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Google Urged the U.S. to Limit Protection for Activist Workers

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Re: Google Urged the U.S. to Limit Protection for Activist Workers

#311

Post by fixermark »

biesnecker wrote: post #157
rconti wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Being pro-employee does not necessarily mean being pro-union.

Technically no, but practically it does, so long as massive corporations exist. I think you can argue that with smaller scale business you can work to better employee conditions without collective action, but given the power and resources that a corporation can bring to bear it's hard to imagine effective bettering of employee conditions without collective action.

> Technically no, but practically it does, so long as massive corporations exist

That's an interesting assertion that you seem to be accepting as universally axiomatic.

(... or perhaps, a self-referential definition. Maybe a company isn't "massive" until one observes behaviors that suggest the company is purposefully acting counter to employee quality-of-life wishes?)

Re: Google Urged the U.S. to Limit Protection for Activist Workers

#312

Post by polishTar »

Retric wrote: post #35
ocdtrekkie wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They'll be upset and "outraged", before returning to work. I keep thinking, each time Google is in the news, that this is finally the day engineers will just walk off the job and not come back. But I know it probably isn't. Even those who have every ability to find a new job quickly will find some excuse to justify staying.

Google has a very high turnover rate relative to company age pay etc at just 3.2 years on average. So, I suspect they really do lose a lot of people over this stuff, they just keep hiring at a very fast pace.

This is absolutely not true. You might be confusing median tenure with turnover rate, but those are drastically different things; especially so in a company that’s growing.

Re: Google Urged the U.S. to Limit Protection for Activist Workers

#313

Post by fixermark »

kome wrote: post #156
typon wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are technically right yet still downvoted. These days these words have so many different definitions for different people that they've become nearly meaningless.

To be fair, I was expecting the downvotes. For two reasons: 1) For a long time, there was no "institutional" left in the United States; so in the US - liberalism was seen as the "left". This is slowly changing now... 2) The tech crowd wants really to believe to be progressive (because they work on "progressive" technologies); but in fact, I never saw so many real life liberals like among tech workers.

Tech workers seem to tend towards social liberalism, but economic conservatism bordering on libertarianism (if not actual, avowed libertarianism).

It's an interesting combination that doesn't fit super-well into America's dominant left-right political axis.

Re: Google Urged the U.S. to Limit Protection for Activist Workers

#314

Post by zjaffee »

anticensor wrote: post #107
josephv wrote: post #79

These comments read like a bunch of low-income retail shoppers defending Walmart because they provide something they otherwise couldn't get. I think these types of debates are bellwether for programmer/IT professional unionization. These are the exact types of lawsuits brought against organized labor as it was trying to get organized to prevent exploitative behavior. It's disturbing to see these same anti-organizatio…

If the employee side is numerous enough to unionise, the employer side should also be numerous enough to establish an employer organisation.

Historically anti trust laws in the united states considered unions as potential trusts that the government would be able to break up. However, they later repealed that piece because it's completely absurd. Even the most powerful union is unable to form a trust in the way that companies can do in order to systemically underpay workers.

Re: Google Urged the U.S. to Limit Protection for Activist Workers

#315

Post by techntoke »

SolaceQuantum wrote: post #246
vips7L wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are not forced to do any of those things. You are able to find a new employer whenever you want.

I might not able to find a new employer whenever I want. I might not have time to job search because I have children. I might have dependents or I myself need critical medical care that cannot be interrupted by job hopping. I might have a family emergency that has destroyed my savings to look for a new job. I might be in the point of my career in which leaving for a new job so soon would be a red flag to employers. I…

Agreed.. thank you for being aware of these issues. I find the tech industry to be pretty toxic & corrupt overall, usually rewarding the employees that are the least ethical.

Re: Google Urged the U.S. to Limit Protection for Activist Workers

#316

Post by fixermark »

MattyRad wrote: post #263
throwaway5752 wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Search results quality is decreasing (which is just my personal speculation, DDG is usually retrieves less polluted results). My experience is that DDG results are terrible. I try it periodically and never lasts more than a day. Has that changed?

I should clarify, google is rife with visual noise, especially for simple queries. As an example, try googling "how to clean rain gutters" in both search engines. You'll need to scroll half down the page, past "Suggested Clip", past "People also ask", past "Videos", to finally arrive at the 1st search result. DDG also shows videos, but doesn't require scrolling. EDIT: I forgot about ads because I use an ad blocker! I…

I think you're perceiving some signal as noise. For me personally, that "Suggested Clip" is what I'd be searching for.

Re: Google Urged the U.S. to Limit Protection for Activist Workers

#317

Post by fixermark »

mbrumlow wrote: post #262
newscracker wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A somewhat recent news about Google’s silence on sexual harassment by men at senior levels while paying them big exit packages a few years ago. Logging people in to Chrome automatically and then backing out after heavy backlash. Google tracking Android users’ location and using it even when they have turned it off. Then there’s also an older one — Google’s bypassing of Safari’s privacy protection through default bloc…

By men youean man. And isolated events with individual employees who arguably had alot of power -- given he founded Android -- is a non issue in this argument. Google or any company has no responsibility or should be required to publicly shame employees who misbehave. And it really is non of your or my business that any of that happened. The rest of your conserns seem valid though.

As a shareholder at Google, it is absolutely one's business whether the company is paying hush money to make personnel problems go away.

Re: Google Urged the U.S. to Limit Protection for Activist Workers

#318

Post by gcb0 »

can someone translate this in a way any layperson can understand?

""" In an emailed statement, a Google spokeswoman said, "We're not lobbying for changes to any rules." Rather, she said, Google's claim that the Obama-era protections should be overturned was "a legal defense that we included as one of many possible defenses" against meritless claims at the NLRB. """

thanks!

Re: Google Urged the U.S. to Limit Protection for Activist Workers

#319

Post by AlexB138 »

Zeklandia wrote: post #255
chrisseaton wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Unions explicitly fight to support all of these people. Unions fight to support newcomers? Common union tactics such as closed shops and seniority-based pay agreements are deliberately and severely hostile to newcomers. > overperforming workers Only a union supporter could argue that a worker can 'overperform'! Tell them to stop doing so well they're making everyone else look bad!

Overperformance is when a worker overexerts themselves, by working themselves harder or for longer. Overperformance is a problem because it exerts pressure on the other workers to do the same, leading to a runaway effect of increasing expectation for results while workers are left exhausting their bodies and their time, and often their own personal resources, trying to meet that expectation in order to not be fired o…

I have a difficult time understanding this world view. A worker choosing on their own to work extra to get ahead is called sacrifice, and is one of the things that differentiates people who do enough to get a paycheck and people who get noticed and promoted.

Coming up with a way to say someone who outworks you is somehow the bad guy because they make you look bad is exactly the kind of mentality that makes me want nothing to do with union membership.

Re: Google Urged the U.S. to Limit Protection for Activist Workers

#320

Post by zjaffee »

rjf72 wrote: post #26
bb101 wrote: post #8

It just goes to show that a large company is made up of many different people in different departments, sometimes with different agendas. It appears that there is a conflict of vision within Google.

I would never judge a company based on their words. Most corporations spend immense amounts of money on public relations firms, and these firms are pretty decent at their job. And words can be faked - lies, deception. If you want to see what a company truly is judge them by their actions, particularly ones that are not obvious PR efforts. Google in recent times: - looking to move into China and create a censored sear…

Don't forget the continued mistreatment of contract workers.
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