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Google’s fires four organizers after hiring union-busting firm

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Re: Google’s fires four organizers after hiring union-busting firm

#31

Post by goto11 »

thundergolfer wrote: post #17
m4r35n357 wrote: post #7

[flagged]

Is the SA acronym that commonly known? I had to search it, and for those also not in the know it's the Sturmabteilung, more commonly known as Storm Troopers. Also I'm pro-union and not averse to laying out links between fascism and corporate capitalism, but I think you'd need to add a bit more argument here beyond 'the Nazis also did this so it's definitely bad'.

Tangential clarification: SA was not "storm troopers" in the sense of military specialist unit as used in the world wars. SA was basically street gangs which beat up political opponents of the Nazi party.

Re: Google’s fires four organizers after hiring union-busting firm

#32

Post by dataduck »

DSingularity wrote: post #29
dataduck wrote: post #27

There has been quite a lot of noise on HN about this, and many of the other posts have disappeared, perhaps in an attempt to stop the whole front page getting swamped by this story. You can find the other links here: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=pastWeek&page=0&prefix=fal... I wouldn't normally bother, but the medium article is about the least balanced of the lot. As far as I can tell, the protesters weren't fir…

How did you reach this conclusion?

Reading the other articles.

Re: Google’s fires four organizers after hiring union-busting firm

#33

Post by goatinaboat »

me_me_me wrote: post #6
sunstone wrote: post #2

So Google really has hit the nadir of the wall that Microsoft hit when Gates testified before the Justice department. It's a tough day for all of us Google fan boys but it's time to look in the mirror and carefully consider the current reality.

What always baffles me is the term fanboy, how in this day and age do we still have people believing/having faith in a company. They all did something abhorrent or yet to be caught doing it. And yet we have people who would seemingly jump into fire for a brand (even in face of damning facts). Is this a form of ancient tribalism still at play?

It’s vicarious living, there is so little real conflict in modern society, people enjoy participating in artificial conflicts such as sports teams, etc. Or inventing new categories to feel oppressed over.

Re: Google’s fires four organizers after hiring union-busting firm

#34

Post by 9HZZRfNlpR »

throwawaylolx wrote: post #26

This article is ranked 16th on HN first page right now, and it has 80 points, was posted 4 hours ago, and has 16 comments. A different article [1] is ranked 8th on HN right now, and it has 31 points, was also posted 4 hours ago and it has 18 comments. They were both posted about the same time, they have the same number of comments, but the article that has significantly more points is ranked significantly lower. If I…

Well before going full conspiracy, I believe a lot of tech people are anti union themselves compared to some other fields. I'm not one of them but as long as there is demand like right now for programmers, the conditions and pay is good.

Re: Google’s fires four organizers after hiring union-busting firm

#36

Post by netcan »

Currently, with the way labour organising works... it seems to either go nowhere, or go into a (belligerent) dichotomy. Professional organizers themselves often see it as an entirely dichotomous, zero-sum game, an inevitable conflict between opposite interests.

Overall I'm curious about unions. I haven't had much/any direct experience for >20 years. Most of the Union examples we have today are either public-ish sector or some old status quo union inherited from an old generation.

It's just hard for me to picture an old-school unionised version of Google or (more to the point) Amazon.

What is the end game or success case, for a Google union?

Re: Google’s fires four organizers after hiring union-busting firm

#37

Post by 9HZZRfNlpR »

m4r35n357 wrote: post #7

[flagged]

Comparing everything with nazis and Hitler is old and tiresome. Waiting for people who don't believe in unions respond you with nazi labor org German Labour Front and how they were socialists and you're back at beginning.

Re: Google’s fires four organizers after hiring union-busting firm

#38

Post by nova22033 »

LeonB wrote: post #28
PunchTornado wrote: post #14

> One of the workers set up notifications to receive emails detailing the work and whereabouts of other employees without their knowledge or consent. This is shady/creepy. There is no need to know when and where a colleague is every hour, every day. You shouldn’t be allowed to do this. I’m glad an employee who does this is getting fired because I wouldn’t feel safe around them. My calendar is public, but that doesn’t…

Google is a company based on surveillance. It crawls the entire world‘s data. It makes money by delivering messages to people you’ve never met based on the intelligence they’ve gathered about the people. They give you free tools for instrumenting websites to gather more intel about people, which is then stored on their servers. And the calendar notification claim relates to using a google product in the exact way it…

Google is a company based on surveillance. It crawls the entire world‘s data

You make it sound more nefarious that it is. If you don't want your data to be crawled, there's an easy solution. Even Rupert Murdoch, who complains about google all the time, won't take the simple step necessary to stop google from crawling the WSJ website.

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