publishing is no longer a business model.
the only 'business' left for people in that 'industry' is to charge rent which is taxes
Bandcamp's Entire Union Bargaining Team Was Laid Off
201–210 of 507 posts
Re: Bandcamp's Entire Union Bargaining Team Was Laid Off
#202Earlier quoted context omitted.
There's probably a performance component as well. If you're high performing, can pick whatever job they want, and therefore get paid well above your peers, why would want to join a union?
Because one day you won’t be high performing and you’d like to have some protection for your job? Among many other reasons…
Regardless of whether as a high performer, joining a union is actually better for you in the long term, the fact that there's a plausible case against it makes it more likely that pro union employees will be disproportionately affected. Not everyone is 100% bought into unions so I'd expect these factors to play a significant role
Re: Bandcamp's Entire Union Bargaining Team Was Laid Off
#203Bandcamp has served me well for many years, but I don't use it anymore. I would really like to see something like Castopod [0], but for artists! Spinning up a website where you showcase and sell your music should (and could!) be as easy as using Wordpress, either via a subscription or self-hosted – on your own domain. Being plugged into the Fediverse makes it much easier to interact with fans and build a connection w…
People need to stop spouting the idea that plugging into the fediverse is "easy." Maybe for you, maybe for me, but the vast chorus since Twitter started circling the drain says otherwise.
While I am a fan of federated social, it does not solve the problem for artists of replacing Bandcamp in any way, shape, or form. Bandcamp provided a storefront, payment handling, a distribution mechanism[1], and a potential audience + editorial that kept people coming back.
A Castopod for Musicians does none of this.
[1] Distribution of digital media, anyway. Distributing physical media was still an exercise left to the artist.
Re: Bandcamp's Entire Union Bargaining Team Was Laid Off
#204Earlier quoted context omitted.
And in the EU it is probably why they have free healthcare, high minimum wage, work weeks of 34-38 hrs, welfare, 8 hour work days, overtime after, high proportion of part time workers, and highest productivity per hour in Germany. But yeah, unions, hate what you gotta hate. I personally hate long hours for bullshit pay.
US median income, even disposable income after all the medical/housing costs, is higher than all of the large EU countries (France, Germany, etc). So if anyone has bullshit pay, it’s the Europeans.
How come everyone is in debt then? What is median debt?
Re: Bandcamp's Entire Union Bargaining Team Was Laid Off
#205It's illegal.See "Discriminating against employees because of their union activities or sympathies" [1] Enforcement is weak, but it's illegal. [1] https://www.nlrb.gov/about-nlrb/rights-we-protect/the-law/di...
If I understood correctly, they are claiming that Epic effectively laid off everyone and sold some of the assets to SongTradr. SongTradr then made offers to half the previous employees. As these people were not previously SongTradr employees, SongTradr hasn't laid off anyone because of their union activities - they didn't employ them in the first place. At least I expect that's their argument. Seems like the way the…
Firing everybody and only re-hiring the meek employees is a classic union-busting tactic and plainly unlawful.
Re: Bandcamp's Entire Union Bargaining Team Was Laid Off
#206Earlier quoted context omitted.
Because one day you won’t be high performing and you’d like to have some protection for your job? Among many other reasons…
Is this a direct admission that unions are for protecting low-performers? Because if yes, that’s not a good look for them at all and is kind of a perfect ammo for the anti-union side.
No. Unions are for protecting employees against abusive employers.
Your highest performing state is temporary. There will be times where you’ll have off days. You will deal with death in the family. You will be eventually injured. If you aren’t already disabled, you will eventually be (this is just old age). You may become a parent. You might immigrate and come under restrictive visa. You’re a human being with fluctuating states, same as everyone else, and an abusive employer shouldn’t get to power trip over you just because they don’t think it’s legitimate enough for them or something.
So yes, there’s a lot of reasons why a “high performer” might want to be in a union. There’s a lot of life shit we all go through.
Edited to add: this is not the mention your employer might just pull some crap like nepotizing a promotion over you, where a union would come in handy handy!
Re: Bandcamp's Entire Union Bargaining Team Was Laid Off
#207I find it so weird to read these stories on how Americans cope with unionizing. In the Netherlands where I live it is very common and normal to be member of a union. Most branches have a union, IT sector is a "free sector" and does not have a union. My wife works as a teacher and she is member of a union.
IT here is also a priviledged sector, in that it's in most cases an employee's market - few people in IT have their job or the wages at risk, layoffs are rare, etc. There are some unions for IT personnel, but they aren't very popular or well-known. There's also the mandatory employee representation (called the Ondernemingsraad in Dutch); every company over 50 employees is required to have one of those. But again, thi…
where I work(for 15 years) we have a IT union, and it's the most dreadful thing ever. I could not recommend it
Re: Bandcamp's Entire Union Bargaining Team Was Laid Off
#208> Songtradr had no access to union membership information and we executed our employment offer process with full-consideration of all legal requirements I know this won't be a popular thing to say, but I'd like to take a moment to thank Songtradr for consulting their lawyers and full-considering all legal requirements. I believe them when they say they didn't legally acquire the union's documentation on membership. B…
Yeah, it's not popular. Most won't thank them for the upcoming enshittification of Bandcamp.
Re: Bandcamp's Entire Union Bargaining Team Was Laid Off
#209For some context, it’s important to understand the degree to which Bandcamp’s success and ubiquity with independent music is built on a people-first, anti-corporate culture. Bandcamp is an obsession for a very large and engaged segment of the independent music world. A good friend, a professional musician, told me “I feel like I’m watching my childhood home burn to the ground.” This is far from a unique sentiment. People are mourning. I’m building an alternative[0] to Bandcamp, announced the day after Epic’s sale, and I am receiving a disruptive volume of messages from people looking to sign up and get involved in response to this. It’s not just users, it’s bands and labels and people who’ve contributed to Bandcamp over the years. Many of these are people with large voices and followings and businesses of their own.
This has been building for some time. The Epic sale set it in motion. The formation of the union was a signal to supporters that the staff distrusted the new owners and were taking steps to protect the company’s mission. The Songtradr sale escalated it. The perception of targeting union members is being interpreted as confirmation of all fears.
So while the tech industry has dealt with high-profile layoffs for the past year, I don’t think most if any of those companies have the cultural significance of Bandcamp or have a for-the-people ethos baked into their DNA. This is much more significant than layoffs after an acquisition. The perception of targeting union members could do irreparable harm to a brand built on honesty, support, and integrity.
[0] - https://ampwall.com
Re: Bandcamp's Entire Union Bargaining Team Was Laid Off
#210Earlier quoted context omitted.
They just acquired the company two weeks prior and layoffs are extremely common after one.
I don't think anyone is too worried about the layoffs, but these look like targeted layoffs, reinforcing the notion that union members / representatives are troublesome. At the very least, for the sake of optics, they shouldn't have fired the union reps. Not all of them anyway.
It looks very much like they layoffs were structured to provide plausible deniability for firing the union organizers and a majority of union and union-eligible employees.