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New York Times Tech Guild goes on strike

washingtonpost.com

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Re: New York Times Tech Guild goes on strike

#361

I am also a member of the union at NPR, on the subway headed to the picket line in solidarity right now. Happy to answer any questions. I encourage everyone to respect the picket line and get your news elsewhere until the workers get a deal. The Times Workers are holding the line against arbitrary return to office mandates and for Just Cause protections. The vast majority of HN consists of developers, designers, QA,…

It sounds like the biggest contention is just cause for terminations instead of at will. If the employer normally isn't firing people without a good reason it sounds like an easy win. Why do they fight these negotiations so much?

I imagine they want to be able to let people go without building extensive cases against them. While being let go without a good reason isn't fun, neither is working with toxic people while the company tries to build a case against them.

Re: New York Times Tech Guild goes on strike

#362

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I see people critique those numbers as being “too high”, or demands for additional compensation “unreasonable”, I can’t help but think those people don’t understand that $100k is very much the new $45k of the 2000s, and has much less purchasing power than the latter did at the time. Truth be told, for the present cost of living in the Northeast in general, you’re looking at a family income of $300k to be “comfor…

Cost of living has gotten really insane today compared to a couple decades ago. Its pretty easy to go to college on loans and rack up $150k in debt for an average 4-year degree. Its easy to spend $35k-$50k on a new car, even 10 year old cars in good shape are $10k-$15k. Housing costs vary a lot more by area, but I think most would agree its extremely expensive these days. The idea that a young family could have $5,00…

> Its pretty easy to go to college on loans and rack up $150k in debt for an average 4-year degree.

It isn't easy for a 4-year degree. To get to that level generally requires law school or medical school debt or an unfunded graduate degree.

For 4-year degrees around 80% of students graduate with less than $30k in debt.

For public schools only 7% of graduates have debt above $50k. For private nonprofit schools 12% have debt above $50k. For private for-profit schools it is 32%.

Re: New York Times Tech Guild goes on strike

#363

Have devs at any of the large tech companies ever tried to unionize? If not, why not?

I get that this is an american comment. But usually you are focused on each trades. In Sweden we have an "office worker" union.

- https://www.unionen.se/in-english/this-is-unionen

You can be in finance, hr, it, dev, engineering etc. Because we all want transparency, good salary, protection, 40h work weeks, overtime etc.

A union is not going to be involved in specifics like if we use Linux or Microsoft, so why does it need to be tech focused?

Re: New York Times Tech Guild goes on strike

#364

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Due process for employment is probably more important than fair pay in most union contracts. Your argument is in fact that exact same one that was used to argue against due process in legal proceedings. "In reality it doesn't play out and you get this group of criminals running free on legal technicalities." If you are in a union shop and have a large contingent of unproductive employees, it happens for the same reas…

> Your argument is in fact that exact same one that was used to argue against due process in legal proceedings. "In reality it doesn't play out and you get this group of criminals running free on legal technicalities." Dumb comparison. Losing a job is not the same as losing a legal action. You can’t just go get a different life if you’re convicted of robbery. > it happens for the same reason as non-union shops. You h…

Where is this legendary employer who instantly hires all takers, no questions asked?

Re: New York Times Tech Guild goes on strike

#365

> The two sides negotiated until late Sunday. The sticking points in recent days were over whether they could get a “just cause” provision in their contract, which means workers can be terminated only for misconduct or another such reason; pay increases and pay equity; and return-to-office policies. This seems like a LOT of issues that still need to be hammered out. It would be one thing if they were disagreeing abou…

> Striking during election week is kind of a crappy move to pull. It's smart. The one week where americans manage pull their head out of their ass is a good time to move.

Why not both smart and crappy?

Re: New York Times Tech Guild goes on strike

#366

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

it's not anti union propaganda. The largest union in the United States is the public school teachers union. It has explicitly fought against merit based pay for decades. Other Unions like the electricians unions also sets up seniority base systems. You can proclaim that it's propaganda all you want, but what matters is whether or not it's actually true. I agree that the union has no incentive to look after the benefi…

[flagged]

Re: New York Times Tech Guild goes on strike

#367

> The two sides negotiated until late Sunday. The sticking points in recent days were over whether they could get a “just cause” provision in their contract, which means workers can be terminated only for misconduct or another such reason; pay increases and pay equity; and return-to-office policies. This seems like a LOT of issues that still need to be hammered out. It would be one thing if they were disagreeing abou…

> workers can be terminated only for misconduct or another such reason This is such a weird request for technology workers. You want to work with low-performing coworkers?

Who your boss says is "low-performing" may not match your own experience of who is "low-performing", and may include e.g. people who the boss doesn't personally like, or indeed may include you yourself.

Re: New York Times Tech Guild goes on strike

#368

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think Boeing developers might be part of their engineers union. Tech companies tend not to unionize, because most developers don't see net gain to be had from unionizing. Most unions end up serving the interest of the union instead of the company, and enact things like seniority based pay and promotion. There's just too much incentive to cater towards interest of mediocre employees in a union model. Another big fac…

[flagged]

> In what world should a UNION of the workers care about the COMPANY?

Some unions are more powerful than companies (think UAW). They're able to negotiate terms that are bad for the long-term health of the company, and not having backgrounds in running companies, union leaders might not be thinking about that.

Re: New York Times Tech Guild goes on strike

#369

Have devs at any of the large tech companies ever tried to unionize? If not, why not?

Media organizations like the New York Times have had unions for a long time. The Times Tech Guild is part of the New York Times Guild, which is part of the NewsGuild of New York, an umbrella organization for a lot of media unions in New York.

There is no tradition of unionization in most tech companies, and tech employees are paid very well and have usually had an easy time moving between companies. If you're unhappy with something, you can probably solve that as an individual without needing collective bargaining.

Tech workers at a company that's already unionized would be more likely to unionize in part because their colleagues are unionized, so they look around and say, "Hey, how come I'm not a part of that?" And the unions themselves can evangelize unions and recruit tech workers to unionize, which is good for the union because it gives them more resources and more bargaining partner. It's much harder for a union to come into a non-unionized workplace and start a movement from scratch, especially with a bunch of people who make six figures.

There's also a libertarian streak to Silicon Valley and the tech industry more broadly. This makes startup culture vibrant but at the expense of more individualism and less collectivism.

It's no coincidence that one of the few areas of tech to have seen a meaningful unionization push in recent years is gaming. Workers in gaming are in much more volatile positions, since it's a hit-driven business with long, expensive development cycles. And there's a constant stream of young, idealistic people who have dreamed of working in games their whole life and are willing to take on terrible working conditions and low pay to live that dream, at least for a while. There's also a lot of roles like art, music, and game design that are hard to parlay into other industries, whereas a software engineer or product manager who works can move between industries with relative ease. So there's an incentive for people in those roles to fix the companies and industries where they are instead of just moving on.

Re: New York Times Tech Guild goes on strike

#370

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Striking during election week is kind of a crappy move to pull. That’s leverage. Striking during a time when the business doesn’t care is a dumb move.

[flagged]

Businesses already hold a lot of leverage over employees - like healthcare or the ability to feed their families.
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