Is there a reaction from the Fastmail corporate to this?
This is a good question, no idea why it's been downvoted. Will Fastmail recognize the union?
Fastmail Employees Form a Union
151–160 of 303 posts
Re: Fastmail Employees Form a Union
#152Does anybody know what motivated the unionization effort? This is relevant to me as a Fastmail customer, because if the employees aren't being treated well that's a very poor reflection of the company.
Fastmail is, IIRC, employee owned. A lot of works on employee-ownership (coop or otherwise) suggest using union structure as a mechanism for procedurally protecting workers (both for things like negotiation and for due process purpose for adverse action, etc.) preemptively as a check against problems happening in the top-down the employees-as-owners -> top management -> line management -> employees-as-workers chain, rather than in reaction to problems.
Re: Fastmail Employees Form a Union
#153I am a software engineer who used to work in a "unionized" workplace. It was quite nice, and the union would negotiate increases in time off and fight against policy changes that were worse for us. The union leaders were elected every few years (very important IMO) and the union was only within the (rather large) company; there was no affiliation with a larger union.
Which country were you in at the time? Union laws vary substantially by country so I think this is relevant to understanding different unions and people's experiences with them.
Re: Fastmail Employees Form a Union
#154Slightly off topic, but could someone explain why employees in the US keep having to form their own union at each company, rather than the employees just joining an existing union? If I wanted to join a union where live, I'd just pick a relevant union, go to their home page, and click 'join'.
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Re: Fastmail Employees Form a Union
#155Unions are fascinating to me. When you are in a Union, part of your money goes to the union in order to, hopefully, make things better for you. This means the relationship between Union leadership and the Union members is just as important as between Union leadership and the company. Historically, we have seen Unions bring things like worker safety to the forefront and do numerous things to help people out. More rece…
> where the Union negotiated pay/benefits they got was less (before and after union dues) than the surrounding non-union competition. Yeah, that's a common anti-union tactic. Another one is passing on any better terms negotiated with a union to non-union workers to make it look like union membership gains you nothing. Of course, when the union is gone, the largesse tends to end.
It depends.
A union that does right by its members means you have leadership who does that. I’ve seen numerous cases where that didn’t happen across several industries. The leadership ended up making bad decisions for the members.
Re: Fastmail Employees Form a Union
#156Earlier quoted context omitted.
You can't unionize your way to a better economy, that's not how that works.
I mean, you can be certain the big heads of companies are unionizing / conspiring against you (meeting behind closed doors to keep wages down, not poach, fix prices / rent, etc.). It's fascinating how the lower class has been indoctrinated against them.
I am anti-union, but not because of any indoctrination, but because when I was younger I worked in union shops before I got my first tech job and I saw how corrupt the union was, it was a complete racket, and it encouraged people to do mediocre work and mess around all day.
In theory I support all the goals people say a union has, but in practice most unions are a way to protect slackers and incompetents while bilking money from your paycheck to do little to advance your interests as an individual. One of my primary interests as a high-performer is working with other high-performers, meanwhile when I was at a union shop I'd get chastised by coworkers for doing /too much/ and being /too good/, because it made the rest look bad and increased expectations. There was a heavy heavy amount of bureaucracy caused by the union insisting on working to rule most of the time, which lead to everything being much worse every day in the workplace and generally being miserable as someone that just wants to get shit done.
I have been burnt out in my life a few times, but never by the workload, always by the work environment. Working in a union environment was a recipe for burn out, because I can't take a lackadaisical approach to my work, that's not my personality or who I am as a person. Anything worth being done is worth being done right and well.
My direct experience is that unions are run by, attract, and retain people who like to lolly-gag around with their thumbs up their asses and get paid for it, and basically have zero ambition or desire to improve the world around them for themselves or for others.
Re: Fastmail Employees Form a Union
#157Earlier quoted context omitted.
Unions in the US are a much different beast. Counterintuitively, Unions in the US have much more legal power in some ways than international counterparts - if they get officially recognized . But official recognition is only workplace-to-workplace and has an election process to follow: https://www.nlrb.gov/about-nlrb/what-we-do/conduct-elections Since it's more all-or-nothing per workplace, your membership is basical…
Also of note is that the US doesn't really have sectoral bargaining like, say, France does. This would prevent scenarios where nonunionized companices in a sector can start up and outperform established unionized ones just by hiring desperate people and paying them below the fair rate.
The people who get hurt the most in that case would be the employees who aren't hired and the customers who are not served by the business that therefore does not start.
Re: Fastmail Employees Form a Union
#158Re: Fastmail Employees Form a Union
#159Earlier quoted context omitted.
As long as there's an option to not be in the union, it's completely fine IMO. In a free market, the best option will win. When non-union jobs are better than union jobs the need for the union should vanish (in theory).
If the market is free, why can't employees decide to group together and negotiate a contract with a company that precludes the hiring of non-union employees? Sounds like freedom of association with me. You wouldn't complain about a corporation signing an exclusive contract with another corporation (even for supplying labor), why is it a problem when it's a collective of workers imposing that restriction rather than a…
In most countries, I would imagine any agreement that prevented the hiring of a specific group of people would run afoul of discrimination laws.
Re: Fastmail Employees Form a Union
#160Slightly off topic, but could someone explain why employees in the US keep having to form their own union at each company, rather than the employees just joining an existing union? If I wanted to join a union where live, I'd just pick a relevant union, go to their home page, and click 'join'.
If you are the only member of a particular union in your company, what additional leverage does that give you? You don’t gain any ability to do collective actions, right?
I'm not GP, but we're from the same country. There's multiple benefits from being unionized, even if you're the only one in your company to be in that particular union:
- Your union is likely to negotiate salaries and benefits with the umbrella organization that the employer is part of. Strikes are usually some employees across a range of companies, rather than everyone at a single company.
- If not, then the union can help you negotiate.
- The union will give you legal aid if needed, whether it's advisory or for a court battle. We have very strong worker's rights, but sometimes companies try to bend the rules.
- The union will arrange relevant seminars, courses etc. which are usually pretty cheap.
- Several parts of the Working Environment Act only apply to workers whose unions have agreements (tariffavtale) with the employer. For example, if you have such an agreement you're entitled to 5 weeks of vacation instead of just 4 weeks and 1 day.
https://lovdata.no/dokument/NLE/lov/2005-06-17-62
But most of this is moot, since many employees in most companies are organized anyway. Like all civilized countries, unionizing is a right.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Convention_on_Human_R...