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Kickstarter employees vote to unionize

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Re: Kickstarter employees vote to unionize

#611

Post by nelsnelson »

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.

Medicare for All covers pretty much everything.

"All Americans would have coverage for comprehensive health care services, including hospital stays; emergency room visits; doctor visits; substance use disorder treatment; dental, vision, and mental health services; long-term care; and reproductive health care. Depending upon income, prescription drug cost sharing would be capped at $200 annually." -- https://www.webmd.com/health-insurance/news/20191120/medicar...

Obviously, there might be some edge cases. This is where private insurers could still fill a role. I can't imagine that extra/supplemental private insurance could be too expensive, if it had to compete against a unified 350 million+ person insurance pool.

Edit: It is worth noting that the US is pretty unique when it comes to the separated dental insurance coverage plans and main health insurance plans.

Re: Kickstarter employees vote to unionize

#612

Post by [deleted] »

bluGill wrote: post #452
Barrin92 wrote: post #321

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>It always made 100x more sense to me on some factory floor in the early 20th century than it does in a tech startup like environment in 2020. Why does that make more sense? The point of unionization is collective bargaining. Collective bargaining is effective whether you have 30 rockstar ninja developers or blue collar workers on a factory floor. In either case the collective action helps amplifying the workforce's…

Are you exactly equal to the worker next to you? If so collective bargaining makes sense because a good deal for everybody is the best deal you can get. If not, then collective bargaining is keeping some great people down. The fact that you said rockstar developer says you believe that there are some non-rockstar developers who are presumably worth less. Note that athletic unions do not bargain for wages in general (…

[deleted]

Re: Kickstarter employees vote to unionize

#613

Post by ken »

yibg wrote: post #439
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…

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…

No, your salary depends on how well you negotiate, not how good a worker you are. Whenever I’ve shared salary information with coworkers (at non-union tech jobs) it never correlated with value or quality or productivity.

If you really want to go the “meritocracy“ route, drop salaries altogether. Make employees bid on features and maintenance, and pay them for accomplishing these specific tasks. Paying salaries at all (the same amount every month regardless of productivity) is anti-meritocratic.

Open source is a fantastic counterexample to this. Lots of people produce huge collective value to the industry for $0 incremental salary.

Re: Kickstarter employees vote to unionize

#614

Post by droopyEyelids »

hoorayimhelping wrote: post #596
eropple wrote: post #464

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the engineering ethos of meritocracy You know what's pretty inarguably a real "meritocracy"? Professional sports players. And they're all unionized. Tech does not meaningfully or significantly adhere to any ethos of meritocracy; it is exactly as political as anything else. The part that really melts your brain is when you realize that the "meritocracy" myth is peddled so the people who don't realize they're bad at…

Sports is about the farthest thing from a meritocracy you can get. Only 25 NBA players in the history of the league have been below 5 foot 9 (175cm) [1] Professional athletes are genetic freaks first and foremost - look at the dropoff from college football players to professional players. It's not talent that determines who makes it, it's genetic ability. The absolute worst NFL team in history would decimate the best…

The way I'm reading it, your argument assumes the mental aptitude we train into the ability to write code is not genetic.

Is that your position or did I read too far into it?

Re: Kickstarter employees vote to unionize

#615

Post by xkemp »

_sbrk wrote: post #68

I worked in a union shop once, as a summer intern. Every day, we were told to be in the break room at 7:59am to begin promptly at the 8am bell. By 4:30 or 4:45pm, everyone was back in there, waiting for the clock to hit 5pm. One day, I needed to connect two PCs together, which was approved by boss as they would be isolated from the network. So, being the diligent type, I went off and found some network cards and a ca…

A union is run rather democratically. It will tend to reflect the attitudes of its membership, i. e. your coworkers. In some old industry on a downward slope, employees will tend to be older and risk-averse, and so will the union. Tech Unions will tend to be rather different.

Don't get hung up on this concept of "union". Look around the office and imagine what you and the ten people you see might want to ask from management.

It could be "no open-plan offices", or maybe it's better options for working remotely, budget for conferences, free choice of OS, whatever...

Re: Kickstarter employees vote to unionize

#616

Post by luckylion »

arrosenberg wrote: post #455
proc0 wrote: post #419

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bargaining rights don't come for free. At the end of the day, unless you are the owner of the company or union leaders, you are basically serving two masters.

That's a pretty pessimistic way to look at it. Without a union or being a high-skilled worker, you are 100% serving your corporate overlord. In well-run unions the leadership serves the membership, not the other way around. With a good union you are serving yourself in a far more significant way than without the union.

> In well-run unions the leadership serves the membership, not the other way around.

Isn't that a bit much like "in a well-run republic, the government serves the people" etc? That's certainly true in theory...

I have no experience with US unions, but I am, thanks to a previous job, very well acquainted with most of the major unions in Germany on multiple levels. The further up you go, the more corruption you will find. They are run as cross-overs between political party and corporation, with large salaries for the executives, networks deciding over promotions and mostly based on political & personal affiliation, not on merit. They tend to say "we have to see eye-to-eye with management to negotiate", which roughly translates to "we have to be paid as well as upper management".

Don't get me wrong, I'd probably still recommend joining a union if you're starting out today, but I wouldn't give you any of that ideological crap. It'll get you more pay, and you'll have a lawyer for any issues with your job. Do it, don't tell anyone about it (illegal or not, if you apply for a job, they will look you up and if you're known for being active in a union, they will not hire you), and keep your head down, because they can also make your life hell if you get on their bad side or insult some local boss.

Re: Kickstarter employees vote to unionize

#618

Post by bearmcbearsly »

carapace wrote: post #407
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…

> 1. Why do tech workers need a union? I don't know if a union is the answer, but tech workers aren't immune to management hi-jinks: "Apple and Google's wage-fixing cartel involved dozens more companies, over one million employees" https://pando.com/2014/03/22/revealed-apple-and-googles-wage...

I dunno... I was a victim of this wage-fixing scheme, as were all of my coworkers at the time. And I don't know of a single one who would have preferred to have a union collectively negotiating wages.

The whole scheme was that the companies stopped their recruiters from cold-calling each others' employees. That kept wages down by reducing the opportunities for people to get a better salary by moving between companies (or threatening to). If wages were collectively negotiated, those opportunities would not exist in the first place.

Re: Kickstarter employees vote to unionize

#619

Post by DoubleGlazing »

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…

> 1. Why do tech workers need a union?

In my experience the normal dynamics of employer-employee relationships are broken in the tech sector.

In most cases where employees have a grief with an employer it's usually due to a lack of something, be it wages, safety, job security etc.

In the tech sector that doesn't apply. Wages are good, normal health and safety issues are non-existent and you have no problem finding a job if you need one - if you have the skills.

The problem is that the environment can be very, very toxic. My experience has been of employers offering me a big salary, but then expecting me to work very long hours. Couple this with an obsession with being the first to market and rushing to get the product out of the door and you end up with an unpleasant and stressful work environment.

There are health and safety issues, but they don't manifest in broken bones or bruises, but in stress, anxiety and nervous breakdowns.

And you can't opt-out. I've asked to have my contract changed so that the overtime clause has limits applied to it in exchange for a salary reduction - in three attempts every employer has said no. It's like overtime is expected as a normal thing and that you can't complain because your salary is so good.

But of course if you are putting in just an extra hour each day and you are contracted for a 37.5 hour week, you are actually reducing your salary by around 13%.

And if you are perceived as a troublemaker by your employer for standing up for yourself you;ll find that news gets around other employers faster than you'd expect.

Its that broken dynamic, combined with a lack of ethics that means tech employees need to unionize in order to reign in bad employers.

Re: Kickstarter employees vote to unionize

#620

Post by eropple »

hoorayimhelping wrote: post #596
eropple wrote: post #464

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the engineering ethos of meritocracy You know what's pretty inarguably a real "meritocracy"? Professional sports players. And they're all unionized. Tech does not meaningfully or significantly adhere to any ethos of meritocracy; it is exactly as political as anything else. The part that really melts your brain is when you realize that the "meritocracy" myth is peddled so the people who don't realize they're bad at…

Sports is about the farthest thing from a meritocracy you can get. Only 25 NBA players in the history of the league have been below 5 foot 9 (175cm) [1] Professional athletes are genetic freaks first and foremost - look at the dropoff from college football players to professional players. It's not talent that determines who makes it, it's genetic ability. The absolute worst NFL team in history would decimate the best…

> It's not talent that determines who makes it, it's genetic ability.

Sorry, I meant "meritocracy" in the way that the tech crowd does, not a, y'know, actual one. Because they rarely if ever exist in practice.

It's funny, because I would hold that a good bit of what we consider "technical aptitude" is innate, if not strictly "genetic". I don't mean stuff like that old Dartmouth CS study, though. Speaking for myself, I have a level of general memory recall that, while not what you might call "eidetic memory", is very, very good. "Remember the behavior of an API I used cursorily five years ago" good. And from a pure value perspective, that I can dredge weird stuff like that up, that I can make connections between disparate stuff based almost entirely on having too much junk in the drawers of my brain, are why I deliver value in tech roles. If anything, my ability to quickly and with self-discomfiting detail remember the failures of code I've written are more valuable than the code I write today. ;)

And I have had that kind of weird memory recall since I was a kid. I don't know if it's "genetic", but I didn't do anything to make it happen. Which leads me to think that if "being tall" rules one out of a meritocracy, stuff like that, or the weird permutation of brainscape that makes one better able to latch onto stuff like algebra or able to better visualize systems--all of that stuff functionally should, too.

Which, to me, is yet another ding in this idea of "meritocracy". It's all a dart board.

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