Google hired union-busting consultants to convince employees “unions suck” • Hacker News Board

Re: Google hired union-busting consultants to convince employees “unions suck”

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Post by magicalist » Wed, Jan 12, 2022, 5:13 PM UTC

briffle wrote: post #198

CreateAccntAgn wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The are police and other public sector unions. The point of unions is to protect labor interests. Unions can exist as long as labor does.

And those police unions are exactly why in many cases, an officer gets to see ALL evidence and video about a situation, with a required rep or lawyer, before making an official statement in many jurisdictions. Something you and I certainly don't get. In fact, they often try to trick suspects.

I mean, police unions do exist solely to protect police officers which means their incentives are sometimes opposed to the public they serve, and so they should absolutely not be in charge of things like self investigations and time-limiting records of abuse, etc.

But that's not inherent to a union. Cities shouldn't cede these extraordinary powers to the union in the first place, and if they already have, they should take them back.

Re: Google hired union-busting consultants to convince employees “unions suck”

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Post by Jensson » Wed, Jan 12, 2022, 5:14 PM UTC

littlestymaar wrote: post #275

Jensson wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Corporations creates enormous amounts of value, as far as we know modern society cannot function without those structures. Unions however are optional, even if they help they still aren't nearly as important as corporations. Edit: For those who disagree, how many modern societies are there without corporations running a majority of the economy? Not a single one. So as far as we know it doesn't work. It can work in th…

> There are however many examples of modern economies with very little union influence, USA is an example, and USA is a better place to live than most countries. The US is arguably pretty subpar in terms of quality of life compared to other developed nations (little vacation, really expensive school system, poor health system for the masses leading to a lower life expectancy, high criminality rate, etc.). Of course,…

I didn't argue otherwise. USA is however not subpar compared to any country hostile to corporations, which is the important part. A country being hostile to unions isn't nearly as bad as a country being hostile to corporations.

Re: Google hired union-busting consultants to convince employees “unions suck”

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Post by JKCalhoun » Wed, Jan 12, 2022, 5:14 PM UTC

boh wrote: post #110

0xbadc0de5 wrote: post #17

A related topic would be collective bargaining - which is often (but not always) associated with a unionized workplace. If you're a sub-standard employee, you win big through collective bargaining because pay bands will move toward the mean. If however, you are a high-performer, you will likely be under-compensated in a collective bargaining environment because your excess effort will be used to compensate those who…

Being a "high-performer" by definition suggests you are operating at a higher level than the average, suggesting you are a minority. The idea that labor policy should exclusively cater to a minority to get better compensated due to their superior contribution and negotiation skills is perplexing. Society requires a stable labor policy. The culture of the narcissistic self which powered the second half of the twentiet…

But we all think we're the high performers.

Re: Google hired union-busting consultants to convince employees “unions suck”

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Post by Natfan » Wed, Jan 12, 2022, 5:14 PM UTC

Minor49er wrote: post #51

yjftsjthsd-h wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Please don't post insinuations about astroturfing, shilling, brigading, foreign agents and the like. It degrades discussion and is usually mistaken. If you're worried about abuse, email hn@ycombinator.com and we'll look at the data. - https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

I searched that page and didn't see a rule about jokes not being allowed

"Please don't post shallow dismissals, especially of other people's work. A good critical comment teaches us something."

Re: Google hired union-busting consultants to convince employees “unions suck”

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Post by jerrycruncher » Wed, Jan 12, 2022, 5:15 PM UTC

blululu wrote: post #81

nerbert wrote: post #22

Seeing comments from previous posts on this forum, I'd say they kind of succeeded.

Resistance to Unions in America is pretty deep. This is a 150 year old issue that previously involved hiring consultants with guns to shoot at anyone who dared to ask for an 80 hour work week. I doubt that a crew of modern consultants did much more than run up some bills on a corporate expense account. *Note that support/opposition to Unions is often form from petty core experiences (first hand and family relations).…

And _currently_ involves hiring consultants to force employees to sit through hours of anti-union fear mongering the second management smells a whiff of pro-union organizing sentiment.

The 'American Factory' documentary has a great example of what this looks like in real life. Hearing that Amazon or Google or whoever else worked to convince employees to vote against unionizing is one thing, seeing what that effort is like on the ground is altogether more eye-opening.

Re: Google hired union-busting consultants to convince employees “unions suck”

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Post by Starlevel001 » Wed, Jan 12, 2022, 5:15 PM UTC

rapind wrote: post #274

marricks wrote: post #147

Go figure the top comments on this thread echo how companies talk about unions. “Oh unions can be good but those Americans don’t know their downsides…” Or “Unions are great but it’s awful people can be forced to join them!” I’m just saying Google’s money was well spent.

Yeah when I clicked into the comments I was hoping for a discussion on the ethics of hiring a firm to trash talk unions (for or against). Instead it’s like the Google 50c party arguing the merits of unions. I’m uncomfortable with companies constantly trying to influence their employees opinions. It’s marketing turned inwards. I’m not so naïve to be surprised, but I would never work at a business who employed tactics…

I'm really not sure why you were hoping for that on a forum attached to a venture capitalist firm site.

Re: Google hired union-busting consultants to convince employees “unions suck”

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Post by endisneigh » Wed, Jan 12, 2022, 5:16 PM UTC

dfxm12 wrote: post #260

endisneigh wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If Google does indeed suck, wouldn’t employees leave for a company that doesn’t? I wonder what the attrition looks like

The grass isn't really greener anywhere else, and since so many benefits are tied to employment in the US, leaving a job is often a lot of trouble. Corporations like Google know & lobby for this.

If other companies aren’t better then does Google suck?

Re: Google hired union-busting consultants to convince employees “unions suck”

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Post by DetroitThrow » Wed, Jan 12, 2022, 5:16 PM UTC

wmil wrote: post #246

geofft wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, I think talking about the benefits of "unions" in the abstract is a little weird because - at least in the US - unions are highly regulated by laws that were written primarily envisioning the model of early-20th-century manual labor. That is to say, unions were designed in a way that fit not just for-profit businesses but very particular types of for-profit businesses. So you need to separate the more conceptua…

Union organizers always want GM style unions. But really developers would be better off with something along the lines of a trade guild. Something that enforces standards on employers and employees.

The Saturn corporation had a labor-management partnership which did exactly that for standards, and was a subdivision of GM. Unfortunately it's stressful for corp and union leadership when high standards are set, so it eventually lost support despite high worker approval.

Re: Google hired union-busting consultants to convince employees “unions suck”

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Post by Jensson » Wed, Jan 12, 2022, 5:16 PM UTC

DetroitThrow wrote: post #288

Jensson wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those were thanks to labor movements, not unions. They are not the same thing, labor movements happens thanks to Democracy. Democracy is crucial, I agree, it lets groups organize, protest and fix problems with how society works. But what we call unions today are not that. I'm all for labor engaging in politics, but they can do that without paying union dues for working at a company. The problem USA's workers face tod…

>Those were thanks to labor movements, not unions. Ahahaha, do you also think that voting rights and anti-segregation laws were due to the 'civil rights movement', and not civil rights activists such as MLK jr or civil rights organizations such as the NAACP?

Labor movements are made up of people, yes. Not sure how that is related to unions. Labor organized in every single democracy regardless if there were unions or not. Labor movements tend to create unions, so unions are often a result of labor movements and not the source of labor movements.

Re: Google hired union-busting consultants to convince employees “unions suck”

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Post by notahacker » Wed, Jan 12, 2022, 5:16 PM UTC

airza wrote: post #173

everdrive wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But could you imagine if we spoke about corporations in this manner? "I've worked for corporations and they are a mixed bag. In practice, they often abuse their employees. I've personally witnessed bosses who contributed nothing for years and just played politics." We definitely talk about corporations in this way. All the time, in fact!

The point which i don’t think was articulated well by the GP is that depsite these objections to corporate power nobody (ok,few people) in HN threads ever seems to endorse getting rid of corporations.

On the other hand, we rarely see HN threads about contractors in which corporations are argued to be a panacea for problems faced by busy well paid contract developers, and anybody suggesting any potential downsides of contractors moving onto payroll is assumed to be a dupe of propaganda pushed by Big Tim Ferriss.

(We can take that comparison further: people on HN sometimes do suggest that Uber drivers might be better off if they could only be hired as salaried employees but almost never say that about highly paid freelance developers. It's pretty similar when we're looking at the respective cost/benefit of collective bargaining arrangements for local bus drivers vs highly skilled developers earning two orders of magnitude more than bus drivers in an job market that offers practically unrivalled opportunities for people with their skillset.)