191–200 of 1001 posts
What exactly does it give the workers, better ways of dealing with management?
Without a union, you can ask management for stuff, but they can just say no. Your only recourse then is to quit, which wouldn't change anything when it's just one person.
With a union, a work stoppage is a possibility. Suddenly management have a reason to come to the negotiation table and make concessions.
Wow this really sad, provided Kickstarter is one of the nicest places to work at and their public benefit corporation was not empty words. These people ruined a really nice NYC company for everyone around. Anyone running their company who thought of making the workplace a bit different will expect the kind of crowd from this photo to show up and implode it. One thing is if the conditions were bad, there was insane ov…
I am not anti-unionist by a country mile, but I can't sympathise with this group.
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This is literally how democracies work.
Most democracies include, at the very least, a bunch of hand-wringing about oppression of minorities, though. It would be unusual in the extreme for a modern western democracy that was 75% christian to force the 25% minority to convert.
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However you feel about unions (and I personally have many reservations), if tech workers unionize, management will have nobody to blame but themselves. They've had decades to listen to us, and they've responded with open offices, JIRA (or the equivalent) ticket quotas, unpaid overtime, whiteboard coding interviews and zero training. We're well paid but besides that, I'd be hard-pressed to think of a way we could coll…
You can always start your own company if you are unhappy about other companies' conduct.
Opinions aside, you have to see the writing is on the wall.
However you feel about unions (and I personally have many reservations), if tech workers unionize, management will have nobody to blame but themselves. They've had decades to listen to us, and they've responded with open offices, JIRA (or the equivalent) ticket quotas, unpaid overtime, whiteboard coding interviews and zero training. We're well paid but besides that, I'd be hard-pressed to think of a way we could coll…
Relative to other wage workers yes, but nowhere close to the ratios between wage and housing last seen 30 years ago. There are opportunities to negotiate for that sort of compensation again.
As long as annual compensation doesn't let you own a house outright in 5 years in the same area as your place of work, then there is more work to do.
Comparing yourself to other trades is not relevant. Wage growth in one not-so-rare trade will benefit many more trades and people.
Most of us would not be where we are today if we limited our aspirations to what other people do.
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I think you may be misunderstanding - "risk" here is a financial thing, not a personal risk of being tossed on the street. If someone is worth $10 billion and will lose $2 billion if their company fails, that's still a lot of risk being covered, even though it won't really change their life to only have $8 billion.
Doesn't that mean that all the employees taken on a much greater personal risk? Personal risk seems to have higher stakes than financial risk - so it's unclear why financial risk is so prized. When you lose $2 billion because your company fails, workers are thrown out onto the streets. What makes the $2 billion risk more valuable than peoples' livelihoods? I'd rather be a multi-billionaire who loses $2 billion than a…
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You worked in a union shop once. Not necessarily a representative unionised workplace, just the one you were in. Yet 'in your experience' they are not optimal.
Why don’t you contribute to the conversation by talking about your own experience with unions?
Once, when workers in Chicago supported a general strike in support of an eight-hour workday, police shot and killed a number of workers. [1]. Someone threw dynamite into a crowd. A lot of people died, but we got that eight hour workday.
Another time, workers protested for higher wages, but the company owners hired private security and killed a hundred workers. The army was called in, and private planes hired by the company dropped bombs on the workers [2].
And who can forget the time the richest man on Earth hired private security as strikebreakers after a collective bargaining agreement failed? [3]? Interestingly, these workers were already part of a union, but the owner unilaterally withdrew recognition of the union. A few people died (private security...), and the collective bargaining agreement ultimately failed.
I suggest you make yourself aware of the trials unions have been through over the past two hundred years. Capital will always repress labor by any means necessary, and parroting the lines given to you by capital is implicit support. This makes you a de facto class traitor. United Bootlickers isn't a union, and even if they were, the benefits wouldn't be that great.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haymarket_affair [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Blair_Mountain [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homestead_strike
This is why the rest of the United States thinks tech is full of a bunch of entitled pricks.
I worked in a union shop once, as a summer intern. Every day, we were told to be in the break room at 7:59am to begin promptly at the 8am bell. By 4:30 or 4:45pm, everyone was back in there, waiting for the clock to hit 5pm. One day, I needed to connect two PCs together, which was approved by boss as they would be isolated from the network. So, being the diligent type, I went off and found some network cards and a ca…
I'm sure it's just a coincidence that this reads like poorly disguised anti-union propaganda, but it does. In my experience with startups--which is a bit more extensive than yours is with union workplaces--"ambition and taking on responsibility" are rewarded only when it's convenient, and those rewards are often removed or withheld for arbitrary or personal reasons that have nothing to do with your quality of work. T…