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Fastmail Employees Form a Union

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Re: Fastmail Employees Form a Union

#41

Post by some_random »

mfer wrote: post #6

Unions are fascinating to me. When you are in a Union, part of your money goes to the union in order to, hopefully, make things better for you. This means the relationship between Union leadership and the Union members is just as important as between Union leadership and the company. Historically, we have seen Unions bring things like worker safety to the forefront and do numerous things to help people out. More rece…

There's a whole societal level aspect too, most Unions are net positive imo (better wages and conditions is better for everyone), but some definitely aren't. The FOP is the absolute epitome of this, if you've ever wonder how we ended up where we are in the US with our cops, look into what their Union does for them.

Re: Fastmail Employees Form a Union

#42

Post by JumpCrisscross »

morvita wrote: post #33
mvexel wrote: post #24

LinkedIn says Fastmail has 116 U.S. based employees. I may be completely off base here, but if you're that small an org and employees feel the need to form a union, wouldn't that indicate a significant problem with company culture?

There's power in bargaining as a collective, whether you're a collective of ten or ten thousand. Either way, it helps with the power imbalance between employees and management.

There's also cost in coordination and agility--this is fundamentally true of any new bureaucracy, company, system or process.

I'm reading this as a sign of cultural stress unless we have evidence to the contrary. (EDIT: I didn't realise Fastmail has almost 1,000 employees, with many remote. That comes closer to where structure is merited, though I'd still argue that this points to dysfunction in the U.S.-HQ bridge given only the Americans are unionizing.)

Re: Fastmail Employees Form a Union

#43

Post by [deleted] »

mfer wrote: post #6

Unions are fascinating to me. When you are in a Union, part of your money goes to the union in order to, hopefully, make things better for you. This means the relationship between Union leadership and the Union members is just as important as between Union leadership and the company. Historically, we have seen Unions bring things like worker safety to the forefront and do numerous things to help people out. More rece…

[deleted]

Re: Fastmail Employees Form a Union

#44

Post by duped »

mfer wrote: post #6

Unions are fascinating to me. When you are in a Union, part of your money goes to the union in order to, hopefully, make things better for you. This means the relationship between Union leadership and the Union members is just as important as between Union leadership and the company. Historically, we have seen Unions bring things like worker safety to the forefront and do numerous things to help people out. More rece…

The SAG-AFTA and WGA strikes should be a signal to knowledge workers that not everything has to look like what they think a union contract is. Competitive pay and benefits can be individually negotiated while unions can represent their interests in the industry at large instead of just looking at compensation.

Re: Fastmail Employees Form a Union

#45

Post by JumpCrisscross »

nightski wrote: post #10
righthand wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because software workers should start looking to form unions as large companies take to stagnate wages with large hire/layoff cycles that flood the employment market.

You can't unionize your way to a better economy, that's not how that works.

> You can't unionize your way to a better economy, that's not how that works

The Nordic model begs to differ.

Re: Fastmail Employees Form a Union

#46

Post by massysett »

jmcphers wrote: post #20
elektor wrote: post #9

Congrats to the team! This might be the reminder I needed to finally subscribe. Gmail’s spam filter has been nonexistent for the past month (300+ clearly spammy email reaching my inbox).

I'm a happy Fastmail customer, but I would not recommend them on the basis of their spam filter. It's competent but makes at least a few mistakes a week. Google's was better for me.

For me Gmail takes way too much legitimate email and sends it to spam. Fastmail strikes a better balance by sending little ham into the spam box, but letting a little bit of spam into the inbox.

Re: Fastmail Employees Form a Union

#47

Post by [deleted] »

jedberg wrote: post #8
mattl wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Because if an employer already treats you well it just adds unneeded bureaucracy. I'm a big fan of unions, but I'm also a big fan of treating employees well. I would hope that my employees would never feel the need to unionize because I already hear their feedback and give them the benefits they want. Unions create an adversarial relationship between labor and management. That shouldn't be necessary if labor and mana…

[deleted]

Re: Fastmail Employees Form a Union

#49

Post by vlovich123 »

brightball wrote: post #38
taurath wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would always rather be in a union than not. Sometimes unions can be opaque or byzantine especially in older industries, but what is always opaque is management. Having fair pay and time off is something I’d rather not leave to whoever happens to sit in the chair above me, because who sits in the chair above me can change on a whim. Congrats to the Fastmail team!

As long as there's an option to not be in the union, it's completely fine IMO. In a free market, the best option will win. When non-union jobs are better than union jobs the need for the union should vanish (in theory).

You realize how collective bargaining breaks down when you aren’t a united front right?

Re: Fastmail Employees Form a Union

#50

Post by EdwardDiego »

mfer wrote: post #6

Unions are fascinating to me. When you are in a Union, part of your money goes to the union in order to, hopefully, make things better for you. This means the relationship between Union leadership and the Union members is just as important as between Union leadership and the company. Historically, we have seen Unions bring things like worker safety to the forefront and do numerous things to help people out. More rece…

> where the Union negotiated pay/benefits they got was less (before and after union dues) than the surrounding non-union competition.

Yeah, that's a common anti-union tactic. Another one is passing on any better terms negotiated with a union to non-union workers to make it look like union membership gains you nothing.

Of course, when the union is gone, the largesse tends to end.

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