Kickstarter employees vote to unionize • Hacker News Board

Re: Kickstarter employees vote to unionize

#111

Post by ilikehurdles » Tue, Feb 18, 2020, 5:20 PM UTC

zchrykng wrote: post #42

Is Kickstarter in a right-to-work state? Because if not, 46 people are forcing 37 to support a union that they might not agree with, which is distasteful in the extreme.

You led me to find a map of US anti-union "right-to-work" states on wikipedia[1]. I previously figured pretty much all of the US is under RTW legislation, but it seems like, outside of the folks in Texas, almost the entire tech industry is in non-RTW states.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right-to-work_law#U.S._states_...

Re: Kickstarter employees vote to unionize

#112

Post by crankylinuxuser » Tue, Feb 18, 2020, 5:21 PM UTC

zchrykng wrote: post #57

ughitsaaron wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thankfully, New York is not a right-to-work state.

So you are fine with the majority forcing the minority to support something they don't want to support? Never going to get behind that notion myself.

There are some glaring problems with federal law behind unions.

1. A union is required to represent all employees. They should t have to.

2. Companies will still have the money, and the employees will just have "work".

A better view is worker owned co-ops. That way the manager is the employee. The stresses of union vs company dissipate. Some others do take hold, but are much less so.

Re: Kickstarter employees vote to unionize

#113

Post by dv_dt » Tue, Feb 18, 2020, 5:21 PM UTC

crankylinuxuser wrote: post #81

nimbius wrote: post #21

Speaking as an IAM union member, congratulations! now comes the hard part. You're probably (still) going to hear a lot of FUD from your employer but dont worry, things really do only get better from here. Once you get a union youll get more quarterly insight into your companies profits, losses, and a MUCH better picture of what the company intends to do in the next six to twelve months. Youll also get a direct say in…

I just formed a company back in December. Super easy to set up an LLC, C or S Corp. But I wanted it to be a worker co-op like Mondragon. And there's no real guidance or help. Democracy is cool, until we look at companies. Then it's dictatorships as the norm. And trying to do it right from the ground up is high impossible. As a obligatory comment: are there any other in the HN-sphere that focuses on worker cooperative…

Look here and with their sister orgs

https://www.usworker.coop/home/

They hold conferences and workshops.

Edit: And if you're looking for a higher level approach:

https://democracycollaborative.org/

Re: Kickstarter employees vote to unionize

#114

Post by jamiequint » Tue, Feb 18, 2020, 5:21 PM UTC

PaulHoule wrote: post #19

exabrial wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nobody at kickstarter is living a wretched existence.

That is some of the reason they can unionize. Kickstarter produces enough surplus that the workers can get a better deal than they would otherwise. What's much more interesting is the labor status of the people who work on the Kickstarted projects.

> Kickstarter produces enough surplus that the workers can get a better deal than they would otherwise.

Not really. It may be short-term better for the workers, but not likely long term as they are effectively constraining the growth of the business relative to what it would be if the union did not exist.

Re: Kickstarter employees vote to unionize

#115

Post by duxup » Tue, Feb 18, 2020, 5:21 PM UTC

_sbrk wrote: post #68

I worked in a union shop once, as a summer intern. Every day, we were told to be in the break room at 7:59am to begin promptly at the 8am bell. By 4:30 or 4:45pm, everyone was back in there, waiting for the clock to hit 5pm. One day, I needed to connect two PCs together, which was approved by boss as they would be isolated from the network. So, being the diligent type, I went off and found some network cards and a ca…

My experience with US unions was similar.

They're just another layer of bureaucracy that is NOT required to respond to you as an individual in any way. I've had lots of poor experience with US unions protecting the lowest denominator at the expense of everyone else. They seem to focus on very specific rules that came up in specific situations applied to everything possible and end up just creating a web that is no different than an employer's web of bureaucracy ... albeit much slower / resistant to change.

I've seen a lot of strange posts about how a union will help with X, Y, Z. They can only help with what they've negotiated, and those rules are restrictions on you as well as the employer. In the US if you've got a fairly simple job that's probabbly OK and a net positive. A nuanced job / people with lots of different skill sets / moving quickly ... those rules can be a nightmare.

Those rules apply to what you can or can't do as much as they apply to what your employer wants to do.

I've heard European unions are notably different, I'm highly skeptical of anyone's ability to emulate that as the help most tech union drives in the US seem to be getting is from traditional US unions.

Re: Kickstarter employees vote to unionize

#116

Post by metalliqaz » Tue, Feb 18, 2020, 5:21 PM UTC

nimbius wrote: post #21

Speaking as an IAM union member, congratulations! now comes the hard part. You're probably (still) going to hear a lot of FUD from your employer but dont worry, things really do only get better from here. Once you get a union youll get more quarterly insight into your companies profits, losses, and a MUCH better picture of what the company intends to do in the next six to twelve months. Youll also get a direct say in…

> election period

didn't they just complete the election?

Re: Kickstarter employees vote to unionize

#117

Post by wellthisisgreat » Tue, Feb 18, 2020, 5:21 PM UTC

Wow this really sad, provided Kickstarter is one of the nicest places to work at and their public benefit corporation was not empty words.

These people ruined a really nice NYC company for everyone around. Anyone running their company who thought of making the workplace a bit different will expect the kind of crowd from this photo to show up and implode it.

One thing is if the conditions were bad, there was insane overtime, the pay was low etc etc., but no, none of that applies to the people on the photo.

This is why we cannot have nice things.

Re: Kickstarter employees vote to unionize

#118

Post by azinman2 » Tue, Feb 18, 2020, 5:23 PM UTC

_sbrk wrote: post #68

I worked in a union shop once, as a summer intern. Every day, we were told to be in the break room at 7:59am to begin promptly at the 8am bell. By 4:30 or 4:45pm, everyone was back in there, waiting for the clock to hit 5pm. One day, I needed to connect two PCs together, which was approved by boss as they would be isolated from the network. So, being the diligent type, I went off and found some network cards and a ca…

It’s all pros and cons. This is very much one of the big negatives of unions. That said, they also are one of the bigger drivers of worker pay increasing over time. In an era of massive income inequality, it’s a loss. I wish there was a way to get best of both worlds.

—-

I’ve always felt ESD stuff is way overhyped. I’ve handled a ton of electronics over decades without any ESD protection, and never had an issue. I just touch metal once before starting in while seated.

Re: Kickstarter employees vote to unionize

#119

Post by mc32 » Tue, Feb 18, 2020, 5:23 PM UTC

_sbrk wrote: post #68

I worked in a union shop once, as a summer intern. Every day, we were told to be in the break room at 7:59am to begin promptly at the 8am bell. By 4:30 or 4:45pm, everyone was back in there, waiting for the clock to hit 5pm. One day, I needed to connect two PCs together, which was approved by boss as they would be isolated from the network. So, being the diligent type, I went off and found some network cards and a ca…

Tech companies in NYC (the likes any one would recognize) who have DCs in NYC area are affected.

If you’ve worked with them in infra you’ll have come across issues like so and so left for the day. They’ll be back tomorrow and so on. It could be as simple as flicking a switch.

Re: Kickstarter employees vote to unionize

#120

Post by username90 » Tue, Feb 18, 2020, 5:23 PM UTC

> a historic win for unionization efforts at tech companies.

Kickstarter is a small company which isn't representative at all for other tech companies, so I doubt this will mean much for efforts at other companies. For example, a majority of their staff at every level are women (a quick glance at their linkedin shows that this is likely true for engineering roles as well) but that doesn't say anything about gender equality of the tech industry as a whole. It is very easy to make wins like this at small companies just by having random (or sometimes not so random) perturbations.

https://qz.com/923957/kickstarter-is-teaching-the-tech-world...