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It seemed to help with severance when they got rid of 40% of their staff a few months after the union was formed [0]. [0] https://www.theverge.com/2020/5/13/21257585/kickstarter-layo...
Indeed a very good example of what union can do for you.
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Unions are just another idea that sounds great on paper, only if you don't consider second and third order effects. They don't serve the workers, they serve themselves (like pretty much any organization). Tech workers are in so much demand that they don't really suffer such a disparity of negotiating power, like workers in other industries. Many software companies offer equity, which makes employers the shareholders.…
Tech workers are in so much demand that they don't really suffer such a disparity of negotiating power, like workers in other industries. How do we test this hypothesis? Do we know that tech companies couldn't afford to double the wages of all their staff, or is that an assumption we've made based on high wages relative to other industries ? I imagine the likes of Apple could certainly pay their devs a lot more.
https://www.digitalinformationworld.com/2020/08/research-rev...
Not just their devs, but all of their workers.
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A union is just an organization which represents the interests of workers. If we don't want BS work rules, we don't have to have them. Instead, we could have things like: 1. abolition of non-compete agreements 2. ownership of code we write when we're not at work 3. standards for privacy and security enforced by working engineers and not by management Maybe your list is different than mine, but if you can think of any…
> A union is just an organization which represents the interests of workers. A union isn't just that, though is it? It's also a beast in its own right, with its own politics and power struggles and debates and meetings and people taking a paycheck from your union dues. A union doesn't even necessarily act in your interests. It acts in the interests of the majority of members, who may be out to actively harm your inte…
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It doesn't replace one untrustworthy, poorly managed organization with another. It just means involving a second untrustworthy, poorly managed organization with its own goals in my contract negotiations. Some might say that unions are better, but that has not been true historically in the US - they have a long history of corruption, power-grabbing, leadership with incentives that aren't aligned with the best interest…
> Europe has a totally different union model that is interesting and seems to work better, but it isn't really an option in the US. Can you say more about what prevents a union in that model from being formed in the US?
In the US, unions are required to represent a legally-defined "unit". Generally this constitutes a group of workers with a well-defined role (e.g. line workers in a factory, butchers in a supermarket, graduate students in the UC system, teachers in California, etc.). When such a unit wishes to unionize, the members in the unit vote whether to establish a union. Assuming a sufficient number vote in favor, a union is formed that becomes the sole, exclusive, permanent (until dissolution) representative of all members of the unit during contract negotiations. This means that all members of the unit, including non-union members, are represented by the union for contract negotiations and it is illegal for anybody else, including yourself, to negotiate on your behalf (technically it is illegal for the business to negotiate with anybody other than the union, but this is functionally the same thing since any such agreement would be non-binding and then they would get fined for no benefit). In addition, no other union can legally be created that can represent any members of the unit. The only way to get different representation in such cases is to either dissolve the existing union or to vote out the leadership.
I find this interesting because I don't fully understand how tech became so opposed to unions. Many in our industry are quite jaded about the poor behavior of large corporations. Perhaps there are also reasons to be distrustful of unions. But mostly we accept working with or doing business with the former, and entirely eschewing the latter. Why have we decided that untrustworthy, sometimes poorly managed organization…
How are you defining tech? If you include IT workers and programmers in certain non-technology companies, I think their position could be improved by unionization. If you include engineers working for technology companies, unionization is less needed. This group has good working conditions on the whole. Personally when I have been frustrated with corporate work-life, it is usually for reasons that unionization would…
And I know for a fact that there will be discrimination on grounds of age, sex, race and disability based on experience in the uk tech industry.
There's also the issue of representation at grievance and discipline hearings.
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Unions can be a way for likeminded workers to pool together lobbying efforts. How would such a law right now be proposed and advanced? Certainly not by the lobbying arms of Big Tech.
I don't know who, and I agree that in theory they could. In practice though, I fear, they will be overtaken by parasites, will advance bureaucratic BS, political opinions, protections for people who game the system, start mandating nonsense technological choices, hurt the efficiency, and just drive the well-paying industry into a ground, forcing capital to just move software companies into places that are better for…
This seems US-specific. #1 internet service company in South Korea is unionized: Naver union. Ditto for #2, etc.
I find this interesting because I don't fully understand how tech became so opposed to unions. Many in our industry are quite jaded about the poor behavior of large corporations. Perhaps there are also reasons to be distrustful of unions. But mostly we accept working with or doing business with the former, and entirely eschewing the latter. Why have we decided that untrustworthy, sometimes poorly managed organization…
For me it's that it's forced. I don't like anything being forced upon me. If I could both keep my job and not be in the union, I'm fine with you unionizing. I just don't want to be forced to be a member or forced to give a chunk of my paycheck.
So are tech workers treated better at kick starter than they are at, say, google or amazon, or even treated better than they were at Kickstarter pre-union? The only thing in the article I could really find was: > Employees who are still with the company say that because of the union, management has been more receptive to worker grievances, especially now during the pandemic. Employees were able to ensure that staff w…
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I think a lot of it is that in-demand, well paid workers don't have patience for the BS work rules that unions are notorious for. It might be unfair characterization, but "you can't change/test that code, that's role X", and other such bureaucracy can be really draining.
Are unions in the US really like that, or is it a one-off being used to spread fud? Or could it be like a judge in sports, you only notice it when the judge makes the wrong call, but all the correct ones are ignored? My union in Europe doesn't really do that much in my day-to-day work. As a skilled worker in demand we're generally treated very well. But for the broader questions they are nice to have. For instance th…
I worked at Northrop Grumman a decade ago as a developer and a lot of the non-tech people were unionized. There were certain things I was not allowed to do because it was the job of some union person. For example, moving equipment was prohibited. When I changed desks I wasn't allowed to move my phone, PC, or monitors, I had to let the person whose job it was to do that, do that. It only happened twice, but in both instances I was without a computer and phone for a day or two, even though my old desk wasn't too far away. It was annoying and seemed illogical.