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Union Is Formed at Los Angeles Times and Publisher Put on Leave

nytimes.com

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Re: Union Is Formed at Los Angeles Times and Publisher Put on Leave

#41

Post by Avshalom »

neuland wrote: post #29
chollida1 wrote: post #2

I thought this was interesting because if knowledge workers like journalists can do so, why not programmers, or what ever term you'd prefer to be called?

I will quit from any employer that forces all programmers to negotiate as a unit, because I believe that compensation should be based purely on your individual skills and the market. I also believe that forced collective bargaining is unconstitutional, because it requires people to associate with a group that they don't want to associate with. If a group of people wish to collectively bargain with their employer, tha…

>>compensation should be based purely on your individual skills

First: Profit seeking organizations don't care about skill they care: about wait for it... profit which is the money you add vs the money you cost, which may be completely divorced from skill.

Second: Literally nobody can accurately measure a specific individuals contribution, through skill or otherwise.

Re: Union Is Formed at Los Angeles Times and Publisher Put on Leave

#42

Post by drb91 »

ng12 wrote: post #5
chollida1 wrote: post #2

I thought this was interesting because if knowledge workers like journalists can do so, why not programmers, or what ever term you'd prefer to be called?

Why do we need a union in a seller's market? If I'm unhappy with my job I can quit and get a new one in a week. It's not about being a knowledge worker. Screenwriters are unionized because there are many more people who want to write than there are gigs, therefore there's a high potential for abuse.

Why pick up gold on the ground when you have bronze in your hand?

Re: Union Is Formed at Los Angeles Times and Publisher Put on Leave

#43

Post by bbddg »

Dirlewanger wrote: post #26
untog wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is interesting that programmers (as a whole) seem resistant to it. It's often described as being unnecessary, but when you go one or two posts down HN you find people decrying long hours, open plan offices, weekend callouts, etc. etc. I suspect it's just that when the going is good, people don't really think they need a union. If the prophecies come true and AI starts writing code for us, you can bet people will s…

I think part of it is because the gap between the skill floor and ceiling is absolutely gargantuan. Unions work best when the skill gap is narrow, and ascension to different levels easily measurable. The more I think about it, software engineering is almost completely antithetical to the idea of unions. Traditional engineers have so much structure around their fields because the laws of physics govern a large part of…

You think the laws of physics don't apply to software engineering?

Re: Union Is Formed at Los Angeles Times and Publisher Put on Leave

#44

Post by davidw »

ng12 wrote: post #5
chollida1 wrote: post #2

I thought this was interesting because if knowledge workers like journalists can do so, why not programmers, or what ever term you'd prefer to be called?

Why do we need a union in a seller's market? If I'm unhappy with my job I can quit and get a new one in a week. It's not about being a knowledge worker. Screenwriters are unionized because there are many more people who want to write than there are gigs, therefore there's a high potential for abuse.

> a seller's market

Is it as much as we think? It seems that big companies in Silicon Valley had no qualms about talking among one another about not "poaching" developers (what a lame term poaching is).

I'm not terribly keen on the idea of unions either (or immigration restrictions for that matter), but we should damn well be sure that companies are not colluding.

Re: Union Is Formed at Los Angeles Times and Publisher Put on Leave

#45

Post by frandroid »

untog wrote: post #17
ProAm wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It is interesting that programmers (as a whole) seem resistant to it. Mostly because our working conditions are not bad, we are more or less paid fairly, there are a lot of options to move around. Also it'd be bad if we had other people negotiating on our behalf, for what we probably feel is less pay than we are worth, and the concept of seniority would ruffle and stop a lot of newer grads from getting higher payin…

> the concept of seniority would ruffle and stop a lot of newer grads from getting higher paying jobs over people that have been working already for 25 years in the industry. That's not a required part of a union. I think one of the misconceptions people have is that if you have a union it looks and operates exactly like one on a Ford factory floor. If you formed a union it could do exactly what you want it to do, an…

I used to think that as well. The problem is that if you don't have an arbitrary employment security clause (seniority, aka LIFO), employers can find ways to fire you/lay you off arbitrarily for union activity under the cover of other reasons (e.g. unrealistic performance goals). I don't know how to resolve this problem. But without LIFO, you can be guaranteed that most people who use the union for its intended purpose doesn't have much of a future at the company.

Re: Union Is Formed at Los Angeles Times and Publisher Put on Leave

#46

Post by dmix »

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #16
dmix wrote: post #6

I'm curious what effect this will have on all the constant cries for more "real journalism" instead of companies pushing for low budget high volume output and semi-digitized content milling. Hiring "real journalists" full time just got a lot more expensive for a company that was already attempting to reinvent itself in a struggle for profitability in a strained industry. Also, can't the LA Times easily just buy up mo…

> Also, can't the LA Times easily just buy up more freelance material from non-employees (not only journalism, graphics, web work, etc)? Not if the union's any good.

In what way could they stop the company from doing this? Besides making firing (even bad) employees difficult?

Any future growth that may have previously resulted in hiring full time workers could easily now be redirected to freelance, temp work, and p/t workers regardless of the union.

I remember watching a Tronc video when it was trendy to make fun of them and they were already talking heavily about digitizing much of the work that was done manually. It's a much more dynamic industry than an old-school factory that needed a set of bodies with predictable roles to show up.

Re: Union Is Formed at Los Angeles Times and Publisher Put on Leave

#47

Post by sigstoat »

untog wrote: post #34
neuland wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I will quit from any employer that forces all programmers to negotiate as a unit, because I believe that compensation should be based purely on your individual skills and the market. I also believe that forced collective bargaining is unconstitutional, because it requires people to associate with a group that they don't want to associate with. If a group of people wish to collectively bargain with their employer, tha…

> I will quit from any employer that forces all programmers to negotiate as a unit You realise that unions are something imposed on employers, right? They don't like them.

> > I will quit from any employer that forces all programmers to negotiate as a unit

> You realise that unions are something imposed on employers, right? They don't like them.

and a common first thing for the union to do is to force the employer to only hire union workers.

Re: Union Is Formed at Los Angeles Times and Publisher Put on Leave

#48

Post by arca_vorago »

chollida1 wrote: post #2

I thought this was interesting because if knowledge workers like journalists can do so, why not programmers, or what ever term you'd prefer to be called?

I think the tech group that ought to unionize is sysadmins. We run the world yet get shit on by management left and right, and it's high time to take some of that power back.

LOPSA is innefective and does nothing and doesn't count in my book.

Of course unions in general have become what they were formed to prevent in many ways, and need massive amounts of reform internally themselves.

Re: Union Is Formed at Los Angeles Times and Publisher Put on Leave

#50

Post by LeifCarrotson »

ng12 wrote: post #5
chollida1 wrote: post #2

I thought this was interesting because if knowledge workers like journalists can do so, why not programmers, or what ever term you'd prefer to be called?

Why do we need a union in a seller's market? If I'm unhappy with my job I can quit and get a new one in a week. It's not about being a knowledge worker. Screenwriters are unionized because there are many more people who want to write than there are gigs, therefore there's a high potential for abuse.

Maybe you feel confident about your ability to get a job in a week, but there is a cost to your resume, cost to your work relationships, a risk of not being as successful in your search as you expect, and a limited number of buyers in your location. There are a lot of barriers that prevent the seller's market from working efficiently.
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