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Wikimedia Foundation refuses union recognition, hires union-busting law firm

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Re: Wikimedia Foundation refuses union recognition, hires union-busting law firm

#21

[flagged]

Can you provide your view of the events, then?

Note that I know nothing about the topic but the article, but the article says:

> [W]e believe a secret-ballot election conducted by the National Labor Relations Board is the appropriate path forward.

Honestly, that was the point where I stopped reading and hid this story.

They used a non-secret election! Fuck them tbh. Jimmy Wales is entirely right here.

Re: Wikimedia Foundation refuses union recognition, hires union-busting law firm

#22

[flagged]

Given your other, completely insane comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49143931

I am inclined to assume that you are paid to oppose unions online.

Also your recent comment history consists entirely of angry contrarianism.

Re: Wikimedia Foundation refuses union recognition, hires union-busting law firm

#23

Can someone explain what "union recognition" means, concretely?

At the conceptual level, unionising is simply a group of workers gathering into a group and saying we want to negotiate as a group. Usually this is done by workers to improve conditions and to have a better say when they’ve been being ignored or worse, poorly treated. Union recognition is then the company accepting that the union exists and then agreeing to meet and engage with it. Not accepting it, is usually a crap…

> Lots of research shows that generally places where unions exist have better work conditions and perform better over the long term.

Do you have any non-partisan sources for this? Genuinely curious. When you say perform better what do you mean specifically? And does better work conditions include better pay or just on-site conditions or something similar?

Re: Wikimedia Foundation refuses union recognition, hires union-busting law firm

#24

Can someone explain what "union recognition" means, concretely?

At the conceptual level, unionising is simply a group of workers gathering into a group and saying we want to negotiate as a group. Usually this is done by workers to improve conditions and to have a better say when they’ve been being ignored or worse, poorly treated. Union recognition is then the company accepting that the union exists and then agreeing to meet and engage with it. Not accepting it, is usually a crap…

[flagged]

Re: Wikimedia Foundation refuses union recognition, hires union-busting law firm

#26

Can someone explain what "union recognition" means, concretely?

[flagged]

1. Mention some concrete facts. Or at least assert some claim.

2. Given the very low rate of unionization in the USA, I think the issue you need to be most concerned about is no-benefit gig work instead of a huge wave of unionization.

Re: Wikimedia Foundation refuses union recognition, hires union-busting law firm

#27

Can someone explain what "union recognition" means, concretely?

At the very minimum, the company acknowledges the union and negotiates with the union for working conditions for union members.

It’s quite common that that also extends to negotiation on salary bands, and it’s also quite common the company then applies the same salary bands to non union employees also, rather than the norm in tech of individual negotiation. Many people think they’re in the group that is negotiating outlier salaries and would lose from this. However, many people with that viewpoint are also wrong about their position in the salary scale.

Sometimes this extends to promotion criteria and some unions push for tenure or seniority based promotions. This may or may not be better than your individual companies specific combination of merit, nepotism, the political clout of your managers and the business criticality of your department.

One thing that happens in the US that is illegal here is some companies agree to becoming a union shop and make joining the union compulsory.

Re: Wikimedia Foundation refuses union recognition, hires union-busting law firm

#28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you provide your view of the events, then?

Note that I know nothing about the topic but the article, but the article says: > [W]e believe a secret-ballot election conducted by the National Labor Relations Board is the appropriate path forward. Honestly, that was the point where I stopped reading and hid this story. They used a non-secret election! Fuck them tbh. Jimmy Wales is entirely right here.

They followed the process for forming a union in the US.

The claim that the Foundation totally supports the right to unionize but wants to hold a secret election would be a lot more credible if this happened before the workers had a supermajority (!) of signatures collected.

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

Re: Wikimedia Foundation refuses union recognition, hires union-busting law firm

#29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The article appeared to state both the facts and the assumptions being made off of them pretty clearly.

[flagged]

You need to be more specific than that if you want to convince people. As far as I can tell, the title is factually correct; if it's not, I'd like to hear your argument.

Re: Wikimedia Foundation refuses union recognition, hires union-busting law firm

#30

Can someone explain what "union recognition" means, concretely?

[flagged]

If you are capable of adding any substance to your various comments, you need to do so. Otherwise you’re just strengthening the view of the opposite as your comments read like someone is desparate to manipulate public opinion.
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