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

#221

Post by girvo » Sat, Jan 20, 2018, 4:06 AM UTC

tptacek wrote: post #83

ng12 wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do we need a union in a seller's market? If I'm unhappy with my job I can quit and get a new one in a week. It's not about being a knowledge worker. Screenwriters are unionized because there are many more people who want to write than there are gigs, therefore there's a high potential for abuse.

If it's a "seller's market", why do so many developers work under onerous IP contracts that grant their employers rights to what they build in their spare time? If it's a "seller's market", why do so many developers work in noisy bullpen environments where they have to blast music into their ears with headphones to focus their attention on what they're building? If it's a "seller's market", why do so many developers…

To your first point: because a lot of people don’t actually negotiate their damned contracts. Drives me mental — over broad IP assignment clauses are the first thing I strike out/adjust, though it has meant passing on job offers where they refused to budge on it. Well worth it however. They don’t own me and don’t own what I do outside of their damned office hours.

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

#222

Post by twblalock » Sat, Jan 20, 2018, 4:18 AM UTC

jimmaswell wrote: post #215

ng12 wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do we need a union in a seller's market? If I'm unhappy with my job I can quit and get a new one in a week. It's not about being a knowledge worker. Screenwriters are unionized because there are many more people who want to write than there are gigs, therefore there's a high potential for abuse.

I did everything "right." I had a lot of side projects, I collaborated on big projects online with others, I knew a lot of languages, I got a 4 year CS degree and I had an internship. I applied to hundreds of places and heard back from maybe 3 places after months of trying. The best I could get before my current offer was one for 35k from a place that wasted two days of my time going half a state away to interview wi…

If that's all you can get in this labor market, the problem is probably your resume, the way you apply to jobs, and the way you interview.

You should not conclude from your experience that tech is a bad career choice.

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

#223

Post by jpollock » Sat, Jan 20, 2018, 4:43 AM UTC

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…

Unions are a negative word because they (in my experience) provide negative experiences. My personal experiences:

1) When a co-op student, a female friend (also a co-op student) was assaulted (punched in the face) when she crossed a picket line to go to work - she wasn't in a union job so she _had_ to go to work.

2) At my first job, another friend related an experience where they beat their daily quota by 3-4x. They were taken aside and told it was amazing how much property damage happened in the parking lot, and perhaps they should slow down a bit.

3) An immediate relative was bullied at work. The union represented her until a point it became contentious. Then they ignored the issue hoping it would go away.

4) Another immediate member of my family had someone protected from repercussions after endangering 100+ people in a safety critical role because they were part of a union drive.

Those experiences all happened in rapid succession in the 90s, it formed an opinion in my head of what a union is, and I didn't want anything to do with them.

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

#224

Post by visarga » Sat, Jan 20, 2018, 5:45 AM UTC

theklr wrote: post #56

joemaller1 wrote: post #23

Because forming a union worked out so well at Gothamist and DNA Info...

That was a totally different environment, it was a monopsonistic structure where the head determined the ROI wasn't even worth the discussion. But same issue, most media is bad at revenue streams, but technically Walmart and Amazon (and most retailers) are for that mark. What troubles me if this is the logic for our newspapers (especially local which cover tangible issues that we could actually change in comparison t…

Many politicians don't give a crap about "being watched by the press" because they can always fix it with more bullshit and fake news.

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

#225

Post by losteverything » Sat, Jan 20, 2018, 6:13 AM UTC

saas_co_de wrote: post #219

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…

I am a Teamster and I have worked in union labor jobs, non union labor jobs, and professional jobs. One of the big misconceptions is that unions are just for workers. In my experience unions benefit the employers just as much as the workers by providing a formal process for raising and resolving grievances. This helps corporations by keeping things smooth and puts a check on low level management that benefits the org…

This is a great comment. Your point "dont really think that software engineers could benefit much from unionization" I disagree in one respect: hours and time of day worked. If rules exist that mean you dont work weekends or holidays or more than 50 hours in a week you as an engineer could simply cite rules amd say no. Rules could exist for who has to work those times...

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

#226

Post by tanilama » Sat, Jan 20, 2018, 6:55 AM UTC

tptacek wrote: post #83

ng12 wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do we need a union in a seller's market? If I'm unhappy with my job I can quit and get a new one in a week. It's not about being a knowledge worker. Screenwriters are unionized because there are many more people who want to write than there are gigs, therefore there's a high potential for abuse.

If it's a "seller's market", why do so many developers work under onerous IP contracts that grant their employers rights to what they build in their spare time? If it's a "seller's market", why do so many developers work in noisy bullpen environments where they have to blast music into their ears with headphones to focus their attention on what they're building? If it's a "seller's market", why do so many developers…

Entitlements from enormous privileges.

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

#227

Post by skrebbel » Sat, Jan 20, 2018, 7:08 AM UTC

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…

I only know American unions from stories (such as the ones in this thread, or the one where a Hollywood director got in trouble for using a towel to wipe some sweat off the face of an actor - that was someone else's job), but wow.

Both American political parties are (from a socio-economic perspective) more right-wing than all mainstream parties in my country. Even the most right-wing party we have is pro (partly) subsidized health care, pro minimum wage, pro decent unemployment and disability benefits, etc etc. You could say my country is way more left wing than the US.

But the unions! Wow USA unions appear to be little communist islands. I've never seen unions so extremely, maybe obscenely left wing than those in the USA. Again, this is just from stories so maybe I have it all wrong, but the unions appear to me like the last remaining instance of "all animals are equal, but some are more equal than others" in the Western world.

If I'm not mistaken (and I might be), then I wonder whether maybe this is because US politics is so bizarrely (from a European perspective) right-wing. If you can actually die from hunger in your trailer home after a bad day at work, then extremely protective unions make a lot more sense than if you know you'll stay alive even if you lose an arm or your boss screws you over.

Not sure whether there's a point I'm trying to make but I wonder what HN thinks about all this :-)

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

#228

Post by knieveltech » Sat, Jan 20, 2018, 7:15 AM UTC

SteveGerencser wrote: post #205

phil21 wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 p…

Yeah unions have definitely changed over the last 40 years. Folks forgot the meaning of the word "solidarity" and are too impatient to put their time in like the older workers they like to complain about. There was an old guy that worked in a union fabrication shop where I used to work. His sole job was to run the band saw that we used to cut structural steel. Given how long a single cut took he spent the overwhelming majority of his time sitting on a stool reading a book and getting paid well for it. Meanwhile here's me pulling overtime fetching shit for every other workstation in the shop and ocassionally pulling 12 hour shifts in front of an industrial milling machine making cable trays. Over time I started resenting the hell out of the guy running the bandsaw, since he had a cushy job and was making way more money than me. I commenced to bitching about it one day on my lunch break and learned from some of the other guys in the shop that this dude had seen more coworkers maimed or killed and hand hung more structural steel than any other 8 men in the shop put together. Among other accomplishments he'd been part of the crew that erected the US 19 bridge over the New River Gorge. He'd paid his dues, put his time in, and was short for retirement, so the Union took care of him. He retired with a full pension (you go ahead and pretend a 401k is equivalent) and healthcare a year after I started working there. The shop found another graybeard to replace him running the band saw.

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

#229

Post by linkregister » Sat, Jan 20, 2018, 7:20 AM UTC

skrebbel wrote: post #227

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…

I only know American unions from stories (such as the ones in this thread, or the one where a Hollywood director got in trouble for using a towel to wipe some sweat off the face of an actor - that was someone else's job), but wow. Both American political parties are (from a socio-economic perspective) more right-wing than all mainstream parties in my country. Even the most right-wing party we have is pro (partly) sub…

I think that you're not well-informed about the character of U.S. unions. Most are in the trades and manufacturing sectors. Members of those unions are typically right-wing and would be appalled at your characterization. The largest U.S. union, AFL/CIO is hardly leftist.

It's interesting that you mention Communism. Historically, U.S. unions have been vehemently anti-communist after widespread suspicion of the U.S. Communist Party spread, due to developments (mass murder) in the Soviet Union and also due to its overt link with the Soviet international organization (Comintern).

While public sector unions, ---particularly teachers unions and police--- can engage in what could be called leftist tactics and attitudes, your description doesn't fit private sector unions.

Some private sector unions in the U.S. have a long history with corruption, particularly Mafia involvement with meat packers and longshoremen in New York, but that is an entirely different matter.

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

#230

Post by linkregister » Sat, Jan 20, 2018, 7:23 AM UTC

skrebbel wrote: post #227

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…

I only know American unions from stories (such as the ones in this thread, or the one where a Hollywood director got in trouble for using a towel to wipe some sweat off the face of an actor - that was someone else's job), but wow. Both American political parties are (from a socio-economic perspective) more right-wing than all mainstream parties in my country. Even the most right-wing party we have is pro (partly) sub…

I am in agreement that the European collaborative union-management relationship is far more productive than the adversarial American one.

(disagreements noted in my other comment)