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Kickstarter Union voted 97.6% to ratify one of the first tech union contracts

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Re: Kickstarter Union voted 97.6% to ratify one of the first tech union contracts

#221

Post by lupire »

adam_arthur wrote: post #72
TulliusCicero wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Competition applies to labor too, by the way Yes, which is why unions are great. Corporations bargain collectively by default; each is a large unit, with a lot of resources, composed of many people. Unions allow individuals to bargain collectively, to match corporations in terms of leverage, because few individuals are valuable enough to even come close.

A union tends to be a monopoly on labor supply in most cases. Not a competitive labor market. Bargaining collectively = monopoly. They can raise wages up to the level of marginal profit of the employing company. Just the same as a company that's a monopoly could raise prices up to marginal value of the good to the customer. If the company can bypass the union to hire others, then it's not a monopoly. But if the union…

What do you think society is made of, if not people?

Re: Kickstarter Union voted 97.6% to ratify one of the first tech union contracts

#222

Post by lupire »

softcactus wrote: post #179
xeromal wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Depends on the contract, but when I worked for Kroger years ago, if I opted out of the union, I got like 2 more $ an hour but at the cost of some other benefits. I was 15 so of course I opted out for that extra cash.

Holy crap those are some insane dues! I had a similar experience working for a grocery store at that age. I am pro-union since I have seen the good it does for trades, but it seemed scummy trying to convince me to join the union as a kid who was on his parents insurance at the time and didn't need benefits.

It's not dues, it's health insurance.

And it's not really "scummy" of the union that health insurance had weird loopholes for kids.

Re: Kickstarter Union voted 97.6% to ratify one of the first tech union contracts

#223

Post by lupire »

tick_tock_tick wrote: post #154
anamexis wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't a very toxic corporate culture the perfect reason for them to be getting a union?

If you take a group of toxic people, the current employee base, and institutionalize them as a Union well now you still have a toxic culture but no way to get ride of the problematic employees.

"toxic culture" almost always means managers abusing staff.

Re: Kickstarter Union voted 97.6% to ratify one of the first tech union contracts

#224

Post by adam_arthur »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #208
adam_arthur wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where do you think those earnings go in the long run? In a competitive market margins get driven down, and profitability feeds into lower cost of goods. E.g. cloud providers must provide cheaper and cheaper service to stay competitive with other cloud providers. This in turn drives down costs for all technology in society. Sure a union could try to take that profit and feed it into wages instead, but that's worse for…

> drives down costs for all technology in society I am not familiar enough with the data to argue one way or another. But a counterargument would involve productivity. There are several fields where good-paying shops run rings around their budget-minded peers. Even for relatively unskilled roles, e.g. Costco. Sometimes consumers care about that directly. More often, it shows up in productivity. Again, can't argue one…

Of course I'm speaking from theory in a vacuum.

In the real world competitors don't always form immediately, it can take quite awhile. But the broad strokes are true, and bear out over time, barring monopoly formation in a given sector, free information etc.

Of course Costco does have competitors, they just haven't been able to execute as well up to this point.

Re: Kickstarter Union voted 97.6% to ratify one of the first tech union contracts

#225

Post by sushid »

lostcolony wrote: post #194
sushid wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Heirs? Kickstarter isn't a dynasty by any stretch of imagination. High performers in tech are in fact allergic to unions. I guarantee you that the highest paid FANG engineers would never in a million years even consider applying to a unionized tech company. Do you know how hard it is to already weed out underperformers in large tech companies? I wouldn't be surprised if half of Kickstarter's engineers pumped out fewe…

>> I wouldn't be surprised if half of Kickstarter's engineers pumped out fewer than 3 PRs a week. Ah yes. That always super meaningful metric of high performance - number of PRs. Doesn't matter what it is, if you can't solve it and push some code in less than two days, it's a clear indicator you're a terrible engineer.

I'm not saying that is the only barometer I would use if I were measuring performance but again, I'd be surprised if you told me that an average Kickstarter now was anywhere close to being as productive (whatever metric you'd like to use) before their unionization.

Re: Kickstarter Union voted 97.6% to ratify one of the first tech union contracts

#226

Post by lupire »

camdat wrote: post #151
Cerium wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately, the minimum in employment agreements is frequently also the maximum.

Source this. Every Union I've seen continues to support performance based raises, just weighed appropriately against other compensation increases.

Source: the whole economy. If someone offers X, and you want Z, and you sign a contract for Y, they are giving you Y. Do you evet give Comcast an extra $50 for fun?

It's what the company supports, not what the union supports. And "performance based raises" are obviously not CoL raisesm

Re: Kickstarter Union voted 97.6% to ratify one of the first tech union contracts

#227

Post by andrepd »

busterarm wrote: post #159
totony wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you have a better term for it?

Back in my younger years, I worked a lot of unskilled-labor type jobs. The starkest difference that I recognize between people in those jobs and people in my career is that in the former people have a hard time showing up to work on-time or at all and in the latter everyone is pretty tuned in and works hard. It only hit me late in life that success in life really can be just as simple as showing up. I guess what I wo…

Yes grampa, the disadvantaged kid who never got a chance to learn a "skilled job" should just pull himself by the bootstraps, show up, give the manager a firm handshake. Yawn.

Re: Kickstarter Union voted 97.6% to ratify one of the first tech union contracts

#228

Post by adam_arthur »

lupire wrote: post #221
adam_arthur wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A union tends to be a monopoly on labor supply in most cases. Not a competitive labor market. Bargaining collectively = monopoly. They can raise wages up to the level of marginal profit of the employing company. Just the same as a company that's a monopoly could raise prices up to marginal value of the good to the customer. If the company can bypass the union to hire others, then it's not a monopoly. But if the union…

What do you think society is made of, if not people?

Unions benefit the people in the union at the expense of the rest of society. There is no free lunch; when somebody gets paid more, that money comes from somewhere else

Re: Kickstarter Union voted 97.6% to ratify one of the first tech union contracts

#229

Post by andrepd »

jltsiren wrote: post #216
adam_arthur wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a good thing Europe can mooch off US innovation and Chinese manufacturing. Manufacturing that is not unionized, by the way. If the US went the way of Europe, technological innovation would slow dramatically, which I'll argue is a bad outcome for the world in the long run. What do you think the cost of basic goods would rise to if all the Chinese manufacturing centers unionized?

The US is not particularly innovative. Due to historical and geographic circumstances, it's in a unique position to attract foreign talent and foreign innovations and to monetize them. It's a good environment for doing business. There is plenty of capital available, and the laws are usually reasonable. It's a large country that's sufficiently centralized that you don't have to localize everything for each state. And…

> As a drawback, the system really favors those who own over those who work. Even in places like the Silicon Valley, how much of the wealth goes to those who innovate and how much goes to those who fund the innovations? And how much goes to local property owners who just happened to be in the right place at the right time?

The crucial paragraph.

Re: Kickstarter Union voted 97.6% to ratify one of the first tech union contracts

#230

Post by goodpoint »

busterarm wrote: post #180
moooo99 wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What an extremely elitist phrase. This! I hate when people talk about "unskilled labor" because there is no such thing. There definitely is work that requires less training than other jobs, but there is no such thing as unskilled labor.

You're certainly glad that your uber driver can't be suddenly promoted to airline pilot though, right?

So what?

Besides, driving a car safely is very much a skill. It's life-saving by definition.

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