Union Is Formed at Los Angeles Times and Publisher Put on Leave • Hacker News Board

Re: Union Is Formed at Los Angeles Times and Publisher Put on Leave

#201

Post by fjsolwmv » Sat, Jan 20, 2018, 2:32 AM UTC

phil21 wrote: post #164

losteverything wrote: post #136

Imo union-ism is an attitide and coupled with experience is effective. Just because you are salaried and "professional" does not mean you collectively do not have extreme clout. Whatever the hot issues are - say hours worked in a 7 day period - and the desire is to place limits (say 4 twelve hour days amd 1 eight hour day) having a union attitude means your bargained (agreed upon) rules are enforceable. And you carry…

Dunno. Maybe. All a union did for me in my younger years was have me work my ass off so older union members could sit around doing literally nothing. In fact as far as I could tell their jobs were effectively finding ways to do nothing, and then when they got too good at that finding ways to keep others from doing anything. I would not be paid nearly what I am today had I been stuck in my first union job. Even if I h…

A union is simply am government. It can be good or bad, but it's almost always better for almost everyone than the natural law of the jungle.

The fact that almost every billion dollar company with decamillionaore CEOs is dead set against unions (not even willing to form a partnership agreement with a union), should prove how good they are for everyone who isn't a multimillionaire.

Re: Union Is Formed at Los Angeles Times and Publisher Put on Leave

#202

Post by pfranz » Sat, Jan 20, 2018, 2:33 AM UTC

zjaffee wrote: post #195

losteverything wrote: post #136

Imo union-ism is an attitide and coupled with experience is effective. Just because you are salaried and "professional" does not mean you collectively do not have extreme clout. Whatever the hot issues are - say hours worked in a 7 day period - and the desire is to place limits (say 4 twelve hour days amd 1 eight hour day) having a union attitude means your bargained (agreed upon) rules are enforceable. And you carry…

My personal issue with unions is I've seen the way my family members work places have acted through the fact that collective bargaining has given them the ability to leverage things such as years served as a way to dictate many aspects of how the organization is run. Additionally, it is very hard to fire people, where people can coast for years and still continue to get raises and even promotions. Additionally, union…

> Additionally, unions force costs to go up on many projects and revert any productivity gains that technology has provided.

Honestly, I think this is worth some honest discussion about the big picture. Many of the critiques against neoliberalism[1] is that all of the benefits of opening international trade and automation have gone to the rich. In 1930 John Keynes predicted 15 hour workweek for his grandchildren[2]. The average workweek in the U.S. is 47-49 hours[3]. This is in a world where dual incomes is common.

I'm not advocating paying people to sit around all day, but I think it would be good to look at what we're trading work/life balance, job security, income, life expectancy, age of retirement, and the other things we give up for it. Personally, I still like the current world of iPhones and Amazon delivery, so it's not a clear argument in one direction, but it's not something I hear people talk about.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neoliberalism#Focus_on_economi...

[2] http://www.businessinsider.com/john-keynes-predicted-15-hour...

[3] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/on-leadership/wp/2014/09...

Re: Union Is Formed at Los Angeles Times and Publisher Put on Leave

#203

Post by noobermin » Sat, Jan 20, 2018, 2:44 AM UTC

zjaffee wrote: post #195

losteverything wrote: post #136

Imo union-ism is an attitide and coupled with experience is effective. Just because you are salaried and "professional" does not mean you collectively do not have extreme clout. Whatever the hot issues are - say hours worked in a 7 day period - and the desire is to place limits (say 4 twelve hour days amd 1 eight hour day) having a union attitude means your bargained (agreed upon) rules are enforceable. And you carry…

My personal issue with unions is I've seen the way my family members work places have acted through the fact that collective bargaining has given them the ability to leverage things such as years served as a way to dictate many aspects of how the organization is run. Additionally, it is very hard to fire people, where people can coast for years and still continue to get raises and even promotions. Additionally, union…

>Additionally, unions force costs to go up on many projects and revert any productivity gains that technology has provided.

Perhaps at individual companies, but the overall trend is pay has not kept pace with productivity gains, so the overall trend across society is the reverse of what you're worrying about.

Re: Union Is Formed at Los Angeles Times and Publisher Put on Leave

#204

Post by tomjakubowski » Sat, Jan 20, 2018, 2:50 AM UTC

jamiequint wrote: post #148

tptacek wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It wasn't the reporters that Tronc'd The Tribune Corporation; it was owners that did that. Why am I required to accept the premise that it's labor that's pathologically short-termist, and not management? I reject that premise.

Unions (aka parasites) have a rich history of running their hosts into the ground. Just look at Detroit pensions, or any of the hundreds of municipalities that got fucked by Police/Fire pensions in the subprime crisis (e.g. Vallejo), or the fact that there are bus/train drivers in SF that make $100k+/year. Unions are responsible for running things into the ground far more often than management is. (or they just creat…

> or the fact that there are bus/train drivers in SF that make $100k+/year.

This is only maybe true in the sense that there probably are some senior-level transit operators who make that much, but the median BART train operator gets $30.58/hr. SF MTA bus drivers are somewhere around $23/hr.

That hardly seems excessive or crazy to me.

Re: Union Is Formed at Los Angeles Times and Publisher Put on Leave

#205

Post by SteveGerencser » Sat, Jan 20, 2018, 2:55 AM UTC

phil21 wrote: post #164

losteverything wrote: post #136

Imo union-ism is an attitide and coupled with experience is effective. Just because you are salaried and "professional" does not mean you collectively do not have extreme clout. Whatever the hot issues are - say hours worked in a 7 day period - and the desire is to place limits (say 4 twelve hour days amd 1 eight hour day) having a union attitude means your bargained (agreed upon) rules are enforceable. And you carry…

Dunno. Maybe. All a union did for me in my younger years was have me work my ass off so older union members could sit around doing literally nothing. In fact as far as I could tell their jobs were effectively finding ways to do nothing, and then when they got too good at that finding ways to keep others from doing anything. I would not be paid nearly what I am today had I been stuck in my first union job. Even if I h…

My experience is quite similar, in two different unions. The first was in the Teamsters at a bottling plant and the second was some years later, on the other side of the country, in the Teacher's Union in California. I left both jobs because of the way they were run by the unions.

In the first, it was 100% seniority-based with zero regards to effort or skill. The second I left for basically the same reason. Ability played very little part in pay or benefits. It was simply a time served deal.

Anecdotally, a friend of mine was named shop steward at an automobile manufacturer. The next day he showed up at the airport, in the middle of a workday, in a brand new truck that he just took off the lot as a perk. When we asked why he was hanging out with us at the airport rather than at work, he smiled and said that all complaints went over his desk first, and he wasn't likely to let a complaint against him go past him.

I know that unions played a massively important role in the past, but like all bureaucracies, as it aged and evolved, they became something far different.

Re: Union Is Formed at Los Angeles Times and Publisher Put on Leave

#206

Post by jokola » Sat, Jan 20, 2018, 3:01 AM UTC

pfranz wrote: post #202

zjaffee wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My personal issue with unions is I've seen the way my family members work places have acted through the fact that collective bargaining has given them the ability to leverage things such as years served as a way to dictate many aspects of how the organization is run. Additionally, it is very hard to fire people, where people can coast for years and still continue to get raises and even promotions. Additionally, union…

> Additionally, unions force costs to go up on many projects and revert any productivity gains that technology has provided. Honestly, I think this is worth some honest discussion about the big picture. Many of the critiques against neoliberalism[1] is that all of the benefits of opening international trade and automation have gone to the rich. In 1930 John Keynes predicted 15 hour workweek for his grandchildren[2].…

There are of course other ways to see things e.g. https://www.jacobinmag.com/2017/08/sweden-social-democracy-m...

Re: Union Is Formed at Los Angeles Times and Publisher Put on Leave

#207

Post by astronautjones » Sat, Jan 20, 2018, 3:02 AM UTC

jokola wrote: post #191

kodablah wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But it is hard to believe that ANY of us disagree about IP contracts or extended options execution windows. It's not that people disagree about them, it's that many developers don't suffer from them. I'm a professional developer and, for me personally, everything in your list is a non-issue. I left BigCo where they were an issue. But I sure can think of a host of issues that I would be concerned about were I part o…

> If a time comes where a good dev cannot choose where they work and basically negotiate their own terms [...] then unionization may be warranted. When that time comes it will very likely be too late to effectively organize. It might already be.

It's definitely too late on a national scale (not limited to this industry). Labor has been utterly and totally decimated

Re: Union Is Formed at Los Angeles Times and Publisher Put on Leave

#208

Post by tptacek » Sat, Jan 20, 2018, 3:02 AM UTC

pfarnsworth wrote: post #179

tptacek wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://i.imgur.com/lziE8QA.jpg It's open, but we got it because we loved the building, and we have two conference rooms with doors for calls. (My "desk" is a big couch with a monitor arm mounted to the wall.)

So, hypocrite much?

No, I don't think so. I can have whatever office I want; I'm an owner. If you think the best rebuttal you can make to me is "you're arguing against your own interests", go right ahead.

Re: Union Is Formed at Los Angeles Times and Publisher Put on Leave

#209

Post by steveax » Sat, Jan 20, 2018, 3:07 AM UTC

SEJeff wrote: post #99

Retric wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are likely confusing cause and effect. Comair was having issues before the union got involved. The union simply made the companies failure more obvious.

They were doing alright, they just had the highest paid stewardesses in the industry (by a large amount actually) for a solid mid-range airline when it comes to KPIs. If they'd have agreed to be paid more in line with what the industry was paying stewardesses there is a great chance the airline would still be open. Also, no matter how you look at it. The result of the failed negotiations was them selling 90 planes to…

I would suggest that not honoring a picket line was a concrete demonstration of your opinion of unions whether you realized that at the time or not.

Re: Union Is Formed at Los Angeles Times and Publisher Put on Leave

#210

Post by toomuchtodo » Sat, Jan 20, 2018, 3:08 AM UTC

kelnos wrote: post #126

booleandilemma wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do we need a union in a seller's market? I think this is going to change soon (~10 years). I have seen people with computer science masters degrees working in support positions. I’m not talking about maintenance development, I’m talking about tech support. When I graduated there were maybe 5 people in my class, but now the market is starting to get flooded with CS people. Everyone is hopping on the CS train like…

Having a CS degree (at whatever level) does not even remotely guarantee success as a software developer.

It does drive down the cost of a business employing developers who don’t have to be rockstars, merely good enough.