Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Id Software devs form "wall-to-wall" union

rockpapershotgun.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

101–110 of 377 posts

Re: Id Software devs form "wall-to-wall" union

#101

Post by seneca »

overfeed wrote: post #92
appreciatorBus wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You forgot that collective ruin is also an option and we have seen this many times when societies attempted to do away with economic & market concepts.

Why is union-related collective ruin anathema, but elite-driven ruin is seen as an acceptable price to pay? Enron, the Great Recession, etc.

>Why is union-related collective ruin anathema, but elite-driven ruin is seen as an acceptable price to pay? Enron, the Great Recession, etc.

What are you talking about? Multiple people were convicted over the Enron scandal, including some serious prison terms.

Re: Id Software devs form "wall-to-wall" union

#102

Post by Workaccount2 »

mrsilencedogood wrote: post #7
nitwit005 wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With a factory, the owner has to deal with the cost of all the late or canceled deliveries. With farms, the crops wither on the vines. There's not really an equivalent with most service industries. Software engineers don't even need to be around for the programs to keep running.

"Software engineers don't even need to be around for the programs to keep running." Can you tell me where you work, and are you hiring???

People dramatically underestimate (or are outright unaware of) the effect of Elon's takeover of twitter had on the tech industry. Twitter needed to collapse, so everyone would see what firing 80% of the workers would do to a tech company.

That collapse didn't happen.

Re: Id Software devs form "wall-to-wall" union

#103

Post by Izikiel43 »

danaris wrote: post #23
palmotea wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you want that, you’d have to negotiate for it, and now doesn’t seem like a great time. Software engineers can be pretty foolish. When we had more power, unions were unpopular because too many imbibed some libertarian propaganda, looked at their high salaries, and decided to cosplay as bosses. Now that power is slipping away, and will slip away faster because we did little to preserve it to our determent . Also t…

> a union should be monomanically about representing worker interests and stay far away from any other kind of issue So...should it pick and choose which kinds of workers to represent the interests of? Or should it fight for the interests of all the workers? Because that's really the choice it has to make: do you fight for the interests of disabled workers, and female workers, and trans workers, and black workers, an…

> Because that's really the choice it has to make: do you fight for the interests of disabled workers, and female workers, and trans workers, and black workers, and immigrant workers? Or do you only fight for the interests of white male workers?

You fight for the interests of tech workers in this case, or truckers in a truckers union, so on and so forth.

Why are americans so obsessed to make everything about race?

If a union member is facing discrimination at work, get them a lawyer for it.

Re: Id Software devs form "wall-to-wall" union

#104

Post by bufordtwain »

paxys wrote: post #19
thinkingemote wrote: post #2

I like the idea and encourage software workers unions. Is there an umbrella union that they can belong to? How effective are these new unions? I imagine these new tech unions don't have the same "shop floor" power as in industry. Why is this? Perhaps generally the ideals the new unions are advocating for are different than traditional ones?

While things can be bad in software in general, game developers need a union more than anyone. Conditions in that industry are horrendous. The entire period of a game's development is "crunch time". Everyone is exempt, so no overtime of course. And it is standard practice to downsize studios and have mass layoffs right after big launches. It's a shame that so many are drawn to this just because of a passion for gamin…

If you enjoy your job your employer is able to exploit you more?

Re: Id Software devs form "wall-to-wall" union

#105

Post by meheleventyone »

appreciatorBus wrote: post #79
popalchemist wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the company's existence depends on the unfair exploitation of its staff, its foreclosure is inevitable and justified, and that is simply the price everyone involved must pay to maintain equilibrium.

Employees being paid less than they would prefer to get paid for a given type of work does not imply "unfair exploitation"

That’s a fair opinion but obviously it’s the opinion of the employees and their ability to freely associate that let’s them collectively organise.

Re: Id Software devs form "wall-to-wall" union

#106

Post by stocksinsmocks »

andy99 wrote: post #70

Curious if this was workers casting off the shackles of their oppression or a luxury option for a group that is already well off?

Deprived of all options by the manifest oppression of the Republican Party, American youths of today face the grim choice between shoplifting Louis Vuitton below their AG’s prosecution threshold or working several hours a week in the shadow of the menacing smokestacks of ID Software to afford their meager iPhones. Affluent Ugandans make monthly donations to American charities who will send them pictures of smiling American 20-something’s named “Jaden” their charity has lifted out of complete destitution and given hope of owning their own Miami condo.

Re: Id Software devs form "wall-to-wall" union

#107

Post by Manuel_D »

IshKebab wrote: post #99
Manuel_D wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The workers aren't drones, they have the agency to choose another job. If a company is underpaying workers relative to the rest of the market, they'll struggle to hire and retain employees without the interference of a union.

This is the magical "perfect competition" view of the market that often doesn't match reality at all.

What's keeping any one of these Id software developers from accepting a competing job offer elsewhere?

Yes, there are scenarios where employees are stripped of agency. E.g a factory owner taking and holding foreign worker's passports. But if you're going to allege that something is preventing these works from accepting competing offers, you have to offer evidence for that claim.

Re: Id Software devs form "wall-to-wall" union

#108

Post by rootusrootus »

hellojesus wrote: post #89
micromacrofoot wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yellow was in massive debt due to poor management decisions and the union fought against a move that would have combined driver seniority lists from various companies they managed, which they suspected was going to be used to cut people's jobs . The union did what it thought was best for all its members, and the company was in so much debt it couldn't figure out how to fulfill those needs another way. This is not a "…

My point is exactly that the union didn't do what was best for its members because their actions collapsed the company. Unions are subject to the constraints of operations. LTL is a very debt-heavy industry, and yellow pushed the envelop too far. But the union could have tried to negotiate a contract contingent on operating costs and debt load. They didn't. Instead they chose their line and then striked until the com…

Looking through the history of the company, it seems like the lack of making a profit for the last 25 years and taking on huge debt may have contributed way more to their demise than anything the union did.

Re: Id Software devs form "wall-to-wall" union

#109

Post by ecshafer »

an_cap wrote: post #100

FWIW, the union (CWA) via its Seattle affiliate tried to get OPT banned, a visa status that many readers of HN benefited from - https://law.justia.com/cases/federal/appellate-courts/cadc/2... . I encourage HN readers to better understand the relationship between unions and immigration before deciding whether they are in favor of joining/supporting unions.

Of course they did. Unions are always going to be against immigrant labor.

Re: Id Software devs form "wall-to-wall" union

#110

Post by Normal_gaussian »

an_cap wrote: post #100

FWIW, the union (CWA) via its Seattle affiliate tried to get OPT banned, a visa status that many readers of HN benefited from - https://law.justia.com/cases/federal/appellate-courts/cadc/2... . I encourage HN readers to better understand the relationship between unions and immigration before deciding whether they are in favor of joining/supporting unions.

Unions are almost fundamentally against the practice of undercutting them with cheaper labour.
Post reply on HN