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Bandcamp's Entire Union Bargaining Team Was Laid Off

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Re: Bandcamp's Entire Union Bargaining Team Was Laid Off

#271

Post by brian626 »

jcpst wrote: post #239
2d8a875f-39a2-4 wrote: post #34

Time to make sure you have downloaded everything you bought on BC.

My thoughts too. This is going to be tedious for those of us with larger collections… too bad there doesn’t seem to be a way to bulk download from my library.

One solution to this, albeit a fairly technical one, can be found here: https://github.com/Ezwen/bandcamp-collection-downloader . I've been using it for years to download my library in FLAC format.

There are also a bunch of GUI tools that claim to download libraries (search for "bandcamp downloader") but I haven't used any of them.

Re: Bandcamp's Entire Union Bargaining Team Was Laid Off

#272

Post by tomcam »

fransje26 wrote: post #161
hiAndrewQuinn wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, it's not really free healthcare, at least not here in Finland. You're expected to spend at least an hour every day exercising with all the time we have off here to make sure you don't get super sick in the first place. In practice then we actually work 45 hours a week every week.

Getting paid to exercise.. Nice!

GP implies that you’d just work longer to incorporate that hour of exercise?

Re: Bandcamp's Entire Union Bargaining Team Was Laid Off

#273

Post by Supermancho »

throwboatyface wrote: post #262
InTheArena wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unions in America are much more militant and much less cooperative, much more likely to go to zero-sum negotiations than in Europe. They also are far far far more corrupt than unions in Europe.

This is just saying "union bad" in more words. The recent WGA strike and Teamsters strike at UPS both got terrific results for workers. The UAW and SAG-AFTRA are also very effectively striking right now.

> This is just saying "union bad" in more words.

That's not "just" what is being said. Unions are generally good in the US, but the tactics have aligned across industries. Notably, the teacher's unions, police unions, and often utility unions are horribly corrupt.

Re: Bandcamp's Entire Union Bargaining Team Was Laid Off

#274

Post by Draiken »

jerf wrote: post #238
Draiken wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wouldn't Tesla be supporting UAW if that was 100% accurate? AFAIR Tesla follows the typical US corporation stance of "kill it with fire" against unions. A sick version of "the enemy of my enemy is my friend"

"Wouldn't Tesla be supporting UAW if that was 100% accurate?" How do you know they aren't? They wouldn't exactly run out to the press and yell "HEY EVERYONE WHO ISN'T WORKING FOR US JOIN THE UAW". I'm not saying they are; I'm asking, how do you know they aren't?

I don't. I guess you're right that even if they did, they'd do so without publicity.

I've seen arguments saying they are still against it, because in the long run, if UAW workers get way better salaries/benefits than Tesla workers, they'll unionize or leave for a union job regardless.

In other words: they want to keep exploiting their workers as much as possible for as long as possible.

Re: Bandcamp's Entire Union Bargaining Team Was Laid Off

#275

Post by mandmandam »

0xpgm wrote: post #240
mandmandam wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In a free-market economy, the companies that make less optimal decisions will have their lunch eaten by those that don't. In a race to the bottom, concern for others is a liability. Ugh.

I'd say an example of not showing concern for others is, for instance, using state power to bail out banks after the executives gambled with their customers savings and cashed out. Bad corporations are given a lifeline until the next set of customers is screwed.

Sure; or spending 8 trillion dollars - well over a trillion on interest to those same banks - on a 'war on terror' that actually increases terror.

But was any of that state 'power'? Or state weakness?

Re: Bandcamp's Entire Union Bargaining Team Was Laid Off

#276

Post by tomcam »

vanderZwan wrote: post #59
nemo44x wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IT doesn’t traditionally gafe unions in the USA. Teachers are unionized here and are one of the most powerful political forces. They are also a likely reason why so many people here don’t like unions.

> Teachers are unionized here and are one of the most powerful political forces. This does not seem compatible with all the stories I've heard about underpaid teachers having to buy material for their students out of their own pocket. I'm sure it somehow ends up both being true in a twisted way, but it still sounds strange.

I think the answer lies in the massively increased administrative presence over the last few decades.

Re: Bandcamp's Entire Union Bargaining Team Was Laid Off

#277

Post by billy99k »

unethical_ban wrote: post #255
nemo44x wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Software engineers fail to unionize because most of them know it’s a bad deal. Tenure in and of itself has 0 to do with your value as a software engineer. But yes your point is right on in that the unions are useless. In large part because they are a corrupt themselves and their grift is taking a vig on employment.

I think you're doing downvoted because you put words into the parent comments now that weren't there. They didn't say unions are useless. They said American unions are weak. The implications are very different.

"They didn't say unions are useless"

If something is weak (like the unions), will it ever be useful?

Re: Bandcamp's Entire Union Bargaining Team Was Laid Off

#278

Post by ludston »

gruez wrote: post #185
bananaquant wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As an HR would say, those people are "a bad cultural fit", which legitimately raises the probability of them being laid off to 100%. Simple.

There's probably a performance component as well. If you're high performing, can pick whatever job they want, and therefore get paid well above your peers, why would want to join a union?

Not every talented person is motivated by greed for personal wealth and status. Actually most aren't.

Re: Bandcamp's Entire Union Bargaining Team Was Laid Off

#279

Post by banannaise »

gruez wrote: post #185
bananaquant wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As an HR would say, those people are "a bad cultural fit", which legitimately raises the probability of them being laid off to 100%. Simple.

There's probably a performance component as well. If you're high performing, can pick whatever job they want, and therefore get paid well above your peers, why would want to join a union?

Because unions protect everyone in ways that don't directly relate to pay scale. They help defend against abusive time-off, on-call, or surveillance practices, advocate for pro-worker policies like parental, bereavement, and sick leave, help prevent employees from being fired for using these benefits...

Re: Bandcamp's Entire Union Bargaining Team Was Laid Off

#280

Post by haneefmubarak »

epilys wrote: post #140
philipwhiuk wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They're not employees. These aren't technically layoffs. The company is being acquired and then they are choosing not to issue a bunch of people contracts.

Do you perhaps know how this works legally? I'm curious. Did their contracts under Epic say something in the lines of, "on the event of ownership change your contracts are null and void" just like that?

My estimation is that Epic sold all of the IP (name, other trademarks, code, infrastructure, etc) along with the right to be the successor to the extensive license agreements and contracts that they held. Included in this is HR records, which allows the new owner to make offers to the folks that Epic is no longer employing after the deal finishe(d/s).

M&A transactions can get pretty complicated for exactly these reasons; frequently, they disassemble the entire set of assets for sale and divvy them up across one or more buyers, who will pick and choose what they want and then reconstitute whatever they have purchased to their desired degree.

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