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Organizers have unionized 5,000 contract workers at Apple, Facebook, Yahoo

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Re: Organizers have unionized 5,000 contract workers at Apple, Facebook, Yahoo

#261

Post by Spooky23 »

morgante wrote: post #242
Clubber wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think a tech union would significantly raise the wages of technical people. A past job, I automated away jobs at $0.10 on the dollar and made a healthy salary, but it obviously was 1/10th of what I was worth. I left that company and all those jobs are still automated away and the more the company grows, the more they save. Also a tech union could push for perks like developer offices, remote work, better work equip…

> I think a tech union would significantly raise the wages of technical people. By what mechanism? Either they engage in collective bargaining, which is filled with problems, or artificially constrict the supply of labor by requiring additional licensing. Considering there is already a shortage of software engineers, constricting it further is unlikely to be net positive. From where I'm standing, the current system w…

The total value of my compensation as a formerly unionized technology guy was on par with a tech company and probably higher than average, adjusting for cost of living.

Everyone on HN is a performer, but the reality is that most people benefit, and most high performers will work for a lot less.

Re: Organizers have unionized 5,000 contract workers at Apple, Facebook, Yahoo

#262

Post by elihu »

tptacek wrote: post #60

If the drivers and cafeteria workers at tech companies can organize, so can the developers. Unlike the developers, the drivers tend to be financially insecure. In this economy, they're eminently replaceable. What they do is outside the core competency of their employers. You'd think they'd have almost no leverage. And yet, in the space of just a few years, they've managed to secure higher wages and health benefits --…

Do any good tech worker unions currently exist, or is this something we'd need to create?

Re: Organizers have unionized 5,000 contract workers at Apple, Facebook, Yahoo

#263

Post by jules »

pyrale wrote: post #249
jules wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That won't make it any better. You're still hand waving away a lot of exploitation. I'm not hand waving away any exploitation. I did not pass any moral judgement, for or against. I described what an unregulated market is. To do so I used the word "voluntary", and I explained what I meant by that word in that context. In particular, it does not include the use of a gun to make somebody give you their wallet. I'm ser…

The point you don't seem to realize in that string of comments is that the amount of extorsion that happens in an unregulated market becomes so large over time that it eventually leads to the dominant player stripping the dominated player of any hint of dignity and reduce him to total dependence. You cannot just look the other way and pretend there is still free choice when these people are captive and not even able…

> You cannot just look the other way and pretend there is still free choice when these people are captive and not even able to search for a new job.

Holding people captive is the opposite of voluntary.

> Here are a few examples to start with

First example: Colorado National Guard massacres workers who refuse to work.

Second example: a company, working together with the sheriff, kidnaps and kills people who refuse to work.

These examples do not show that the dispossessed have to resort to physical violence because that's their only resort left. The physical violence was initiated by the companies working together with the government.

Just read the description on Wikipedia:

> Those who went on strike were promptly evicted from their company homes, and they moved to tent villages prepared by the union. The tents were built on wood platforms and furnished with cast iron stoves on land leased by the union in preparation for a strike.

So far so good.

> Baldwin–Felts had a reputation for aggressive strike breaking. Agents shone searchlights on the tent villages at night and fired bullets into the tents at random, occasionally killing and maiming people. They used an improvised armored car, mounted with a machine gun the union called the "Death Special" to patrol the camp's perimeters. The steel-covered car was built in the Colorado Fuel & Iron Company plant in Pueblo, Colorado from the chassis of a large touring sedan. Frequent sniper attacks on the tent colonies drove the miners to dig pits beneath the tents where they and their families could be better protected.

The workers were using their right to refuse to work! What the workers needed was precisely government enforcement of the law that you can't just go around shooting people. This is the exact opposite of what you implied it was.

Re: Organizers have unionized 5,000 contract workers at Apple, Facebook, Yahoo

#264

Post by forapurpose »

dkhenry wrote: post #15

No its not. This is a union fluff piece. The reality is these are contractors who will get dropped as soon as it makes sense. Thats why you hire these services as contractors. I think the real test here will be how long till the union pushes facebook too far and they are just dropped. I have never seen a union that could actually compete with non-union shops unless there was a legal force preventing the competition.

> The reality is these are contractors who will get dropped as soon as it makes sense. Thats why you hire these services as contractors. I think the real test here will be how long till the union pushes facebook too far and they are just dropped.

That overlooks the whole point of unions, which is to give people power over their work lives and prevent situations like the one you describe. Perhaps the union won't succeed, but they have far more negotiating power when they are organized than when they are not.

> I have never seen a union that could actually compete with non-union shops unless there was a legal force preventing the competition.

That's a powerful claim, but do you have evidence? Particular expertise?

Re: Organizers have unionized 5,000 contract workers at Apple, Facebook, Yahoo

#265

Post by tptacek »

elihu wrote: post #262
tptacek wrote: post #60

If the drivers and cafeteria workers at tech companies can organize, so can the developers. Unlike the developers, the drivers tend to be financially insecure. In this economy, they're eminently replaceable. What they do is outside the core competency of their employers. You'd think they'd have almost no leverage. And yet, in the space of just a few years, they've managed to secure higher wages and health benefits --…

Do any good tech worker unions currently exist, or is this something we'd need to create?

You'd need to create one. And, as I think this thread clearly shows: you probably won't want to call it a "union".

Under the NLRA --- and you'll want to talk to a labor lawyer about this, but come on, that's a $200 expense tops --- it just takes two of you to start one at your company and enjoy legal protection.

Re: Organizers have unionized 5,000 contract workers at Apple, Facebook, Yahoo

#266

Post by jules »

pyrale wrote: post #252
jules wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Where does your ownership of the land originate if not from someone at some point in history using the threat of violence to keep other people off of it? It comes from exactly that, and the system in which that occurred was not a free market. > it was imposed on me with the threat of violence. Absolutely, _the system_ is imposed with the threat of violence. I said that transactions within the system must be volunta…

So you involuntarily participate in a system where you must only make voluntary decisions ?

Yes, just as I involuntarily participate in the system that I can't punch random people in the face.

Re: Organizers have unionized 5,000 contract workers at Apple, Facebook, Yahoo

#267

Post by omegaworks »

ic4l wrote: post #166
AlexC04 wrote: post #3

> Eventually, Facebook says, it OK’d proposed terms of the contract, which hiked drivers’ average pay by half, to $27.50 an hour, and for the first time provided fully paid family health care. For those people doing the driving that's pretty great news. I hope they also took care of those working conditions issues too. Split shifts etc...

Won't last long. Few more years, and it will be a autonomous fleet anyways.

In the meantime this gives them enough to save for night classes / secondary education so that when automation inevitably comes, they'll have other options.

Or did you just always want to discard these people regardless, paying them the minimum required for their entire working lives?

Re: Organizers have unionized 5,000 contract workers at Apple, Facebook, Yahoo

#268

Post by forapurpose »

sushid wrote: post #253
Clubber wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think a tech union would significantly raise the wages of technical people. A past job, I automated away jobs at $0.10 on the dollar and made a healthy salary, but it obviously was 1/10th of what I was worth. I left that company and all those jobs are still automated away and the more the company grows, the more they save. Also a tech union could push for perks like developer offices, remote work, better work equip…

Value add is not always how people get paid. For instance, say a GOOG/FB/APPL driver drives 100+ engineers and saves them 100 hours/ride on commuting time. That doesn't mean that the driver reasonably deserves the cost of 100 hours of engineering time per ride even though he does provide that service. But yes, I do agree that it would significantly raise the wages if we were able to collectively bargain.

> Value add is not always how people get paid.

It's never how people get paid, at least not on the open market. You get paid based on what the market will bear for your skills, based on supply and demand. If you have the unique skill to create exceptional Renaissance Italian stained glass then you may be paid a mint if there is demand, or you may he waiting tables if not. Same thing if you are an expert in Vax machines.

Re: Organizers have unionized 5,000 contract workers at Apple, Facebook, Yahoo

#269

Post by jules »

krapp wrote: post #260
jules wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An unregulated market doesn't mean that you can shoot people. Each transaction must be voluntary. Capitalism is not the same as anarchy.

>Each transaction must be voluntary. That's a regulation, and for that to be binding, it needs to be backed up by coercion and violence. In an unregulated market, whether or not one can shoot people, or whether or not transactions should be voluntary, would be decided like everything else by success or failure through competition in the marketplace. You can't have free market except for this one little rule ... that'…

You absolutely need government force to enforce the rule that you can't use a gun to make somebody give you their wallet. That is not what I disagree with. Calling this a market regulation is what I disagree with.

> You can't have free market except for this one little rule... that's just a very weakly regulated market.

In what sense is that a market at all? Market implies that the transactions are voluntary. Unregulated market implies that all voluntary transactions are legal. A regulated market is a market in which some transactions are disallowed even if they are voluntary. Minimum wage, for example, makes it illegal for you to offer your services for $5 per hour.

Re: Organizers have unionized 5,000 contract workers at Apple, Facebook, Yahoo

#270

Post by pascalxus »

aeorgnoieang wrote: post #235
pascalxus wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Given how hard it is to find labor, due to the lack of housing, they might even have some degree of success. Tech giants need to learn this the hard way: the bay area is not a place for cheap labor: housing costs and taxes are way too astronomical for that. Also, as the article put it, in the short term, I think Google is putting themselves in a very weak position by making their expansion in San Jose. They could've…

> Tech giants need to learn this the hard way: the bay area is not a place for cheap labor: housing costs and taxes are way too astronomical for that. If the tech giants paid even more than they do already, wouldn't that hurt everyone else even more than they already because of the competition over housing?

It sure would!

Unfortunately, At this point, the only politically feasible option is to escape the bay area.

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