Anti-union activity is heating up ahead of Google contractor's vote to unionize • Hacker News Board

Re: Anti-union activity is heating up ahead of Google contractor's vote to unionize

#151

Post by yifanlu » Sat, Sep 21, 2019, 6:10 PM UTC

tyri_kai_psomi wrote: post #128

moocowtruck wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

well, USPS has an IT union and I can tell you first hand it is no good for employees, the things you mentioned happening absolutely happen and the place is just a disaster

We have a contract with the USPS IT department and let me tell you, it is absolutely awesome for their employees. They do about half the work we do in twice the amount of time, get paid more, have more holidays (2 weeks + every single federal holiday) and have pensions. Every worker there clocks in at 9, and clocks out at exactly 5, not a single minute past. If you want a meeting or them to get you something, it need…

If everyone is happier, less stressed, and as a result less productive, then isn’t that a good trade off? Shouldn’t we all strive to work less hours if it means better mental health? That’s what I would wonder.

Re: Anti-union activity is heating up ahead of Google contractor's vote to unionize

#152

Post by staticautomatic » Sat, Sep 21, 2019, 6:10 PM UTC

geofft wrote: post #113

staticautomatic wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your assumptions about my personal politics are both incorrect and unwarranted.

You misread the comment. No one is saying that you agree with these other political positions, just that the political position you stated that you believe in makes equally little sense.

No, I did not. Thanks.

Re: Anti-union activity is heating up ahead of Google contractor's vote to unionize

#153

Post by Apocryphon » Sat, Sep 21, 2019, 6:11 PM UTC

mszcz wrote: post #138

tyri_kai_psomi wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We have a contract with the USPS IT department and let me tell you, it is absolutely awesome for their employees. They do about half the work we do in twice the amount of time, get paid more, have more holidays (2 weeks + every single federal holiday) and have pensions. Every worker there clocks in at 9, and clocks out at exactly 5, not a single minute past. If you want a meeting or them to get you something, it need…

I don't know if I'd like to work in a place like that. Wouldn't you get lazy after a couple of years? Doesn't this create incentives to deliberately work more slowly? After a couple of more years like that wouldn't you get used to not doing much and then get slaughtered when inevitable change came around? My friend referred to this kind of situation as "being in an ass" ;) Yeah, from time to time there's a smell but…

> Wouldn't you get lazy after a couple of years? Doesn't this create incentives to deliberately work more slowly?

Maybe without unpaid overtime and burnout, developers will finally have the chance to contribute to open source and side projects that recruiters are always looking for.

Re: Anti-union activity is heating up ahead of Google contractor's vote to unionize

#154

Post by stjohnswarts » Sat, Sep 21, 2019, 6:11 PM UTC

tyri_kai_psomi wrote: post #128

moocowtruck wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

well, USPS has an IT union and I can tell you first hand it is no good for employees, the things you mentioned happening absolutely happen and the place is just a disaster

We have a contract with the USPS IT department and let me tell you, it is absolutely awesome for their employees. They do about half the work we do in twice the amount of time, get paid more, have more holidays (2 weeks + every single federal holiday) and have pensions. Every worker there clocks in at 9, and clocks out at exactly 5, not a single minute past. If you want a meeting or them to get you something, it need…

Is something keeping you back from working for USPS IT?

Re: Anti-union activity is heating up ahead of Google contractor's vote to unionize

#155

Post by freyr » Sat, Sep 21, 2019, 6:11 PM UTC

erikpukinskis wrote: post #42

dev_dull wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The painfully obvious answer is that the work is low skill. Why? Because the job market in the Bay Area is such that high skilled labor can easily and quickly find more gainful employment. It doesn’t make it better for them to earn less, and a union is one way to group high and low skill labor pool such as the whole can have a better quality of life.

If you’re talking about programming... the reason programmers (of a certain sort) are paid a lot in the Bay Area is not because they are vastly “higher” skilled than other people. The average chef in the Bay Area is WAY more skilled than all but the most skilled coders. There are two reasons why programmers (of a certain sort) make so much money: 1) It’s an area of speculation, how much revenue can such people produc…

We've been hearing this same argument for twenty years.

It scared me away from the industry, back when I was in college and the scaremongers claimed that all the software jobs would move to India and the U.S. programmers would be laid off en masse. It never happened, and in fact, many programmers got quite rich shortly thereafter. The tech companies play a significant enough role in the U.S. economy that I can't see the money disappearing "soon," short of Elizabeth Warren dismantling them.

Also, having worked for an old-school tech company that refused to pay its engineers competitively, I've seen firsthand how a strong engineering culture can crumble overnight. The good engineers migrated to better paying jobs and couldn't be replaced. The company dug its heels into the ground, and put more arrows behind marketing and middle management and low-cost contract engineering labor. And that went as well as you might expect. I'd be surprised if they're still around in a few years.

Re: Anti-union activity is heating up ahead of Google contractor's vote to unionize

#156

Post by microcolonel » Sat, Sep 21, 2019, 6:12 PM UTC

geofft wrote: post #132

microcolonel wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having recently listened to and briefly met Daryl Davis, I know racists in large part can be reached, if we're not lazy about it. If they're your own parents, you have a huge advantage in terms of common ground.

There's the "racist" that leads the Ku Klux Klan, and the "racist" that has black coworkers they get along with great but just doesn't want their daughter dating a black man, it's just not how we do things, you know. The Klansman, at least in the present day, knows that he's on the margins of society's beliefs. Like any other tiny political position, holding those beliefs is uncomfortable. Even among the second categ…

> The Klansman doesn't have friends.

The Klansman is a Klansman because his friends are Klansmen. If left to their own devices, they'll just get more used to living that way.

Daryl doesn't win because he's on a crusade, he wins because he's a good friend.

Re: Anti-union activity is heating up ahead of Google contractor's vote to unionize

#157

Post by CydeWeys » Sat, Sep 21, 2019, 6:12 PM UTC

pgrote wrote: post #105

staticautomatic wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One can be pro-organizing but not pro-union.

>One can be pro-organizing but not pro-union. Agree 100%. Im the United States most local and state ballots have measures on them generated by petition drives. Get X number of registered voters to sign a petition and it is on the ballot. I always signs these when the someone approaches me. I may not agree with the cause or be a proponent of the goal, but the group organizing should have the right to appear on the bal…

Few if any are trying to eliminate the ability to have ballot initiatives, whereas plenty of moneyed individuals are trying to eliminate unions.

I don't think it's a fair comparison.

Re: Anti-union activity is heating up ahead of Google contractor's vote to unionize

#158

Post by geofft » Sat, Sep 21, 2019, 6:13 PM UTC

parineum wrote: post #135

geofft wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That seems like a decent definition, if oversimplified. What's wrong with it? (And I think you'll find that I disproportionately support the non-millionare politicians.)

I know people personally on both the right and the left that aren't millionaires but (nearly) all of the public and influential political actors I know are at least millionaires, regardless of affiliation. You're counting your opponents as the second group and your allies as the first group. Someone on your opposing side could make the _exact_ argument by reversing the groups. It's telling that your statement does no…

Sure, politicians can become wealthy after holding office. I'm more talking about where people were situated before they entered politics, and in particular the people who are not politicians - donors, influencers (for lack of a better term), etc.

And I think my politics are more accurately represented by normal people vs. career politicians than by donkey mascot vs. elephant mascot. I vote Democrat as a matter of lesser-of-two-evils, but I yearn desperately for a world in which no one who's involved in any way with DCCC can have influence in politics ever again. If you find me someone who votes Republican who says the like AOC and hate Trump, I'd probably agree with them on a lot of things.

Re: Anti-union activity is heating up ahead of Google contractor's vote to unionize

#159

Post by kazen44 » Sat, Sep 21, 2019, 6:13 PM UTC

geofft wrote: post #49

cgag wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What percentage of your life have you been being inculcated with the idea that your political opponents believe themselves to be temporarily embarrassed millionaires?

Opponents? My political opponents are actual, non-embarrassed millionaires and billionaires from families of millionaires and billionaires. My political allies are temporarily embarrassed millionaires, from the folks accepting below-market salaries to work at a potential unicorn to the folks buying literal lotto tickets at the corner store. A few of them are no longer temporarily embarrassed, having joined the right…

is this not just survivorship bias? What about the countless of people who did not make it into a successful startup, or all those people who bought lottery tickets without winning anything?

becoming a millionaire is statistically highly unlikely, and why would such an unlikely event warrant anti-union sentiment?

Re: Anti-union activity is heating up ahead of Google contractor's vote to unionize

#160

Post by mokus » Sat, Sep 21, 2019, 6:16 PM UTC

anigbrowl wrote: post #111

parineum wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You present this as if there were only two positions one could hold on those topics which helps you paint anyone who has a different opinion as an indecisive buffoon.

This is no different from centrists saying that every problem can be solved by splitting the difference. There's some times and things where one should expect a normal distribution, and other times and things where a binomial distribution shows up. Phase transitions and bifurcations show up all the time in natural systems, from mathematics to cell division and population ecology; I don't know why people think social…

This is a non-sequitur. The (apocryphal, IMO) “centrist” that’s saying everything is “between the two extremes” is not the same thing as someone saying “no, there’s actually more than 2 positions”.

Your statistical example actually takes things the wrong direction. The person you are responding to is positing a distribution with more than two modes, not fewer, and by suggesting there are two your example actually is closer to the “centrist” straw man.