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Fastmail Employees Form a Union

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Re: Fastmail Employees Form a Union

#61

Post by zbyte64 »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #42
morvita wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 gi…

The kind of coordination that requires less representation does not have your interests in mind.

Re: Fastmail Employees Form a Union

#63

Post by brightball »

ztetranz wrote: post #54
brightball wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

>In a free market, the best option will win. I'm not sure if you mean that generally or just around employment and unions. If you mean it generally then, just as a random example, should we make emission control on cars an optional extra? Let the free market customer decide if they want to pay extra for a catalytic converter.

I'm not suggesting that laws and regulations should cease to exist. That would be anarchy.

Re: Fastmail Employees Form a Union

#64

Post by BoiledCabbage »

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).

It's not a free market. Corporations perform collective bargaining.

Eliminate collective bargaining for a corporations, and then it would make sense to see things on an equal playing field.

The reason why employees jump from one company to another for salary boosts is because a corporation collectively bargains for salary, and this happens less so between different companies.

When an employee can just as easily pit one manager at a FAANG against another manager to bid for their salary to get a boost, as they can get a higher offer at another company to get a boost then this situation will be resolved.

As long as companies can say "you'll keep the same level and pay regardless of where you transfer within the company" because they've agreed to not complete against each other and instead collectively bargain for salary (and benefits) it will be an imbalance. And the only counterbalance is for employees to do the same.

The need for collective bargaining of labor is to balance the presense of collective bargaining by management.

Re: Fastmail Employees Form a Union

#65

Post by brightball »

zbyte64 wrote: post #58
vlovich123 wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I don't understand how people perceive corporations as an individual that seeks to negotiate with you on neutral grounds.

They don't. But supply and demand still wins. A union may be necessary if there is a monopoly on employment. Nuclear power facilities for example.

Re: Fastmail Employees Form a Union

#66

Post by rqtwteye »

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).

“In a free market, the best option will win”

There is no free market. Everything is skewed to give an advantage to employers and capitalists.

Re: Fastmail Employees Form a Union

#67

Post by ath3nd »

diob wrote: post #34
nightski wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I mean, you can be certain the big heads of companies are unionizing / conspiring against you (meeting behind closed doors to keep wages down, not poach, fix prices / rent, etc.). It's fascinating how the lower class has been indoctrinated against them.

Yes, I can swear that we either have professional union busters among us, or people have been heavily indoctrinated to willingly take it from their corporate overlords.

I simply can't believe why even the high paid workers like the software engineers that we are are okay with a single grandpa on the top to take millions or billions of profit while we slave our days and nights creating value for them. They are nothing without us, their workers.

We deserve a much better share of the profits, and since our individual bargaining positions are weakened now, the only way we fight back is by doing it together.

Tell me how Tesla, then Spotify, then AWS, then Microsoft, then Facebook flooding the market with devs that THEY hired is not a coordinated (you could say "unionized") collective action from the corporations?

That created an ideal climate for the corps to stagnate wages, cut costs, bump their stock price, and for you to be competing with other fellow engineers for the few positions that they so gracefully bestow upon you.

How about WE also do some collective action and fight back?

Re: Fastmail Employees Form a Union

#68

Post by pc86 »

EdwardDiego wrote: post #50
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.

How is "I give my negotiating rights away to a union and they did a worse job negotiating than I did" a "common anti-union tactic?" It sounds like just something that happens from time to time.

Re: Fastmail Employees Form a Union

#69

Post by mrweasel »

pseudalopex wrote: post #23
mrweasel wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because they shouldn't start their own union. Unions are across companies, having a single union for a single company doesn't make much sense. Take the UAW, they don't just cover General Motor, they cover all workers in that sector, giving them more power and influence. It's the same with a Star Bucks union, that's silly and not cost effective. You have a "restaurants (and cafe's)"- union. Take McDonalds, they have a…

The Fastmail workers formed a local branch of the Communications Workers of America.

Oh, perfect then... nevermind.

Re: Fastmail Employees Form a Union

#70

Post by tobyjsullivan »

coldpie wrote: post #27
thadt wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a Fastmail customer (and software developer who is unfamiliar with how unions would/will work in this space), why would I not already be concerned? My first impression is "man, they must not be treating their employees that well if they decided they needed to bring in a third party to help them negotiate." However - I'm not well versed in this area and willing to learn - why is this a 'good' sign?

Unions don't always indicate there is a problem in need of solving. It's just a group of employees agreeing to bargain collectively with their employer, which helps balance out the negotiation power between employees and the employer and creates a stable, well-defined employment relationship.

I struggle to imagine a scenario where employees would unionize despite already feeling like they are treated fairly.

The union/employer relationship is inherently hostile. The whole idea is that unionized employees can threaten production/profits as negotiation leverage.

Choosing that path means the employees have already given up on cooperation based on goodwill. It must take a very sour relationship to reach that point.

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