Earlier quoted context omitted.
That’s a lot of hand waving around an assertion conspicuously missing any supporting logic or data. Do you have any citations? Say, for example, a study comparing the actions of unions versus senior management over time? It’s not hard to find examples of unions accepting cuts to help the future of a business during a bad economic downturn, or executives focused on juicing the share price before they sell, so I think…
Sure, here's a 40 year survey paper published in a top three economics journal which supports this with data: https://www.princeton.edu/~davidlee/wp/Longrununion.pdf Also I'm not sure what "supporting logic" is, I presented my logic and you can disagree with it if you want (usually using different logic, which you haven't presented), but there's no such thing as "supporting logic".
Fastmail Employees Form a Union
201–210 of 303 posts
Re: Fastmail Employees Form a Union
#202Does anybody know what motivated the unionization effort? This is relevant to me as a Fastmail customer, because if the employees aren't being treated well that's a very poor reflection of the company.
I don't have any insider knowledge at Fastmail, but the fact that a labor union could get organized and come into being without any drama from the company probably indicates that the upper levels of the company respect their employees enough to not fight its creation. Seems good, imo
Re: Fastmail Employees Form a Union
#203Earlier quoted context omitted.
The relationship you're describing is balanced, as opposed to non-unionized employment, where management can threaten employment and healthcare as negotiation leverage and employees can't threaten anything.
One more reason health care should not be employer subsidized. You want insurance (and you should), go buy it: same as you get car and house/apartment insurance.
Re: Fastmail Employees Form a Union
#204Earlier 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.
I am not hinting at a conspiracy here. I am merely pointing to the fact that when the megacorps saw an opportunity to: - reduce spending by cutting off positions
- boost their stagnating stock values
- lower the bargaining power of their workers and have an excuse to keep their wages low
they immediately, did it, in a uniform fashion, in 3 big waves in the last 1.5 years. That tanked the developer market and boosted their stock.
We can only speculate how much it was coordinated, and how much they all saw the same opportunity after the unstable right-wing man-child that is Elon Musk burned Twitter to the ground. While probably nothing that they did was provably illegal, nevertheless, it was at least amoral and had the effect of dramatically cooling the market and stagnating our wages.
> reduce labor value across the entire industry is so incredibly disconnected from reality
YOU have to be very disconnected from reality to not acknowledge that there are 1000s of things that companies agree behind closed doors that we are just hearing about:
- Google having a shady deal with Spotify where Spotify doesn't pay the Google Play store fee: https://www.pcmag.com/news/spotify-doesnt-pay-google-play-st...
- Or that Google is paying Apple 36% search revenue to stay the default search engine in Safari so it can keep (and exploit) its dominant position in search: https://www.cnbc.com/2023/11/14/google-pays-apple-36percent-...
- Or Apple's deal with Amazon to get cleaner Amazon listing pages: https://www.theverge.com/2023/11/10/23955934/apple-amazon-de...
So what makes you think that they didn't have some friendly chats over the pesky tech workers, or "laptop class" as Elon so lovingly calls us. Somebody gotta put those ingrates back to their place, no?
While you might be happy to accept being downtrodden by your corporate overlords, and worship the psychotic man-children that Musk, Bezos, Branson and Zuck are, in other countries we don't want to become like the US. A country where capitalism rages unchecked and throws workers rights, nature, and eventually the world under the bus in a never ending chase for growth is not how we want for us.
Re: Fastmail Employees Form a Union
#205Earlier quoted context omitted.
If the market is free, why can't employees decide to group together and negotiate a contract with a company that precludes the hiring of non-union employees? Sounds like freedom of association with me. You wouldn't complain about a corporation signing an exclusive contract with another corporation (even for supplying labor), why is it a problem when it's a collective of workers imposing that restriction rather than a…
In most countries, I would imagine any agreement that prevented the hiring of a specific group of people would run afoul of discrimination laws.
Re: Fastmail Employees Form a Union
#206So all of the comments I've seen so far are (predictably) armchair snark from both sides of the political spectrum. Perhaps the reason for this is that there is a very conspicuous lack of information here. For all we _actually_ know, this could be a fake account posting a fake announcement to a fake twitter. 1. Why did the Fastmail employees decide to form a union? Were the working conditions poor? Was the pay below…
While I know nothing about this specific campaign, I am a member of the union they purport to be joining and have worked on a half-dozen new organizing campaigns. Local 13000 is a real local, and it would make sense for them to be joining it.
Most of your questions can be answered by reference to labor law and the union's internal "law" (i.e. the CWA constitution, sector and local bylaws), both of which are available online. Here is what we can say at a high level based on those resources (and in a few instances, my personal experience of the union).
#3 - Per CWA guidelines for locals engaged in new organizing, the leadership of the unit will be an organizing committee that represents each work group in the sought bargaining unit. The typical guideline is a committee of at least 20% of the sought unit. The CWA does not go public with new units without at least of 70% of the unit expressing interest in writing ("signing a union card").
#6 - The use of the term "renegotiating" is misleading. Collective bargaining agreements supersede individual employment contracts by definition. Typically, the CWA conducts an election of workers in the unit to choose a bargaining committee, which then bargains with the employer assisted by paid staff and/or lawyers. In any case, the contract must be ratified by a majority vote of the members for CWA to enter into it. Only then would their "employment contracts" be superseded. That said, the overwhelming employment contracts in the united states do not bind the employer in any meaningful way, and are not meaningfully negotiated. Where there are meaningfully bargained contracts, such as in broadcasting or entertainment, union members can and often do allow certain provisions to remain in force, using the union contract to set a floor on conditions. This is very common in Hollywood.
#7 - This depends a great deal on where Fastmail conducts its business in a legal sense, and is a somewhat unsettled area of law with increasing relevance due to remote work. In the United States, unions have a "duty of fair representation" to represent every member of their unit, have basic democratic processes, etc. This is typical in democratic countries. It is also typical for union members to equally share the cost of running the union to ensure that there is no free-riding. In the United States, federal law mandates that unions have a duty of fair representation, but some state laws allow people to avoid paying their share of the costs of that representation. These so-called "right to work laws" were proposed in response specifically to African American workers in the South seeking to form unions that could not be undermined by free-riding (cf. the Memphis Sanitation Strike).
#8 - The union may propose any unit. The employer may challenge that unit. If challenged, the National Labor Relations Board determines whether the workers in the unit represent a "community of interest." This standard evolves constantly as successive administrations appoint members of the National Labor Relations Board.
#9 - This is determined by the executive board of the local, which is elected by members according to procedures in the local bylaws. In some locals, this will be a fixed amount; in others, it will be a fraction of gross income. I pay 1.67% of my overall income in dues and saw a raise substantially greater than that when we ratified our first contract. Some members saw raises as high as 10%.
#10 - See the bylaws for meetings in the local. The unit meetings would generally be organized by the elected bargaining committee, and then by stewards. All locals of the CWA will have a business meeting monthly, but individual units (i.e. groups of workers at a given company) typically meet more often and delegate someone to go to meetings of bodies representing larger groups. Activity in unions is, generally speaking, highly uneven. In my unit, there is some sort of union discussion in our slack daily. Tech worker units are, as a rule, more active than those in other fields.
#11 - See the local bylaws, sector, and international bylaws, which lay out a comprehensive system of elected offices, delegation of democratic authority. The primary recourse is to petition their elected officers/stewards, many of whom will be their immediate peers and have an interest in maintaining good relationships. Failing that, they can support the candidacy of new officers in regular elections. Failing that, they can run themselves. Outside the elective process, all officers are bound by the decisions of collective bodies like the local's executive board (which are recorded in meeting minutes all members have the right to access). Major decisions about union policy go to a vote of delegates to the international convention (there was one last year), many of whom are rank and file members. If any officer (or member) violates the the bylaws, the CWA has procedures (laid out in the links below) that allow members to bring up officers up on charges. Charges are ultimately evaluated by juries with rank and file representation. Finally, under some circumstances there could be appeal through the courts under federal laws like the Labor Management Relations Act and Labor Management Reporting Act.
Local Bylaws: https://www.cwalocal13000.org/_files/ugd/5e3432_517e9a7e2c71... CWA Constitution: https://cwa-union.org/for-locals/cwa-constitution
Re: Fastmail Employees Form a Union
#207Earlier 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…
> 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.
The same megacorps that borrowed and overhired like insane during the pandemic to boost their stock price, now scream bloody hell and cut major portion of the people they just hired during the pandemic. That also boosted their stock price.Oh, and it allowed them to crank up their pricing models to the max, again boosting their stock price. I'd argue that it's the megacorps and their greed that are the major cause of the inflation that we experience recently worldwide.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/sep/25/inflat...
And please, stop using "macroeconomic factors" as an excuse for bad management (who made them overhire during the pandemic), greed, and lack of vision.
When a CEO makes 300 times the salary of their median employee (https://www.wsj.com/business/auto-ceos-make-about-300-times-...), the best way for the company to save money is to fire their C-suite for the "leadership" that brought it to be influenced by "bad economic headwinds" in the first place.
Stop defending corporations, what they do is inexcusable, amoral, and probably, some day, and with some scrutiny, illegal.
Re: Fastmail Employees Form a Union
#208Earlier 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).
The evidence doesn’t support this claim, and is why over 1000 VW workers in Tennessee indicated their intent to join the UAW after the UAW won historic benefits from automakers.
> 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).
If UAW is the best option and people want to join it...that is the best option winning.
Re: Fastmail Employees Form a Union
#209Earlier quoted context omitted.
> You know a company is morally bankrupt if they fight their employees unionizing Any company would oppose their employees unionizing; they have a fiduciary duty to do so
> fiduciary duty to do so Is that actually so?
Re: Fastmail Employees Form a Union
#210Earlier quoted context omitted.
> You know a company is morally bankrupt if they fight their employees unionizing Any company would oppose their employees unionizing; they have a fiduciary duty to do so
Exactly right. A union is basically a cartel. The whole idea of a union is to nullify at will employement.