Earlier quoted context omitted.
Do unions allow competition among union members? It’s always seemed to me that they work in jobs where the people are replaceable. In Google one could work to make 2x to 3x more than the next person - is that will possible with a union? Seems like in jobs where individual talent / skills matter, a union is by definition harmful (unless you’re in the lower 50%). Collective action / protest works fine, though, for esta…
Nothing in the notion of union stops competition or talent/skill expression. A lot of people only associate unions with factory workers kind of jobs, it’s not. Think of journalists or performing actors unions for instance.
Google Ends Forced Arbitration for Employees
241–250 of 293 posts
Re: Google Ends Forced Arbitration for Employees
#242Earlier quoted context omitted.
I agreed to that contract and open sourced many thousands of lines of code owned by Google, but still available to me and the rest of the world via github. I don't see the problem. If you could demonstrate your project didn't overlap google business then you could do your own project.
People seem to not quite get this, so I'll try to be as clear as I can. Google should not have the ability to claim ownership on unrelated work that does not use company time or resources unless _I_ _voluntarily_ relinquish such ownership. Google should have no business whatsoever interfering with what I do on my own personal time. Nor should I have to make anything open source. Nor should I need to ask anyone's _per…
You might "think" but that's how Anglo Saxon employment law (UK USA Some Commonwealth countries) works.
There is literally hundreds of years of case law on this - you may not know that modern employment law descends from acts like the "masters and servants act" - guess which one we are.
Re: Google Ends Forced Arbitration for Employees
#243Earlier quoted context omitted.
What is "company time" for a salaried employee that doesn't have required working hours?
Come on, then it's a straight down slope to the company owns all intelectual output. Write a sonnet for a lover ? Bam, it owns it. If it wasn't planned through the usual company command-and-control chain of command, it obviously should be outside company time when you're at home.
That would not be related :_) - though the court case would be awesome.
Re: Google Ends Forced Arbitration for Employees
#244Earlier quoted context omitted.
> On the basis that the contract says "40 hours a week". It's extremely rare for salaried worker contracts to say that.
Most in the UK do, albeit normally with a caveat about exceptional situations.
Not for salaried they don't its no fixed hours of work - some employee handbooks will have core hours and a suggested average per week.
Re: Google Ends Forced Arbitration for Employees
#245Earlier quoted context omitted.
If two companies of comparable size want to agree to arbitrate any disputes in a contact, that should be allowed. It saves massive amounts of time and money. The problem is the disparity between the parties involved when it's a company and an individual. Forced arbitration also bans class action lawsuits, which weakens individuals even further.
I think forced arbitration should only be legal in actively negotiated contracts (i.e. both parties were active in writing and modifying all the terms), where the proposing party disclosed the implications in plain language, and where agreeing to it was entirely optional for either party (sort of like GDPR consent). I think those conditions would effectively exclude it from consumer contracts while permitting it when…
> and where agreeing to it was entirely optional for either party
That’s really the crux of it, isn’t it? In general it is entirely common in a contract situation for one party to care so much about a particular provision that it would rather not contract at all than contract without that provision. Generally the better the best alternative to a negotiatied agreement (BANTA) for a party the more likely it is to be willing to walk away over a particular provision.
I think the root of the perceived unfairness here is that people think a take it or leave it attitude is not fair. In a Dunbar size world, maybe it isn’t. But you can’t run a company with 100k individually negotiatied employment contracts.
Re: Google Ends Forced Arbitration for Employees
#246Earlier quoted context omitted.
All you have to do is try to run a conference in Chicago to see how bad unions can make things though. Sorry, you can’t plug that in, only a card-carrying electrician is allowed to do that! And he’s on break. My point here is that unions have done plenty to make a bad name for themselves, blaming everything on the media is simplistic.
>only a card-carrying electrician is allowed to do that! Had I not experienced it directly (multiple times!), I would 100% think it was hyperbole. My first 'real' job was flying around and recording conferences for a little shop. Chicago and Philly were by far the worst places to work. I was literally not allowed to plug my little hand held recorder into the wall without paying for a qualified union electrician to co…
:-) wonder what would have happened if that happened when I worked at BT "sorry comrade, that is telecommunications equipment can I see your CWA card, oh and did I mention that I am branch secretary (president) of my branch.
Its more the rip off prices for lighting and network service that piss me off
Re: Google Ends Forced Arbitration for Employees
#247Earlier quoted context omitted.
You ignore the non-union organizations that also protect their own. ABA, AMA, etc. control the supply of doctors/lawyers and accomplish the same end result as unions: higher wages and less competition.
Those are more like guilds than unions.
Historically that's what guilds did.
Re: Google Ends Forced Arbitration for Employees
#248Earlier quoted context omitted.
Many union contracts call for arbitration. The advantages in that scenario is that it is faster and more definitive. Usually unions and management have some sort of process to pick the arbitrator in a manner deemed acceptable. Advantages are speed, privacy and cost. You also avoid the political risk of the court district that you are in. In an individual vs company situation, it’s always better for the employer, unle…
The difference in that case if you have a union on your side to help ensure that you get a fair arbiter and a fair process. Without that, it's all on the company.
If you’re suing an employer as an at-will employee without a contract, it’s pretty academic.
Re: Google Ends Forced Arbitration for Employees
#249Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yeah, this is real. On a throwaway for obvious reasons, but this is from an employment contract I've seen in the past: "I acknowledge that I have no reasonable expectation of privacy in any computer, technology system, email, handheld device, telephone, or documents that are used to conduct the business of the Company. As such, the Company has the right to audit and search all such items and systems, without further…
I fail to see the issue. Hell my company went further: only their registered devices can even login to access company emails (including via web!) and other services. Not only it protects them, it enforces the work/personal hardware separation for me, which is good. My work hardware (which is pretty much a laptop and a phone) has no traces of my personal stuff and my personal has no traces of my work stuff and can't e…
I genuinely don't understand the mixing of personal and work environments.
Convenience. I access my work calendar from my personal phone so I can check my calendar first thing in the morning. And avoid carrying/caring for a company-issued phone.
Meeting with Indian teams are rare, but when they happen, I have to be at the office an hour or two before normal. I'm always awake in time to get in, but generally have a relaxed morning - long dog walk, cooked breakfast, walk to work. If I have a 7am meeting, I have to grab a muffin and drive to work.
Re: Google Ends Forced Arbitration for Employees
#250This has low key been a big year for labor in tech. First we have Amazon backing out of NYC partly due to political pressure from the unions and wins like this vs. Google. Full blown unionization may never happen but the forces of labor are definitely starting to affect tech giants.
> This has low key been a big year for labor in tech. Honestly, I am having my suspicions whether or not that "low key" aspect isn't artificially maintained by the media somewhow. I had heard about the scandals and such last year, but somehow I missed: > Following the massive, 20,000-person walkout at Google in November, Google got rid of forced arbitration for sexual harassment and sexual assault claims, offering mo…
Indeed, it was hard to miss. There was tons of coverage.