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

Kickstarter Union voted 97.6% to ratify one of the first tech union contracts

twitter.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

151–160 of 313 posts

Re: Kickstarter Union voted 97.6% to ratify one of the first tech union contracts

#151

Post by camdat »

Cerium wrote: post #54
bestcoder69 wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Minimum means the least you can do of something. For example, if the minimum amount of dollars you must pay for something is seven, then you cannot pay six dollars or less (you must pay at least seven). You can do more than the minimum, but no less. [0] [0]: https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maximum_and_minimum

Unfortunately, the minimum in employment agreements is frequently also the maximum.

Source this. Every Union I've seen continues to support performance based raises, just weighed appropriately against other compensation increases.

Re: Kickstarter Union voted 97.6% to ratify one of the first tech union contracts

#152

Post by bjornsing »

bestcoder69 wrote: post #95
adam_arthur wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A union tends to be a monopoly on labor supply in most cases. Not a competitive labor market. Bargaining collectively = monopoly. They can raise wages up to the level of marginal profit of the employing company. Just the same as a company that's a monopoly could raise prices up to marginal value of the good to the customer. If the company can bypass the union to hire others, then it's not a monopoly. But if the union…

> Distorted wages for labor is not good for broader society Real life on planet earth disagrees pretty hard with you. Google "___est countries". Pick a metric that shows policy impacts. Say, health, happiness, etc. The kind of metrics that aren't abstract BS and can't be cherry-picked. Pick the first, say, five. Then look up their unionization rates. I'll spoil it for you. Nordic countries win (it doesn't even matter…

But there’s a chicken and eg problem there. I would argue that we in Sweden have the GDP (per capita) we have because of the few large companies that were started before unionization.

It’s also kind of unsustainable in a globalized world, and even more so with remote work: The Nordic model is that you give everyone more or less the same compensation regardless of contribution. But how is that going to work 5 years from now? It’s already coming apart I would say.

Re: Kickstarter Union voted 97.6% to ratify one of the first tech union contracts

#153

Post by totony »

bpodgursky wrote: post #140
triceratops wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

High-paid/low-paid labor?

This is a terrible substitute, since there are a lot of low-paid high-skill jobs (ex, graduate students, TAs). There's a meaningful labor liquidity difference between a job that takes 2 years of training and 2 days of training, and it's important for policy decisions. Sorry?

But aren't those low-paid, high skill jobs likely to be unionized? Only issue I see with that term is that union affects pay.

Re: Kickstarter Union voted 97.6% to ratify one of the first tech union contracts

#154

Post by tick_tock_tick »

anamexis wrote: post #51
jjcon wrote: post #15

Love that someone in tech is finally getting unions in tech, don't love that it was kickstarter though. Their corporate culture is very toxic and I don't see them sticking around long term. It might be just me but my impression of kickstarter is that they are some of the worst offenders of 'maximum virtue signaling, minimum virtue'. That makes me inherently skeptical of a move like this.

Isn't a very toxic corporate culture the perfect reason for them to be getting a union?

If you take a group of toxic people, the current employee base, and institutionalize them as a Union well now you still have a toxic culture but no way to get ride of the problematic employees.

Re: Kickstarter Union voted 97.6% to ratify one of the first tech union contracts

#155

Post by bestcoder69 »

adam_arthur wrote: post #103
bestcoder69 wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Distorted wages for labor is not good for broader society Real life on planet earth disagrees pretty hard with you. Google "___est countries". Pick a metric that shows policy impacts. Say, health, happiness, etc. The kind of metrics that aren't abstract BS and can't be cherry-picked. Pick the first, say, five. Then look up their unionization rates. I'll spoil it for you. Nordic countries win (it doesn't even matter…

It's a good thing Europe can mooch off US innovation and Chinese manufacturing. Manufacturing that is not unionized, by the way. If the US went the way of Europe, technological innovation would slow dramatically, which I'll argue is a bad outcome for the world in the long run. What do you think the cost of basic goods would rise to if all the Chinese manufacturing centers unionized?

> If the US went the way of Europe, technological innovation would slow dramatically, which I'll argue is a bad outcome for the world in the long run.

IRL datapoints > counterfactuals: https://www.peoplespolicyproject.org/projects/nordic-state-i...

Also I said "Google it" for a reason. You picked an abstract one, and Sweden still beat us! And who could have guessed (me!), but Netherlands, Denmark, and Finland sit there in the top 10 as well :) [0]

> What do you think the cost of basic goods would rise to if all the Chinese manufacturing centers unionized?

You're not only dodging my point, but your own. You asked what was best for society.

0: https://www.wipo.int/pressroom/en/articles/2021/article_0008...

e: Man the "mooching" argument, in this context specifically, is really gonna stick with me. In a work meeting once, someone with knowledge said that each engineer in my org was earning the company $1.5-3 million. This is against a ~$200k salary. This is kind of subjective, but as an """innovator""", the idea that Finland is the one mooching off me is _hilarious_. I'm not gonna comment on what I "deserve" though because dessert theory isn't sound anyway.

Re: Kickstarter Union voted 97.6% to ratify one of the first tech union contracts

#156

Post by cmeacham98 »

adam_arthur wrote: post #133
deep_merge wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The MTA is run by New York State, and therefore at the whim of Albany cronyism [1]. This is why it’s so dysfunctional. I wouldn’t necessarily blame the transit unions. Edit: also, there’s a history of multiple private subway companies in NYC, it didn’t work out. 1. https://www.cityandstateny.com/politics/2021/01/how-the-mta-...

Yes, combination of the misaligned incentives of government coupled with a public sector union. Given the lack of a profit motive, a well run government needs incentive structures to motivate results towards societally good outcomes. Too bad none of the local, state, federal governments do. Would be easy to institute if the will were there though Edit: To address your edit, the private subway systems failed after NY…

You seem to be magically appending "with a public sector union" to the real cause of the majority of MTA's problems.

Sorry, but I don't buy this guilt by association: How does the union cause a significant portion of MTA's problems?

Re: Kickstarter Union voted 97.6% to ratify one of the first tech union contracts

#157

Post by CamperBob2 »

noSyncCloud wrote: post #145
busterarm wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Corporations bargain collectively by default; Only with unskilled labor. My profession is skilled and the skillset is in demand and hard to find. I bargain for myself, thanks. I have repeatedly and at length discussed on HN about my 3 separate union membership experiences and how I will never again repeat them.

> I bargain for myself, thanks. Well, that's good to know. I guess the rest of the world can stop worrying about themselves since you're taken care of.

He's saying he doesn't want the choice denied to him, as unionization advocates frequently attempt to justify.

Re: Kickstarter Union voted 97.6% to ratify one of the first tech union contracts

#158

Post by bjornsing »

kieselguhr_kid wrote: post #85
busterarm wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also a large chunk of the employees who didn't want to unionize (25-35% of their peak headcount) left the company over some of the tactics employed in the contested fight over unionizing the company.

A recently unionized workplace can get hostile to workers who opposed it. This is fine by me: if you opposed the majority of your coworkers in their struggle for better material working conditions, then you should feel their resentment.

Yes. I think that’s exactly how Mao phrased it. ;)

Re: Kickstarter Union voted 97.6% to ratify one of the first tech union contracts

#159

Post by busterarm »

totony wrote: post #105
xibo9 wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"unskilled labor" What an extremely elitist phrase.

Do you have a better term for it?

Back in my younger years, I worked a lot of unskilled-labor type jobs.

The starkest difference that I recognize between people in those jobs and people in my career is that in the former people have a hard time showing up to work on-time or at all and in the latter everyone is pretty tuned in and works hard.

It only hit me late in life that success in life really can be just as simple as showing up.

I guess what I would say here is that the kind of people who feel that they need collective bargaining agreements probably overlaps quite strongly with the group of people that have a hard time showing up.

Re: Kickstarter Union voted 97.6% to ratify one of the first tech union contracts

#160

Post by pessimizer »

busterarm wrote: post #64
throw_m239339 wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Their corporate culture is very toxic and I don't see them sticking around long term. I think they changed CEO recently, no? It seems like the ex-CEO, one of the founder, wasn't "a good cultural fit" after all. They had a round of layoffs a few years ago where some activist employees were weeded out, seems like it didn't work.

It's actually sort of the opposite of that. They fired 2 activists who were poor performers but not even the people leading the activism. The press made an enormous, outsized fuss over it. A bunch of non-activists left the company half out of disgust and half out of strong encouragement from their peers. The company's culture is "very toxic" because 80% of the people there are moralizing to all of their peers instead…

Weird context for moralizing to happen at a company whose model is encouraging people to make interest-free unsecured loans to people who aren't obligated to deliver a thing for them.
Post reply on HN