I think we should all pause and consider how it is that at a 120k person company, an announcement by 230 people to unionize makes headline news.
Could it be yet another instance of a "journalist" acting as advocate?
A group of Google workers have announced plans to unionize
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Re: A group of Google workers have announced plans to unionize
#322Many people don't realise this but unions don't just negotiate salaries. They assure rights aren't being violated, promote ethical, safe and healthy workplaces, prevent and fight against discrimination and unfair treatment, fight wrongful dismissal, etc.
Indeed. HR has incentives to side with the employer, where a union rep has incentives to side with the employee.
In Belgium, every company of a certain size is required to have a union rep. They provide a lot of services you would expect HR to provide: being the point of contact for complains, clarify certain rights and obligations, etc. Even when a national holiday falls on a weekend, the company has to agree with the union rep how that will be recuperated. Unions in Belgium typically do not negotiate salaries, except for cases where there's statutes involved (e.g. gov workers like teachers).
Re: A group of Google workers have announced plans to unionize
#323Earlier quoted context omitted.
You list teachers, who in my opinion are the poster children of how problematic unions are. And there are some phenomenal teachers out there. There are teachers that change lives profoundly. But they don't need the unions, and the terrible teachers who should be fired /are/ protected. It's really messed up, most people have first-hand experience with it, and they are a corrosive factor in the end.
I think it's pretty hard to claim that the reason there are bad teachers is because it's hard to fire them because they're unionized. There are a lot of potential reasons: - The pay is crap - The "prestige" is crap - The barrier to entry is low In Finland, for example, there are excellent teachers because the profession is treated as on par with doctors. I don't think it's fair to blame unions for this difference in…
Your first two reasons are not valid reasons for being a bad employee. Both are knowable before taking the job. If you take a job knowing the pay is bad and you justify being a bad employee because the pay is bad, you’re a shitty person.
The third reason I don’t think is true. Teaching is in the class of occupations that require government certification.
Re: A group of Google workers have announced plans to unionize
#324Earlier quoted context omitted.
Essentially the different is that Google is so incredibly culty that people refuse to leave even when they're grossly mistreated and the company does incredibly unethical things. Everyone in big tech has job mobility, so for someone to care to unionize, they have to not want to leave . So where in other tech companies, unhappy employees leave, at Google they try to "fix" it, which has led to these unionization type e…
> Everyone in big tech has job mobility, Except for immigrants pending green card/citizenship...
That is definitely true, and unfortunately tech companies have been abusing H-1B laws flagrantly in order to hire trapped workers they can underpay. (https://www.cnet.com/news/facebook-accused-by-trump-administ... is particularly blatant.)
That being said, without the employees who could leave, but choose not to, Google would not survive. Hiring underpaid immigrants can only get you so far.
Re: A group of Google workers have announced plans to unionize
#325> Google workers announce plans to unionise
uh, are they still not unionised? weird.
what to say: I hope it is not just an announce.
Re: A group of Google workers have announced plans to unionize
#326Earlier quoted context omitted.
> but when you already work at the company that pays and treats their employees like Google, I'm not sure what more you are entitled to. Google made something like 300,000 in profit per employee in 2019. There are regular complaints about benefits and pay multipliers being cut back. Why shouldn't workers seek to capture as much of their labor as possible? People don't seem to complain when businesses do that.
Just call it what it is, greed. Why is it greedy if company owners want to make money, but "good and social" if workers want to make money? I don't think the "earnings per employee" metric entitles employees to anything.
I don’t think profit per employee entitles an employee to more salary, but it can justify or prove that the company can afford to pay more.
I think unions exist specifically to help employees in their struggle to be greedy against a greedy boss or shareholders.
Do you work harder in a partnership where you get 50% or as an employee making 1% of your value?
Has corporate greed harmed its own profits and innovation by failing to adequately pay its employees?
I think greed is good to a point, then it becomes detrimental to self and society.
Re: A group of Google workers have announced plans to unionize
#327Earlier quoted context omitted.
Credit everyone by name or credit no one by name. It is inherently unfair to only credit key talent.
It's also incredibly unfair to credit people not really related to the actual product. Should the names of all the employees of some bookstore in Wyoming be in the credits for Harry Potter books? The credits for God of War PS4 were 28 minutes long listing pretty much every employ of Sony in all countries down to caterers. Personally I find that insulting and unfair to the actual creative team that made the game.
Which is why credit appearance order and grouping is such a big deal and part of contract negotiation in films. Earlier appearances is supposed to signify importance (notice when a group of names isn't alphabetical), along with pre-title and marketing materials credits and the slideshow credits separate from the rolling credits.
Re: A group of Google workers have announced plans to unionize
#328What is HN doing about serious attempts from the likes of Pinkertons to create FUD in these threads? We know for a fact that tech companies are their customer, and we know they're ruthless in online disinfo. Is HN doing any monitoring to the discourse to make sure the comments are coming from actual individuals rather than a company buying up a bunch of HN accounts with history and creating disfino and FUD?
It shouldn't be shocking that a site full of tech nerds is going to be rallying for meritocracy when these unions want 1% of salaries.
I don't see how a union would make my life better. When I hate my job, I leave my job and find a new one within a week. If I am swapping into a new role or looking for something specific, a month.
I just see this as creating an additional bureaucratic layer that steals my money and gives me the same rights I currently do.
What more could someone want? Foot massages? Even at a non-FAANG company, life as an SE is very comfortable.
Re: A group of Google workers have announced plans to unionize
#329It seems incredibly significant that only 230 people are officially involved with these plans to unionize. As of 2019, Google had nearly 120,000 employees.[0] That seems quite small, relatively speaking. Legally (I think, just learning about this now), to form a union, a majority of workers must show their willingness to form a union. Alternatively, to choose an existing union to join, an election with 30% of the wor…
Traditional unions target specific job role at specific locations, where you only need people in that job at that location to vote for unionization. It seems like a lofty goal to try to unionize the whole company in one go, when you don't have a track record of successes at a small scale you can point to as reasons that this union is a good idea on a large scale.
You have to start some where, I was involved in successfully recovering collective representation for senior sales grades in BT a while back.
Also I believe in the USA has structural issues where each location has a union and not a whole company un ion
Re: A group of Google workers have announced plans to unionize
#330When I talk to colleagues in tech about unions I hear a lot of misconceptions, seemingly based in stereotypes about what unions are for and who they serve. People often seem to think of unions as being purely blue-collar operations, and this just isn't true. For example, I've had people tell me that they don't support unions in tech because they'll be "paid less", or less competent engineers will be promoted faster.…
>because they'll be "paid less", or less competent engineers will be promoted faster.
The first thing is strictly true. Every union takes dues. It is not strictly true that pay/compensation will increase in all cases.
The second thing is true a lot of the time. Unions tend to wind up using seniority as the primary metric for positions and compensations.
Why ignore those things?