Reminder that Alphabet, the parent company of Google, already has a union. AWU-CWA Local 1400
Google hired union-busting consultants to convince employees “unions suck”
131–140 of 493 posts
Re: Google hired union-busting consultants to convince employees “unions suck”
#132Having worked for both union and non-union employers - it's a mixed bag. Unions have advantages and disadvantages. They are great for worker representation - but that's a double-edged sword. Ideally, unions protects worker's interests. In practice, they often lead to abuse, stagnation and corruption. I've personally witnessed union employees who contributed nothing for years, get perpetually shifted from team to team…
These can all be true things. But could you imagine if we spoke about corporations in this manner? "I've worked for corporations and they are a mixed bag. In practice, they often abuse their employees. I've personally witnessed bosses who contributed nothing for years and just played politics." For some reason we hold unions to an incredibly high standard of "no problems, ever" but this is never used to discourage al…
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Re: Google hired union-busting consultants to convince employees “unions suck”
#133Seeing comments from previous posts on this forum, I'd say they kind of succeeded.
Yup, money wins, people will fight against their own interest, etc etc
It’s incredibly presumptuous to assume you know someone else’s best interest better than them. If someone makes a different decision than you, maybe it’s because they value things differently than you and not that you’re sooooo much smarter than them,
Re: Google hired union-busting consultants to convince employees “unions suck”
#134The American idea of a union seems worlds apart from what I know in western Europe.
Over here, jobs are not favorably handed out to union members just for being a union member. It's completely irrelevant if you're a union member. Not only does it not directly favor you in getting in, you also don't get any individual protection.
What a union over here does instead:
- Collective bargaining of salary increases, yearly. Mostly based on the macro trend of the economy. It's not even the goal to maximize the increase, above all the goal is maintain purchase power. So it aims to compensate inflation, and will leave the rest to markets and individuals.
- Protection is only collectively, for example when a mass firing of workers is pending. Or when terms are suddenly dramatically worsened for all workers at once. Here a union may step in. And it will engage in a large number of steps before going to the absolute last resort: a large strike. Which are rare. Even strikes are regulated and bound to federal terms.
The American version sounds like a bad movie.
Re: Google hired union-busting consultants to convince employees “unions suck”
#135Earlier quoted context omitted.
With regard to the lazy worker, honestly, who cares? You still get paid. The company isn't going under. No doubt like most situations of abuse, this is a minority case because in general people like being productive.
Then Google should just hire 100,000 devs this year, why not? They're not going to go under, who cares that they won't be able to contribute to the success of the company?
> Then Google should just hire 100,000 devs this year, why not?
Hold up that's actually a good idea. It would help a lot of entry level devs bulk up their resume and learn hands on skills. This would lead to an influx of sorely needed new talent to the entire tech industry and enable a lot more innovation than was possible before, if only due to HR red tape.
Re: Google hired union-busting consultants to convince employees “unions suck”
#136Earlier quoted context omitted.
So I guess unions do suck, thanks for clarifying. Hopefully people will be smart enough to not interfere with a firm's epic struggle for efficiency and polishing out the friction of overbearing worker compensation and benefits. Sounds like unions are too corrupt and will just interfere with the purity of corporate practices. I love how people have an easier time imagining colonies on mars than giving labor a platform…
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Yeah like Hollywood actors —- why don’t they just drop their agents as they can negotiate themselves!
Re: Google hired union-busting consultants to convince employees “unions suck”
#137Earlier quoted context omitted.
Agree and this depends on the union also. The RMT in the UK is famously militant. When a new General Secretary was voted in a few years ago (before the current one I think), he didn't promise to "represent his members" but instead promised "that the RMT would remain militant", which doesn't sound great. Another railway union, the TSSA had a generally "no strike" policy but would still provide support for any disagree…
Everyone could get a better comp and work conditions but noo, that one lazy guy won't be fired, we can't have that!
If the company's in a competitive market, it's unlikely that there's a huge pot of gold somewhere to hand to employees in operations. The whole value-add for unions lately has been pitched as better employee representation in decision making. I'm all for that - if that stops management from colluding with some hedge fund to engineer an awful reverse-buyback-privitazation scheme to load the company with unservicable debt or something like that, I think unions have a lot to add.
But I can tell you from experience - it's definitely not "one lazy guy" - it becomes endemic because the process for dismissal becomes so costly. It's extremely demoralizing working alongside people who are "working the system" and are lazy as fcuk. It's better to just leave.
Re: Google hired union-busting consultants to convince employees “unions suck”
#138Earlier quoted context omitted.
So I guess unions do suck, thanks for clarifying. Hopefully people will be smart enough to not interfere with a firm's epic struggle for efficiency and polishing out the friction of overbearing worker compensation and benefits. Sounds like unions are too corrupt and will just interfere with the purity of corporate practices. I love how people have an easier time imagining colonies on mars than giving labor a platform…
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Bcs as a lone expendable agent, your capacity to initiate company wide change is nonexistent.
Re: Google hired union-busting consultants to convince employees “unions suck”
#139Earlier quoted context omitted.
People _can_ be awful. I've seen founders, managers and execs bleed people dry - squeezing the life out of critical contributors whole stringing them along with promised of "getting their piece of the pie" that they had no intention of ever sharing. Telling anecdotes about "that one lazy guy who got paid for doing nothing" is tired. We've done that for the last 40 years. Time to try unions again, please.
Once a union is in place, it's hard to remove it, especially if you end up with a lot of union employees that act like the above. It's important for the workforce starting a union to choose, but they surely need to know both the pros and cons, right?
It can be hard to remove but usually not so hard to influence elections if and when the abuses are serious. If the union is protecting some do-nothing guy, you probably won't win an election on that, but effective theft of funds you absolutely would.
Re: Google hired union-busting consultants to convince employees “unions suck”
#140Having worked for both union and non-union employers - it's a mixed bag. Unions have advantages and disadvantages. They are great for worker representation - but that's a double-edged sword. Ideally, unions protects worker's interests. In practice, they often lead to abuse, stagnation and corruption. I've personally witnessed union employees who contributed nothing for years, get perpetually shifted from team to team…
Regardless of the negatives unions bring, they still can be more beneficial to workers than to not have them. Unions can be corrupt, but is the other side of the table not corrupt as well?
My father, who did not finish high school, was able to earn a living as a construction worker that afforded us a computer in the 90’s. That is how I started programming which paved the way for to make $500k the last year I choose to work. This is absolutely survival-ship bias, but it’s my only experience with unions.