Bandcamp's Entire Union Bargaining Team Was Laid Off • Hacker News Board

Re: Bandcamp's Entire Union Bargaining Team Was Laid Off

#341

Post by s1artibartfast » Thu, Oct 19, 2023, 3:23 PM UTC

justin66 wrote: post #319

nemo44x wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IT doesn’t traditionally gafe unions in the USA. Teachers are unionized here and are one of the most powerful political forces. They are also a likely reason why so many people here don’t like unions.

> Teachers are unionized here and are one of the most powerful political forces. I cannot even imagine what sort of lens you'd have to be looking through to identify teachers as "one of the most powerful political forces" in the United States. Certainly the awesome political power they wield hasn't helped to increase salaries (compare them to any other credentialed profession requiring a college degree), or prevent c…

At the same time, unions make it impossible to fire bad teachers

Only a handful of teachers have been fired in the last 20 years in California

Re: Bandcamp's Entire Union Bargaining Team Was Laid Off

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Post by g-b-r » Thu, Oct 19, 2023, 3:25 PM UTC

sickcodebruh wrote: post #209

For some context, it’s important to understand the degree to which Bandcamp’s success and ubiquity with independent music is built on a people-first, anti-corporate culture. Bandcamp is an obsession for a very large and engaged segment of the independent music world. A good friend, a professional musician, told me “I feel like I’m watching my childhood home burn to the ground.” This is far from a unique sentiment. Pe…

If you succeed in making it a Bandcamp alternative please make the tos and privacy terms extremely brief and transparent, for me (and I imagine many other privacy-minded people) that's one of the most important factors in deciding to try and trust a service these days

Re: Bandcamp's Entire Union Bargaining Team Was Laid Off

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Post by banannaise » Thu, Oct 19, 2023, 3:26 PM UTC

haneefmubarak wrote: post #280

epilys wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you perhaps know how this works legally? I'm curious. Did their contracts under Epic say something in the lines of, "on the event of ownership change your contracts are null and void" just like that?

My estimation is that Epic sold all of the IP (name, other trademarks, code, infrastructure, etc) along with the right to be the successor to the extensive license agreements and contracts that they held. Included in this is HR records, which allows the new owner to make offers to the folks that Epic is no longer employing after the deal finishe(d/s). M&A transactions can get pretty complicated for exactly these reas…

"Hey, we sold your entire department's work to this subsidiary, but we're keeping you as part of the parent company. Oh look, there's no work for you to do! You're all laid off. I hear this new subsidiary is hiring."

Re: Bandcamp's Entire Union Bargaining Team Was Laid Off

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Post by gizmo » Thu, Oct 19, 2023, 3:26 PM UTC

jacobr1 wrote: post #302

gizmo wrote: post #283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does a judge want to set the precedent that union busting is legal when you do it with extra steps? 1) Fire everybody 2) Create new corporate entity 3) Rehire the meek and compliant 4) Sell corporate entity back to original company Judges tend to get very cranky when they have to deal with shenanigans like these.

Except there is no #4 in this case. The question really should just be in #1 is legal. The extra shenanigans doesn't change that question.

But it would still set the /precedent/ that you can lawfully shed troublesome employees who you could otherwise not fire by changing the ownership structure of a company.

#1 by itself is not illegal. When companies move a factory overseas they also just fire everybody. Not nice, but not illegal.

Re: Bandcamp's Entire Union Bargaining Team Was Laid Off

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Post by ToucanLoucan » Thu, Oct 19, 2023, 3:27 PM UTC

yoyohello13 wrote: post #334

plussed_reader wrote: post #328

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So why am I still using and recommending VLC? Because it doesn't have to be that way. In before the true scotsman of software lifecycles.

VLC is developed by a non-profit (as far as I'm aware). I'm kind of interested in what the world would be like if all companies were non-profit.

I mean Google started as a non-profit and basically defined the search engine and it's tools. Then it went private, continued briefly, and has slid more and more into yet another corporate rent-seeker ever since.

I don't even think it's necessarily profit vs. non-profit, I think it's private vs. shareholder ownership. Once the shareholder brain-worms take root, a company will set itself on fire to maintain the illusion of quarterly growth, because anything else is failure. Even if you somehow managed to dominate a market to complete exclusion of meaningful competitors, if you fail to grow, you are failing. That is fucking absurd. A company reaching a natural plateau of steady customers generating excellent profits is, by Wall Street's definition, a failed business. I'm reminded of Greta Thunberg's notion of "the fantasy of infinite growth."

For-profit entities certainly can do some sketchy things to ensure profitability, and that warrants skepticism. But you really only see the truly brain dead nonsense decisions from publicly traded corporations. Shit like laying off 2/3 of your staff because you had a less profitable period (not not-profitable, _less_ profitable!).

Re: Bandcamp's Entire Union Bargaining Team Was Laid Off

#346

Post by g-b-r » Thu, Oct 19, 2023, 3:28 PM UTC

yoyohello13 wrote: post #304

sickcodebruh wrote: post #209

For some context, it’s important to understand the degree to which Bandcamp’s success and ubiquity with independent music is built on a people-first, anti-corporate culture. Bandcamp is an obsession for a very large and engaged segment of the independent music world. A good friend, a professional musician, told me “I feel like I’m watching my childhood home burn to the ground.” This is far from a unique sentiment. Pe…

Someone makes something awesome that people love, it gets bought by a giant company, the giant company extracts as much value as possible and discards the corpse, someone makes an awesome new version. This is the software lifecycle.

The difference here is that the owners had always signaled to not want to do it

Re: Bandcamp's Entire Union Bargaining Team Was Laid Off

#347

Post by DHPersonal » Thu, Oct 19, 2023, 3:30 PM UTC

internetsamurai wrote: post #339

sspiff wrote: post #320

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was wondering why noone had started a bandcamp alternative as I read this article. Bandcamp isn't a complicated product. It's the people and content that define its value. If trust and goodwill are eroded, then the platform loses its value. Glad to see an independent initiative in this space.

There are quite a few alternatives - Resonate, focused on streaming ( https://resonate.coop/ ) and Formaviva, focused on independent electronic music ( https://formaviva.com/ )

Rob Dougan (you'd know him from The Matrix soundtrack) started selling his music on Gumroad a while ago. https://robdougan.gumroad.com/

Re: Bandcamp's Entire Union Bargaining Team Was Laid Off

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Post by kjkjadksj » Thu, Oct 19, 2023, 3:31 PM UTC

tomcam wrote: post #261

Fischgericht wrote: post #254

In any case anyone wants to read about a EU perspective: Over here in Germany the "trick" of doing an asset deal to get rid of employees (and any benefits they may have earned over time) is very risky, and can fire back massively. It's not a black-and-white thing, but the labor courts have check-lists: - Are people at the new company work on the same tasks as they did in the old one? - Are people at the new company s…

Super informative. I must reveal my bias toward a free market here, but I also remember keenly what it was like to be a powerless employee. Germany appears to have by far the strongest economy in the EU but with higher unemployment than the USA. I’d love to hear your thoughts on the balance there vs the USA? I can imagine compelling arguments for each approach.

Are unemployment benefits better in germany? If they are you’d expect it to be higher than the US, as in the US workers might run out of the social support network sooner and be forced to take any job just to eat and shelter.

Re: Bandcamp's Entire Union Bargaining Team Was Laid Off

#349

Post by banannaise » Thu, Oct 19, 2023, 3:31 PM UTC

InTheArena wrote: post #246

ivolimmen wrote: post #49

I find it so weird to read these stories on how Americans cope with unionizing. In the Netherlands where I live it is very common and normal to be member of a union. Most branches have a union, IT sector is a "free sector" and does not have a union. My wife works as a teacher and she is member of a union.

Unions in America are much more militant and much less cooperative, much more likely to go to zero-sum negotiations than in Europe. They also are far far far more corrupt than unions in Europe.

Is it possible that this is caused in part by corporations being much more militant and much less cooperative, as evidenced by what they do to employees when there isn't a union?

If the corporation refuses to cooperate (and this seems to be the norm), the union's only option is to fight.

Re: Bandcamp's Entire Union Bargaining Team Was Laid Off

#350

Post by JumpCrisscross » Thu, Oct 19, 2023, 3:33 PM UTC

ToucanLoucan wrote: post #345

yoyohello13 wrote: post #334

Earlier quoted context omitted.

VLC is developed by a non-profit (as far as I'm aware). I'm kind of interested in what the world would be like if all companies were non-profit.

I mean Google started as a non-profit and basically defined the search engine and it's tools. Then it went private, continued briefly, and has slid more and more into yet another corporate rent-seeker ever since. I don't even think it's necessarily profit vs. non-profit, I think it's private vs. shareholder ownership. Once the shareholder brain-worms take root, a company will set itself on fire to maintain the illusi…

> if you somehow managed to dominate a market to complete exclusion of meaningful competitors, if you fail to grow, you are failing

This is a trope in Silicon Valley, but it's simply not true. Most companies in a developed economy aim for a stable state, i.e. close to zero real growth with payments made to investors via sole proprietorship pay-outs, dividends and/or debt.

Now a growth company is worth more than a stable-state one, ceteris paribus, so there are incentives to promise it. If your promise growth and fail to grow, you are failing. That doesn't mean the company is failing. It's just mismanaged and likely misrepresented by its capital structure.