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

Google hired union-busting consultants to convince employees “unions suck”

arstechnica.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

141–150 of 493 posts

Re: Google hired union-busting consultants to convince employees “unions suck”

#141

Post by judge2020 »

UncleMeat wrote: post #114
0xbadc0de5 wrote: post #12

Having 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…

> but this is never used to discourage all participation in the labor force because employers are often shitty.

There are approximately 93 million adults (civilian noninstitutional population) that don't work[0]. I'm sure it's not all because of the employers themselves, but surely a lot don't want to deal with the politics and culture imposed on them by managerial talent [maybe some study on this portion of the population's reason for not working would be useful].

0: https://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.t01.htm (Men, 20 years and over->Not in labor force + Women, 20 years and over->Not in labor force)

Re: Google hired union-busting consultants to convince employees “unions suck”

#142

Post by sleepychu »

tnel77 wrote: post #129
UncleMeat wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I am very pro-union, but I feel like a part of situation you are describing is because we needs businesses. We don’t necessarily need unions. Without unions, businesses would still be here. Without businesses, where would the unions be? Edit: I would like to reiterate that I am pro-union. I am just saying that unions are optional, but businesses (or the government as some have pointed out) are more necessary from the…

co-operatives?

Re: Google hired union-busting consultants to convince employees “unions suck”

#143

Post by nosequel »

paisawalla wrote: post #28
nosequel wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Money. As soon as a lot of people leave a team or location in Google, Google responds by giving everyone bonuses. When a bunch of people started quitting from the Boulder office a few (5?) years back, they offered to send everyone on a trip to Hawaii. Google's Do No Evil has been gone for a long while, but people stick around because they are making so much goddamn money.

That's exactly how it should work...? What's the issue, Google is evil because it increased the incentive for employees to stay?

I don't know where you got that from my reply. I was simply answering the question of why people stay at Google if they are evil. I was answering the retention question only.

Re: Google hired union-busting consultants to convince employees “unions suck”

#144

Post by skywal_l »

the_printer wrote: post #113
boh wrote: post #69

Earlier 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…

Quoted post unavailable.

> I love how I’m supposed to think a middle man acting on my behalf will somehow be better than me acting on my own behalf.

Because you do not think that when employees get together as a single negotiating entity they have more negotiating power? I mean, I understand you don't like unions but I am sure you understand the principle of balance of power.

> Unions are compulsory in blue states (non-right-to-work). They are also political entities funding specific candidates, parties, and causes which means union dues is compelled political speech. It’s crazy.

In those states you can ask to only pay the part of the dues that concern bargaining activities.

Re: Google hired union-busting consultants to convince employees “unions suck”

#145

Post by habosa »

secondcoming wrote: post #60
flerchin wrote: post #9

Everyone can benefit from a union IMO. The Googlers that most need one are probably contractors (ie, not actually Googlers).

Except contractors know the deal when they become contractors. They deliberately want to represent themselves and take the risks and tax benefits that come along with that. If a contractor isn't happy with the work or conditions then they should move on to the next job.

I think by contractors they meant all non-employees. Temps, vendors, etc. Google has over 100,000 of these and they do not all "know the deal" about how much worse their compensation / conditions will be compared to full time employees.

Re: Google hired union-busting consultants to convince employees “unions suck”

#146

Post by excalibur »

Today's unions DO suck. In that they're becoming scarce and have grown largely ineffective at shielding workers from employer abuse. (Thanks in no small part to red tape introduced at the behest of corporate lobbyists.) And now that the corporations have beaten worker advocates into a useless bloody pulp they want them removed altogether so that they may exploit their workers with fewer constraints. Google, Amazon et al can fuck ALL THE WAY off.

Re: Google hired union-busting consultants to convince employees “unions suck”

#147

Post by marricks »

Go figure the top comments on this thread echo how companies talk about unions.

“Oh unions can be good but those Americans don’t know their downsides…”

Or

“Unions are great but it’s awful people can be forced to join them!”

I’m just saying Google’s money was well spent.

Re: Google hired union-busting consultants to convince employees “unions suck”

#148

Post by pmyteh »

chrisseaton wrote: post #86
bennysomething wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You say let's try again, I think before doing that it would be wise to look at why we got rid of them. I'm the UK, I know people who are doctors and teachers, they all have stories of how their unions are hurting the public.

The thing with teachers unions and doctors unions you have to remember is that they represent the interests of the teachers or the doctors. They don't represent the interests of pupils, patients, or the public. In fact they have to work directly against those groups for the interests of their members.

Sometimes, but not necessarily always. I'm in UCU, the UK academics' union. We're quite often on the same side as the students, and not on the same side as the government. We get substantial support from students' unions on the basis that 'your working conditions are our learning conditions'. Casualisation, for example, is seen as substantially damaging good quality teaching for pretty small financial gains - but teaching is not in practice seen as a major priority by government or senior university managers.

We don't represent the public. Whether we're working on behalf of the public depends on whether you think the government's position represents 'the public', and which part of the public you're most interested in. (The interests of childless taxpayers who don't believe in the importance of university education are not well represented by lecturers and their unions, surprisingly enough...)

I think what I'm saying is that some of the conflicts between unions and management are zero-sum, but others are not. And while public sector unions can narrowly represent a producer interest, that certainly isn't true of all situations.

Re: Google hired union-busting consultants to convince employees “unions suck”

#149

Post by cool_dude85 »

Jensson wrote: post #102
boh wrote: post #69

Earlier 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…

US unions are like US healthcare, regulatory capture makes them suck. Unions working well in other countries doesn't mean it works well in USA. And neither party wants to improve the state of unions, democrats are on the side of union leadership while republicans are just anti unions in general, none wants to support workers on this.

No, I work in a US union that I'm very happy with. I have personally seen action on the ground preventing unfair discipline by management, passing people up for raises over personal vendettas, baseline quality of life stuff. I suspect that most people in a union in the US are quite happy with it.

Re: Google hired union-busting consultants to convince employees “unions suck”

#150

Post by fearfulofview4 »

tnel77 wrote: post #129
UncleMeat wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I am very pro-union, but I feel like a part of situation you are describing is because we needs businesses. We don’t necessarily need unions. Without unions, businesses would still be here. Without businesses, where would the unions be? Edit: I would like to reiterate that I am pro-union. I am just saying that unions are optional, but businesses (or the government as some have pointed out) are more necessary from the…

No post body was provided.
Post reply on HN