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Fastmail Employees Form a Union

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Re: Fastmail Employees Form a Union

#161

Post by dontlaugh »

dagw wrote: post #97

Slightly off topic, but could someone explain why employees in the US keep having to form their own union at each company, rather than the employees just joining an existing union? If I wanted to join a union where live, I'd just pick a relevant union, go to their home page, and click 'join'.

In the US unions only exist as a legal entity after a collective bargaining contract has been reached.

In most other countries, before that point workers can still be union members “at large” get support from members in other workplaces and from the central union in their quest to gain recognition in their workplace.

Re: Fastmail Employees Form a Union

#162

Post by taurath »

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).

When employees have as much power as employers, there can be a free market. Without some form of employee power structure, that will never happen. Alas - only the very top percentage of employees in top industries can demand practically anything from an employer. Otherwise, why would so many workers be working for low wages without time off?

Re: Fastmail Employees Form a Union

#164

Post by taurath »

pc86 wrote: post #130
ath3nd wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you not seen the coordinated layoffs in tech the last 1.5 years? How is that not collective bargaining against tech talent? They all used every excuse they have: overhiring, wars, inflation (which they partially helped create) to flood the market TOGETHER, thereby reducing the price of our labor. All while racking in record profits. All that perfectly legal, all that a form of them collectively bargaining to low…

Seeing layoffs as a coordinated effort by companies to reduce labor value across the entire industry is so incredibly disconnected from reality I'm not even sure it's worth responding to.

It doesn’t have to be coordinated. It’s often people’s livelihoods being crushed for the benefit of a few investors.

Re: Fastmail Employees Form a Union

#165

Post by stale2002 »

ath3nd wrote: post #121
pc86 wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Companies coordinating pay and benefits, anti-poaching agreements, etc. are all anti-competitive and illegal. So I'm not sure "corporations perform collective bargaining" is accurate.

Have you not seen the coordinated layoffs in tech the last 1.5 years? How is that not collective bargaining against tech talent? They all used every excuse they have: overhiring, wars, inflation (which they partially helped create) to flood the market TOGETHER, thereby reducing the price of our labor. All while racking in record profits. All that perfectly legal, all that a form of them collectively bargaining to low…

> How is that not collective bargaining against tech talent?

Well you see, there are these things called interest rates which effect the cost of borrowing.

And when those interest rates go up massively, like they did, this causes a completely predictable effect of it being more expensive to borrow and spend money.

And this has economy wide effects, that are what bog standard macro economics predicts.

Re: Fastmail Employees Form a Union

#166

Post by VirusNewbie »

Does anyone have any resources for stopping unions from being formed? I've started taking steps to join the "Union" at my FAANG, in hopes of sabotaging it.

I can't think of anything worse for software developers than having some politically motivated organization to deal with in addition to management.

You can see how well unions have gone for software engineers in the past, (Boeing is one example that has a strong union) and compare it to the working conditions of non union places.

I understand it's 'en vogue' to support unions as a display of political affiliation, but the evidence is quite strong that it's bad for software engineers.

Re: Fastmail Employees Form a Union

#167

Post by burkaman »

jamiequint wrote: post #127
MeImCounting wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is wrong. This is like saying that the whole relationship of employer/employee is inherently hostile because the employer can threaten wages/livelihood as negotiation leverage. Unions are kind of like HR that serves the employees

Unions almost never negotiate in the long-term interest of a business, they're collectively overly-short-term-focused cash/productivity drags on a business. If unions were truly long-term focused they'd be negotiating things like employee equity, but you almost never see that. Ceteris paribus non union shops are more long-term focused and trend towards better long-term outcomes.

> Ceteris paribus non union shops are more long-term focused and trend towards better long-term outcomes.

Do you have any source for this? It seems hard to believe but I haven't been able to find any studies yet. The best I've found so far says unionization has no impact on business survival: https://www.princeton.edu/~davidlee/wp/unionbf.pdf.

I'm also skeptical that you could really study this effectively, since non-unionized employees tend to benefit when unions are formed elsewhere in their industry. You'd need to compare a group of companies that unionized against a group of similar companies in the same time and place that didn't unionize and also were completely unaffected by the mass unionization of the first population.

Re: Fastmail Employees Form a Union

#168

Post by 8372049 »

8ytecoder wrote: post #83
tobyjsullivan wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

That’s a very US centric view. It’s quite common to join unions in most European countries. It does not indicate mistreatment at all. In the US, unionisation happens when all else has failed.

And in Europe, being able to unionize is considered a human right, meaning companies aren't legally allowed to try to oppose it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Convention_on_Human_R...

Re: Fastmail Employees Form a Union

#169

Post by VirusNewbie »

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.

Why is it that my non union company showers me with incredible benefits and pay, far beyond any union employees? Hmmm...

Makes you think, maybe it's you who confused the cause and effect?

Re: Fastmail Employees Form a Union

#170

Post by legitster »

treyd wrote: post #140
legitster wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unions in the US are a much different beast. Counterintuitively, Unions in the US have much more legal power in some ways than international counterparts - if they get officially recognized . But official recognition is only workplace-to-workplace and has an election process to follow: https://www.nlrb.gov/about-nlrb/what-we-do/conduct-elections Since it's more all-or-nothing per workplace, your membership is basical…

Also of note is that the US doesn't really have sectoral bargaining like, say, France does. This would prevent scenarios where nonunionized companices in a sector can start up and outperform established unionized ones just by hiring desperate people and paying them below the fair rate.

The US does in some sectors! But this traces all the way back to when two competing union organizations in the US (the AFL and CIO, before they merged) had major beef about how unions should operate. In the end, the CIO's model mostly won out.

It would be really hard to do sectoral bargaining in the US because there are vastly different costs of living across the country but each state is required to have free trade with each other. So to have New York workers bargaining for Alabama workers or vis versa would be a disaster.

It should also be worth pointing out that countries with sectoral bargaining also have huge number of self-employed and sole enterprise people. France has something like 2-3 times the number of self-employed people, and my understanding is that it's one of the only ways people in these economies can "opt-out" of bargaining agreements.

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