Wikipedia Workers to Seek Union Recognition • Hacker News Board

Re: Wikipedia Workers to Seek Union Recognition

#251

Post by psychoslave » Thu, Jun 25, 2026, 4:37 PM UTC

cdkmoose wrote: post #237

changoplatanero wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What’s in the collective best interest may not match with what’s in the individual best interest. Perhaps unions are more likely to be in the self interest of the below average employees, the ones with no negotiating power. The best school teachers are almost certainly being held back by their unions and the worst ones are getting a free pass. When I worked at a unionized place I was blocked from an opportunity my em…

Unions tend to use otherwise arbitrary criteria to determine a members value. Not all people with the same number of years of experience, the same job title or the same degree provide equal value to the company. As a school board member, I had to deal with the situation of a nationally recognized(awarded) teacher who got paid the same as every other teacher with the same degree and years in district. When asked why w…

What’s wrong with everyone with same degree and years in district being paid equally? Per the very definition of such a competition, not everyone can pursue and finish number one in national fame machines.

Re: Wikipedia Workers to Seek Union Recognition

#252

Post by bawolff » Thu, Jun 25, 2026, 4:41 PM UTC

JdeBP wrote: post #90

This is the same press release from the union as at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48663861 , and the same discussion points apply as there, including the fact that the press release is conflating 'Wikipedia Workers' and 'British-based employees at the Wikimedia Foundation'. The two are not the same. This conflation appears to be the fault of the union. Certainly the people who write Wikipedia well know the dif…

British-based employees at the Wikimedia Foundation United doesn't have quite the same ring to it.

I suspect its just because naming things concisely is hard.

Re: Wikipedia Workers to Seek Union Recognition

#253

Post by psychoslave » Thu, Jun 25, 2026, 4:45 PM UTC

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #155

tovej wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those legal protections are easily eroded without unions. Just look at Finland. Here, the current government first made it illegal for unions to strike when the government takes action to weaken employment law, and then they significantly weakened employment law. The only protection left is collective bargaining agreements, which can still uphold some of the old legal protections through contract law. This was also o…

> Unions are the only defense that workers have. If there are no unions, the employer can have their pick among desperate job seekers, and give them the lowest wage they can live on. The major other defense is competition. If there were infinitely many workers then unions would be useless to begin with, because employers would just let them walk out and hire someone else. Individuals can likewise use the fact that la…

>The major other defense is competition.

Yes. As sure as the casino fear the competition among players in games on which they unilaterally set the rules.

Re: Wikipedia Workers to Seek Union Recognition

#254

Post by cdkmoose » Thu, Jun 25, 2026, 4:48 PM UTC

psychoslave wrote: post #251

cdkmoose wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unions tend to use otherwise arbitrary criteria to determine a members value. Not all people with the same number of years of experience, the same job title or the same degree provide equal value to the company. As a school board member, I had to deal with the situation of a nationally recognized(awarded) teacher who got paid the same as every other teacher with the same degree and years in district. When asked why w…

What’s wrong with everyone with same degree and years in district being paid equally? Per the very definition of such a competition, not everyone can pursue and finish number one in national fame machines.

If they don't contribute equally, why should they be paid equally, especially when the individuals desire to be paid per their contribution. Some rest on their years and degree while others go above and beyond to deliver a difference. The union doesn't allow the employer to recognize that.

I think there are jobs where those distinctions don't matter as much, but creative jobs and other areas where the ability of an employee to deliver quality is very personal don't seem to work well with unions in my view.

I would have loved to pay that teacher more because he did so much more and had a huge positive influence on his students, but the union would never have allowed that.

Re: Wikipedia Workers to Seek Union Recognition

#255

Post by bawolff » Thu, Jun 25, 2026, 4:48 PM UTC

throw93949444 wrote: post #106

JdeBP wrote: post #90

This is the same press release from the union as at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48663861 , and the same discussion points apply as there, including the fact that the press release is conflating 'Wikipedia Workers' and 'British-based employees at the Wikimedia Foundation'. The two are not the same. This conflation appears to be the fault of the union. Certainly the people who write Wikipedia well know the dif…

Seems like a loophole not to employ people. "Editor" sounds like a job title! There is code of conduct, all sort of paperwork, you have to deal with comitees, editorial process... There is non disclosure agreement, you are not allowed to discus internal stuff with people outside from company... wery far from "i seen something was wrong, so i just made quick edit"! Smells like proper job to me! We closed the same loop…

> Smells like proper job to me!

In proper jobs you get paid, and there is someone telling you what to do. Neither of those things apply to Wikipedia.

There is no NDA. The only exception is if you volunteer to join the group that deals with private data (this is not the same as being an Admin, its the step above. Its a very small group)

Comittees exist but are largely optional. If you want to change things at a meta level or do wide coordination, there is no getting around that. But such stuff is optional. You don't need to join any comittees if you just want to write articles.

Now, if you want to say its exploitative (editors put in the labour and get almost none of the created value), then fair point. I would say its no more or less exploitative than your average open source project.

Re: Wikipedia Workers to Seek Union Recognition

#256

Post by IncreasePosts » Thu, Jun 25, 2026, 4:50 PM UTC

pasc1878 wrote: post #167

IncreasePosts wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cousins of American style bumping is definitely in employment law in the UK(where it is done by the employer instead of the employees and union). It also exists at least in Germany(sozialauswahl) where employees theoretically who could get chopped are given points to determine who to chop, where seniority is one of the ways to gain points, as well as age, as well as having children.

I don't think so in UK. In UK to make someone redundant (ie fired not for cause) then the job has to be removed and only the holder of that job can be fired and not any other person. Of course HR departments and consultants are paid to work around this

The rule is called transferred redundancy and it goes like this in the UK: the company can't eliminate a high level position if some argument can be made that they only needed to eliminate a lower level position. So if a company feels it doesn't need a certain VP position, it can't actually get rid of that VP position if there is some argument that the company would only need to get rid of a lower director position. And the director position can't be eliminated if there's some argument that only a lower senior position could be eliminated. And the senior position cannot be eliminated if there's some argument that only a junior position would need to be eliminated.

Re: Wikipedia Workers to Seek Union Recognition

#257

Post by bawolff » Thu, Jun 25, 2026, 4:56 PM UTC

some_random wrote: post #189

sandworm101 wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are some non-divestable rights out there. Canada (and others) have a copyright concept of moral rights that cannot be given away by contract or, in other words, nobody can ever force someone to give them away. An artist/creator can decide to not exercise them but the artist/creator retains them regardless of contract language. >> Unlike other IP rights, moral rights cannot be sold or given away. Even in the cas…

How is the right non-divestable if you can waive it? More importantly, how could wikipedia possibly work if contributors retained copyright in any form over their submitted articles and edits?

> More importantly, how could wikipedia possibly work if contributors retained copyright in any form over their submitted articles and edits?

Note, the cc-by-sa 4.0 license that wikipedia uses requires you to waive any moral rights to the extent possible. In canada if you are the creator of the work, then you can waive all of them, so its really a moot point. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/legalcode.en

In general though, moral rights tend to be the sort of thing where they only come into play if you're being an asshole, so it mostly doesn't matter.

Re: Wikipedia Workers to Seek Union Recognition

#258

Post by psychoslave » Thu, Jun 25, 2026, 4:56 PM UTC

some_random wrote: post #193

anothermathbozo wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unions are not the primary mechanism between employers and workers for establishing fairer wages in many European countries. Unions are designed to level a power imbalance between an employer (typically a legal vehicle which aggregates the material self interest of various actors) and the employees who would otherwise have to act alone. Myopically focusing on wages while ignoring the many other concerns about the dis…

What a great excuse for stagnant wages.

Real wages (adjusted for inflation) were relatively flat from 2001 to the mid-2010s, especially for the bottom half of the wage distribution. Since then, there have been periods where real wages grew, but inflation often outpaced wage growth, particularly from April 2021 to early 2026. As of May 2026, real wages were still down 1.4% compared to January 2021, meaning that, after accounting for price increases, American workers are making less than they did five years ago.

Not every American citizen is having incomes like SWE in SV.

https://www.statista.com/chart/32428/inflation-and-wage-grow...

Re: Wikipedia Workers to Seek Union Recognition

#259

Post by bawolff » Thu, Jun 25, 2026, 4:58 PM UTC

throw93949444 wrote: post #198

some_random wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is the right non-divestable if you can waive it? More importantly, how could wikipedia possibly work if contributors retained copyright in any form over their submitted articles and edits?

The only legal way to waive copyright rights, is to hire an employee to produce the work. Individual contributors are not cogs in a machine, employees are! And if someone produced work for 15 years, and edited 10000 articles... very hard to argue it is not permanent worker! Wikipedia can easily work as "marketplace of ideas", linking original authors. That is not possible if you have editorial policy, political opini…

> The only legal way to waive copyright rights

This is generally not true, but more importantly Wikipedia does not ask people to waive their copyright rights, only license it under a creative commons license. Its no different than how open source software works.

Re: Wikipedia Workers to Seek Union Recognition

#260

Post by some_random » Thu, Jun 25, 2026, 5:00 PM UTC

true_religion wrote: post #244

some_random wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If editing an article opens you up to copyright lawsuits for "destroying their work", it's completely untenable.

With a moral rights framework, that depends on the content of the edit. If for example you edit in racist views and leave the attribution of the original author because it’s just a one word change from “the holocaust” to “the alleged holocaust”, then yes you are open to a lawsuit for any harm that results from that malicious edit. This is especially true with my example as that view would run afoul of criminal statue…

So that's what I assumed too but it turns out that's not true, at least in Canada. The Flight Stop example was cited as an example of an artist asserting their moral rights to their art to prevent the owner from tying bows around the necks of a his flock of fiberglass geese for the holidays. For art in Canada, modifying it at all prejudices the author. The standard for other works is higher, but still nothing as high as you think.

https://www.aci-iac.ca/art-books/michael-snow/key-works/flig...

Edit: I also wonder how or if this works in reverse, if someone wrote a fantastic article on numerology or whatever with a screed halfway through, would removing it from the article violate their moral rights? I think any framework where the answer is no is also probably going to be unworkable.