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Google hired union-busting consultants to convince employees “unions suck”

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Re: Google hired union-busting consultants to convince employees “unions suck”

#441

Post by tablespoon »

__float wrote: post #431
tablespoon wrote: post #336

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The fact that in the US, treating minorities (BIPOC or otherwise) fairly is polarizing is sad. It is, however "fairly" is a pretty loaded word that leaves too much unspecified. It's important to emphasize that "BIPOC" is a shibboleth , and you can be for "treating minorities fairly" without being aligned with the ideological faction the use of "BIPOC" indicates. And just to be clear, a union effort will almost cert…

https://www.theverge.com/2021/12/17/22841166/google-californ... > According to a diversity report Google released earlier this year, Black women make up around 1.8 percent of its workforce and departed the company at a higher than normal rate. In the report, the company said it had “room for improvement” when it came to keeping underrepresented talent. How much evidence are you going to demand before considering that…

> How much evidence are you going to demand before considering that perhaps they actually aren't treated fairly, by any reasonable definition of the word? You're largely refusing to engage with the actual topic at hand and instead squabbling over "shibboleths". Do you have an preferred way to discuss this, because I do think there's a legitimate concern here.

What are you talking about? The "actual topic at hand" is unionization, not the digression you're trying to pull it to. You also appear to be exhibiting a pretty polarized way of thinking, by assuming (falsely, I add) I take some "other side" position because I'm not hitting all your myside notes.

The point is that if you use polarized shibboleths [1] in your unionization drive, you're doing the union-busting consultants' work for them (specifically, enabling a divide and conquer strategy). If you want to succeed with unionization, broadly, you have to be very, very careful not to do that, since the playing field is already tilted against you.

[1] https://www.dictionary.com/browse/shibboleth, if you're unaware of the meaning, which your scare-quotes lead me to suspect.

Re: Google hired union-busting consultants to convince employees “unions suck”

#442

Post by ziggus »

paisawalla wrote: post #349
ziggus wrote: post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bureaucracies often impose arbitrary measures of success on teams and employees that often have nothing at all to do with merit or productivity or any other measure that a reasonable person would use, and reduce or increase staffing levels based on those measures. See 'stack ranking' for a perfect example.

What's the evidence that stack ranking is unreasonable or that it doesn't correlate (even imperfectly) to merit? I think it's pretty trivial to construct a case that, given pressure to apply resources efficiently and to incentivize growing performance, stack ranking or similar are reasonable approaches.

Stack ranking is based on whatever metrics team leaders/supervisors want to use. It often becomes a simple popularity contest, and leads to an 'every person for themselves' culture which can stifle innovation and collaboration. Even in cases where there's a quantitative metric used for ranking, it's often subject to gaming, such as the use of number of commits or ticket closures.

Also, stack ranking doesn't account for any flaws in the systems of the company itself - if you have poor processes that hinder productivity, it's going to artificially diminish the rankings of employees that have to use or are subject to those processes.

There's a reason why companies that use it tend to have much higher turnover than companies that don't - because it makes for a really unpleasant workplace.

Re: Google hired union-busting consultants to convince employees “unions suck”

#443

Post by lovich »

padastra wrote: post #429
lovich wrote: post #319

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Businesses create value Workers labor mixed with capital creates value. Businesses are just a way of organizing that interaction that, if it succeeds, makes the interaction more efficient. The businesses through the ownership of capital are the ones doing the redistributing of value, they are the ones writing the checks. Unions just negotiate that the redistribution allocates more of the pie to labor rather than th…

I think we're roughly in agreement. Businesses are composed of the capital providers, the organizers (who decide how to deploy the capital), and the workers. Capital providers colluding to set a loan rate is illegal. We shouldn't allow them to collude legally; they are a small number of experienced actors operating with information asymmetry already. Organizers (i.e. senior management) colluding is--I don't know the…

The capital tied up in any given business is colluding by definition because it moves in lock step. You don’t have multiple managers in a single org making conflicting business deals or bids with workers(for the most part, I’ve heard of a few companies organized this way). Hell even having multiple investors in a single company is collusion of capital owners when the company makes any sort of business deal.

Unions are just the workers colluding in the same fashion to increase their negotiating power

Re: Google hired union-busting consultants to convince employees “unions suck”

#444

Post by aylmao »

CountSessine wrote: post #230
cool_dude85 wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>If the company's in a competitive market, it's unlikely that there's a huge pot of gold somewhere to hand to employees in operations. Here in the US, corporations all over are making record profits! Buying back shares like never before! Unless you want to play definition games about what a "competitive market" is, plenty of companies in competitive markets have big pots of gold to hand to employees.

The average operating margin for companies on the S&P 500, the "best of the best" of US corporations, is 9.35% - and that's a figure that is inflated by all of the pharma companies that have crazy 20% margins and sell into a dysfunctional drug market in the US and don't have to compete with generic drugs. Remove them and the operating margin is even lower. There's no pot of gold in most cases. But I still think there…

I will point out 9.35% when talking about companies that size is a lot of money.

Also worth noting; companies pay taxes on their profits, so while there's a lot of incentive to report high profits when a company is looking for investors, there's also plenty of incentive to hide profits (and thus lower operating margins) or shift them to subsidiaries in countries with lower taxes when companies that don't need to inflate their value. I am curious wether the stats you found take this into account.

Re: Google hired union-busting consultants to convince employees “unions suck”

#445

Post by IncRnd »

woodruffw wrote: post #233
Jensson wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Corporations creates enormous amounts of value, as far as we know modern society cannot function without those structures. Unions however are optional, even if they help they still aren't nearly as important as corporations. Edit: For those who disagree, how many modern societies are there without corporations running a majority of the economy? Not a single one. So as far as we know it doesn't work. It can work in th…

What, pray tell, are those corporations made of?

A corporation in the US is a legal fiction that creates a pseudo-person distinct from the owners, providing privileges to operate and legal protections for the owners. A corporation does not require many employees, which you seem to imply are required. The owners are the main component of a corporation not the employees.

Re: Google hired union-busting consultants to convince employees “unions suck”

#446

Post by IncRnd »

8note wrote: post #376
Jensson wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Corporations creates enormous amounts of value, as far as we know modern society cannot function without those structures. Unions however are optional, even if they help they still aren't nearly as important as corporations. Edit: For those who disagree, how many modern societies are there without corporations running a majority of the economy? Not a single one. So as far as we know it doesn't work. It can work in th…

Isn't it by force of the US nuclear arsenal that modern societies must have corporations? You can do something else, but Americans will always try to assassinate you, and make sure you don't have access to resources There's reasons other than being an absolute requirement for why everyone's currently using something

The US will not try to assassinate people for lacking corporate governance.

Re: Google hired union-busting consultants to convince employees “unions suck”

#448

Post by aylmao »

ambrozk wrote: post #396
marricks wrote: post #147

Go figure the top comments on this thread echo how companies talk about unions. “Oh unions can be good but those Americans don’t know their downsides…” Or “Unions are great but it’s awful people can be forced to join them!” I’m just saying Google’s money was well spent.

This conversation makes me crazy. I was at Google when its employee union, a.k.a. "AWU", was trying to get off the ground. I formed my opinion of it completely independent of company propaganda. AWU is a political advocacy organization, not a traditional union. AWU's mission statement is explicitly and emphatically not to further my or other full-time employee's interests. Rather, it is organized primarily as a vehic…

> Almost none of AWU's projects have focused on Googlers' work conditions or pay.

I'd assume this is why they've been allowed to exist.

In fact, unfortunately, this sounds like it could be working well for Google. If this organization is calling itself a "union" without doing actual union work or representing employees, it can help create an apathetic environment towards unions at the company. It also sounds like this organization is doing product work, and with the right maneuvering this sort of momentum can be used to allow controversial changes you'd be willing to try, but would rather not take the blame for.

Re: Google hired union-busting consultants to convince employees “unions suck”

#449

Post by woodruffw »

IncRnd wrote: post #445
woodruffw wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What, pray tell, are those corporations made of?

A corporation in the US is a legal fiction that creates a pseudo-person distinct from the owners, providing privileges to operate and legal protections for the owners. A corporation does not require many employees, which you seem to imply are required. The owners are the main component of a corporation not the employees.

A corporation doesn't require any employees. Like you said, it's a legal fiction. My point was that the corporations that "create enormous amounts of value" (GP's words) are those same corporations that have employees, and the "value" described therein is really the value of the labor of those employees.

There's no metaphysical Lockean value production going on inside of a corporation. When it produces value, the value it produces is the value that its employees produce. Waxing poetic about the value of corporations is thusly mostly a game of smoke and mirrors that obscures the real source of that value (the humans doing the work), and detracts from the actual advantage that comes from incorporation (i.e., solving the coordination game and thereby extracting more value from workers).

Re: Google hired union-busting consultants to convince employees “unions suck”

#450

Post by IncRnd »

woodruffw wrote: post #449
IncRnd wrote: post #445

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A corporation in the US is a legal fiction that creates a pseudo-person distinct from the owners, providing privileges to operate and legal protections for the owners. A corporation does not require many employees, which you seem to imply are required. The owners are the main component of a corporation not the employees.

A corporation doesn't require any employees. Like you said, it's a legal fiction. My point was that the corporations that "create enormous amounts of value" (GP's words) are those same corporations that have employees, and the "value" described therein is really the value of the labor of those employees. There's no metaphysical Lockean value production going on inside of a corporation. When it produces value, the val…

> from the actual advantage that comes from incorporation (i.e., solving the coordination game and thereby extracting more value from workers).

In my experience the value of incorporating has not been to hire people but the legal protections and ability to create certain tax structures for retirement planning that benefit the owners.

> A corporation doesn't require any employees.

In reality some employees are required in order to keep the corporate designation that allows the use of certain retirement plans.

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