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Wikimedia Foundation refuses union recognition, hires union-busting law firm

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Re: Wikimedia Foundation refuses union recognition, hires union-busting law firm

#291

Post by ReactiveJelly »

joshspankit wrote: post #284
alt227 wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The point is when you go to Wikipedia and they are on a funding drive with their very prominent ads for donation requests, they dont mention any of this. They make it sound like wikipedia is very much at risk of dying due to lack of funds when in reality they are looking for more funding for programmes like this, which is where a lot of the mistrust and 'deceptive advertising' opinions come from.

Honestly, I’ve never donated bc “keeping Wikipedia up” could be a solved problem by now. Not just cheaper processing and bandwidth costs, but p2p hosting, etc. Every time I see that ad, I say to myself “it should not be that expensive”. Now, if they had said “We need 200k to send CC photographers to the Olympics”, count me in. That sounds bigger and way more interesting!

I don't even use Wikipedia anymore, I use the free online P2P encyclopedia. It's called

Re: Wikimedia Foundation refuses union recognition, hires union-busting law firm

#292

Post by estearum »

inigyou wrote: post #256
xnx wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On posts about companies spending so much money on AI (datacenter buildouts, tokkenmaxxing, etc.) comments wonder why they are doing this and replies say "money laundering", "definitely money laundering", etc. I'll post an example if I come across another one.

You guys do realize that part of money laundering is making it look like you're just bad at business, yeah? "Oops we accidentally overpaid some incompetent guys for this data center" is a smokescreen for "I am taking your data center money and giving it to my cousin"

How about you just state clearly yes/no:

Are you accusing Wikipedia of actual money laundering?

If you are accusing them of being bad at business or bloat (which is all that's alleged in the article you linked to), then the answer is NO. So you should just say NO.

If you are accusing Wikipedia of actual money laundering, that is concealing the source of illegally gotten money, then the answer is YES.

Please reply YES or NO so we can have a single conversation about the claim being made.

Re: Wikimedia Foundation refuses union recognition, hires union-busting law firm

#294

Post by ericmay »

dofm wrote: post #286
ericmay wrote: post #276

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I literally did not say that vaccine and vaccine adoption has anything to do with unions. Why would you ever think I did? It's an analogy. ??? > we don't need unions anymore are engaging with the status quo in the same way as people who say we don't need vaccines anymore. > If you can't understand why I am comparing anti-union with anti-vax, then I think you don't really understand the point I am making about histo…

It's an analogy . In that sentence I'm not saying that one has to do with the other. I am talking there about the relationship of people arguing against a concept with the status quo for that respective concept. The way those arguments are made is similarly ignorant of history , is the simple point. It's not that difficult. Really. Other people grasped it.

It's not a good analogy though. Unions aren't a clear public good.

> The way those arguments are made is similarly ignorant of history, is the simple point.

Yes and that point is rejected by me.

Re: Wikimedia Foundation refuses union recognition, hires union-busting law firm

#295

Post by stasomatic »

lukeschlather wrote: post #231
stasomatic wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They have enough employees to need a union and a board? It's a CRUD PHP site that I could run from a VPS (joking ofc, but not that much off). I've never worked in an industry where unionization was a thing, but my general understanding is that the unions are protectionist dreaming of things that were true before but not today, but they want to keep things as they were. Good luck. I've benefited from Wikipedia, but I…

Wikimedia requires a board. IMO that board should include at least one representative selected by the employees (i.e. a union rep.) It has one seat reserved for the founder. This governance question doesn't go away if another Wikimedia rises from the ashes. You still will still need a board making decisions, and someone needs to pick the members of the board. Right now there are 8 seats selected by "the community," 7…

Yes, so? If you are here you could clone that thing in a weekend, no? You’d be the sole Chairman, CEO, and Supreme Leader for life. Wikipedia needs to be eminent domained, but we can’t agree on things while the US is headed by you know who.

Re: Wikimedia Foundation refuses union recognition, hires union-busting law firm

#296

Post by acdha »

amazingamazing wrote: post #142
acdha wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“No evidence” or “I haven’t looked for evidence”? Unions do more than just keeping people from dying in mining accidents — for example, I read this yesterday with what sure looks to be concrete benefits for the workers: https://www.propublicaguild.org/updates/propublica-guild-rat...

This isn’t impressive. 13% over 4 years? In any case this can’t be evaluated without knowing what was initially offered pre union and what they initially asked for.

Can you show the research you did before declaring there is no evidence of better performance? For example, how does the ProPublica contract compare to the industry trend?

Re: Wikimedia Foundation refuses union recognition, hires union-busting law firm

#297

Post by akudha »

shimman wrote: post #212
dannyw wrote: post #135

Some people here think Wikimedia Foundation's mission is to keep Wikipedia up. That's a subset of their mission. I attribute nearly all of the blame to WMF, because their donation ads are quite deceptive. The actual, public mission of Wikimedia Foundation: > The mission of the Wikimedia Foundation is to empower and engage people around the world to collect and develop educational content under a free license or in th…

That's pretty cool and worthy endeavor. Having public domain pictures of cultural events seems like a worthy cause IMO.

Genuinely curious - why is photographing FIFA World Cup important? It is a very wildly watched event, extremely popular. Literally every for-profit media is going to cover it.

Wouldn’t that money be spent on lesser known, lesser popular events? Or even projects like photographing the effects of climate change etc - the events that for-profit media is unlikely to cover?

Re: Wikimedia Foundation refuses union recognition, hires union-busting law firm

#298

Post by AngryData »

sokoloff wrote: post #205
cool_dude85 wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>What’s a union going to do if (doing a lot of work there) AI significantly reduces the demand for software engineers or tech workers generally? Aside from general job protection stuff, the general answer would be that they can ensure that some of the productivity gains go to employees rather than employers. Let's say the company has been so much more efficient thanks to AI that they earn an extra 100 million in reve…

In a world where AI heavily disrupts software, a union striking over economics (to get an extra $50M paid out to union members every year) would immediately notice all the replacement tech workers (who were out of work due to AI disruption) streaming in to do the work. It's really hard for me to imagine the conjunction of significant disruption from AI and effective union bargaining.

That same problem exists for factory workers, plumbers, machinists, etc and yet unions and strikes still work.

Re: Wikimedia Foundation refuses union recognition, hires union-busting law firm

#299

Post by dofm »

ericmay wrote: post #294
dofm wrote: post #286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's an analogy . In that sentence I'm not saying that one has to do with the other. I am talking there about the relationship of people arguing against a concept with the status quo for that respective concept. The way those arguments are made is similarly ignorant of history , is the simple point. It's not that difficult. Really. Other people grasped it.

It's not a good analogy though. Unions aren't a clear public good. > The way those arguments are made is similarly ignorant of history, is the simple point. Yes and that point is rejected by me.

The comparison is the unambiguous gains for society union labour organisation achieved through industrial history, which was a clear public good, and what is lost if there are no longer unions to defend those gains.

Stuff can go backwards and currently in the USA absolutely is going backwards, at a federal, state and commercial level. Unions, even in their flawed American form, are a force pushing back on that.

You still need them. In just the same way that you still need continued vaccination to protect the gains made by vaccination.

I am obviously not bothered if you reject my points; I am disappointed with the way you argue, though.

Re: Wikimedia Foundation refuses union recognition, hires union-busting law firm

#300

Post by culi »

decimalenough wrote: post #90

I'm hardly a fan of the WMF, but the headline is clickbait. The WMF has used a law firm called Jones Day for brand and trademark management for over a decade. The firm is one of the largest legal firms in the US and it also does union busting, but a) the WMF does not appear to have engaged them for that, and b) the relationship long predates the current kerfuffle.

Not clickbait. You should read it before commenting.

The union busting firm is not Jones Day. It's Littler Mendelson. Which specializes in union busting. It seems clear that Wikimedia hired them for this.

TFA explicitly states they hired Littler Mendelson for the union and links several sources

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