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Kickstarter employees vote to unionize

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Re: Kickstarter employees vote to unionize

#251

Post by username90 »

luckylion wrote: post #56
chimeracoder wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> One day we will have one big union. The strength of labor unions in Europe is drawn in large part due to the fact that there are a multiplicity of unions representing workers for the same companies, and workers can choose who they want to represent them. That's not the case for labor unions in the US.

That's not the case in Germany as well, there's practically only the DGB (Deutscher Gewerkschaftsbund, German Trade Union Federation) that has member unions that have very little overlap. Yes, there are some small, competing unions (e.g. there is another union representing police officers and another federation for people working in government organisations) and some non-members (e.g. a union representing airplane pi…

DGB is a choice though, you aren't forced to join it. Every worker at Kickstarter will be forced to join this union, so the situation is very different.

Re: Kickstarter employees vote to unionize

#252

Post by _1qd4 »

jaredtn wrote: post #221

I would love to understand the dynamic better, so please correct me here or chime in. Tech is has one of the best combinations of (lucrative + meritocratic) I've seen. Fields that pay similarly or better (law, medicine, investment banking) require either significant time-consuming credentials or significant time investment as an underlying (like IB analyst). The interview process does require intensive preparation to…

Just to add to this comment; It's one thing for software developers in the government or a large "essential" corporation like a bank or telecom company to unionize. Those places get toxic because the work has to be done and gets very political because of the sheer number of people's lives they affect. I understand the labour issues around working for those organizations.

But kickstarter? You mean the funding apparatus for indie games and gimmicky consumer products? That's where you want to unionize?

Re: Kickstarter employees vote to unionize

#253

Post by karatestomp »

iandanforth wrote: post #132
big_chungus wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why thankfully? Don't workers' rights mean they ought to make their own choices about joining a union or not?

Comments like the above fascinate me. The emotional appeal of "choice" seems to have no end. You can employ it to fight unions, health care, public schools anything you want. Similarly if you can successfully attach "right" (as in "a right") to your rhetoric you can draw out pride, anger, indignation, all sorts of powerful emotions. I recently learned that Frank Luntz ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_Luntz ) is…

Weirdly, this kind of "freedom" is often freedom that's of zero or negative value to me. Take the "freedom" lost by switching to single payer healthcare or similar: oh, no, I don't get to rely on private insurance and deal directly with private medical provider billing departments anymore, and spend tens of hours fixing their mistakes and attempts to screw me every time I use medical care, plus all the time trying to understand their deliberately-complicated policies to make any kind of mostly-useless attempt at comparison shopping, all while paying a premium for it, and instead I just pay taxes and get medical care when I need it.

Like, OK, I'm losing some "freedom" of choice from a certain point of view, but damned if that wouldn't feel one hell of a lot more free.

Re: Kickstarter employees vote to unionize

#254

Post by spoovy »

_sbrk wrote: post #68

I worked in a union shop once, as a summer intern. Every day, we were told to be in the break room at 7:59am to begin promptly at the 8am bell. By 4:30 or 4:45pm, everyone was back in there, waiting for the clock to hit 5pm. One day, I needed to connect two PCs together, which was approved by boss as they would be isolated from the network. So, being the diligent type, I went off and found some network cards and a ca…

In the UK unions have generally become thinly-veiled extortion rackets. Rail workers unions are the most infamous example, whose train drivers generally receive massively inflated salaries and working conditions compared to similarly-skilled peers thanks to decades of legalised blackmail. The strikes are always about working conditions or health & safety on the surface, but they always end with a whopping pay rise, quietly accepted. I also have direct experience of a very historic and well known union which repeatedly issued false statements in the national news media a couple of years ago with the intention of removing a government minister. Of course they claimed it was about health & safety, but internal documents showed it was purely to force him from his job because he was messing with their overtime bonus rates.

Re: Kickstarter employees vote to unionize

#255

Post by ilikehurdles »

amyjess wrote: post #106
_sbrk wrote: post #68

I worked in a union shop once, as a summer intern. Every day, we were told to be in the break room at 7:59am to begin promptly at the 8am bell. By 4:30 or 4:45pm, everyone was back in there, waiting for the clock to hit 5pm. One day, I needed to connect two PCs together, which was approved by boss as they would be isolated from the network. So, being the diligent type, I went off and found some network cards and a ca…

Any union in the tech industry is going to resemble professional unions such as Hollywood unions or sports unions much more than the punch-clock unions seen in manufacturing and government.

This goes against the anti-union propaganda, though. I'm sure if we unionize, some mafioso from "corporate" will come down to my home office 8 US states away to plug in my monitor before I'm allowed to work.

/sarcasm

What an absolute joke of a discussion. Rather than discussion how actual professional unions operate in our fields, instead we're talking about punch-clocks and strict schedules (which I had plenty of in non-union shops) and over-bureaucratic corporates.

Re: Kickstarter employees vote to unionize

#256

Post by lawnchair_larry »

amyjess wrote: post #106
_sbrk wrote: post #68

I worked in a union shop once, as a summer intern. Every day, we were told to be in the break room at 7:59am to begin promptly at the 8am bell. By 4:30 or 4:45pm, everyone was back in there, waiting for the clock to hit 5pm. One day, I needed to connect two PCs together, which was approved by boss as they would be isolated from the network. So, being the diligent type, I went off and found some network cards and a ca…

Any union in the tech industry is going to resemble professional unions such as Hollywood unions or sports unions much more than the punch-clock unions seen in manufacturing and government.

No, it will look nothing like those. The industries have virtually nothing in common.

Re: Kickstarter employees vote to unionize

#259

Post by username90 »

bluedays wrote: post #236

Yeah this discussion appears to have been hijacked by thinly veiled anti-union astroturfing. I would be highly skeptical of all posts in this thread. Many of the posts literally using the exact phrases commonly repeated by anti-union propagandists. This makes me wonder if Silicon Valley is starting to see the writing on the wall and pay for disinformation campaigns in places where engineers regularly read and post. I…

I am pro European style unions where membership is optional, but anti American style unions where you have to leave your job if you don't like the union.

(I live in Europe)

Re: Kickstarter employees vote to unionize

#260

Post by erik998 »

_sbrk wrote: post #68

I worked in a union shop once, as a summer intern. Every day, we were told to be in the break room at 7:59am to begin promptly at the 8am bell. By 4:30 or 4:45pm, everyone was back in there, waiting for the clock to hit 5pm. One day, I needed to connect two PCs together, which was approved by boss as they would be isolated from the network. So, being the diligent type, I went off and found some network cards and a ca…

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 with different rates for indy films vs big budget films. It's not so hard to imagine a software developers guild where they negotiate for a daily/weekly minimum for developers, dba's, qa's, devops, and such...

https://www.sagaftra.org/production-center/contract/810/rate....

If you are celebrity equivalent of a developer, then you can get paid more. There are no real restrictions. You don't see famous actors getting paid below the daily minimum. When they work for a big budget film they typically get x multiple times the daily rate. Also, if they want to work on an indy film they can agree to those minimum daily rates as well.

I think its flexible enough so if you want to work for a nonprofit you can just accept the daily/weekly minimum vs asking full price if you work for FAANG.

I don't think it's a crazy amount of protections but it sets aside a basic set of standards you can expect from job to job.

If your are making over 120k they suggest actors create a loan out corporation at that point...

https://firemark.com/2015/01/12/should-you-have-a-loan-out-c....

Can you imagine all the FAANG companies having to setup a Software Industry Association to negotiate with a Software Developers Guild every year? It seems plausible. It's probably in their best interest as well. These companies could just dump any social issues on to the union and just focus on making profits. The ability to lock out competitors might force other big software dev employers to join the association as well.

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