Kickstarter employees vote to unionize • Hacker News Board

Re: Kickstarter employees vote to unionize

#541

Post by hinkley » Tue, Feb 18, 2020, 7:57 PM UTC

rrobukef wrote: post #526

nelsnelson wrote: post #504

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is worth mentioning that if the Senate bill version of Medicare for All becomes the law of the land, then previously employer-funded healthcare becomes one less thing for union leaders to have to negotiate with employers.

Why? It just raises the bar for the unions: negociating co-pay, dental plan... Plenty of healthcare things will not be covered by Medicare. Unions will negociate about this.

Would nationalized healthcare cover orthodontics? I could see an awful lot of union members being interested in supplemental family dental from employers.

Re: Kickstarter employees vote to unionize

#542

Post by mplewis » Tue, Feb 18, 2020, 7:57 PM UTC

ticmasta wrote: post #460

mdonahoe wrote: post #411

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Athletes unionize" is one of the better arguments I've heard for why devs should. I'm curious to learn more about the origins of the players' union.

They don't unionize though, they have a player's union. This is not the same thing. There is no collective bargaining process in professional sports that matches the typical public sector and athletes are not salaried employees. Nothing stops the top performers from negotiating a more lucrative contract. They also make a huge portion of their earnings via 3rd party engagements which a FT salaried employee cannot do.…

> If we focused on the bigger issue

We can do two things at once.

Re: Kickstarter employees vote to unionize

#543

Post by baron816 » Tue, Feb 18, 2020, 7:57 PM UTC

elicash wrote: post #512

baron816 wrote: post #498

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That professional sports are monopolies and monopsonies isn't particularly relevant to this point. What are you talking about. That’s entirely relevant. What’s not relevant is that the workers are rich. Market dynamics are the entirety of what determines your compensation and working conditions. Being able to leave for a competitor is pretty all the leverage you’re ever going to have.

If that was true, Kickstarter wouldn't have fought it as hard as they did. The workers just gained additional leverage. What's the evidence that these workers have zero additional leverage?

There’s no evidence that they do have additional leverage either. I could argue that they acted against their own self interest in many ways, but still don’t know for sure how things will work out in one way or another.

Re: Kickstarter employees vote to unionize

#544

Post by Gwypaas » Tue, Feb 18, 2020, 7:58 PM UTC

yibg wrote: post #431

Balero wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The experience I have had with UK unions is very different from this, and the other descriptions of unions in the US. I only had a few interactions with them (in a union capacity, the rep was a normal worker as well). These were things like: Getting some new equipment for the break room (kettle and mugs), pushing some new health and safety process (developed alongside the company), and then the yearly meeting, which…

That sounds like a much better relationship. But in that case isn’t the role of the Union almost redundant? I mean what’s stopping the workers and management from just having a dialog without a union? Another thing is I don’t want the same X% increase as everyone else. What if I’m better or worse employee? Why should I get the same output for variable input?

Just to take Sweden as an example. For public companies with more than 25 employees the workers have the right to two members and two substitutes on the companies board. Usually these come from the union working with the company.

The goal of this is to create a dialog of how the company is run and similar on every level of the company.

Regarding your question about the salaries, that is mostly blue-collar work here. For white-collar workers the unions mostly exist to enforce regulations and allow the workers to have the legal clout and information necessary when disputes arise, creating more of a do it right the first time rather than try to bend the rules to see how far you can go environment. Salaries are individually negotiated.

Re: Kickstarter employees vote to unionize

#545

Post by jkingsbery » Tue, Feb 18, 2020, 7:58 PM UTC

claudeganon wrote: post #518

thefreeman wrote: post #384

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> NBA player association I disagree. The NBA players association looks out for the mid level role players (who make up a vast majority of the league) over the highest performing players. The top tier of NBA players are essentially "underpaid" compared to their worth due to maximum salaries. This makes room for mid level guys to make 10-15 million per year. If there was no maximum salary there would be a massive biddi…

Judging from this post, I’m not sure you fully grasp how basketball works nor the underlying concept of “team sports.” Even MJ needed 4 other guys on his side to win.

While it may be true that team sports need multiple players, several players have currently signed "supermax contracts." Since they signed a maximum contract, their team would be willing to pay them more, so they are underpaid.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NBA_salary_cap#Supermax_contra...

Re: Kickstarter employees vote to unionize

#546

Post by Seenso » Tue, Feb 18, 2020, 7:58 PM UTC

leto_ii wrote: post #503

yibg wrote: post #439

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just in terms of salary isn’t an union somewhat contradictory to the engineering ethos of meritocracy? I mean we’d like to think that the good ideas win and impact and outcome matters. We hold up the 10x engineers and those that make an outsized contribution to the industry / company / product right? Shouldn’t they get higher compensation compared to the rest of the work force? How do we square that with collective b…

> Just in terms of salary isn’t an union somewhat contradictory to the engineering ethos of meritocracy? I've seen that other commenters have already pointed out that the two are not incompatible. However, with the risk of getting some downvotes, I would like to challenge the primacy of meritocracy itself. I don't mean to say that people shouldn't do a good job at work or that they shouldn't try to continuously impro…

> I don't mean to say that people shouldn't do a good job at work or that they shouldn't try to continuously improve. But I think that an environment and a mentality of continuous competition between individuals is not necessarily beneficial. For one it can cause tensions, frustration, anger, alienation at an individual level, but I think in the long run it can actually harm the company itself.

IIRC, the authors of Peopleware [1] (fantastic book, btw) agree with you. They identified some pay for performance ideas for knowledge workers as "teamkillers" (e.g. tempting management ideas that end up destroying the social fabric that makes an effective team stronger than the sum of its parts).

https://www.amazon.com/Peopleware-Productive-Projects-Teams-...

Re: Kickstarter employees vote to unionize

#547

Post by Apocryphon » Tue, Feb 18, 2020, 7:59 PM UTC

azinman2 wrote: post #125

jdkee wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Millions of people across the U.S. benefit from collective bargaining, such as increased wages, health benefits and retirement security, yet one anecdotal off-topic post gets upvoted.

Probably because it resonates as a real problem despite the upsides.

Or perhaps it reinforces preconceived notions?

Re: Kickstarter employees vote to unionize

#548

Post by Apocryphon » Tue, Feb 18, 2020, 8:00 PM UTC

notyourday wrote: post #317

lawnchair_larry wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s not the correct comparison. Unions are a hedge against abusive employers when employees lack other options. They are a blunt instrument with many downsides. They make sense when the downsides are not worse than the abusive employer. This does not describe the situation with kickstarter employees, and any real union job would find this entitlement laughable.

Tech industry is full of entitled prima donnas living in an alternative reality valid only in their heads. US median wage according to data for 2016 was about $32k [ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_income_in_the_United_... ]. According to Payscale Kickstarter pays its employees an average of $96,897 a year. Salaries at Kickstarter range from an average of $62,662 to $142,634 a year. Deciding to treat tech mana…

"Software engineers aren't a privileged set. They're just less fucked than the rest of the U.S. Former Middle Class."

https://www.quora.com/Why-do-software-engineers-make-so-much...

Re: Kickstarter employees vote to unionize

#549

Post by jcampbell1 » Tue, Feb 18, 2020, 8:01 PM UTC

totaldude87 wrote: post #443

elicash wrote: post #379

1. Why do tech workers need a union? If you want to improve your workplace, you have additional leverage to fight for changes if you're in a union. There's often very little you can do alone. This might be things like pay, or it might be something else entirely. 2. But aren't tech workers elite coddled rich kids who are lucky to make what they receive? I mean, no. But even if so, high pay doesn't stop athletes from j…

I think the tech people/artists working on gaming industry , Uber's male chauvinistic culture and the problems associated with that can be a typical examples of "why tech needs to unionize". So far , the medium.com has been the "systematic problems reporting tool" for tech and that just generates the views and small changes.. In the past decade, i hate to see that the word "unionizing" in itself has become a bad word…

Unions have a terrible reputation when it comes to helping people in the minority. They have elections and tyranny of the majority is the natural outcome. Unions and Labor parties have a nasty history of racism. About 15 years ago I was present when a UAW rep called a gay salaried coworker the f-word at 150 decibels and the company could do nothing. He is now the plant union chairman.

I am sure this union will start off nice, but eventually the Bros will run it.

Re: Kickstarter employees vote to unionize

#550

Post by hinkley » Tue, Feb 18, 2020, 8:01 PM UTC

linuxftw wrote: post #410

elicash wrote: post #379

1. Why do tech workers need a union? If you want to improve your workplace, you have additional leverage to fight for changes if you're in a union. There's often very little you can do alone. This might be things like pay, or it might be something else entirely. 2. But aren't tech workers elite coddled rich kids who are lucky to make what they receive? I mean, no. But even if so, high pay doesn't stop athletes from j…

The number 1 reason to form a union in the tech world is so a company can't pull a Disney. Replace all your full time workers with imported 'contractors' and force you to train them. Getting rid of the 'contractor' loop hole in tech will be better for everyone.

I'm interested in someone setting minimum quality requirements for code, and I've no faith in my government to do that well. No, I said that wrong. I have every faith in my government screwing that up spectacularly.

From what I understand from other industries, the safety guidelines are often, at least initially, heavily informed by the professional bodies of those industries. Later on watchdog groups start to propose more stringent rules.

We haven't really discussed any of this stuff very concretely and we'd have to start somewhere (other than legislation please).