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As unions decline, inequality rises

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Re: As unions decline, inequality rises

#371

Post by kelseyfrog »

i_am_toaster wrote: post #343
kelseyfrog wrote: post #260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's been my experience as well. It's pure reactance psychology. From the first paragraph of the wiki page > Reactance is an unpleasant motivational reaction to offers, persons, rules, or regulations that threaten or eliminate specific behavioral freedoms. Reactance occurs when an individual feels that an agent is attempting to limit one's choice of response and/or range of alternatives. When I think about the peop…

The lack of empathy and unfavorable labeling of opinions that differ from your own is not something you should get in the habit of.

Rather, it is precisely an empathic explanation. It attempts to find an underlying basis for such an opinion rather than writing it off as unfounded. People with high reactance have an emotional response when compelled to action and this emotional response is what I'm empathizing with.

Any reading of my response as judgemental is a perversion of intention and I'd encourage anyone doing so to get curious and assume positive intent rather than reading it with malicious subtext. Something is only pathological if it negatively impacts someone's life.

Re: As unions decline, inequality rises

#372

Post by ww-picard-do »

bombolo wrote: post #368
ww-picard-do wrote: post #347

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are being very patronizing. Other people in this thread have given reasonable explanations for not liking unions. You are free to disagree, of course, but being smug about it is rude.

Like the one "office workers don't need unions because meritocracy"… if you think that's reasonable… I can only think of it as reasonable if you start from made up facts to reach the conclusion.

I never said that just like no one said "oh no my lazy coworkers might get a bigger bonus!". You seem to insist on mischaracterizing what people say. Why?

Re: As unions decline, inequality rises

#373

Post by faitswulff »

logicalmonster wrote: post #78
faitswulff wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ironically you’re being downvoted by the same folks who would benefit from unions. American Twitter employees, for instance, would have done a lot better with European labor protections. European Twitter employees probably have a sizable comeuppance on the horizon.

If the European standards are so good, where are all of the influential European tech companies? To properly weigh all of the tradeoffs, you might consider asking if those Twitter jobs would even emerge in the European system and if there's a link between European labor standards and the lack of influential European tech companies. Europe is a large market that is filled with many capable and educated technology work…

A simple answer is that being able to abuse workers allows businesses to move faster.

Re: As unions decline, inequality rises

#374

Post by PhasmaFelis »

geraldwhen wrote: post #337
KevinGlass wrote: post #325

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fact that everything is designed around cars is one of the invisible nooses around the neck of America. When you look around and notice that everything is covered in cars, that's hard to unnotice. All those cars, roads, parking lots, highways, box stores, mile of sewer and water pipe, cost a staggering amount and are going to start costing a lot more to maintain over the next decade as systems age out and need re…

Nobody wants to live in apartments. Maybe 20-something’s with no prospect of family, but that’s it.

Apartments are fine as long as they're good apartments. Properly-built concrete walls completely mitigate the sound problem you mentioned below. In four years at my current place, I've never heard a neighbor's voice from inside my apartment.

Shitty slumlord apartments are what everyone wants to escape from, in my experience.

Re: As unions decline, inequality rises

#375

Post by TaylorAlexander »

ben_w wrote: post #294
TaylorAlexander wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fact that some people don’t know how well they have it is not evidence that everything is fine. Watch a few news reports on poverty in America and you will see that a decent percentage of working adults live with their entire family in a small cramped apartment, can’t afford any vacation, and likely can’t afford emergency medical care if it comes up. And even those people in the suburbs with all those TVs could h…

They didn't say "everything is fine". There's a lot wrong with everyone's economy from the perspective of "we work just as hard, why don't we get the same stuff?" However, I think you're misapprehending quite how much worse things were a century ago. Now the poor may struggle to afford a PET/CT/MRI/ultrasound scan, or a PCR test, or a dose of antibiotics, or a heart (lung, liver, kidney, bladder, pancreas, ovary, …)…

No I’m not misapprehending how much worse things were a century ago. I simply believe that argument has no bearing on the discussion of a fair distribution of wealth in todays society. No one today lives 100 years ago as a matter of simple fact. Yes, we have antibiotics now, and that’s great, but that has nothing to do with the fact that workers are producing vast amounts of wealth and receiving very little of that wealth as remuneration. We have cars today that make certain kinds of transportation easier, but that has nothing to do with a lack of maternity and paternity leave for new parents. We have cell phones so we can now talk to anyone in the world but that has nothing to do with the fact that business owners will selfishly decide to ship 1000 jobs overseas with no input from the workers who will be disenfranchised.

I’m talking about unfair power imbalances today. This has nothing to do with the past.

Re: As unions decline, inequality rises

#376

Post by [deleted] »

kelseyfrog wrote: post #371
i_am_toaster wrote: post #343

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The lack of empathy and unfavorable labeling of opinions that differ from your own is not something you should get in the habit of.

Rather, it is precisely an empathic explanation. It attempts to find an underlying basis for such an opinion rather than writing it off as unfounded. People with high reactance have an emotional response when compelled to action and this emotional response is what I'm empathizing with. Any reading of my response as judgemental is a perversion of intention and I'd encourage anyone doing so to get curious and assume po…

[deleted]

Re: As unions decline, inequality rises

#377

Post by azemetre »

nightski wrote: post #352
scruple wrote: post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have, yes, and I've gone as far as finding friends and former colleagues who would be interested in joining me. Unfortunately health insurance is tied to employment in this country and we all have families. The uncertainty in that regard leaves it a non-starter for people in our situation. At least for the time being.

I'm not sure I follow on how that would stop you from forming a worker co-op. Almost all businesses who have full time employees pay for health insurance. Are you implying a co-op would make less revenue and therefore could not provide its employees insurance?

Businesses get way different insurance rates than a single individual (or 12 individuals). It costs me $240 a month for full health coverage ($1000 deductible), dentistry, and eye from my current employer; for me to get something equivalent outside this company would cost me $3,000 to $5,000 a month. I can't afford that plus rent, plus energy, plus food.

Not all businesses are equal, not all benefits are equal.

When I worked in a call center the only insurance that wasn't pure garbage cost me $300 a paycheck.

Sorry but it's expensive being poor in America.

Re: As unions decline, inequality rises

#378

Post by i_am_toaster »

kelseyfrog wrote: post #371
i_am_toaster wrote: post #343

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The lack of empathy and unfavorable labeling of opinions that differ from your own is not something you should get in the habit of.

Rather, it is precisely an empathic explanation. It attempts to find an underlying basis for such an opinion rather than writing it off as unfounded. People with high reactance have an emotional response when compelled to action and this emotional response is what I'm empathizing with. Any reading of my response as judgemental is a perversion of intention and I'd encourage anyone doing so to get curious and assume po…

That is not empathy. That is labeling them based on what you think their perspective is and using that label to reason why you understand their point of view. Characterizing another persons mental reasoning by putting it into some generic box is, by definition, NOT empathy.

Edit: I can’t help but feel like I’m being trolled, so this is where the conversation ends.

Re: As unions decline, inequality rises

#379

Post by ben_w »

RhysU wrote: post #344
ben_w wrote: post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most, myself included, have a very limited understanding of the economy we are part of, so I'm not surprised by complaints. Every so often, someone making 2 or 3 times the national average income makes an ass of themselves on TV by claiming they're economically disadvantaged. In some senses, you don't even have to go to the suburbs to be unimaginably better off now than it was possible to be a century ago, because a…

> Every so often, someone making 2 or 3 times the national average income makes an ass of themselves on TV by claiming they're economically disadvantaged. Someone making 3X the US national median income is paying roughly the US national median income in federal/state/local taxes. They're paying a median working citizens' earnings in taxes.

And?

Re: As unions decline, inequality rises

#380

Post by azemetre »

moneywoes wrote: post #198
susanasj wrote: post #142

I think this is a good article for tech workers to read to provide perspective on our place in the tech economy (particularly Americans): https://organizing.work/2020/12/there-is-something-missing-f... particularly this part: > Early on in my own career in the industry, I felt guilty about making a “good” salary. Why did I deserve to make more money than a teacher or a nurse? Of course, I don’t — they deserve a lot m…

My worry is bringing unions in the US tech industry will just accelerate off shoring especially with super fast growing companies like Deel What are your thoughts?

Well if there was an actual union in place there would be general strikes. A company that lost all IT/SWE staff for the period of the strike may be more open to negotiations.
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