Here is a question: Why don't we have more smaller unions in America, but instead these GIANT mega unions? I get collective bargaining is better with more numbers, but it feels like there is no way to have a "new" union exist?
There's an enormous amount of infrastructure behind the big ones. They save up enough money to pay wages during strikes, they lobby heavily on the state and federal level, etc.
Sounds like a non-profit startup problem to build out tooling to rapidly form, run, and govern unions.
Interesting development. Glitch used to be Fog Creek, where Joel Spolsky talked of treating developers well (latest hardware, private offices etc) and paying them well. I wonder if the culture has changed and that's why the developers felt the need to create a union.
Throwaway account because duh. Note that I am not a current Glitch employee, but am well-connected to Glitch née Fog Creek. Management was basically incredibly incompetent, for a long time, and were so unfair to employees at the company that they felt this was the only option. There is a Tweet stream a couple months ago from someone who left the company who highlighted the amazing degree to which they were unfairly r…
Can you link to the tweet stream?
I knew people would ask and I'm trying to find it. I promise to edit this comment or post under it once I do.
> Here is a question: Why don't we have more smaller unions in America, but instead these GIANT mega unions? US labor law differs from European labor law, and it essentially encourages/requires a small number of conglomerate unions, each of which have exclusive representation within a company, rather than a larger number of independent unions which can coexist within a single company.
Sounds like as with our healthcare system and many other major problems in America, the problem isn't purely government vs. industry or liberal vs. conservative, but rather a mess of both.
Government Vs. Industry and Liberal vs. Conservative are distinctions that serve to obfuscate the true divide in our system: Capitalists vs. everyone else. Capital doesn't care about these distinctions. The difference between the Cabinet and the Boardroom is akin to a room with a curtain in the middle.
It is all the same with the large corporate unions. They are designed to be run by those cozy with the ruling class and stifle actual workplace democracy.
I wonder why they need a union. Is something currently not working in their favor?
Throwaway account because duh. Note that I am not a current Glitch employee, but am well-connected to Glitch née Fog Creek. Management was basically incredibly incompetent, for a long time, and were so unfair to employees at the company that they felt this was the only option. There is a Tweet stream a couple months ago from someone who left the company who highlighted the amazing degree to which they were unfairly r…
I remember Fog Creek used to be a well liked company years back...
I wonder why they need a union. Is something currently not working in their favor?
Throwaway account because duh. Note that I am not a current Glitch employee, but am well-connected to Glitch née Fog Creek. Management was basically incredibly incompetent, for a long time, and were so unfair to employees at the company that they felt this was the only option. There is a Tweet stream a couple months ago from someone who left the company who highlighted the amazing degree to which they were unfairly r…
Thanks for the report, exactly what I was looking for!
This is something I wish had been in the article. Even something vague, like "Employees reported they were unhappy with management and the performance evaluation system. The union with CWA will work with management to blah blah blah".
I can't tell if there's a trace of sarcasm in the comment, so for the avoidance of doubt, I'll link to a pretty good lay read on issues in the game industry. https://time.com/5603329/e3-video-game-creators-union/
As a side note on the gaming industry: That industry seems notoriously bad so I wonder why people keep joining it. It also seems competitive to get in. So, to me, it seems like people know what they're getting themselves into before joining.
> That industry seems notoriously bad so I wonder why people keep joining it.
Because kids romanticize it and think that their job will involve playing video games all day.
I wonder why they need a union. Is something currently not working in their favor?
Throwaway account because duh. Note that I am not a current Glitch employee, but am well-connected to Glitch née Fog Creek. Management was basically incredibly incompetent, for a long time, and were so unfair to employees at the company that they felt this was the only option. There is a Tweet stream a couple months ago from someone who left the company who highlighted the amazing degree to which they were unfairly r…
>Management was basically incredibly incompetent, for a long time
seems to be a correlation - back then like 10 years ago HN had various FG blogposts/articles appear on the front page relatively frequently while in recent years i don't remember any.
Sounds like as with our healthcare system and many other major problems in America, the problem isn't purely government vs. industry or liberal vs. conservative, but rather a mess of both.
Government Vs. Industry and Liberal vs. Conservative are distinctions that serve to obfuscate the true divide in our system: Capitalists vs. everyone else. Capital doesn't care about these distinctions. The difference between the Cabinet and the Boardroom is akin to a room with a curtain in the middle. It is all the same with the large corporate unions. They are designed to be run by those cozy with the ruling class…
Some of the endorsement antics during the Democratic primaries exposes that, but I'm making a less partisan point: our healthcare system simultaneously includes incomplete or bad private insurance plans, yet U.S. spends a larger amount per citizen for health care than most other developed nations. It's an unholy mess of inefficient bureaucracy and failed private-public relations, rent-seeking, crony capitalism, unhelpful regulations, outdated systems, and scaling issues leading to bloated organizations that pleases nobody.