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Google’s fires four organizers after hiring union-busting firm

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Re: Google’s fires four organizers after hiring union-busting firm

#21

Post by thundergolfer »

PunchTornado wrote: post #14

> One of the workers set up notifications to receive emails detailing the work and whereabouts of other employees without their knowledge or consent. This is shady/creepy. There is no need to know when and where a colleague is every hour, every day. You shouldn’t be allowed to do this. I’m glad an employee who does this is getting fired because I wouldn’t feel safe around them. My calendar is public, but that doesn’t…

Where are you quoting that from? I just string searched it in the article and got nothing.

Re: Google’s fires four organizers after hiring union-busting firm

#23

Post by Fordec »

otalp wrote: post #16
rocqua wrote: post #12

What has made google look at the facts and think this is the right way to proceed? Do they think this won't blow up? Do they fear unions so much that this is worth the bad PR? Or is this just a corporate process that no-one took a big picture view on? Because from where I am standing, this just seems like a dumb move.

People will forget about this in a few weeks

"People will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel"

Re: Google’s fires four organizers after hiring union-busting firm

#25

Post by idlewords »

sunstone wrote: post #2

So Google really has hit the nadir of the wall that Microsoft hit when Gates testified before the Justice department. It's a tough day for all of us Google fan boys but it's time to look in the mirror and carefully consider the current reality.

What is the nadir of a wall? The baseboard?

Re: Google’s fires four organizers after hiring union-busting firm

#26

Post by throwawaylolx »

This article is ranked 16th on HN first page right now, and it has 80 points, was posted 4 hours ago, and has 16 comments. A different article [1] is ranked 8th on HN right now, and it has 31 points, was also posted 4 hours ago and it has 18 comments. They were both posted about the same time, they have the same number of comments, but the article that has significantly more points is ranked significantly lower.

If I understand the HN ranking algorithm, this means this submission is heavily reported. This is not the first time I observe this behavior for anti-Google submissions. Is there a different explanation for this phenomenon other than heavy reporting?

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21636093

Re: Google’s fires four organizers after hiring union-busting firm

#27

Post by dataduck »

There has been quite a lot of noise on HN about this, and many of the other posts have disappeared, perhaps in an attempt to stop the whole front page getting swamped by this story.

You can find the other links here: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=pastWeek&page=0&prefix=fal...

I wouldn't normally bother, but the medium article is about the least balanced of the lot. As far as I can tell, the protesters weren't fired for unionizing, in fact they never attempted to push for better pay or conditions; they were fired for harassing other employees in order to further private political agendas. This changes the story somewhat.

Re: Google’s fires four organizers after hiring union-busting firm

#28

Post by LeonB »

PunchTornado wrote: post #14

> One of the workers set up notifications to receive emails detailing the work and whereabouts of other employees without their knowledge or consent. This is shady/creepy. There is no need to know when and where a colleague is every hour, every day. You shouldn’t be allowed to do this. I’m glad an employee who does this is getting fired because I wouldn’t feel safe around them. My calendar is public, but that doesn’t…

Google is a company based on surveillance. It crawls the entire world‘s data. It makes money by delivering messages to people you’ve never met based on the intelligence they’ve gathered about the people. They give you free tools for instrumenting websites to gather more intel about people, which is then stored on their servers. And the calendar notification claim relates to using a google product in the exact way it was designed to be used (and reads like lawyers grasping for a safe technicality.) It’s a bit unsavoury imo.

Re: Google’s fires four organizers after hiring union-busting firm

#29

Post by DSingularity »

dataduck wrote: post #27

There has been quite a lot of noise on HN about this, and many of the other posts have disappeared, perhaps in an attempt to stop the whole front page getting swamped by this story. You can find the other links here: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=pastWeek&page=0&prefix=fal... I wouldn't normally bother, but the medium article is about the least balanced of the lot. As far as I can tell, the protesters weren't fir…

How did you reach this conclusion?

Re: Google’s fires four organizers after hiring union-busting firm

#30

Post by ljf »

throwawaylolx wrote: post #26

This article is ranked 16th on HN first page right now, and it has 80 points, was posted 4 hours ago, and has 16 comments. A different article [1] is ranked 8th on HN right now, and it has 31 points, was also posted 4 hours ago and it has 18 comments. They were both posted about the same time, they have the same number of comments, but the article that has significantly more points is ranked significantly lower. If I…

True but you will find that there are a bunch of sites and sources that don't rank as highly as others. The Guardian needs more up votes to get to the same position as a non newspaper site, plus there is the matter of the ranking of the person that posted it, the ranking of the voters, the time scale of the voting patterns, and interactions with comments.

There are loads of things that affect weighting and ranking here. Not that I mind, I largely support the way this community is run, pretty hard thing to keep the site down te as valuable and as interesting as it is.

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