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Kickstarter’s staff is unionizing

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Re: Kickstarter’s staff is unionizing

#101

Post by kevindqc »

ashelmire wrote: post #72
ckdarby wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From the gist found the article: http://www.newsguild.org/mediaguild3/software-company-learns... $775k for 15 people especially SF based I wouldn't exactly call that a large cash settlement considering what happened, rep damage, time to find new work, etc. Just had expectations of at least a year salary per person.

> The 15 former employees of Lanetix comprised the firm’s entire non-management programming staff. Doesn't this kill a company?

They were planning to open (opened?) an offshore coding center in Eastern Europe.

Re: Kickstarter’s staff is unionizing

#102

Post by duado »

czbond wrote: post #71
bwestergard wrote: post #9

This is fantastic news. I'm one of the software engineers who was fired for organizing a union at a SF/DC based startup last year. The National Labor Relations Board found in our favor and we won a large cash settlement. But what we wanted was a union. Seeing others pick up the torch is extremely gratifying. Below are some links to news coverage of our case. https://gist.github.com/bwestergard/a77744dc6f3095fd3fb769d…

Two questions: Why are tech company staff wanting to unionize? For the most part, aren't tech staff reasonably to well paid - with good working conditions and moderate hour expectations (say 40-50)? Management has the right at a workplace to make any decisions, whether someone in non-management sees fit. Can't people who are frustrated with the company just go pursue a position elsewhere?

Why not take power that is available to you? Management certainly exercises every bit of power that they are able to.

The relationship between a company's stockholders and a company's employees is part competitive and part collaborative. Ignore either at your own peril.

Re: Kickstarter’s staff is unionizing

#103

Post by pjc50 »

the_bear wrote: post #66
lazyasciiart wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is the overhead?

I'll admit I'm not very knowledgeable about the logistics of unions, but I imagine there's some kind of up-front legal overhead. Like, maybe there are contracts between the union and the company, or within the union itself to determine how it's governed? I also get the impression there is some overhead in an ongoing basis in the form of extra meetings, more complicated negotiations, etc. All of those things seem like…

There is as much overhead as people want there to be.

That is, so long as the employees are content, it will be very low; try to do things that they don't like and the cost will go up.

Re: Kickstarter’s staff is unionizing

#104

Post by asark »

czbond wrote: post #47

Why are tech company staff wanting to unionize? For the most part, aren't tech staff reasonably to well paid - with good working conditions and moderate hour expectations (say 40-50)?

50's too much and 40 should include an hour of breaks. Noncompetes and very broad claims of inventions and copyright by employers need serious push-back until they're rare or illegal, and organized labor can do that.

Also it'd be nice if some of the more powerful workers here could organize and help lobby for things like parental leave and minimum vacation for all workers, including those without so much clout.

Re: Kickstarter’s staff is unionizing

#105

Post by ahelwer »

soheil wrote: post #94
untog wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Salaries aren't the only thing unions are good for. I'd be very interested in a job that had cast-iron guarantees about working hours, on-duty overtime, no open offices, stuff like that.

Why can you not ask for those things directly for the company you want to work for? I’m not getting my office? no thank you. I have to be on page duty in the middle of the night? No thank you. There are companies that offer all those maybe you sacrifice salary a bit. Someone has to pay the cost, I don’t think unions magically can give you the same salary or more at the same time you getting everything you wish for ab…

As someone who has pushed back against on-call overreach, all it achieved was a negative remark on my next performance review. The company attempted to make an "intermediate-severity" class of incident, where on-call workers were required to respond between the hours of 8 am and midnight (the next-lowest severity required response only during business hours, and the next-highest required 24 hour response - both reasonable if applied reasonably). Of course this new severity class was instantly abused to enact permanent crunch time. Even my humble suggestion of changing it from 9 am to 11 pm so I could have time for 8 hours of sleep with buffer time on each end was shot down.

Individual workers are powerless, only able to bring their own labor to the negotiation table. I was lucky to be able to just switch teams to get away from it, but would have much preferred the option of enacting positive change without changing jobs.

Re: Kickstarter’s staff is unionizing

#106

Post by lupire »

ashelmire wrote: post #72
ckdarby wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From the gist found the article: http://www.newsguild.org/mediaguild3/software-company-learns... $775k for 15 people especially SF based I wouldn't exactly call that a large cash settlement considering what happened, rep damage, time to find new work, etc. Just had expectations of at least a year salary per person.

> The 15 former employees of Lanetix comprised the firm’s entire non-management programming staff. Doesn't this kill a company?

Yes. The founder rebooted it: https://www.lanetix.com and abandoned the Twitter account https://twitter.com/lanetix?lang=en

Re: Kickstarter’s staff is unionizing

#107

Post by sovnade »

czbond wrote: post #71
bwestergard wrote: post #9

This is fantastic news. I'm one of the software engineers who was fired for organizing a union at a SF/DC based startup last year. The National Labor Relations Board found in our favor and we won a large cash settlement. But what we wanted was a union. Seeing others pick up the torch is extremely gratifying. Below are some links to news coverage of our case. https://gist.github.com/bwestergard/a77744dc6f3095fd3fb769d…

Two questions: Why are tech company staff wanting to unionize? For the most part, aren't tech staff reasonably to well paid - with good working conditions and moderate hour expectations (say 40-50)? Management has the right at a workplace to make any decisions, whether someone in non-management sees fit. Can't people who are frustrated with the company just go pursue a position elsewhere?

Right this minute? Yes, tech employees are better off in a lot of areas than say Amazon warehouse employees, but there's nothing saying that in 10 years the market won't be saturated and people won't be pressured into working 60-80 hours a week (which they already are at a lot of the huge firms).

It would be better to solidify these things before the industry takes a nose dive.

Re: Kickstarter’s staff is unionizing

#108

Post by Dirlewanger »

JoshTriplett wrote: post #30
sf_rob wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Has being in the news as an organizer significantly harmed your job search?

Here's an interesting question: The NLRB says you can't fire someone for union organizing, but does it say you can't refuse to hire someone for union organizing?

Right, but that's on the same grounds as refusing to hire someone because they're black/Muslim/some other minority of some sorts. Becomes very hard to prove.

Re: Kickstarter’s staff is unionizing

#109

Post by drawkbox »

msghacq wrote: post #48

"America’s political climate is changing; among other things, the 2016 presidential election brought up the issue of wealth inequality in this country and made people consider more closely the structural forces that define class here." What on earth does the 2016 election have to do with wealth inequality (or unions for that matter)? Inequality has been on the rise for decades and Clinton was also a member of the 1%.…

Yeah inequality has been in play for decades but heavily since 2000s.

The Great Recession and subsequently Occupy Wall Street were early reactions to the symptoms that started heavily in the 2000s but really has been in play since the 70s. Share of GDP is a steady downtrend [1]. Velocity of money fell of a cliff in 2000s [2]. US GINI coefficient has increased steadily [3]. Inequality definitely became more of an issue in 2016 election but not much has been done to help it, it will continue to be an issue until UBI or GDP share changes.

[1] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/W270RE1A156NBEA

[2] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/M2V

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_income_eq...

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