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Wikimedia Foundation Workers Overwhelmingly Vote to Form Union with CWA

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Re: Wikimedia Foundation Workers Overwhelmingly Vote to Form Union with CWA

#81

Post by NoImmatureAdHom »

insom wrote: post #33
colechristensen wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right? If your logo[1] is going to be a fist raised in defiance you'd better at least have something you're trying to fight about. And if you're going to brag about succeeding in your vote at least give an idea about WHY you want a union in the first place. There are unionization attempts I understand like Amazon warehouse workers and unionization attempts that I don't like the Minneapolis small coffee chain workers…

I think that this fundamentally comes from thinking that unions are only there for the worst possible jobs in the worst conditions, or where outright abuse occurs. And also from the (imo incorrect) idea that you should have those bad conditions before organizing. Unions even the balance of power between the executives and labour at an organization. Even if WMF conditions are perfect and there's never any abuse of pow…

Yes, but if you don't allow corporations to lay off people when it makes sense you end up with low salaries, meaningless jobs, and economic stagnation (like Europe).

Europe is nice to visit but a giant pain in the ass to do business in. Certainly don't even consider aspiring to anything. If you can manage that, then yeah...France, Spain, and Italy are cheap and have good food and weather :-)

Re: Wikimedia Foundation Workers Overwhelmingly Vote to Form Union with CWA

#82

Post by cortesoft »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #54
cm2012 wrote: post #25

Everyone wants a piece of the wikipedia gravy train. In 2010: Wikimedia Foundation annual expenses were about $20m In 2025: Wikimedia Foundation annual expenses are about $200m The story of Wikipedia of the last 10 years especially is endlessly higher spending for a very stable number of monthly users (1.5b or so). You can make the case that 80% of this spend is not necessary to what the average users donating to Wik…

> It makes sense for the employees to want to lock in their share of the bag. That's the problem, isn't it? Suppose that e.g. Wikipedia traffic is down year over year because of AI summaries and then they get fewer donations. Now something needs to be cut. It's a non-profit so "investor profit" can't be that thing. If you then also make it so that it can't be workers, what's left? It's mostly either spending down sav…

One option would have been to stay small. Keep the yearly spend down where it was in 2010, don't hire too many more people, and save all the donation money they brought in. Build that fund in the good years to pay for salaries in the lean years.

Re: Wikimedia Foundation Workers Overwhelmingly Vote to Form Union with CWA

#83

Post by parineum »

serbuvlad wrote: post #78
OneDeuxTriSeiGo wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Half of that goes to wages and salary for ~650 staff members. Of the ~114M that goes to wages, 90M goes to people working directly on projects, 15M goes to admin/management, and the other 9M goes to people in fundraising/financials. 9M goes to paying donation processing fees. 3.5M goes towards network infra. ~2M of in-kind services were donated (i.e. doing free work or donating goods) and that shows up as a dedicated…

114M a year buys you only 650 people? Damn. I really should be moving to America at some point :)

If anyone wanted to do the math, that's an average of 175k per person

Re: Wikimedia Foundation Workers Overwhelmingly Vote to Form Union with CWA

#84

Post by next_xibalba »

Grombobulous wrote: post #60
next_xibalba wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And all of that (along with the serious problems in how WMF/Wikipedia operate) is why I no longer donate to WMF. Clearly, they don't need my money. But if they ever want to bring me back into the fold, they need to adopt Larry Sanger's prescriptions. This unionization seems likely to push WMF (IMO) further in the wrong direction.

I think all employees should work for a union. My local art museum has a union. My local school system has a union. The non-profit university I graduated from has a union. Why shouldn't WMF have a union? I really don't understand the bitterness toward them. If you look at their data, their donations are growing faster than their expenses. The people who donate to Wikipedia/WMF want more money to go into the organizat…

I can't think of a single unionized organization that is run as well as or better than union-free organizations. Unionized companies all seem to be crippled by bureaucracy and unable to improve performance and output.

Re: Wikimedia Foundation Workers Overwhelmingly Vote to Form Union with CWA

#85

Post by cortesoft »

echelon wrote: post #43
collinmcnulty wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'd imagine it must be pretty relaxed/cushy, albeit probably at the lower end of market comp for software jobs in particular. Based on what?

Mission-oriented jobs tend to be below-market. Open source, gaming, SpaceX, etc.

That explains the below-market part, but not the cushy part. Gaming is notorious for not being cushy.

Re: Wikimedia Foundation Workers Overwhelmingly Vote to Form Union with CWA

#86

Post by asadotzler »

parineum wrote: post #83
serbuvlad wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

114M a year buys you only 650 people? Damn. I really should be moving to America at some point :)

If anyone wanted to do the math, that's an average of 175k per person

That's about half total comp of juniors at any FANG.

Re: Wikimedia Foundation Workers Overwhelmingly Vote to Form Union with CWA

#87

Post by uqers »

PorciiVorbesc wrote: post #75
tux3 wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anyone can edit Wikipedia, editors are not employees. Even the admins are not employees. (As far as I know you only have to sign any kind of formal documents if you have one of the few roles (as a non-employee) where you may have access to sensitive personal data, which is very few people.)

>Anyone can edit Wikipedia Hasn't been true in a very long time. Plenty of politically charged articles are locked so that only Wikipedia's editors can edit them, and you can guess which side they're taking. It's not a democracy.

Could you give an example of an article that was protected for reasons other than preventing vandalism? I've seen other people bring this up, but never with evidence.

Re: Wikimedia Foundation Workers Overwhelmingly Vote to Form Union with CWA

#88

Post by Grombobulous »

next_xibalba wrote: post #84
Grombobulous wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think all employees should work for a union. My local art museum has a union. My local school system has a union. The non-profit university I graduated from has a union. Why shouldn't WMF have a union? I really don't understand the bitterness toward them. If you look at their data, their donations are growing faster than their expenses. The people who donate to Wikipedia/WMF want more money to go into the organizat…

I can't think of a single unionized organization that is run as well as or better than union-free organizations. Unionized companies all seem to be crippled by bureaucracy and unable to improve performance and output.

The daycare my parent friends go to can’t retain a teacher for longer than a year or two. I hear stories all the time about the disruption and emotional distress abruptly losing a teacher with a 1-2 weeks notice causes.

The PreK teacher at the local public school has been there over 10 years at the same school and has a masters degree. Union, of course.

I’m sure the public school system is more expensive overall. You get what you pay for.

Re: Wikimedia Foundation Workers Overwhelmingly Vote to Form Union with CWA

#89

Post by Grombobulous »

NoImmatureAdHom wrote: post #80
Grombobulous wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think all employees should work for a union. My local art museum has a union. My local school system has a union. The non-profit university I graduated from has a union. Why shouldn't WMF have a union? I really don't understand the bitterness toward them. If you look at their data, their donations are growing faster than their expenses. The people who donate to Wikipedia/WMF want more money to go into the organizat…

My experience is that unions very often make things stupider and less efficient. I've been forced to give to two of them that were basically just political cosplay by children (well really the $ was taken without consent before it was even in my hands, so it was stolen) And I've had the displeasure of working in a factory environment that was unionized. Perhaps there was a time when this made sense, but I think those…

I would submit the idea that a lot of union reforms that have been made to laws in the US have been specifically designed to make unions less attractive and less incentivized toward positive outcomes.

Re: Wikimedia Foundation Workers Overwhelmingly Vote to Form Union with CWA

#90

Post by brokensegue »

asadotzler wrote: post #86
parineum wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If anyone wanted to do the math, that's an average of 175k per person

That's about half total comp of juniors at any FANG.

Also it includes insurance and such that doesn't appear in TC

Disclaimer: I work for the wmf

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