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

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

#161

Post by VictorPath »

exabrial wrote: post #120

This whole debacle is sort of humorous. I fully support the rights of workers to unionize. The problem is in "Non Right to Work States" the unionized can clobber people that choose not to unionize and coerce them into participation. This is incredibly unethical, immoral, and unconstitutional and violates a person's right to self-determination and other human rights.

So a mine exists and a bunch of heirs have a corporation. Through the corporation, a portion of the wealth miners create by mining from that mine goes to the heirs. The workers doing all the work and creating all the wealth organize and strike a deal that the company hires only union members.

So the thing which is "unethical, immoral, and unconstitutional and violates a person's right to self-determination and other human rights" is not what the heirs did, but what the workers doing all the work and creating all the wealth did. No questions about the province of the heirs. You're dealing with both these groups but questioning the paternity of only one of them, the ones actually doing all the work and creating all the wealth.

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

#162

Post by brendoelfrendo »

judge2020 wrote: post #70
borepop wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As opposed to CEOs and upper management, who are all lovely people and want nothing but the best for their employees, and are definitely not motivated by short-term gains.

Depends on whether you get a good union structure or not. As an observer, it doesn't seem like employees get a choice besides when voting whether or not to instate a union at all.

You also don't get a choice in upper management, but at least the union is nominally on your side.

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

#163

Post by advael »

lordnacho wrote: post #74
brightstep wrote: post #47

Earlier 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.

Isn't it a fairly common thing to not appreciate it when other people get the same reward for no contribution? It's like when you're a kid and you win some sweets, and your parents decide you have to share them with your little brother. There may be a desire to do so, but does he get half your sweets?

Yes, I would describe that as a pretty common human failing. Human societies are collaborative by nature, and you are likely blind to the situations in which you are "carried" by others, despite being hyper-attuned to situations in which you feel you are "carrying" disproportionate weight. People's lives not being ruined every time they're not useful is a feature, not a bug, of membership in most functioning human groups, and balking at this desirable property when it benefits others is indeed something I associate with children

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

#164

Post by taeric »

omginternets wrote: post #44
taeric wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This feels... Unlikely to be a thing of unions. Seems just as likely, if you saw promotions that were unwarranted, that there was incentive for management to get more promotions. Indeed, it is often to grade managers on how many promotions they have overseen. Not shocking that measuring that would cause them to happen unwarranted sometime. Which is just too say that a healthy organization is hard. There are no panace…

>This feels... Unlikely to be a thing of unions. Why? I likewise have mixed feelings about unions, but I have repeatedly noticed this pattern in countries with strong (typically: constitutionally-protected) unions.

I've seen in it many non unionized shops. And there are plenty of examples you can find of promotions that seem unwarranted. Nepotism is a common reason. As is just general networking. Seems common for folks to get good at networking and generally pleasing management as much as doing a great jobs.

I'd be delighted to see data on this. My prior is that it is rather evenly mixed with no obvious cause.

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

#165

Post by slibhb »

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 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."

Who doesn't talk about corporations in this manner? Doesn't everyone?

> Unions are democratically controlled worker organizations. Like democratic nations, they can contain abusers, they can be inefficient, and they can fail to solve problems effectively. But like democratic nations, they provide a powerful resistance to authoritarian abuse and on balance improve the quality of life for their people.

Democracy doesn't make sense in every situation. It makes sense for countries because we are born into citizenship. If you dislike a company you can just leave.

In situations where you can't "just leave," unions may make sense. Google is not an example of this. Everyone who works at Google could leave and find a job elsewhere tomorrow.

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

#166

Post by Jensson »

cool_dude85 wrote: post #149
Jensson wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Right, lots of people are also happy with US healthcare, it is tied to their job (just like unions) and they didn't have any problems with it so to them it seems to work fine. For now. In most other countries unions aren't tied to your job, just like healthcare.

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

#167

Post by stuartjohnson12 »

everdrive wrote: post #153
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…

> 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." We definitely talk about corporations in this way. All the time, in fact!

Right, but we don't oppose their existence on that basis.

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

#168

Post by cft »

everdrive wrote: post #153
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…

> 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." We definitely talk about corporations in this way. All the time, in fact!

Moreover, the market often takes care of corporations that contribute nothing. Especially of the private ones. For the public ones, there's no "union" that protects their stock price on the stock market.

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

#169

Post by taeric »

flavius29663 wrote: post #48
taeric wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This feels... Unlikely to be a thing of unions. Seems just as likely, if you saw promotions that were unwarranted, that there was incentive for management to get more promotions. Indeed, it is often to grade managers on how many promotions they have overseen. Not shocking that measuring that would cause them to happen unwarranted sometime. Which is just too say that a healthy organization is hard. There are no panace…

If you don't fire bad employees and just shift them around, it's more likely they will find a manager that promotes them, is it not? Unions sound to me like just another layer of bureaucracy, with its own mind and interests. Any extra bureaucracy increases corruption and inefficiencies.

I mean. Maybe? Seems I could just as easily blame management for not better training and removing bad managers.

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

#170

Post by pydry »

slibhb wrote: post #165
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…

> 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." Who doesn't talk about corporations in this manner? Doesn't everyone? > Unions are democratically controlled worker organizations. Like democratic natio…

>Who doesn't talk about corporations in this manner?

Corporations are usually horrendously corrupt so we should abolish them all?

No. Bit of a fringe view, that.

The rule is, if it's a court, company, government, NGO or serbian tennis club then corruption should be met with reform.

In the predominantly investor owned media, corruption in unions leads to calls to abolish them. It's standard.

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