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Kickstarter’s staff is unionizing

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Re: Kickstarter’s staff is unionizing

#371

Post by soheil »

untog wrote: post #128
soheil wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why can you not ask for those things directly for the company you want to work for? I’m not getting my office? no thank you. I have to be on page duty in the middle of the night? No thank you. There are companies that offer all those maybe you sacrifice salary a bit. Someone has to pay the cost, I don’t think unions magically can give you the same salary or more at the same time you getting everything you wish for ab…

> And if they do promise that maybe at best it’s their marketing PR and at worst look what communism did in Russia. Good grief, really? We're pivoting from unions directly to Soviet communism? The advantage of a union is collective bargaining. If I, on my own, ask my employer to alter the layout of their building so that I might have a private office they're quite likely to say no. And not unjustifiably - altering th…

> Good grief, really? We're pivoting from unions directly to Soviet communism?

I'm just pointing out the extremes so we can set the framework of the discussion, the reality is most likely somewhere between the extremes.

> But if all us employees sat down and decided that we all wanted private offices

Agreed, I also believe individual responsibility is paramount. If you want something ask for it and try to achieve it, if you lived in a society where everyone did that instead of being silent observers waiting for handouts then private companies would not be able to get away with the things that you point out.

Re: Kickstarter’s staff is unionizing

#372

Post by goldcd »

My humble take is that unionization is valuable as a counter-balance in a company and can benefit it and all within. Let's take extreme examples: 1) CEO sees a blip coming in the quarterly income results. CEO disposes of enough people to reduce costs, hit profit target and claim their bonus. CEO is better off, company is worse off. Repeats each quarter until the CEO retires. 2) CEO tries to focus company by laying off unionized employees in legacy area. Union blindly prevents this, company is stuck on legacy path, company suffers and so ultimately do the employees when it all implodes.

The problem in both cases is simply due to a misalignment of personal goals/compensation within the company.

When it's "working right" The CEO can defend their "not randomly firing employees" as being too expensive due to their unionized status. Converse is that the union can accept that some employees need to go to be replaced with other employees in another field to reflect the world changing (and help relocate/pay off/re-train as needed).

In summary - plans rarely work out and ideally there's an internal buffer/slush-fund to cover this. When you're publicly traded, there's always going to be somebody demanding you cash in this buffer to the shareholders in the short term. Unionization provides a nice external buffer.

Re: Kickstarter’s staff is unionizing

#374

Post by shawnz »

cpursley wrote: post #344
BrainInAJar wrote: post #303

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The biggest lie capitalists ever told you was that unions were about money. They're about control. How's your open plan office? Do you like it? Can you do anything about it? Unions can help.

Or you can go work for a normal company that treats its employees well. There's plenty of them out there; it's a competitive market for good staff. *Edit: I don't understand the downvotes. If you're in tech at the moment and somewhat competent, you can basically name your price and benefits.

> Or you can go work for a normal company that treats its employees well.

If a union is in the best interest of the employees, then it's in the best interest of any company that respects their employees. Companies which employ union-busting practices don't treat their employees well by definition. And promises of good will from management hardly compare to having a dedicated infrastructure in place to support employees' needs and rights, which is exactly what a union is. Management can change and promises can be broken. Unions on the other hand are intentionally structured to place employees' needs above all else.

Re: Kickstarter’s staff is unionizing

#375

Post by dragonwriter »

kjksf wrote: post #319
minikites wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>No union ever said "Wow, this new CEO and management are super fair and reasonable. We are no longer necessary, let's dissolve and let them take the reigns." Name a company with a CEO and management who are super fair and reasonable (e.g. paying employees the full value of their labor instead of profiting from the surplus value created by the employee)

Name a unionized company where this kind of utopia exists i.e. company pays literally all of its profit as salaries. Most of pro-union comments incorrectly assume that unions create some worker utopia. Name unionized company that offers salary and perks comparable to Google. Not to mention that pretty much all unions have very strong pro-seniority rules. Work harder than others? Produce more value than others? Doesn'…

> Not to mention that pretty much all unions have very strong pro-seniority rules. Work harder than others? Produce more value than others? Doesn't matter, the guy that has been 5 years longer gets paid more, gets more vacation time etc. How is that fair?

As a tech worker in a union, about the only union negotiated pro-seniority rules apply to layoffs; my employer does have tenure-based rules that apply to vacation, etc., but those apply equally to non-union employees, and tenure-based vacation formulas are common in non-union shops, too.

Re: Kickstarter’s staff is unionizing

#376

Post by dagw »

sokoloff wrote: post #332
Retra wrote: post #292

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Whose competition? Other companies are not employee's competition, they are potential places to work. They only compete with the company, not the employees.

Kickstarter's prime competition is Indiegogo. Kickstarter employees who think their competition is against Kickstarter leadership rather than Indiegogo are at risk to seriously suboptimize, IMO. (The same is true for Kickstarter leadership, of course.)

employees who think their competition is against Kickstarter leadership rather than Indiegogo are at risk to seriously suboptimize

Suboptimize what? By what metrics? And why are those the primary metrics I should be using to make extremely important life choices?

Re: Kickstarter’s staff is unionizing

#377

Post by soheil »

geofft wrote: post #122
soheil wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why can you not ask for those things directly for the company you want to work for? I’m not getting my office? no thank you. I have to be on page duty in the middle of the night? No thank you. There are companies that offer all those maybe you sacrifice salary a bit. Someone has to pay the cost, I don’t think unions magically can give you the same salary or more at the same time you getting everything you wish for ab…

Leverage. As an individual, the response of the company is likely to be "whatever, we can hire someone worse than you who won't make these demands." If hundreds of people are saying the same thing, we're in a better negotiating position. It is funny that you attack pro-union folks with a comparison to Soviet propaganda when you yourself are spouting better propaganda than the USSR could ever have dreamed: capitalism…

> "whatever, we can hire someone worse than you who won't make these demands."

So even by your argument the companies are forced to hire someone worse than you? This seems to me like capitalism working as intended, you are not ready to pay for employees you can afford therefore you get worse employees and your competitor wins and can pay even more for better employees and their demands.

Re: Kickstarter’s staff is unionizing

#378

Post by chrisseaton »

matthewowen wrote: post #302
chrisseaton wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That doesn't seem practically any different. I still have to support the union if I want to work.

If you want to work at a company there are lots of aspects of corporate culture and working environments that you have to accept if you want to work there. Presumably if you don't want to work in a union shop... you won't? And to put another way: would it be reasonable for you to benefit from the work the union does for all employees without also contributing to that union? All this is besides the point that requirin…

> would it be reasonable for you to benefit from the work the union does for all employees without also contributing to that union?

If I never asked for the union or their collective bargaining, then yes. It's like cleaning my windows when I never asked you to and then demanding cash for it.

Re: Kickstarter’s staff is unionizing

#379

Post by cpursley »

shawnz wrote: post #374
cpursley wrote: post #344

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or you can go work for a normal company that treats its employees well. There's plenty of them out there; it's a competitive market for good staff. *Edit: I don't understand the downvotes. If you're in tech at the moment and somewhat competent, you can basically name your price and benefits.

> Or you can go work for a normal company that treats its employees well. If a union is in the best interest of the employees, then it's in the best interest of any company that respects their employees. Companies which employ union-busting practices don't treat their employees well by definition. And promises of good will from management hardly compare to having a dedicated infrastructure in place to support employe…

So go work for another company. My company treats me like an adult and pays me well to boot. There's way more to tech than the valley sweat shops...

Re: Kickstarter’s staff is unionizing

#380

Post by ahelwer »

soheil wrote: post #356
ahelwer wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone who has pushed back against on-call overreach, all it achieved was a negative remark on my next performance review. The company attempted to make an "intermediate-severity" class of incident, where on-call workers were required to respond between the hours of 8 am and midnight (the next-lowest severity required response only during business hours, and the next-highest required 24 hour response - both reaso…

> Individual workers are powerless, only able to bring their own labor to the negotiation table. What do you mean they are only able to bring their own labor to the table, what else is there that a laborer can bring to the table other than their own labor? If individual workers feel powerless that is probably not because of them possessing something other than their own labor while not being able to negotiate that so…

Many workers putting their labor on the table is a much, much stronger negotiating position than a single worker putting their labor on the table. This is the entire thesis of unions.
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