[flagged]
>It might even be a lawsuit that forces the WMF to pay out a judgement that is larger than the reserve.
lololol
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
#62Wikipedia's side > [W]e believe a secret-ballot election conducted by the National Labor Relations Board is the appropriate path forward. This process protects individual choice and ensures that any outcome reflects the collective will of those eligible to participate. > [Jimmy Wales:] One of the problems with the process so far is that it was not secret and we have heard from some staff members that they felt pressu…
Yeah for the counterargument like... if you were afraid of tipping your hand, maybe you should've done it the correct way (anonymously) the first time?
They are doing it the correct way. In order to get union recognition you need to get enough people in the company to sign union cards. This is the normal way to create a union.
Companies argued that some people could be coerced and so the NLRB created a "two step" process in case the company protests the creation of the union. Basically if the company says "we don't think these cards were signed under proper circumstances" the NLRB would come in and hold a secret ballot.
That is basically what's happening here, and "wikipedia's side" is actually them reading a statement written by their lawyers in order to activate the NLRB balloting process.
The real reason why the companies like to invoke the secret ballot process is it takes a long time, and this gives them a lot of time to fight the union, fire the organizers, and "convince" employees to withdraw their support.
Re: Wikimedia Foundation refuses union recognition, hires union-busting law firm
#63Wikipedia's side > [W]e believe a secret-ballot election conducted by the National Labor Relations Board is the appropriate path forward. This process protects individual choice and ensures that any outcome reflects the collective will of those eligible to participate. > [Jimmy Wales:] One of the problems with the process so far is that it was not secret and we have heard from some staff members that they felt pressu…
Yeah for the counterargument like... if you were afraid of tipping your hand, maybe you should've done it the correct way (anonymously) the first time?
That's not how it works. You need the signed cards to hold an election. Employers can, seeing a large majority publically willing to sign the cards before they have any solid protections, choose to forgo the election on the basis that a majority of employees were willing to sign.
If the only reason WMF had to request a formal election was to allow secret ballot, they would not be hiring union busting law firms. The point of such firms is to legally and illegally discourage union membership - the penalties for doing so illegally are comically small.
Re: Wikimedia Foundation refuses union recognition, hires union-busting law firm
#64[flagged]
The linked article doesn't even come close to suggesting money laundering. It really just argues that Wikimedia is similar to virtually every other successful organization on earth and that its bloat grows with its resources. Wow insightful. The mere existence of The Mythical Man-Month or Peopleware does not prevent this behavior. Turns out it's actually super, super hard to avoid. It's pervasive enough to have sever…
Money laundering has become a default catch all term for "monetary misuse / suboptimal allocation". At least among the general public.
I worked in AML tech for a bank earlier in my career. I put up a fight against this misuse of terminology for a while, but eventually just gave up. Just embrace that everything is money laundering to many people and life is easier.
Re: Wikimedia Foundation refuses union recognition, hires union-busting law firm
#65Can 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 o…
> At the very minimum, the company acknowledges the union and negotiates with the union for working conditions for union members.
By federal law, if a company has a union, the union must represent ALL non-management workers, even those who do not pay dues.
This is obviously fucked up. But this has been union law at the NLRB for a long time.
The fair response: a union should only legally be responsible for representing its members. But these sorts of terrible union laws are the consequence of attempting to destroy them since their creation.
And for those of you who think unions are terrible (capitalists and ilk), what we had before was 'firebomb the business or the bosses house', and basically waging war between capitalists and labor. Unions and legal representation WAS the compromise.
Labor history has always been a bloody and murderous affair. Go look up the history of the pinkertons.
Re: Wikimedia Foundation refuses union recognition, hires union-busting law firm
#66Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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?
The non partisan source is the history of the industrial revolution itself. I am not saying that you are doing this, but I tend to find that people who think we don't need unions anymore are engaging with the status quo in the same way as people who say we don't need vaccines anymore.
I think working conditions have changed enough since then to make a request for non-biased studies a reasonable one.
Most debates about unions seem to boil down to “I just know” or anecdotes. I would expect unions to fund research to show that working conditions are better in union shops, but not include the fact that some unionized shops can’t compete in a market with non union shops and might go out of business. (But have great working conditions until the last day)
And vice-versa for pro industry research.
Unions are adversarial, and feel necessary to people that view employment or employers through that lens.
It’s possible that we can still credit unions with the status quo, but 1they have nowhere near the adoption of vaccines to make the analogy a good one.
I’d rather debate “which employers/industries” need unions than debate whether they are objectively good in all circumstances.
Re: Wikimedia Foundation refuses union recognition, hires union-busting law firm
#67Earlier quoted context omitted.
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
> They followed the process for forming a union in the US. They followed a process. Secret ballots are also an established process. From your own link: > Since the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) became law in 1935, card check has been an alternative to the National Labor Relations Board's (NLRB) election process. My understanding is that a secret ballot election is actually the more common scenario. > The claim…
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Re: Wikimedia Foundation refuses union recognition, hires union-busting law firm
#68Earlier quoted context omitted.
The linked article doesn't even come close to suggesting money laundering. It really just argues that Wikimedia is similar to virtually every other successful organization on earth and that its bloat grows with its resources. Wow insightful. The mere existence of The Mythical Man-Month or Peopleware does not prevent this behavior. Turns out it's actually super, super hard to avoid. It's pervasive enough to have sever…
It is interesting how "enshittification" just happens because of scale.
Enshitification doesn’t just happen, it’s a choice to sacrifice quality and integrity for short term profit. There are plenty of large products and companies that haven’t gone this way.
Re: Wikimedia Foundation refuses union recognition, hires union-busting law firm
#69Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
Is union recognition legally required to, say, organise a strike? Do workers who participate in a strike organised by a non-recognised union expose themselves to getting fired?
When strikes are legal is really complicated and depends on industry.
The thing to understand is that labor law in the US was created to "reduce labor strife." Unions existed before they were recognized as legal. What labor law tries to do is make an orderly process with the goal is no strikes and a mutually agreed-on contract.
The company recognizing the union is the first step towards a contract. Basically it's saying "I understand this organization represents these employees and I should negotiate with it."
Re: Wikimedia Foundation refuses union recognition, hires union-busting law firm
#70Remember that this is what your money funds when you donate to it...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Guy_Macon/Wikipedia_has_C...
No wonder they've upped the guilt tripping this year. Wikipedia has enough money right now to run Wikipedia forever but it keeps wasting it on useless stuff and feeling like it needs more. The WMF cannot fathom how to operate without continuous growing wastes of money, and without donations, Wikipedia would die within two years. We need to starve the beast so it learns to live frugally again.
Jimmy needs his third yacht, dangit!