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

arstechnica.com

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

#301

Post by tablespoon »

fallingknife wrote: post #108
brightstep wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It won't happen because those criteria are antithetical to the purpose of a union. Unions are about solidarity as a working class against corporations. It doesn't work unless members see eachother as on the same side regardless of perceived competence

I'm not on the side of the dead weight I have to pull at work. Not ever. I'm not on the side of the useless union official who makes a multiple of my salary (taken out of my paycheck) for preaching "solidarity" to me. Results or GTFO. Union people talk like you, which is why Google doesn't need to convince me that unions are bad. Unions have already done the work for them.

It might be interesting to have a union that functions sort of like a cooperative consulting/contracting company with an exclusive contract: the employer pays the union, but the union itself performs hiring, firing, performance evaluations, etc. such that it's beneficial to the union itself to drop freeloaders.

Obviously there'd be a lot of complicated details to work out so the employer can't actually treat the union like it would a regular contracting company (e.g. a tool to keep its responsibilities to labor at even greater length, and fire with even less care).

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

#302

Post by dls2016 »

Tinyyy wrote: post #265
discardedrefuse wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is non-sense. There's no rule that says collectively bargained contracts can't include rewards or incentives for higher-performance. In fact, many do. Look at any professional sports contract. Players usually get bonuses for hitting predetermined stat goals on the field. Look at any teacher contract. Teachers get bonuses for attaining higher education and certifications, or simply taking on leadership roles.

How much do you think Lebron James would be paid in a free market without collective bargaining?

I don't know, how much would he make if the NBA wasn't a monopoly?

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

#303

Post by Aunche »

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.

So what exactly did Google spend their money on? What exactly did these "union-busting" consultants do? Like the other article posted yesterday, this one is remarkably lacking of details. If the pro-union side is pulling out their pitchforks despite a lack of substantive allegations, then why wouldn't the anti-union side do the same?

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

#304

Post by alistairSH »

minhazm wrote: post #271
kilroy123 wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yup, I truly don't understand why people in tech are so against this. It will likely be a net positive for all tech folks. In Hollywood they have SAG (Screen Actors Guild) so a large union for high paying jobs isn't unheard of in America.

Most members of SAG are not highly paid. The median income for an actor is $43,760, and even the 75th percentile is only $60,760. The numbers for SAG represented actors is similar to these numbers. The thing is that not all tech employees are paid the same, nor should they be. Google and other similar companies often times pay multiple times the median tech salary. [1] https://money.usnews.com/careers/best-jobs/actor…

NFLPA, NBPA, and MLBPA all exist as well. Those are definitely highly-paid members (minimum salaries of ~$600k/year for baseball and football, and just shy of $1million for basketball).

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

#305

Post by boh »

notahacker wrote: post #221
boh wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I don't think that rhetoric is going to convince many people who think they deserve an above average pay rise to accept the average instead :) Personally I don't think "stable labour policy" is more important than allowing people to ask for higher wages and receive or leave, but if I did I'd be more hostile to wage bargaining via collective threats to withdraw labour than individual ones...

If you work in a high margin, less capital intensive industry with more specialized labor categories, a union is likely less necessary. Unfortunately only a minority of American workers operate in such an environment. This minority of higher paid individuals aren't enough to power a massive economy centered on consumerism. Without a stable labor policy, you risk social instability, low growth rates and rising inequality.

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

#306

Post by croes »

everdrive wrote: post #153
UncleMeat wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These can all be true things. 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." For some reason we hold unions to an incredibly high standard of "no problems, ever" but this is never used to discourage al…

> 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!

But corporations rarely get busted. Talk is cheap, but unions have to face actions.

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

#308

Post by d4mi3n »

Jensson wrote: post #292
littlestymaar wrote: post #275

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

> A country being hostile to unions isn't nearly as bad as a country being hostile to corporations.

This is a very subjective conclusion that is likely very dependent on what economic class you fall into. Many folks on HN (myself included) fall into the category white collar or professional workers. For many other parts of the labor market, you're literally trading sweat and toil for money.

Add to this that labor intensive jobs tend to lead to a lot of physical wear and tear with less medical benefits than white collar professionals typically receive, then just by quality of life and welfare alone most people doing physical labor would come to opposite conclusions re: pro union vs pro cooperation economic/governmental policies.

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

#309

Post by croes »

Jensson wrote: post #189
airza wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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…

Unions in Scandinavia are pretty strong, doesn't look worse than the USA.

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

#310

Post by dls2016 »

endisneigh wrote: post #7
sanxiyn wrote: post #2

Unions don't suck, Google sucks.

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

Well, for a while they colluded with other tech giants to prevent this.

https://www.npr.org/sections/alltechconsidered/2015/01/16/37...

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