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Kickstarter’s staff is unionizing

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Re: Kickstarter’s staff is unionizing

#241

Post by marknutter »

SilasX wrote: post #227
umvi wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or it's just a symptom of the Shirky Principle: "Institutions will try to preserve the problem to which they are the solution." Even if the workplace is not adversarial, any union will try to preserve the conditions that necessitate its continued existence. No union ever said "Wow, this new CEO and management are super fair and reasonable. We are no longer necessary, let's dissolve and let them take the reigns."

Dissolving would be an overreaction, but yes, I would expect a reasonable union leadership to say (in particular circumstances meriting it), "These are great benefits that are above market, and no one's getting cited or dismissed without cause, so we're just going to sit back for the time being and keep you all apprised if that changes."

...while continuing to collect a salary for effectively doing nothing. Sounds about right.

Re: Kickstarter’s staff is unionizing

#242

Post by enraged_camel »

nichos wrote: post #218
normal_man wrote: post #188

The anti-union rhetoric in America is staggering. You like weekends? Then stop ragging on unions.

You mean the American 5 day work week, brought to us by Henry Ford and not unions?

The truth is a bit more nuanced than that. Henry Ford did not institute a 40-hour workweek out of the goodness of his heart. In an interview to World's Work magazine in 1926, he said: "Leisure is an indispensable ingredient in a growing consumer market because working people need to have enough free time to find uses for consumer products, including automobiles."

In other words, he understood that a consumer-based economy needs consumers, and consumers need sufficient leisure time to be able to go shopping and buy things.

Re: Kickstarter’s staff is unionizing

#243

Post by alasdair_ »

minikites wrote: post #187
tomohawk wrote: post #169

I wish them well, but having family members and friends work in unionized workplaces, it's not something I would ever do. It always seems to degenerate into an "us vs them" sort of thing whenever I talk to them about where they work. Why would I ever work some place where things are so adversarial? You also end up with this 3rd party involved in everything, creating all kinds of "rules" to make things "fair". Want to…

>It always seems to degenerate into an "us vs them" sort of thing whenever I talk to them about where they work. Why would I ever work some place where things are so adversarial? Every workplace is adversarial, it's you versus the C-suite who profit from the surplus value created by your labor. A union just evens out the bargaining power between you and them.

>Every workplace is adversarial, it's you versus the C-suite who profit from the surplus value created by your labor. A union just evens out the bargaining power between you and them.

I guess it depends on the equity split. Very early engineers with, say 0.1% vested of a unicorn still feel like owners to me, in addition to being workers.

Re: Kickstarter’s staff is unionizing

#245

Post by naravara »

diminoten wrote: post #32
cableshaft wrote: post #4

If Kickstarter can do it, the game industry can do it! Come on, game industry, it's your time to unionize!

It'll never happen so long as there are "gamers" who want to work in the industry they "love", unfortunately.

>It'll never happen so long as there are "gamers" who want to work in the industry they "love", unfortunately.

Judging by the gamer-centric media, it seems like most of them hate the industry and most of the major companies in it. They love small developers, they love making games, they love their Twitch streamers, but they hate the companies with a burning passion.

Unfortunately, that passion often gets channeled into harassing women and minorities instead of going anywhere productive.

Re: Kickstarter’s staff is unionizing

#246

Post by moduspol »

notheruser wrote: post #173
moduspol wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Seems no worse than an employer doing the same, directly or via interest groups. Well, in one scenario it's their money being spent. In the other, it's yours . You don't draw a pretty clear distinction there?

The managers of the corporation are not spending their money either, unless they own the corporation.

They're voluntarily authorized by the controlling interest of the people whose money it is.

Re: Kickstarter’s staff is unionizing

#247

Post by hajile »

segmondy wrote: post #123
nanokilo wrote: post #3

If this works out, this has the potential to be huge for the industry. I would love to see more unionization in tech, and this could be a first step in that direction.

It's going to end badly, unlike factories where a walkout would but a strain on production. A walkout necessarily doesn't put a strain on tech. Companies are going to embrace distributed teams/remote teams very fast and unionizing will just be a reason to close up shop in that location. That's what I imagine happening, predicting the future is hard tho.

A programmer walk-out is way worse. The Bus Factor is a real thing. Hire a new team to replace the old one on a complex project and it'll be months or years before they start doing anything productive. Making things worse, bit-rot is real and threatens existing software with failure if complaints aren't addressed.

Re: Kickstarter’s staff is unionizing

#248

Post by lsaferite »

minikites wrote: post #224
umvi wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or it's just a symptom of the Shirky Principle: "Institutions will try to preserve the problem to which they are the solution." Even if the workplace is not adversarial, any union will try to preserve the conditions that necessitate its continued existence. No union ever said "Wow, this new CEO and management are super fair and reasonable. We are no longer necessary, let's dissolve and let them take the reigns."

>No union ever said "Wow, this new CEO and management are super fair and reasonable. We are no longer necessary, let's dissolve and let them take the reigns." Name a company with a CEO and management who are super fair and reasonable (e.g. paying employees the full value of their labor instead of profiting from the surplus value created by the employee)

> instead of profiting from the surplus value created by the employee

Why wouldn't the employee work for themselves if they expect the full surplus of their value to go to them? I mean, it's not like the company is a charity, right? It's designed to be profitable for it's owners.

Re: Kickstarter’s staff is unionizing

#249

Post by 49531 »

ahelwer wrote: post #230
49531 wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That weird "us vs them" sort of thing is called class consciousness. The adversarial nature exists whether you're conscious of it or not.

Exactly! Always be suspicious of calls for unity, many times they only serve to paper over divisions which should be addressed and will continue to exist regardless of whether discussion is silenced. I liken this to undeveloped understandings of interpersonal relationships. One is given the impression early in life that all disagreements are bad and must be avoided. This can manifest in pathological conflict avoidanc…

Yup, families don't downsize when things get hard. It's materially profitable for employers to attempt to erase class consciousness as much as possible, to the detriment of the workers.

Re: Kickstarter’s staff is unionizing

#250

Post by gamblor956 »

ticmasta wrote: post #228
minikites wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>It always seems to degenerate into an "us vs them" sort of thing whenever I talk to them about where they work. Why would I ever work some place where things are so adversarial? Every workplace is adversarial, it's you versus the C-suite who profit from the surplus value created by your labor. A union just evens out the bargaining power between you and them.

>> A union just evens out the bargaining power between you and them. What if you're better than the majority of "us". I can negotiate a better deal for myself than they can get or justify; now I subsidize the group for "the greater good". This is not why unions where created. They were to address the monopoly of power when all employees could offer was their labour. This is definitely not the case in the western whit…

Hollywood unions set wage and salary floors and generally focus on work-place conditions. Individuals are allowed to and encouraged to negotiate their salaries above that floor if they're talented enough to have the market power to do so.

Programmer unions could copy the Hollywood model--salary floors, with no caps on salary negotiated by so-called "superstar" programmers.

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