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Bandcamp's Entire Union Bargaining Team Was Laid Off

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Re: Bandcamp's Entire Union Bargaining Team Was Laid Off

#471

Post by vitus »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #184
vitus wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You've computed the odds that at least 40 of the 67 union members get laid off, bargaining team member or not. You actually want the odds of a specific set of 40 individuals getting laid off. It looks like Bandcamp had 118 employees and 60 layoffs per various news outlets (and on the wikipedia page [0]). Assuming each employee was equally likely to get laid off given the target retention [1], you could compute this f…

> You've computed the odds that at least 40 of the 67 union members get laid off, bargaining team member or not. Well, close. I've computed the odds that at least 40 of a group of 67 special people get laid off. There is another comment in this thread suggesting that 67 is the number of bargaining team members. I don't know, because I haven't read the article. So my calculation might or might not be right, depending…

The calculation you provided is probably more closely represented as "what is the likelihood that the outcomes affecting the union were random happenstance, versus the union members being singled out".

I incorrectly conflated the number of laid off union members with the total number of "special" individuals, while only 8 of them were actually "special" (i.e. democratically elected bargaining team members). It'd be more accurate to describe that probability of the impact to the bargaining team as (110 choose 52) / (118 choose 60) which comes out to about 0.35%, not too far off from the 2^-8 estimate (0.4%) that your approach of using the binomial distribution on this same set would result in. Both approaches would yield similar results, and the result is still somewhat in the realm of plausible deniability.

> All specific outcomes are rare, so that question will never tell you anything informative.

I'm not describing any specific outcomes in this case, though. You could throw up your hands and say "oh, we laid off these specific 60 people, there's only a 10^-34 chance of picking exactly those 60 people out of 118". That would absolutely be useless.

I'm describing the event that "all of this one group got laid off" as a subset of the space of possible outcomes given what we observed, and ascribing a probability to that event.

I will admit I used the wrong inputs, but I stand by my approach.

Re: Bandcamp's Entire Union Bargaining Team Was Laid Off

#472

Post by bmicraft »

lolinder wrote: post #439
diob wrote: post #436

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd rather have less jobs, with better benefits / pay.

By this do you mean that you would rather be unemployed than employed with less benefits, or that you would rather other people be unemployed while you get good benefits?

I think a more generous way to put it would be, they'd rather unemployed people get good benefits than have to work a back-breaking job with a wage that isn't better than said benefits.

Re: Bandcamp's Entire Union Bargaining Team Was Laid Off

#473

Post by bmicraft »

epivosism wrote: post #431
lowbloodsugar wrote: post #407

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is this "free market" you describe? Am I free to occupy any building I like, or does your "free" market include a concept of a "property" and entire government bureaucracies and men with guns to enforce such concepts? Does your "free market" make a distinction between "I expect this property to still be mine tomorrow" and "I expect this job to still be mine tomorrow"? Does you "free market" allow for individuals…

By definition unions have local monopolies and can't be attacked. In a well-run truly free economy, corporations don't have that. my view of the power distributions and their results * company town, one company enslaving all workers To your point about house ownership being protected by law, but job ownership not being, I think it's a matter of contracts. Selling someone and helping them own it forever is fairly triv…

> In a well-run truly free economy

Either the economy is truly free, or it is "well-run" aka state managed.

Pick one. It can only be truly free without any state intervention.

Re: Bandcamp's Entire Union Bargaining Team Was Laid Off

#474

Post by mattmcknight »

saltminer wrote: post #421
mattmcknight wrote: post #329

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They do in many cases, it doesn't help because it's such an easy PR story. They just ask for more. The objective can never be "stop this group from wanting more money" because human desire is infinite.

So when one of my high school teachers had a projector bulb die but they couldn't afford any more bulbs that year, she should've just bought one and submitted it to the county for reimbursement? Or when I repaired their laptop carts with duct tape and prayers, they should've just expensed new ones? That's incredible, I can't believe they were all were so stupid! /s

I guess that wasn't one of the many cases that I was referring to, where, when given a supply budget, the union immediately claimed it was too small. It was increased, they still claimed it was too small and wanted more. You'll notice the omnipresent demand of "more" never a specific amount mentioned unless it is something wildly impractical for anchoring purposes.

Of course, no matter what budget is promised, it can be misspent, and the tendency for administrators of all sorts of organizations to only spend on splashy new things they can brag about and not cover boring operations and maintenance of existing equipment is well known.

Re: Bandcamp's Entire Union Bargaining Team Was Laid Off

#475

Post by onethought »

drekipus wrote: post #469
onethought wrote: post #462

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s not wage based labour. You are an owner/operator in that scenario, and you fully realised the value. The value of the fence is X and you got X.

The value of the fence is different for different people. For me it's $500, for my neighbour it's $5000 - because it stops rabbits from eating his garden and stray dogs or whatever. If it's $5000 value to my neighbour, should I have charged more even though I would've accepted $500? Who would have been exploiting who then? This is directly analogous to my employer as well, except replace "neighbour" with boss, and "f…

No it’s not, because you are being paid for an outcome not time.

So yes, if it’s worth more and someone pays more then you get more. That’s not at all the point.

But if you are paid per hour and you produce many more fences than is required to pay your wage, you are being exploited.

Re: Bandcamp's Entire Union Bargaining Team Was Laid Off

#476

Post by eru »

cool_dude85 wrote: post #186
nemo44x wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No it’s not. The reason being the public sector Union gets large enough to pick winners. The winner is the person who approves their contract and budget and is likewise incentivized to grow the Union more to secure more votes. It’s a massive conflict of interest.

That famously powerful voting bloc, federal civil servants. You always hear about what the federal civil servant lobby is pushing for and the concessions they squeeze out of anyone who's running for office.

Teachers unions are pretty notorious, rightly or wrongly. And other civil service unions have significant impacts as well. (Not sure why you single out federal civil servants compared to other levels of government?)

Re: Bandcamp's Entire Union Bargaining Team Was Laid Off

#477

Post by dehrmann »

afterburner wrote: post #381
dehrmann wrote: post #376

I get the impression there's an attitude from the newer generation of tech workers--the ones that are more progressive and less libertarian--about their right to unionize. They were so interested in union politics and the reading about the glory days of unions that they overlooked their current situation. You don't sell a company to break up a union and lay off half the staff. Bandcamp wasn't a good fit any more, and…

Unions don't need a labour shortage to have power. Collective bargaining is its own leverage. Besides, unemployment is low, so I'm not sure why you're talking about there not being a labour shortage.

> Besides, unemployment is low

Is it low in tech? There have been a lot of layoffs over the past year.

Re: Bandcamp's Entire Union Bargaining Team Was Laid Off

#478

Post by afterburner »

dehrmann wrote: post #477
afterburner wrote: post #381

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unions don't need a labour shortage to have power. Collective bargaining is its own leverage. Besides, unemployment is low, so I'm not sure why you're talking about there not being a labour shortage.

> Besides, unemployment is low Is it low in tech? There have been a lot of layoffs over the past year.

It's 3.1 percent in tech, so, yeah, it's low. Those layoffs are peanuts.

https://www.statista.com/statistics/199995/rates-of-jobless-...

Re: Bandcamp's Entire Union Bargaining Team Was Laid Off

#479

Post by [deleted] »

fsckboy wrote: post #465
smcl wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Applying stereotypes to a person is not the same as saying a phenomenon exists (in this case they said nearly-exclusively) in country. By way of examples: "Americans are fat" is a (negative) sterotype. "Americans get poor value for money in healthcare" isn't.

why did you dishonestly add a completely unrelated idea to make your point? Because you couldn't make it with the case at hand? Americans are subjected to decades of mind-warping propaganda (in a way that other countries are not?) is not a stereotype?

[deleted]

Re: Bandcamp's Entire Union Bargaining Team Was Laid Off

#480

Post by runeks »

potatopatch wrote: post #144
philipwhiuk wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They're not employees. These aren't technically layoffs. The company is being acquired and then they are choosing not to issue a bunch of people contracts.

That is still a lay off. If the company is acquired you don't get to pick and choose what contracts it had are valid, you have to argue your new contract is similar employment terms or you have laid someone off.

If everyone were laid off before the company was acquired, why wouldn’t the new owner get to choose who to employ?
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