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Union Is Formed at Los Angeles Times and Publisher Put on Leave

nytimes.com

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Re: Union Is Formed at Los Angeles Times and Publisher Put on Leave

#111

Post by paxy »

tptacek wrote: post #83
ng12 wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do we need a union in a seller's market? If I'm unhappy with my job I can quit and get a new one in a week. It's not about being a knowledge worker. Screenwriters are unionized because there are many more people who want to write than there are gigs, therefore there's a high potential for abuse.

If it's a "seller's market", why do so many developers work under onerous IP contracts that grant their employers rights to what they build in their spare time? If it's a "seller's market", why do so many developers work in noisy bullpen environments where they have to blast music into their ears with headphones to focus their attention on what they're building? If it's a "seller's market", why do so many developers…

Who are these "so many developers" you've referenced a dozen times? You've been spending too much time on internet forums listening to rants of the vocal minority. Truth is that most developers are happy and don't need a drastic change, and this can hardly be said about any other profession.

Re: Union Is Formed at Los Angeles Times and Publisher Put on Leave

#112

Post by chimeracoder »

dtornabene wrote: post #103
ng12 wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do we need a union in a seller's market? If I'm unhappy with my job I can quit and get a new one in a week. It's not about being a knowledge worker. Screenwriters are unionized because there are many more people who want to write than there are gigs, therefore there's a high potential for abuse.

Its amazing that none of the replies (so far) have pointed out something in the very article that spawned this thread, the status of women and minorities. Literally in the title its noted that the publisher is being put on leave, if you read the article it goes on to note that was because of sexual harrassment and his attitude toward gay men. These are bread and butter union issues.

> Its amazing that none of the replies (so far) have pointed out something in the very article that spawned this thread, the status of women and minorities.

It's not that surprising; Hacker News comments tend not to sympathize with victims of harassment, sexism, or racism when stories about those topics come up. So it's not surprising that it doesn't become the focus of the thread here, since it's not the lede in the story.

> f you read the article it goes on to note that was because of sexual harrassment and his attitude toward gay men. These are bread and butter union issues.

In theory, yes. In practice, it depends on the workplace. If the workplace is mostly men who don't really have a problem with harassment of women, the union won't either, and women aren't going to have a great time there. That's sadly pretty common in blue-collar unions[0].

[0] eg: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/12/19/us/ford-chica...

Re: Union Is Formed at Los Angeles Times and Publisher Put on Leave

#113

Post by s73ver_ »

ng12 wrote: post #21
FussyZeus wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also don't forget it would make it much easier for individual engineers to argue back at Management about employing dark patterns, or directives to make apps/websites addictive and generally harmful. For as much as people like to gripe about LinkedIn and their variously deceptive practices, marketing heads and executives don't write code. There are engineers in there making that stuff happen.

Do you think that's because the developers lack power or it's because they don't really care?

Some of both. I'd imagine those that cared enough, and felt confident enough in finding another job left, whereas those who weren't in such a position shut up about it.

Re: Union Is Formed at Los Angeles Times and Publisher Put on Leave

#114

Post by geofft »

tylerhou wrote: post #74
geofft wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I will quit from any employer that forces all programmers to negotiate as a unit, because I believe that compensation should be based purely on your individual skills and the market. But that is the market, is it not? If your employer chooses to require all employees to negotiate as a unit, and is not required to do so by law, aren't they just doing that because they're a rational actor in the market? The law is a…

And if the poster you replied to quits from his employer, isn't he just doing that because he's a rational (by his own metric of rationality) actor in the market? Presumably there is at least one un-unionized employer where he could get a job.

I mean, in a sense yes, but also his "rational" explanation is that he doesn't think employers should do X, he thinks employers should just behave as the market demands which clearly cannot include doing X, so I'm pushing back on whether that's actually a rational decision.

Re: Union Is Formed at Los Angeles Times and Publisher Put on Leave

#115

Post by SEJeff »

mixmastamyk wrote: post #102
SEJeff wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find there are more than enough people that want me (as a software engineer with 10+ years of low level linux / unix experience) and wish me to be very happy. If I ever was forced to join a union, I'd quit on the spot and go find somewhere else to work. I worked for Comair (small airline owned by Delta) during a stewardess strike, which ultimately caused the company to sell planes and eventually go out of business.…

As there are good and bad companies, there are good and bad unions.

Oh I agree. My opinion is massively different for smaller unions, but all humongous national unions have all become the power/greed and awfulness they were created to fight. Corruption at the core.

Re: Union Is Formed at Los Angeles Times and Publisher Put on Leave

#116

Post by tptacek »

paxy wrote: post #111
tptacek wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If it's a "seller's market", why do so many developers work under onerous IP contracts that grant their employers rights to what they build in their spare time? If it's a "seller's market", why do so many developers work in noisy bullpen environments where they have to blast music into their ears with headphones to focus their attention on what they're building? If it's a "seller's market", why do so many developers…

Who are these "so many developers" you've referenced a dozen times? You've been spending too much time on internet forums listening to rants of the vocal minority. Truth is that most developers are happy and don't need a drastic change, and this can hardly be said about any other profession.

People disagree about open offices. Some people disagree about the option to work from home or hire remote.

But it is hard to believe that ANY of us disagree about IP contracts or extended options execution windows.

Are you a professional developer? Which of these issues do you think are non-issues?

Re: Union Is Formed at Los Angeles Times and Publisher Put on Leave

#117

Post by zzzcpan »

ng12 wrote: post #5
chollida1 wrote: post #2

I thought this was interesting because if knowledge workers like journalists can do so, why not programmers, or what ever term you'd prefer to be called?

Why do we need a union in a seller's market? If I'm unhappy with my job I can quit and get a new one in a week. It's not about being a knowledge worker. Screenwriters are unionized because there are many more people who want to write than there are gigs, therefore there's a high potential for abuse.

Job markets can be seller's markets only temporary, until large employers and investors realize this. At which point they can take away any power people had via secret anti-competitive agreements, artificial barriers for changing jobs, lobbying and investing into more supply, etc.

For software developers seller's market is long gone.

Re: Union Is Formed at Los Angeles Times and Publisher Put on Leave

#118

Post by s73ver_ »

Dirlewanger wrote: post #26
untog wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is interesting that programmers (as a whole) seem resistant to it. It's often described as being unnecessary, but when you go one or two posts down HN you find people decrying long hours, open plan offices, weekend callouts, etc. etc. I suspect it's just that when the going is good, people don't really think they need a union. If the prophecies come true and AI starts writing code for us, you can bet people will s…

I think part of it is because the gap between the skill floor and ceiling is absolutely gargantuan. Unions work best when the skill gap is narrow, and ascension to different levels easily measurable. The more I think about it, software engineering is almost completely antithetical to the idea of unions. Traditional engineers have so much structure around their fields because the laws of physics govern a large part of…

I cannot disagree more. I see absolutely nothing in software engineering that is antithetical to unions. Much of what you claim could also be applied to acting, or to professional athletes, who do have unions.

Re: Union Is Formed at Los Angeles Times and Publisher Put on Leave

#119

Post by jamiequint »

tptacek wrote: post #85
bmmayer1 wrote: post #76

How does unionization protect workers against the decline in demand for journalists and the collapse of the newspaper industry? (serious question)

Here's one possible way: by exploiting their negotiating position to act as a check against management's impulses to sell cathedrals of journalism for spare parts on the promise that maybe the resulting third-tier incarnation of Buzzfeed that will result might temporarily juice returns to owners. Maybe it's possible that the people actually doing the work know better about how to run a successful media company than t…

> Maybe it's possible that the people actually doing the work know better about how to run a successful media company than the Troncs do?

Why don't they start their own media company then rather than resort to short-term value extraction tactics which will likely drive said "cathedral of journalism" into the ground?

Re: Union Is Formed at Los Angeles Times and Publisher Put on Leave

#120

Post by ng12 »

geofft wrote: post #27
ng12 wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right, but there are no struggling software engineers. Even college kids won't touch an internship for less than $20/hour, much less be forced to take a gig for "exposure".

Are the "struggling actors" actually unemployed, or just not getting the roles they want? I don't know many people in the industry who can't find a job in programming (that pays better than the LA Times pays their journalists), but I know lots of people who are struggling to find a good job that matches their skills more accurately than "can program" and helps their career, and also lots of people who have had troubl…

Actually unemployed. I have several actor friends (I live in NYC) who spend roughly half the year auditioning -- if they're lucky. On paper the jobs pay pretty well because they pay union rates but that's because they subsidize large stints of unemployment.
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