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New York Times tech workers union votes to authorize a strike

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Re: New York Times tech workers union votes to authorize a strike

#531

Post by Alupis »

mplewis wrote: post #518
bad_user wrote: post #501

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, in the parts of the world that are still not industrialized, such as Sub-Saharan Africa. It's also easy to forget that during 19th century, 90%+ of the population suffered from hunger and malnutrition. Right now that's around 10%, but it's less than 2.5% in the highly industrialized countries. IMO, the parts of the world still suffering from hunger could use more "corporate greed" and industrial exploitation.

They are dying of hunger because of corporate greed. Africa has many of the world’s most resource-rich areas, but they don’t realize the profits: Western corporations that extract the resources using local slave labor do.

So what's been stopping African companies/government from exploiting their own natural resources for all of these years?

"Corporate greed" is a fun slogan, but means nothing in reality. In the few areas where the government is exploiting its own natural resources (instead of outsiders), the working and living conditions are not inherently better. If it worked that way, all of the middle east and large areas of Africa wouldn't be so destitute.

Re: New York Times tech workers union votes to authorize a strike

#532

Post by marcusverus »

mplewis wrote: post #519
WalterBright wrote: post #505

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, in countries that are not free market countries.

20,500 Americans died of hunger in 2022.

Extraordinary claims require a citation.

Edit: The parent appears to have committed the cardinal sin of believing CNN, which made this claim here[0], but cited a CDC report[1] does not support the assertion. I went looking for the underlying NCHS data, but couldn't find it.

[0]https://www.cnn.com/2023/12/21/health/nutritional-deficiency... [1]https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/vsrr/vsrr031.pdf

Re: New York Times tech workers union votes to authorize a strike

#533

Post by VirusNewbie »

yodsanklai wrote: post #476
slt2021 wrote: post #402

Earlier quoted context omitted.

programmers are close to doctors than plumbers: high comp, high knowledge industry, constant learning Doctors have cartel though, instead of union that protects their jobs by limiting number of residency slots that limits number of new licensed doctors

Not all programmers have high comp, and high comp are extremely dependent on market conditions and skills. And a programmer career can be rather short too due to ageism. Doctors have a much more stable and predictable compensation.

Dependent on skills is a good thing.

Re: New York Times tech workers union votes to authorize a strike

#534

Post by codr7 »

ugh123 wrote: post #203
consteval wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These "X has it worse" arguments are tiresome and lack any sort of rigor. There's modern day slavery in the world. Today. Even in the US we have compelled labor - it's a whole thing in the Georgia prison system. Those McDonald's burger flippers are essentially slaves, and I bet you didn't know that. But if we subscribe to the ideology of "X has it worse" nothing would get done, ever. The reality is even in seemingly…

>What you're describing is relying on the generosity of the corporations who employ them No i'm not. I'm highlighting the market forces within a competitive, highly paid job market. These people have options. Other industries, not so much.

Everyone has options, always.

But when all options suck equally, that doesn't really help.

Re: New York Times tech workers union votes to authorize a strike

#535

Post by codr7 »

WalterBright wrote: post #521
mplewis wrote: post #519

Earlier quoted context omitted.

20,500 Americans died of hunger in 2022.

Malnutrition is not the same thing. Drug addicts and alcoholics often are malnourished - not because food is withheld from them, but because they are more interested in drugs and alcohol than food. The same goes for seriously ill people.

As far as alcohol goes, it's also because it's toxic as hell and actively stopping your body from absorbing what it needs from food.

Re: New York Times tech workers union votes to authorize a strike

#536

Post by orthecreedence »

consteval wrote: post #388
kortilla wrote: post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it's a whole thing in the Georgia prison system. Those McDonald's burger flippers are essentially slaves, and I bet you didn't know that The prisoners yes, the McDonald’s workers absolutely not. The avg McDonald’s worker tenure is quite short and having briefly been one, I can assure you it’s nothing like slavery. Get a grip.

> the McDonald’s workers absolutely not Absolutely yes, it's a whole program for coerced labor. Like I said, I bet you didn't know about it because this shit is absolutely under the table in regards to our media. But yes, we do, to this day, have prisoners who are mostly black forced to work for well under minimum wage in private businesses, such as McDonald's, Wendy's, Golden Corral... sounds a lot like slavery when…

It sounds like slavery because it is:

> Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.

People act like the US abolished slavery but it instead institutionalized it and then later (of course...) privatized it.

Re: New York Times tech workers union votes to authorize a strike

#537

Post by kryogen1c »

umvi wrote: post #475
ncr100 wrote: post #459

Awesome news. In my experience, Mismanagement, both in personnel and compensation, seems to be commonplace, as corporations seek to lower costs in response to our changing economy. Corporations looking to find an advantage may shortchange employees, overwork them, and not train managers but rather expect everybody to "just work well together", deflecting responsibility. Unionizing provides a relief valve where unions…

If you read books from the early 1900s (Radium Girls, Rocket Boys, Seabiscuit), it's painfully obvious to see how incredibly exploitative industries can become (literally working people to death) without something like a union to check corporate greed against worker well-being. It's a fine balance though. Unions are organizations very similar to companies and can fall victim to the same sins as exploitative companies…

> it's painfully obvious to see how incredibly exploitative industries can become (literally working people to death) without something like a union to check corporate greed against worker well-being.

I don't think the missing mechanism is unions, I think it's an aggressive monopoly-busting government. What we're talking about is an industry outstrippinng it's competition and harming people - basically the definition of a monopoly.

Totally free markets are self destructive. Well regulated free markets are the greatest driving force for human quality of life we've found.

Re: New York Times tech workers union votes to authorize a strike

#538

Post by morgante »

ssklash wrote: post #472
marxisttemp wrote: post #375

Let’s all remember that the vast majority of programmers are not mathematicians, nor logicians, nor authors, we are tradespeople. And you’ll notice that tradespeople in almost every other industry unionize.

I've always thought that if a union is good enough for LeBron James and Tom Brady and Mike Trout, it's good enough for anyone. The same reason professional athletes have a union and would not dream of doing without one still fully applies to everyone else.

Yet professional athletes don't negotiate the same contract for everyone (precisely why I hate unions and what this union is demanding).

Re: New York Times tech workers union votes to authorize a strike

#539

Post by qwytw »

bad_user wrote: post #487
umvi wrote: post #475

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you read books from the early 1900s (Radium Girls, Rocket Boys, Seabiscuit), it's painfully obvious to see how incredibly exploitative industries can become (literally working people to death) without something like a union to check corporate greed against worker well-being. It's a fine balance though. Unions are organizations very similar to companies and can fall victim to the same sins as exploitative companies…

It should also be painfully obvious that, during those times, the alternative — subsistence agriculture — was much worse, and people working in factories no longer starved. The industrial revolution, AKA "greed", has ended starvation and slavery, so when socialists of late 1800s or early 1900s talk of exploitation, that should raise an eyebrow. Unions are not similar to companies because they don't compete on the fre…

> the alternative — subsistence agriculture — was much worse, and people working in factories no longer starved.

It's not straightforward as that. In Europe, or at least in countries that are relevant "subsistence agriculture" had stopped being a significant thing centuries before the industrial revolution (outside of relatively rare periods of very bad weather).

By the 1800s there were generally too many people and not enough land (the real problem short term was that land being very unequally distributed and landhorders preferring to use it for less labor intense and more profitable purposes and significantly reducing the amount of "common land" available). Productivity was also increasing meaning there was a lower demand for labor. But that's the opposite of subsistence agriculture.

However it's not really that obvious that conditions for factory workers were meaningfully better than they would have been 50-100 years earlier until at least the mid 19th century or so when the labor market became more balanced and workers permitted to organize to some extent without the fear of extreme repression).

In most extreme cases like the Great Famine in Ireland the outcome was the opposite. There was enough food (or at least enough to significantly reduce the death toll) it's just that local people couldn't afford it and it was shipped off to feed the workers in the more industrialized parts of UK. That period probably marked the heyday of 'free market' and laissez-faire ideologies.

Re: New York Times tech workers union votes to authorize a strike

#540

Post by fatbird »

WalterBright wrote: post #528
htek wrote: post #522

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You know the White House isn't personally building these charging stations, yes? The money is available and awarded to state entities that have to approve and bid out contracts, which come with their own set of local legislation that slow down the process. The Biden administration claims the process will advance faster now that states are enacting their own legislation and rules regarding charging stations. And you c…

You're describing inefficiency and corruption. Also, Washington State is completely controlled by the Democrats - all three branches of the state government. Where are the charging stations? What about the other Democrat run states? Do you know of any private company that moves that slowly? I don't think it took years and $45 billion for Musk to install a national network of charging stations. Heck, even the local su…

Honeywell, for one, with whom I worked for eight years. It's incomprehensible, the wasted money I saw, easily reaching to billions over the same time frame. The difference is that you hear about large gov't spending initiatives, but not about those from Fortune 100s, whose incentives are to hide such inefficiencies and waste in their required reporting.

Enron. Boeing Starliner. Coke wasting $2B on a failed rollout of SAP. There are endless examples of huge piles of money pissed away in the private sector through inefficiency and incompetence, or outright theft.

However, we were discussing corruption, not inefficiency, and your example of Biden's EV program included no evidence of actual corruption. Can you think of a concrete example?

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