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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

#311

Post by hamper653 »

inigyou wrote: post #138
wildfireday2 wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You both have it mostly backwards. The Taft-Hartley act mostly bans closed shops and allows states to pass “right to work” laws making payment of any agency fees to unions optional. In no state are any employees compelled to formally join a union. In an American-style “closed shops” in a non-right-to-work state, if you don’t join the union the bargaining agreement can charge nonmembers an agency fee representing most…

It just struck me how dystopian the phrase "right to work" is. Like, you have the right to go down the coal mine for 16 hours a day and get lung cancer! No right to get paid, though...

Workers must be doubly free.

"For the conversion of his money into capital, therefore, the owner of money must meet in the market with the free labourer, free in the double sense, that as a free man he can dispose of his labour-power as his own commodity, and that on the other hand he has no other commodity for sale, is short of everything necessary for the realisation of his labour-power. "

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

#313

Post by x______________ »

kosh2 wrote: post #308
dannyw wrote: post #135

Some people here think Wikimedia Foundation's mission is to keep Wikipedia up. That's a subset of their mission. I attribute nearly all of the blame to WMF, because their donation ads are quite deceptive. The actual, public mission of Wikimedia Foundation: > The mission of the Wikimedia Foundation is to empower and engage people around the world to collect and develop educational content under a free license or in th…

That is why I always say: Don't donate to wikipedia, donate to archive.org

>That is why I always say: Don't donate to wikipedia, donate to archive.org

Just learned from a 2 sec llm query that archive.org archives Wikipedia, neat!

Wiki should still receive donations but archive should receive more as a valid backup mechanism (in case the prior goes dark for example).

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

#314

Post by mcmcmc »

lukeschlather wrote: post #238
senordevnyc wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They’re pointing out that calling the federal government “a big union” is inaccurate, and reasons why.

It's accurate. The constitution of the United States explicitly describes it as a union in the preamble.

Don’t be dense, we’re discussing labor unions, not all possible interpretations of the word “union”

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

#315

Post by matteoraso »

stasomatic wrote: post #203
sassbadger wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have donated to them for many years and will stop now. I will not support any kind of union busting.

They have enough employees to need a union and a board? It's a CRUD PHP site that I could run from a VPS (joking ofc, but not that much off). I've never worked in an industry where unionization was a thing, but my general understanding is that the unions are protectionist dreaming of things that were true before but not today, but they want to keep things as they were. Good luck. I've benefited from Wikipedia, but I…

You're unfamiliar with the scale of Wikimedia. Besides Wikipedia, they also host multiple other projects, like Wikidata and Wikimedia Commons. Besides that, a huge portion of their budget goes towards grants to organizations that help distribute information for free on the internet. This absolutely isn't a "CRUD PHP site".

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

#316

Post by dgellow »

inigyou wrote: post #252
dgellow wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone living in Germany, what you're saying is not true. It is correct that protests have to be registered, that's the case for pretty much all developed countries. It is also correct that the organizers are responsible to cover costs. But the police doesn't restrict people from seeing signs, doesn't blare their sirens. They mostly stay on the side while handling the traffic, and intervene if the protest becomes…

That doesn't match what I saw.

Do you often go to protests in Germany? Or do you mean something you saw online?

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

#317

Post by stasomatic »

matteoraso wrote: post #315
stasomatic wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They have enough employees to need a union and a board? It's a CRUD PHP site that I could run from a VPS (joking ofc, but not that much off). I've never worked in an industry where unionization was a thing, but my general understanding is that the unions are protectionist dreaming of things that were true before but not today, but they want to keep things as they were. Good luck. I've benefited from Wikipedia, but I…

You're unfamiliar with the scale of Wikimedia. Besides Wikipedia, they also host multiple other projects, like Wikidata and Wikimedia Commons. Besides that, a huge portion of their budget goes towards grants to organizations that help distribute information for free on the internet. This absolutely isn't a "CRUD PHP site".

Well, that’s what the output looks like. Like a barebones phpMyAdmin query result from 20 plus years ago.

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

#318

Post by Pay08 »

applfanboysbgon wrote: post #227
nearlyepic wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Don’t be afraid of destroying things. Wikipedia isn’t unique or precious really. Surely you’re joking?

Before LLMs, Wikipedia was the greatest source of misinformation in all of human history. It is at best good for satiating an idle curiosity with some plausible-sounding fun facts to amuse oneself with without care for whether they're really true or not, but so many people rely on it for so much more, and I have little doubt it causes more harm than good. Real encyclopedias with professional standards exist.

What truly grinds my gears about Wikipedia isn't the amount of false information but the amount of uncorroborated info. The amount of times I've read an article that made large, sweeping claims about something and then not have any citations, often not even a "citation needed" box should be frankly unacceptable.

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

#320

Post by sph »

oblio wrote: post #185
rexreed wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

SV is so SV-centric that people in SV can only call SV "SV" and assume everyone outside SV knows what they are talking about.

We're on the newsite of a Silicon Valley venture capital fund.

Which is published on the Internet, bringing people from all over the world.
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