Live data from Hacker News

Kickstarter Union voted 97.6% to ratify one of the first tech union contracts

twitter.com

301–310 of 313 posts

Re: Kickstarter Union voted 97.6% to ratify one of the first tech union contracts

#301
post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What an extremely elitist phrase. This! I hate when people talk about "unskilled labor" because there is no such thing. There definitely is work that requires less training than other jobs, but there is no such thing as unskilled labor.

You're certainly glad that your uber driver can't be suddenly promoted to airline pilot though, right?

Uber drivers have to pass an examination by the state which usually requires many hours of lessons and supervised training. How is that unskilled?

Re: Kickstarter Union voted 97.6% to ratify one of the first tech union contracts

#302

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It compounds them. Government has no incentive for real results, union leads to highly overpaid employees who are frequently caught not working on the clock. Two separate problems for sure, both bad for the rest

> union leads to highly overpaid employees who are frequently caught not working on the clock Can you demonstrate this, or provide any evidence for it at all? The reason I ask this is because you seem to be automatically assuming Union=Bad with no reason to do so.

Happens all the time in the MTA, just Google it

Re: Kickstarter Union voted 97.6% to ratify one of the first tech union contracts

#303
post #280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>"I know that name-calling is inherently unserious." But I must beg the question, if society normalizes and encourages violence against Nazis, doesn't that mean that calling someone a Nazi is a potentially serious act? And, what if they aren't really a Nazi? The term "stochastic terrorism" has been discussed and I believe it applies here. This is the definition I pulled from dicitonary.com: "the public demonization o…

>But I must beg the question, if society normalizes and encourages violence against Nazis, doesn't that mean that calling someone a Nazi is a potentially serious act? And, what if they aren't really a Nazi? Context is important and it seems like you are trying to blur that context for the sake of an argument. "Mitt Romeny is a Nazi" is not a serious opinion. "Punch a Nazi" is only a slightly more serious notion, but…

>"Punch a Nazi" is only a slightly more serious notion, but there is firmly a tongue in cheek aspect to it.

I think we are debating cross topic.

There is a literal argument that if you think someone is a Nazi you should punch them in the face. It is not a widespread sentiment but advocated by fringe people.

Others are arguing against the literal interpretation. If you disagree with the literal interpretation, I think discussion of abstractions would be more fruitful

Re: Kickstarter Union voted 97.6% to ratify one of the first tech union contracts

#304
post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I left because the UFCW wasn’t representing me. People think that unions are simply fair by default but some are really an Animal Farm where all animals are equal, just some are more equal than others.

Yeah, there are bad unions just like bad companies. At least they tend to have contracts when companies don't. I would love to have contracts be required via legislation rather than unions.

I'm sorry but the contract was screwing me. I worked (decades ago) as a third shift janitor in a 24 hour supermarket. My responsibilities included cleaning the customer and employee restrooms and also cleaning the meat cutting room. My union negotiated maximum hourly wage was less than the starting wage for stockers and cashiers. Why? Because there were maybe 10 janitors per store, whereas there were 100+ stockers and cashiers. So the union represented votes and 10 votes per store amounted to exactly what you think it would. This is why any sort of generic 'tech union' is going to be a failure in my opinion, because if you have 150 developers and 20 QA, for example, where do you think the equality will actually land. People will vote for the common good up to a point. Single occupation unions would possibly work, i.e. a QA union, a Developers union but would introduce other problems.

Contracts and unions aren't some magical cure all. Unions are political organizations and come with all the problems that political organizations have.

Re: Kickstarter Union voted 97.6% to ratify one of the first tech union contracts

#305

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're certainly glad that your uber driver can't be suddenly promoted to airline pilot though, right?

Uber drivers have to pass an examination by the state which usually requires many hours of lessons and supervised training. How is that unskilled?

85% of Americans have a driver's license too.

Re: Kickstarter Union voted 97.6% to ratify one of the first tech union contracts

#306
post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Holy crap those are some insane dues! I had a similar experience working for a grocery store at that age. I am pro-union since I have seen the good it does for trades, but it seemed scummy trying to convince me to join the union as a kid who was on his parents insurance at the time and didn't need benefits.

It's not dues, it's health insurance. And it's not really "scummy" of the union that health insurance had weird loopholes for kids.

Then why try to convince me to join if I'm paying into insurance and strike funds that I will never see any benefit from? I understand collective bargaining but it seems like they just wanted to trick high school kids into giving away 15% of their paychecks. Also even though the store had high union membership, my managers still pulled crap like calling me to the register during my legally mandated 15 minute break.

Re: Kickstarter Union voted 97.6% to ratify one of the first tech union contracts

#307

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> union leads to highly overpaid employees who are frequently caught not working on the clock Can you demonstrate this, or provide any evidence for it at all? The reason I ask this is because you seem to be automatically assuming Union=Bad with no reason to do so.

Happens all the time in the MTA, just Google it

So in other words, you can only prove the MTA has lazy employees, and are assuming that the union is causing that (with no evidence).

That's what I wanted to know, thanks!

Re: Kickstarter Union voted 97.6% to ratify one of the first tech union contracts

#308
post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The entire comic is predicated on a meme coming out rioting at UC Berkeley when Milo Yiannopoulos was scheduled to speak on campus It is a reference to a tweet from writer Mike Monteiro, who declared “It’s ok to punch nazis AND white male libertarians who wanna talk about free speech.” It is not about literal German Nazis, It is about attributing the title of Nazi to US conservatives and validating physical violence.

Equating people criticizing folks like Milo Yiannopoulos and Richard Spencer as people criticizing "US conservatives" says more about you and the Republican Party then the people doing the criticizing. These are not mainstream conservative people. They do not have mainstream conservative values. These are people who support extreme right wing policies including at times fascist policies. Basically every mainstream pl…

[dead]

Re: Kickstarter Union voted 97.6% to ratify one of the first tech union contracts

#309
post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What an extremely elitist phrase. This! I hate when people talk about "unskilled labor" because there is no such thing. There definitely is work that requires less training than other jobs, but there is no such thing as unskilled labor.

You're certainly glad that your uber driver can't be suddenly promoted to airline pilot though, right?

So you would define an airline pilot as skilled labor but driving an Uber (I have never used Uber, so I will compare it to a taxi) as unskilled labor.

Flying a plain certainly takes a skill. So does driving a car. Both are skills. They certainly differ in the time required to obtain that skill, but that does not change the fact than an unskilled person can't drive a car through dense urban traffic bringing you safely to your destination, neither can they land a an airplane.

If a job was really unskilled, anybody could do it without any training at all. People usually don't pay for actually unskilled things because they can do it themselves just as good

Re: Kickstarter Union voted 97.6% to ratify one of the first tech union contracts

#310
post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The union isn't my employer, why would I need their permission to work?

Because your employer wants the union to be happy. You also need the customer's permission to work; because if customers ask your employer to fire you, your employer will think that it's a good idea to fire you. edit: TBH, you need my permission to work, too, if I know enough of the customers or have enough followers on my twitter account.

I can assure you my employer would like the union to fuck off.

In a world where it isn't illegal to fire everyone who even thinks of joining the union, you might have some (ethically wrong) point. That's not in this world.

Post reply on HN