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Fastmail Employees Form a Union

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Re: Fastmail Employees Form a Union

#231

Post by brightball »

zbyte64 wrote: post #221
brightball wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They don't. But supply and demand still wins. A union may be necessary if there is a monopoly on employment. Nuclear power facilities for example.

Without unions, the logic of supply and demand favors larger businesses because they have greater purchasing power - they are already operating as a collective!

How do you figure?

They have to compete against other businesses to hire skilled positions.

They have to create an appealing enough opportunity to get people to apply and continue to work there.

Re: Fastmail Employees Form a Union

#232

Post by pseudalopex »

bluGill wrote: post #183
pseudalopex wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You struggle to imagine anyone understanding current fair treatment does not guarantee future fair treatment?

Unions also mistreat their members at times. That isn't to say unions are bad, but they are not a perfect answer and you need to watch the union.

No one said unions are perfect or work without participation.

Re: Fastmail Employees Form a Union

#233

Post by [deleted] »

bluGill wrote: post #183
pseudalopex wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You struggle to imagine anyone understanding current fair treatment does not guarantee future fair treatment?

Unions also mistreat their members at times. That isn't to say unions are bad, but they are not a perfect answer and you need to watch the union.

[deleted]

Re: Fastmail Employees Form a Union

#235

Post by jamiequint »

acdha wrote: post #201
jamiequint wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, here's a 40 year survey paper published in a top three economics journal which supports this with data: https://www.princeton.edu/~davidlee/wp/Longrununion.pdf Also I'm not sure what "supporting logic" is, I presented my logic and you can disagree with it if you want (usually using different logic, which you haven't presented), but there's no such thing as "supporting logic".

That’s paywalled but the abstract is talking about stock market pricing, not the health of the company. Lower equity would make intuitive sense if workers have better compensation, but that doesn’t mean the business is less competitive or likely to survive.

Changed to link the actual PDF of the study.

I don't think you understand what the price of a stock means ...

Re: Fastmail Employees Form a Union

#236

Post by UtopiaPunk »

bluGill wrote: post #213
burkaman wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree that healthcare should not be employer subsidized, but I don't think there is any country in the world where you just go out and buy it like car insurance. Almost everywhere in the world it is a baseline government service, and in some rare cases it is a private service but heavily subsidized by the government when necessary. If I could replace the US system with something I would choose one of those options.

You can just go out an buy health insurance in the US, but it is typically a horrible deal. If you have a job odds are your company is putting in thousands of dollars if you go with their plan, get any other plan and you lose all the money. Self employed people do this all the time (generally via the exchanges), as do people who don't work enough hours to get employer health care (the later often get low income subsi…

Yeah, me and my partner were both freelancing for a time, and shopping for health insurance was terrible. Health insurance wasn't the only reason I shifted from freelance to employee work, but it was definitely a very large reason. Now my whole family is covered under my employer's health insurance (and my partner still freelances).

It is wacky that my ability to see a doctor is depends on my job. Losing my job and experiencing a medical emergency is a scarier proposition than losing a month or two of pay for me, tbh.

Re: Fastmail Employees Form a Union

#237

Post by VirusNewbie »

ath3nd wrote: post #229
VirusNewbie wrote: post #166

Does anyone have any resources for stopping unions from being formed? I've started taking steps to join the "Union" at my FAANG, in hopes of sabotaging it. I can't think of anything worse for software developers than having some politically motivated organization to deal with in addition to management. You can see how well unions have gone for software engineers in the past, (Boeing is one example that has a strong u…

How is it bad to have job security and collective bargaining rights? > I can't think of anything worse for software developers than having some politically motivated organization Unions are not politically motivated. They are a social collective response from workers to counteract the disproportionate power imbalance between employees and corporations. All great advancements in worker rights were done by some kind of…

>How is it bad to have job security and collective bargaining rights?

Unions provide job security for low performers, but do not protect against layoffs. You can check and see that plenty of people were laid off by the large tech companies all across the world, many of which who were in strong unions.

>All great advancements in worker rights were done by some kind of collective organized pressure from workers vs employers.

I can think of plenty of things that weren't because of unions. Stock options and RSUs have literally changed millions of engineers lives for the better, that was done because of the free market, not unions.

>You are just a disposable cog in the machine for them

And yet FAANG companies have had very generous severance packages, despite not having unions.

>yet you are trying to disband the only group of people that are incentivised to help you

No, they're only incentivized to help me when I am helping them. If I decide not to be in the union, that same group are going to work against me to get me fired or make me literally unhirable (by not being in the union).

That's what you're not understanding, there is a cost. The cost is that the union decides who is in the union, and tries to LIMIT your ability to get work if you don't go along with what they want!

That's why I'm going to do my best to ruin their chances of forming.

Re: Fastmail Employees Form a Union

#238

Post by keep_reading »

tonfreed wrote: post #188
Nifty3929 wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which country were you in at the time? Union laws vary substantially by country so I think this is relevant to understanding different unions and people's experiences with them.

Yeah, I have the choice of about 3 unions where I work, all of which are big unions because there can only be one per industry in Australia. All three have wasted way too much time and members' money on vanity projects that I don't want to join.

> there can only be one per industry in Australia

That seems hostile and designed to enable corruption

Re: Fastmail Employees Form a Union

#239

Post by keep_reading »

secretforest wrote: post #150
nerpderp82 wrote: post #94

Also a Fastmail customer and prounion. I'll be watching this closely. I have been ecstatic about the quality of service. Fingers crossed management does the right thing and retains their customers and employees.

Bron seems like a good CEO. He's come up through the ranks at FM, so hopefully he's fully onboard with the workers. I had an account when they first got off the ground, survived the Opera days, and built their little email empire. I followed Bron and RobN on Twitter and on blogs. If I lived in a place where there was an IT union like the Communications Workers of America union that covered IT people, I'd join. They a…

> so hopefully he's fully onboard with the workers

If he was the union wouldn't be necessary, right?

Re: Fastmail Employees Form a Union

#240

Post by sneeze-slayer »

Nifty3929 wrote: post #153
sneeze-slayer wrote: post #85

I am a software engineer who used to work in a "unionized" workplace. It was quite nice, and the union would negotiate increases in time off and fight against policy changes that were worse for us. The union leaders were elected every few years (very important IMO) and the union was only within the (rather large) company; there was no affiliation with a larger union.

Which country were you in at the time? Union laws vary substantially by country so I think this is relevant to understanding different unions and people's experiences with them.

It was Germany. I put the union in quotes because the direct translation is Works Council.

I think that some software engineers in Germany are covered by the larger unions like IG Metall and Verdi, but my understanding is mostly for those that work in companies that make physical goods like Mercedes, Siemens, etc.

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