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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.

#191

Post by phpisthebest »

dmitriid wrote: post #182
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…

> 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 underpai…

>>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

No I want to be served by a Robot, and hope mcd;s leads the technology on automation technology to replace humans in the food service space

>>- ... the list is endless

and none of it is relevant and most of them do not work for unions or need unions to get good pay. so....

Union membership in the US have been DROPPING for decades for a reason.

>>You, as a manager, and the company you represent have all the power in these negotiations.

That is bullshit, every time this happen it has been the person we are looking to hire to bring up the things they want / need, All I have done is passed them to HR or my VP to see if the request could be accommodated or not

>>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

It does scale but no I do not expect everyone to be "lucky" nor do I think you can eliminate all bad employers even under the EU level of authoritarianism you can not eliminate them all,

I am a capitalist, I believe in capitalism and over all I believe markets are a batter solution to human scale problem that government. History proves me correct and you wrong, history will continue to prove me correct and you wrong

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

#192

Post by thebradbain »

dmitriid wrote: post #184
thebradbain wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Well, unfortunately the major VFX houses today are not unionized. There used to be some, but Marvel opened the floodgates to contracting out major VFK work to non-union companies.

I imagine this will be added to the list of grievances animators historically have had with the lack of union protections in recent years, and used as a negotiation chip in the next round of strikes. After all, union films and tv shows cannot use non-union actors or crews in most cases. I imagine there will be a similar rule made that union productions cannot work with non-union vfx agencies, eventually.

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

#193

Post by sudosysgen »

mypastself wrote: post #131
sudosysgen wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Corporations get special legal privileges, why not unions too?

In a free market environment, neither would have them.

There can be no such thing as a real free market. It's an inherently contradictory concept because it necessarily relies on a government strong enough to impose a private property rights regime but at the same time act against its own interests.

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

#194

Post by triceratops »

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.

Not at all. I just object to the toxic idea that professions should pay more or less based on how much much people like doing them. Justify salaries based on supply and demand, and value creation.

"Your job is fun/cool/meaningful whereas my work makes me hate myself. Therefore, I deserve more money than you" is an awfully sour worldview.

Working conditions or health and safety, are not up for debate no matter how amazing or terrible the job is.

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

#195

Post by mbesto »

pixl97 wrote: post #180
mbesto wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> you'd excuse their behavior saying there are plenty of other guys out there they could go with instead.

Where was I excusing it? I was simply laying out the market reality. If you want to say certain classes of professions "deserve" less or more money, then shouldn't we expand this discussion to all professions (teachers, doctors, lawyers, etc.)? No one is really saying they deserve less, but rather that this is the market reality.

If gaming devs want to unionize then that's their prerogative.

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

#196

Post by mbesto »

triceratops wrote: post #194
PathOfEclipse wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Not at all. I just object to the toxic idea that professions should pay more or less based on how much much people like doing them. Justify salaries based on supply and demand, and value creation. "Your job is fun/cool/meaningful whereas my work makes me hate myself. Therefore, I deserve more money than you" is an awfully sour worldview. Working conditions or health and safety, are not up for debate no matter how ama…

> should pay more or less based on how much much people like doing them. Justify salaries based on supply and demand, and value creation.

Reread your sentence and think real hard about it because you're saying the same thing, you're just conflating the premise. Gaming devs ARE based on supply and demand. As one of the other comments points out, the demand is outsized relative to other developer positions (e.g. SaaS dev). Simple supply and demand tells us if the demand is higher, then the price goes down. There ya go.

> Therefore, I deserve more money than you

No one is saying this.

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

#197

Post by arsenide »

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 work in the slot gaming industry. A lot of ex-video game developers end up coming over. May be worth looking into.

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

#198

Post by klyrs »

advisedwang wrote: post #162
derefr wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Unions create a wage floor and standards of working conditions which eliminates the main benefit of churning though young and optimistic people trying to break into the industry. That's another reason (besides barriers to entry) that unions are responsible for why the film industry has more "old" talent than games.

Ehhh... the "wage floor" in the film industry is nothing to strive for.

https://www.thelightleaks.com/think-pieces/reality-of-unpaid...

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

#199

Post by mypastself »

sudosysgen wrote: post #193
mypastself wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In a free market environment, neither would have them.

There can be no such thing as a real free market. It's an inherently contradictory concept because it necessarily relies on a government strong enough to impose a private property rights regime but at the same time act against its own interests.

The initial argument was about whether or not unions could be considered a part of a true free market, and whether champions of capitalism should support their existence.

Your argument is that a free market cannot exist at all, which is not exactly what the discussion is about.

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

#200

Post by tchaffee »

Manuel_D wrote: post #177
tchaffee wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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% o…

A "housing shortage in desirable metros" is moving the goal posts. The claim was that unaffordable housing can only be attributed to a shortage and has nothing to do with massively increased wealth gaps nor the shrinking middle class.

"Most countries aren't America" is just an excuse. Most European countries aren't Germany. So by that reasoning most European countries can't afford education or healthcare.

Here's what really makes the US different: most countries don't have America's massive wealth gaps. That's the real cause.

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