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Fastmail Employees Form a Union

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Re: Fastmail Employees Form a Union

#241

Post by ath3nd »

VirusNewbie wrote: post #237
ath3nd wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is it bad to have job security and collective bargaining rights? > I can't think of anything worse for software developers than having some politically motivated organization Unions are not politically motivated. They are a social collective response from workers to counteract the disproportionate power imbalance between employees and corporations. All great advancements in worker rights were done by some kind of…

>How is it bad to have job security and collective bargaining rights? Unions provide job security for low performers , but do not protect against layoffs. You can check and see that plenty of people were laid off by the large tech companies all across the world, many of which who were in strong unions. >All great advancements in worker rights were done by some kind of collective organized pressure from workers vs emp…

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Re: Fastmail Employees Form a Union

#242

Post by stale2002 »

pseudalopex wrote: post #214
stale2002 wrote: post #179

Earlier 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. Hey as long as it goes both ways. It would equally be freedom of association to fire any union employees. Oh wait, that's illegal. So instead of that, a fair compromise is that it should be equally illegal for firi…

> That's what right to work laws do. They give equal protections to both union and non union employees. No. Federal law and jurisprudence prohibit making union membership a condition of employment but compel unions to represent non members. So called right to work laws allow non members to withhold payment for the compelled representation.

Gotcha. Unrelated to my point though.

So the whole point is that the other person who I was responding to was wrong on the freedom of association angle.

If is not freedom of association to only give protections to union members.

Instead the fair thing would be for it to be illegal to fire either union members or non union members for their choice of whether they join the union or not.

Also, laws that merely make union or non only shops disallowed would be the fair and equal freedom of association way to do things.

Re: Fastmail Employees Form a Union

#243

Post by stale2002 »

ath3nd wrote: post #207
stale2002 wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

You know who caused raised the raised interest rates? 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…

> You know who caused raised the raised interest rates?

Oh yeah. That would be the organization that is in charge of deciding what the rates are.

Which would be the federal reserve.

They quite literally decide what the rate is.

> "macroeconomic factors"

Do you not know how interest rates and borrowing costs work?

It's pretty standard econ 101 stuff, about how interest rates effect the economy and effect hiring and firing rates.

You can read it in an economics textbook.

Here, it is pretty standard stuff: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phillips_curve

Its called the Phillips curve.

Re: Fastmail Employees Form a Union

#244

Post by mfer »

dontlaugh wrote: post #191
pc86 wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Unions negotiate collective minimums. Individuals frequently manage to negotiate more for themselves, if they have the leverage.

It depends on the Union and where you're at. Some unions negotiate everything from vacation time to pay bands to how raises happen.

There are many places where the hardest worker and the laziest worker make the same. There are places where what you make is solely based on how long you've had the job and it's not negotiable.

Unions work differently in different places.

Re: Fastmail Employees Form a Union

#245

Post by ath3nd »

stale2002 wrote: post #243
ath3nd wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You know who caused raised the raised interest rates? 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…

> You know who caused raised the raised interest rates? Oh yeah. That would be the organization that is in charge of deciding what the rates are. Which would be the federal reserve. They quite literally decide what the rate is. > "macroeconomic factors" Do you not know how interest rates and borrowing costs work? It's pretty standard econ 101 stuff, about how interest rates effect the economy and effect hiring and fi…

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Re: Fastmail Employees Form a Union

#246

Post by PascLeRasc »

tobyjsullivan wrote: post #70
coldpie wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I'd bet a lot of money that it's around a new on-call requirement with no pay increase that no one will put their name on promoting but managers are seeing appear on their all-manager meeting agenda.

Re: Fastmail Employees Form a Union

#247

Post by VirusNewbie »

ath3nd wrote: post #241
VirusNewbie wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>How is it bad to have job security and collective bargaining rights? Unions provide job security for low performers , but do not protect against layoffs. You can check and see that plenty of people were laid off by the large tech companies all across the world, many of which who were in strong unions. >All great advancements in worker rights were done by some kind of collective organized pressure from workers vs emp…

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> I am talking to a mid 20's conservative childless male from the US who recently managed to join FAANG (congratulations).

I'm in my early 40s, coding professionally since I was a teen, so over 20 YOE, lived through multiple downturns. Didn't vote conservative at all last election.

I have a child, and have extensive experience in both big companies and small startups.

>And I can guarantee you, your FAANG is just waiting to replace you with a cheaper, younger and more malleable version of yourself, ready to hustle for less money and put more hours in.

I mean, they're welcome to, but they could have hired someone for far far cheaper than me, and they didn't. What you might be thinking of is Boeing, the place with an engineering union. Why don't you talk about how it's better to go work there?

I think it's likely you're a lot less experienced than I am in tech, and once you get some more skill and experience you'l understand what the rest of us are talking about.

Re: Fastmail Employees Form a Union

#248

Post by acdha »

jamiequint wrote: post #235
acdha wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s paywalled but the abstract is talking about stock market pricing, not the health of the company. Lower equity would make intuitive sense if workers have better compensation, but that doesn’t mean the business is less competitive or likely to survive.

Changed to link the actual PDF of the study. I don't think you understand what the price of a stock means ...

> I don't think you understand what the price of a stock means ...

Well, the context here was your assertion that unions don’t act in the “long-term interest of a business”. Now, most people understand that share prices are bets on the future value, but also that it’s not a direct relationship because there’s an inherent tension between long-term and short-term interests. That plays out in questions about how much or whether to pay dividends (which has seen a big multigenerational shift in investor preferences), and whether a move which raises share prices is a long-term detriment.

We’ve seen a lot of the latter discussed here lately with tech companies doing broad layoffs to satisfy activist investors, despite research suggesting that companies making unforced layoffs tend to underperform over the long term.

Re: Fastmail Employees Form a Union

#249

Post by stale2002 »

ath3nd wrote: post #245
stale2002 wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You know who caused raised the raised interest rates? Oh yeah. That would be the organization that is in charge of deciding what the rates are. Which would be the federal reserve. They quite literally decide what the rate is. > "macroeconomic factors" Do you not know how interest rates and borrowing costs work? It's pretty standard econ 101 stuff, about how interest rates effect the economy and effect hiring and fi…

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The information is there for you to lookup.

The Philips Curve is a well studied topic in mainstream economics.

So my only theory is that you haven't studied the topic much.

It's ok. Most people don't actually study econ 101.

It's not too hard to pick though, and these basic topics are all covered!

Re: Fastmail Employees Form a Union

#250

Post by ath3nd »

VirusNewbie wrote: post #247
ath3nd wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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> I am talking to a mid 20's conservative childless male from the US who recently managed to join FAANG (congratulations). I'm in my early 40s, coding professionally since I was a teen, so over 20 YOE, lived through multiple downturns. Didn't vote conservative at all last election. I have a child, and have extensive experience in both big companies and small startups. >And I can guarantee you, your FAANG is just wait…

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