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New Facebook tool allows employers to suppress “unionize” in workplace chat

theintercept.com

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Re: New Facebook tool allows employers to suppress “unionize” in workplace chat

#341

Post by stronglikedan »

ShamelessC wrote: post #79
teddyh wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here’s a good article to show people: http://habitatchronicles.com/2007/03/the-untold-history-of-t...

Rocket League's approach to this is very good. The D-pad is bound to several predefined words and phrases that are useful such as "Nice shot!" or "Great pass!". Because of the fast paced nature of the game it's pretty tough to try to abuse this system (maybe by spelling words with the first letters of allowed phrases?) but no one does that. To appease the folks who wanted to express that they were using a curse word,…

> Rocket League has gotten about as close to possible to solving the issue.

To be fair, it was Tribes that solved that issue, and Rocket League just implemented it.

Re: New Facebook tool allows employers to suppress “unionize” in workplace chat

#342

Post by ecf »

objclxt wrote: post #25

I used to work at Facebook, and it was always interesting to me to see just how many engineers were actively against - aghast, even - at the idea of unions. Whenever it would come up on the internal boards the arguments were usually along the lines of: * "People who don't deserve to be paid more will get more money under a union" * "I'll be paid less under a union" * "Unions will slow us down, and we'll become more b…

Many tech people have had very limited interaction with unions, and usually those interactions are negative.

For example, I was not allowed to run ethernet through the paneled ceiling to hard wire our conference rooms for the startup I was at.

Why? Well the building had a contract with a unionized cabling company so every cabling job in the building HAD to be done by them. We would have been charged thousands and had to wait weeks for a job I could do myself in 30 minutes.

Re: New Facebook tool allows employers to suppress “unionize” in workplace chat

#343

Post by nashashmi »

jimmaswell wrote: post #324
objclxt wrote: post #25

I used to work at Facebook, and it was always interesting to me to see just how many engineers were actively against - aghast, even - at the idea of unions. Whenever it would come up on the internal boards the arguments were usually along the lines of: * "People who don't deserve to be paid more will get more money under a union" * "I'll be paid less under a union" * "Unions will slow us down, and we'll become more b…

I'll never forget the union at a convention center that forced vendors to pay them to move anything from their own car they couldn't carry. Nothing but extortionist bullies squeezing every cent of protection money they could out of the people there who actually make things and add value to the world. In contrast, these union employees were nothing but parasites. They did nothing the vendors couldn't do themselves, wh…

Union rules are about making sure a management team does not subject employees to random jobs. It is a about adding a control over management.

In other words, in my office an employee is not allowed to hang a whiteboard on to a wall. Because building mandates only union employees can make such hardware modifications.

Fine you are protecting the job of the union but what you are really doing is prevent job creep or scope creep.

Another hypothetical example: no employee is allowed to work past 5 pm. Sure hardworking employees want to. But when they do, the put the pressure on other employees to do the same. This kind of culture is net negative.

Re: New Facebook tool allows employers to suppress “unionize” in workplace chat

#344

Post by pnutjam »

ethbro wrote: post #185
piva00 wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The same system is used in most of Scandinavia, the union-government-employer tripod where the government acts as a facilitator and the union and employers negotiate a collective agreement.

I read a study on international power polarities, and they noted that truly independent tripolar was among the most stable configurations from a game theory perspective. Broadly summarizing, the potential for the remaining tie-breaker to defect to either side tends to keep participants honest, even if they're bitterly opposed.

After thousands of online games of RISK, I concur.

Often you find yourself in a situation where nobody can win, but anyone can choose who wins if they commit to losing.

Unfortunately, it's rare all three participants realize the situation.

Re: New Facebook tool allows employers to suppress “unionize” in workplace chat

#345

Post by [deleted] »

jimmaswell wrote: post #324
objclxt wrote: post #25

I used to work at Facebook, and it was always interesting to me to see just how many engineers were actively against - aghast, even - at the idea of unions. Whenever it would come up on the internal boards the arguments were usually along the lines of: * "People who don't deserve to be paid more will get more money under a union" * "I'll be paid less under a union" * "Unions will slow us down, and we'll become more b…

I'll never forget the union at a convention center that forced vendors to pay them to move anything from their own car they couldn't carry. Nothing but extortionist bullies squeezing every cent of protection money they could out of the people there who actually make things and add value to the world. In contrast, these union employees were nothing but parasites. They did nothing the vendors couldn't do themselves, wh…

[deleted]

Re: New Facebook tool allows employers to suppress “unionize” in workplace chat

#346

Post by pietrovismara »

x86_64Ubuntu wrote: post #338
jimmaswell wrote: post #324

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'll never forget the union at a convention center that forced vendors to pay them to move anything from their own car they couldn't carry. Nothing but extortionist bullies squeezing every cent of protection money they could out of the people there who actually make things and add value to the world. In contrast, these union employees were nothing but parasites. They did nothing the vendors couldn't do themselves, wh…

So because you can't move a piece of furniture, you believe it cancels the amount of protections and good from unionization?!

That kinda shows you what privilege is and how it conditions the political discussion. If you never had to face a problem (never needed someone to protect you against greedy employers), it is so hard to understand why that it's relevant.

Re: New Facebook tool allows employers to suppress “unionize” in workplace chat

#347

Post by capdeck »

jimmaswell wrote: post #324
objclxt wrote: post #25

I used to work at Facebook, and it was always interesting to me to see just how many engineers were actively against - aghast, even - at the idea of unions. Whenever it would come up on the internal boards the arguments were usually along the lines of: * "People who don't deserve to be paid more will get more money under a union" * "I'll be paid less under a union" * "Unions will slow us down, and we'll become more b…

I'll never forget the union at a convention center that forced vendors to pay them to move anything from their own car they couldn't carry. Nothing but extortionist bullies squeezing every cent of protection money they could out of the people there who actually make things and add value to the world. In contrast, these union employees were nothing but parasites. They did nothing the vendors couldn't do themselves, wh…

This is an excellent example why unions are wrong solution to a bigger problem - lack of universal healthcare, free education and guaranteed pension. If we had the three above - there won't be a need for unions because you are not loosing _everything_ when you are loosing a job.

Until this bigger problem is fixed unions will remain one of the very few things workers can do to improve their odds in life. So you can't be for or against them - it is the only logical outcome of the current social order.

Re: New Facebook tool allows employers to suppress “unionize” in workplace chat

#348

Post by claudeganon »

nogabebop23 wrote: post #337
dijit wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the same argument I see americans make a lot. "Unions are bad!", no, the concept is fine, you have some bad ones. "Police are bad!", no, the concept is fine, yours are just untrained and overburdened. "Public transport is bad, I need a car!", no, the concept is fine, you just have bad public transport and that forms your opinion.

OK - but your response could be abstracted to Q: "Why is X so bad?" A: "You're doing it wrong" Could it also be that Y is always/sometimes just better?

If the evidence is that American institutions fail where the vast majority of developed countries succeed, the onus would seem to fall on the “American” part and not the institutions. The same logic applies for healthcare, public transportation, and representative democracy.

Re: New Facebook tool allows employers to suppress “unionize” in workplace chat

#349

Post by siruncledrew »

yibg wrote: post #316
objclxt wrote: post #25

I used to work at Facebook, and it was always interesting to me to see just how many engineers were actively against - aghast, even - at the idea of unions. Whenever it would come up on the internal boards the arguments were usually along the lines of: * "People who don't deserve to be paid more will get more money under a union" * "I'll be paid less under a union" * "Unions will slow us down, and we'll become more b…

I don't think it's necessarily based on misconceptions about what unions are, but also their own experience and from what they hear from people they know. We've already seen in this thread very different personal experiences with unions, often based on where they are. e.g. folks in Europe seems to have mostly positive interactions, where as folks in the US negative. I personally don't want an union in my work place.…

What I have learned from U.S. union interactions is that people who profit from bureaucracy love adding more bureaucracy to the system.

The "boxing match" analogy is reflective of the "us against them" power struggle between those trying to leverage their own hand at the expense of someone else in the U.S. corporate-union world.

This is contrasting to the concepts in Europe of labor stakeholders having a roundtable and coming to compromise as a group effort... not that it's perfect, just a different system.

Re: New Facebook tool allows employers to suppress “unionize” in workplace chat

#350

Post by gpanders »

C1sc0cat wrote: post #156
0-O-0 wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> union is something the workers create and run I just assume that it's almost never going to be the case. It might look like it's created by worker, but it's created by a sub group of workers which is unhappy with a status quo. This effort will be led by even smaller sub group of activists that have a drive and skillset to organise and weasel into a leadership positions. Worker run union seems to be even more implau…

Unions are run by the members

Just like democracies are run by the voters?

True in principle, but rarely in practice.

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