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Wikipedia Workers to Seek Union Recognition

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Re: Wikipedia Workers to Seek Union Recognition

#231
post #217
post #56

There is no reason for any employee to not search for unionization. It is your right and it is in your best interest. Good for them.

British have no concept of unionisation and avoid conflict at all cost. Their employer tells them they must go back to five days to the office? They all obediently do it

No idea where you get that from. Most of my childhood was dominated by strikes. We still have them.

Re: Wikipedia Workers to Seek Union Recognition

#232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you believe the legal protections in place as a direct result of the labour movement (of which Unions are just one part) will remain in place in the face of constant well funded opposition by Capital then I have a case study for you in the UK, we call them Zero Hours Contracts.

Another UK example, you effectively have very limited rights until you’ve worked for a company for 2 years. Before then they can fire you for any reason they care to.

I think that is changing though: https://www.business.gov.uk/campaign/employment-changes/

Re: Wikipedia Workers to Seek Union Recognition

#233
post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No I believe that you should not be paid my tax money to run your politically motivated union. The members of the union should.

Ah, but that's not your tax money you see; your tax money is being spent on other things you don't like such as teacher salaries. It's other people's tax money that's being used to maintain unions.

You make a lot of assumptions about other people don’t you and what they believe. You should learn to see the world as a spectrum of grays instead of black and white. Two things can be true at the same time.

Re: Wikipedia Workers to Seek Union Recognition

#234
post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You think global prosperity was won by unions fighting for rights? This is untrue and a folk theory that people hold on to, to justify their ideology. Primarily global prosperity was achieved by higher productivity - the ability to do more with less work. Unions had very less to do for increasing productivity. I’m not saying anything extreme because this is the academic consensus.

Ahh I see. I misunderstood what you meant with global prosperity. I understood it as "everyone being prosperous". You mean a few individual becoming insanely prosperous at the expense of everyone else. Then you're completely right. Unions have definitely succeeded in redistributing prosperity though (e.g. negotiating for higher wages) and also reducing exploitation (e.g. fairer working conditions).

> I understood it as "everyone being prosperous".

I meant this. Which one do you think was primarily responsible for prosperity? Unions or businesses/technology? It is by far and obviously businesses and technology.

You can't redistribute anything if you don't have the wealth to distribute it.

Re: Wikipedia Workers to Seek Union Recognition

#235
post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't dispute that unions were important and offer some sort of benefit. What I don't like is that most of the big unions in Europe receive a lot of governmental money and become lobbying groups for political parties. I would not consider them independent in any sense of the word.

But that's exactly what a union is: a lobbying group that strives for a better outcome on behalf of its members. "Independence" is not part of their job description. Why wouldn't they talk to politicians, or even publicly support the political parties that are more aligned with their goals? Or do you believe that is a privilege to be reserved only for the rich?

[dead]

Re: Wikipedia Workers to Seek Union Recognition

#236
post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is the right non-divestable if you can waive it? More importantly, how could wikipedia possibly work if contributors retained copyright in any form over their submitted articles and edits?

It seems to be a somewhat murky area of law. In Europe (and, I guess Canada) you can't really have public domain because of moral rights that you can't waive. IANAL but I've talked with IP lawyers about this and they've been sortof "Yes this is often kinda true." So the broad public domain that is generally true of the US government and which individuals can release in the US isn't really true in Europe as I understa…

Europe is nearly 50 different jurisdictions, spanning multiple very different legal traditions.

But it is mostly not very murky. Moral rights and commercial rights are distinct in a wide range of jurisdictions. You can generally waive commercial rights, and that is for the most part sufficient for things to e.g. be "functionally" public domain in the ways most people care about.

What moral rights prevent is generally speaking usually things like for someone else to take your work and simply put their name on it, or keeping your name on it but making changes that might do harm to the creator in various ways.

There are nuances between jurisdictions, but it's generally not more difficult than being respectful of the effects (positive or negative) of attribution and integrity of a work.

Re: Wikipedia Workers to Seek Union Recognition

#237
post #56

There is no reason for any employee to not search for unionization. It is your right and it is in your best interest. Good for them.

What’s in the collective best interest may not match with what’s in the individual best interest. Perhaps unions are more likely to be in the self interest of the below average employees, the ones with no negotiating power. The best school teachers are almost certainly being held back by their unions and the worst ones are getting a free pass. When I worked at a unionized place I was blocked from an opportunity my em…

Unions tend to use otherwise arbitrary criteria to determine a members value. Not all people with the same number of years of experience, the same job title or the same degree provide equal value to the company.

As a school board member, I had to deal with the situation of a nationally recognized(awarded) teacher who got paid the same as every other teacher with the same degree and years in district. When asked why we wouldn't pay him what he is worth, the answer was simple, your union won't let us. Not every job type/environment make sense to have a union.

Re: Wikipedia Workers to Seek Union Recognition

#239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I used to work at a call center for a large (fortune 500) company. But that company did not sign my paychecks. It was a shell company with a different name, so that the company could not be held accountable when someone inevitably jumped from the roof. Since then accountability sinks have stood out to me. I'm going to side with the Union on this one. And plus, unions are good.

Good? They've been a mixed bag in my life. Unions are made up of people and they come with all of the good and bad of people. I watched a union refuse to support a colleague of mine. Why? Because the people in the union were competing against him for resources and they wanted him gone. And they succeeded. I've never really liked unions after that. I suppose I can see some good, but for the most part the union ends up…

> I watched a union refuse to support a colleague of mine. Why? Because the people in the union were competing against him for resources and they wanted him gone. And they succeeded. I've never really liked unions after that

Wait until you see what management does to workers, like fail to pay them on time, give them inhumane working conditions, or fire them arbitrarily.

Sarcasm aside, I've never understood this genre of comment. One second-hand bad experience and you seem opposed to unions for life? Unions are the only way workers can have anything like even footing with management.

Re: Wikipedia Workers to Seek Union Recognition

#240
post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As I say, a murky area. The MIT license was basically created because the X-Windows folks wanted to release it into the public domain but IBM would have nothing to do with it so the MIT lawyers came up with a permissive license. https://opensource.com/article/19/4/history-mit-license

What is “X-Windows”?

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