Live data from Hacker News

Employee activism in tech stops short of organizing unions

nytimes.com

221–230 of 256 posts

Re: Employee activism in tech stops short of organizing unions

#221
post #76
post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And staying at the same employer indefinitely is a sort of soul crushing purgatory in my mind. Software work is one of the few industries where you can completely change the business problem you're addressing by changing employers without your skill set being irrelevant. I love the fact that if I grow tired of the industry the company I'm working at is servicing, I can easily move to another employer with a totally d…

Having a union doesn't change that option for you.

It certainly would when the union implements seniority based protocols.

Re: Employee activism in tech stops short of organizing unions

#222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not only that, by expanding the industry - tech has been able to "eat" other industry, due to its inclusiveness. 20 years ago the internet was less than 0.01% of global GDP. Tech will continue eating industries that are structured unfairly.

> Tech will continue eating industries that are structured unfairly. Like how tech took driving a taxi from a job that (unfairly) paid a living wage to one that doesn't.

At the cost of billions in venture capital. The market is starting to correct itself now that most ridesharing companies are publicly traded profit seekers and cutting wages.

Re: Employee activism in tech stops short of organizing unions

#223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Employers often have much more power than employees. That is, if Google doesn't hire me, it doesn't lose out on much. For Google, maybe a small fraction of its capital isn't deployed, which is unfortunate but doesn't make a dent in the grand scheme of things. But if I don't have a job, then I will lose out on a lot -- I can't pay bills, I might lose my home. So I have a strong incentive to accept an offer from Google…

> That is, if Google doesn't hire me, it doesn't lose out on much. For Google, maybe a small fraction of its capital isn't deployed, which is unfortunate but doesn't make a dent in the grand scheme of things. But if I don't have a job, then I will lose out on a lot -- I can't pay bills, I might lose my home. So I have a strong incentive to accept an offer from Google, and therefore Google has a lesser incentive to of…

> You're comparing apples and oranges here, in that you're comparing Google not hiring a single employee to you not getting _any_ job.

Yes, which is why I clarify in the second paragraph that my first paragraph is a lie. As a tech worker with a few years experience, it is unlikely that I can't find any job (i.e. it is likely I can find a job).

But my first paragraph is _not_ a lie if you replace Google with MIT/Princeton/Harvard/Columbia/other universities, at which there are currently unionization efforts among graduate students. Or industries/regions where there are fewer employers or high switching costs.

Re: Employee activism in tech stops short of organizing unions

#224
post #73

My Dad owns a construction company in a highly unionized region. He is an advocate for unions, although he acknowledges that quality varies among them. That said, many of the conditions where unions are beneficial don't seem to apply in tech: * Vocational training: unions in our area run schools to train craftsman (e.g. carpenters). This increases productivity and screens for quality. * Shifting workforce: Constructi…

Those were my initial feelings as well. I guess the issue comes down to focusing on software development as a skill and having that skill rewarded in manner you can count on. Our industry is really similar to actors. They have SAG and their guild negotiates with the MPAA. So every studio needs to belong to MPAA. Every year they negotiate the daily/weekly minimum rates for actors with SAG. They are pretty flexible wit…

It's less cut and dry as to who should covered by a union and who shouldn't. With SAG (IIRC) there are specific rules with respect to screen time / speaking parts and so on. Who needs to be in the software union? Anyone who writes code? Do SQL analysts count? SaaS admins?

One advantage of software as a relatively ill defined career is that you can acquire responsibilities that look like software engineering without actually having a software job. Would my first employer have let me tinker around with the server (when my job was mostly Excel based) if it would have run afoul of union rules?

Re: Employee activism in tech stops short of organizing unions

#225

Tangent - there was an article on the NYTimes the other day about how their editorial work was trivializing Bernie Sanders political impact the last election and actually using misleading headlines to distort the truth. I’ll try to find the link (on my phone now). It was pretty eye opening and had links to sources as well as exposing some of these editors and their role working for the Clinton camp. I call this out b…

Well, yeah. First of all, tech is a threat to established media. They were asleep at the wheel in the 2000's and most of the 2010's and missed that many people started getting their news from online sources. Secondly, established-leftist-media such as the NYT is anti-tech because their belief that tech helped elect the current administration. You will see these calls to action dissipate when a new administration gets…

> established-leftist-media such as the NYT

The NYT is decidedly _not_ leftist. Slightly-liberal leaning maybe, but in no way leftist. They supported the Iraq war of all things.

I honestly can't think of a paper that leftists are more critical of... Maybe the Washington Post?

Re: Employee activism in tech stops short of organizing unions

#226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe the following is being referred to: Inside a company, the management/owners regularly talk together about how to minimize the cost of employees, including compensation. But employees talking together about maximizing their compensation is considered scandalous, harmful or even unethical. The practice is even given special names "organizing" and "unionizing" and is certainly considered unusual. Corporations…

I'm going to be controversial here. I don't think management/owners regularly talk together about how to minimize the cost of employees. I mean, it happens occasionally, but it's not actually a normal conversation in a company. Instead companies talk about how much they can afford to pay for salaries. Frequently they talk about increasing the cost of employees from the point of view of expanding. Should we hire more…

> in my experience is the conversations almost never discuss the health of the company. They only discuss strategies for maximizing pay, benefits or ensuring that layoffs are impossible.

Those topics may dominate the discussions, but unions can be a way to leverage worker power for the good of the organization as well. How many times has a company turned out to have leadership that refuses to heed the concern of engineering, mandating development by sales bullet point and failing to allocate the necessary time to maintain product quality? How often does management order prioritize the wrong choices, leading to fiscal straits where the workforce suffers? How often are the concerns of the rank and file ignored, either dismissed at all-hands or filed away by powerless HR orgs? And how often do we hear stories of tech companies with toxic dysfunctional cultures?

There is at least some precedent for unions forcing leadership to be aware of market realities:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13986889

Re: Employee activism in tech stops short of organizing unions

#227
post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but they never really exceed the corruptness of the corporate powers they negotiate with I'm not convinced that is the case, nor is it an either or (union or corporate powers). Your protection by the union depends on what the union negotiates... beyond that their ability to effect change pretty much stops there. Then you are again at the mercy of your employer. I've had first had experience with "oh yeah they can d…

My worry is that without premature organization, the next recession is going to make the "tech worker shortage" a permanent thing of the past. We'll never have as much negotiating power as we do now. If say there was a Tech Workers Union/Guild/Association, we might have been able to protect the older workers at IBM, or the outsourced workers at Disney. Maybe there could be a push back against open offices and poorly…

This is an important and highly plausible scenario. Everyone in this thread who feels comfortable that they can get another job at the drop of a hat owes that feeling to the existing labor market, which is fueled nearly entirely by venture capital funding. If the economy goes through another Great Recession style downturn, funding will constrain, companies that aren't immediately profitable will reduce their workforces considerably, and hiring will drop.

If, today, you work for an organization with a few dozen or couple hundred employees, but it is really run by ten or twenty "Directors", "VPs" and "Executives", they likely have full control over the majority of the capital owned by the company. They are also likely to be highly paid, and own the majority of stock or RSUs. If a moonshot expansion plan fails, they will be fine. Executing on high-risk and high-reward business ideas is 100% in their best interests.

However, if employees organize, those who instead rely on the organization to feed and shelter their families will begin to have a say in whether it's worth dumping the organization's $30M Series C into some blockchain moonshot that may never pay off.

Frankly, I don't believe they'll be as inclined to say yes. The union may instead re-negotiate to redistribute that funding to workers salaries, or to invest it in training programs. This is a good thing if you're in this industry because you're an experienced and skilled worker who wants long-term stable employment, but perhaps a bad one if you're in it to hope you hit the startup lotto and get rich after selling our your stock at 26. If you run an organization, which would you rather have working for you?

Re: Employee activism in tech stops short of organizing unions

#228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe the following is being referred to: Inside a company, the management/owners regularly talk together about how to minimize the cost of employees, including compensation. But employees talking together about maximizing their compensation is considered scandalous, harmful or even unethical. The practice is even given special names "organizing" and "unionizing" and is certainly considered unusual. Corporations…

I'm going to be controversial here. I don't think management/owners regularly talk together about how to minimize the cost of employees. I mean, it happens occasionally, but it's not actually a normal conversation in a company. Instead companies talk about how much they can afford to pay for salaries. Frequently they talk about increasing the cost of employees from the point of view of expanding. Should we hire more…

I agree that there is nuance and details that make it more useful in some cases than others. Conversely, unions can assist a companies survival. There are cases where even the teamsters(!) agreed to pay cuts to save businesses. And of course it can occasionally go wrong and there can be incompetence just like everything else in this world. But there are some widely held beliefs that demonize unions more than should be.

For example[1], empirically the presence of a union does not correlates with a bad workplace or failing business because the bulk of last half of the twentieth century saw widespread union membership yet was dominated by enormous growth in both production and quality of life along side high job satisfaction. While the last 40 years with declining union membership has seen slower GDP growth and in some cases quality of life reversal. So unions can't be causing the problem.

And the Us vs Them attitude is certainly close to catastrophic. But people aren't going to go through the effort, stress and risk of forming a union unless there are already some never addressed grievances in the first place. The antagonism would have to precede the talk of unionizing not be caused by the appearance of the union. And after the fact, there is at least some small chance of discussing, explaining and solving the problems. But I too would bail long before it got that broken. But for tight labor markets, with few and poorly run industries, this choice doesn't exists.

[1]in western countries and Japan

Re: Employee activism in tech stops short of organizing unions

#229

Biggest question is if a union or union-like system makes sense in companies where the average tenure is ~2-3 years mostly due to employee choice.

I agree. This is a central question. Is the ideal model of employment the "job-for-life," or not. If not, how many of a "traditional" union's norms still make sense? Personally, im not really sure where I stand on tech unions. I suspect that certain things would be better if unions were more present. Work-life balance, unpaid overtime and always-available-on-email problems would probably be better. I suspect on-the j…

On training, in a warehouse you have be fully trained and competent to drive a forklift because your decisions are implemented in real time and you can hurt someone if you mess up. In software you can be given low risk problems to figure out, and your decisions and implementations are (ideally) reviewed before they go live.

Re: Employee activism in tech stops short of organizing unions

#230
No, thank you. I've seen how HN reacts to this stuff. It's always some protectionist nonsense about making sure you have the right degree and training, making sure no immigrants can move to America, all that sorts of crap. That's what a union would look like too.

You try it. Make a union at your workplace. See how many people want to join your company after.

Post reply on HN