot to escape that.

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

#184

Post by dmitriid »

thebradbain wrote: post #174
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…

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 sim…

> But at least the unions guarantee certain things like

Except in VFX which is as young as gaming industry and suffers from the same problems.

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

#185

Post by Tangurena2 »

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.

Musicians are not the ones raking in all the money - the record companies are the ones doing that. There are plenty of articles about how artists would have made more money working at McDonalds while the record company brought in 8-9 digits of revenue. In TLC's case, their 2 albums sold over $100,000,000 yet the 3 artists each received less than $50k. The studio and management companies made bank.

Samples: 0 - https://www.salon.com/2000/06/14/love_7/

1 - http://www.nytimes.com/1996/11/25/business/tlc-settles-suit-...

> The group later revealed that the owner of Pebbitone made them pay $3 million to own the rights to their name.

2 - https://www.cheatsheet.com/entertainment/tlcs-crazysexycool-...

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

#186

Post by Tangurena2 »

modo_mario wrote: post #20
lettergram wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I find it weird that nobody in the US seems to look beyond their country or similar systems for different models regarding this. Here in Belgium we have some industry specific unions like for rail (idk how the government in the US forces em to do anything). But most unions are cross industry. They aren't really noticed when working in the context of a specific company too often unless mediation is needed when big lay…

In the case of rail workers, there is a separate retirement system just for rail workers. Everyone else has a retirement system called "Social Security." If you have earned a retirement benefit (well, it is an annuity) with the railway worker plan, quit to work in a job covered by social security, it is possible to lose your railway annuity. This is why many of the rail workers "don't just quit". Additionally, there are anti "double dipping" laws that reduce your railroad annuity if you get social security.

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

#187

Post by hintymad »

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 salaries are low, the work is stressful, crunch is high.

Is this because of supply & demand is different from other sectors? Say, people really love building games so they flock to the game industry? I'd imagine that developing games require highly specialized skills: great artistic sense, complex tool chains, deep understanding of maths and physics, and of course excellent programming and engineering skills. Case in point, my friends in the gaming industry routinely reads and implements SIGRAPH papers, or show me cool optimizations they did to all kinds of physics simulations with the NS equation, the constrained particle systems, and etc. It's hard to fathom that such talents get worse work condition that those who build CRUD apps.

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

#188

Post by Tangurena2 »

mattficke wrote: post #178
surement wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 emp…

Please do not forget the mandatory arbitration clauses in many of these "agreements".

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

#189

Post by Tangurena2 »

tchaffee wrote: post #123
trashtester wrote: post #69

The 70s are back. We're approaching a period of strong unions, huge labor conflicts and eventually rampant inflation. At least in Europe. I've been thinking that the USA would be affected less than Europe, due to weak unions in most sectors, but it's certainly possible for unions to form.

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.

When working on my 2nd bachelors, this subject came up in some of our sociology courses. The older people remembered exactly when this changed: the 1973 Oil Embargo. For them, this was the time when our mothers had to get a wage-paying job outside the home. Some remembered it as "that's when I had to start pumping my own gas". The people involved were all upper-middle class. My dad was an engineer (in the oil business) and the attire, cigarette smoking and alcohol consumption of Mad Men was reasonably close to my memories.

While many folks would consider factory workers are working class, they were unionized and I'd consider them middle class.

Max income tax bracket in the 70s was 70%. This prevented the income disparity that we've seen since the 1980s.

https://taxfoundation.org/historical-income-tax-rates-bracke...

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

#190

Post by phpisthebest »

dmitriid wrote: post #183
phpisthebest wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Neither, I normally work for privately held companies with between 200-1000 employees and revenues between 500million and 1 billion per year That seems to be the sweet spot to not get abused, either by management nor unions. Startups suck, Huge enterprises suck

> That seems to be the sweet spot to not get abused, either by management nor unions. Startups suck, Huge enterprises suck In Europe I've worked for startups, I've worked for corporations. Everywhere I had the same situation: sick pay, vacations etc. It's amazing that you assume that "getting abused" is the norm and you have to find yourself in some sweet spot to escape that.

To me, working anyone in the EU, under the EU laws would suck, I would be "abused" by the government instead of corporations in that case and would not no avenue of escape at all

Your assimilation of government abuse as not being abused does not magically change that

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