Kickstarter’s staff is unionizing • Hacker News Board

Re: Kickstarter’s staff is unionizing

#671

Post by mcv » Wed, Mar 20, 2019, 1:12 PM UTC

yibg wrote: post #559

I'm not against unions in general or in principle, but some implementations are not great. I suspect like some folks here, my personal (negative) interactions with unions have turned me off of unions in general. I worked at an unionized shop when I first graduated and while I recognize some of the positives the union brought, there were also many downsides. Some examples: - Nepotism. We had an open position we couldn…

This does not sound like what (little, I admit) I know about unions. If the union is in charge of hiring, promotion and even the content of your work, it seems the union is effectively running the company.

Dutch unions, as far as I know, negotiate employment contracts, employment standards and general working conditions with employers and the government. A lot of Dutch economic decisions are made in a committee with representatives of the government, employer organisations, and the unions. In many industries there are standards about what someone in a certain position should get paid, but hiring, promotions and bonuses are based on performance.

Union membership is also not mandatory, but some employers encourage it, and unions provide services for their members.

This seems to me like the right way to do unions, but stories about unions in other countries (the US in particular) often come across as completely nuts.

Re: Kickstarter’s staff is unionizing

#672

Post by crankylinuxuser » Wed, Mar 20, 2019, 1:16 PM UTC

dantheman wrote: post #631

crankylinuxuser wrote: post #473

Earlier quoted context omitted.

According to the labor theory of value: When an individual negotiates and works for a company, they make the company X$/yr. And they only pay the person YX$/yr where Y is a value from 0-.99 . That's because the company relies on this imbalance across its workforce to extract money from employees' labor. Your value may be X$/yr, but you are compensated for .2X$/yr . The .8X/yr goes to the company as their profit. In u…

The labor theory of value has been widely discredited.

By whom? Fox news?

I certainly see criticisms of LTV (like any economic theory), but there is no discrediting from what I've seen.

Care to share links about this discrediting?

Re: Kickstarter’s staff is unionizing

#673

Post by mcv » Wed, Mar 20, 2019, 1:24 PM UTC

tylerl wrote: post #652

bargl wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this means we need to re-think how unions work. It should be used to create fair workplaces. My concern with the anti-union rhetoric in the USA is that we then turn to the government to protect workers. I think it's a lot better to have a union vs government as long as that union isn't protected from competition like they are today. If we can introduce competition into unions then they might better serve the…

Unions don't exist for the employees' benefit, they exist for the union's benefit. There's a big ol difference, and because of their protected status, unions get away with a lot of really horrifying behavior. I've worked with several unions in different industries, and I can say pretty categorically that unions are brazenly unethical. Unions may sometimes improve working conditions and pay, but only in the sense that…

Employees shouldn't join unions that don't exist for their benefit. And if a union doesn't benefit the workers, they should leave and start a new union.

This happened years ago in Netherland: many railway employees weren't happy with something their union (part of the largest union federation) negotiated for them, so they left and started a competing union to negotiate for them instead. Messy, embarrassing for the big union, but it solved the problem.

Not sure if the alternative union still exists or if it merged back into the large union again.

Re: Kickstarter’s staff is unionizing

#674

Post by chimeracoder » Wed, Mar 20, 2019, 1:34 PM UTC

mlillie wrote: post #134

duxup wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm highly skeptical of US style unions, but if any tech industry seems to need unions... it's the game industry.

How would you qualify US style vs non-US style unions? The prevalence of business unionism here?

> How would you qualify US style vs non-US style unions? The prevalence of business unionism here?

The big difference, which nobody seems to have mentioned here, is that unions in the US are guaranteed exclusivity by law over representing people within a bargaining unit, as well as unilateral and retroactive control over defining the bargaining unit. In practice, this means that all employees at a given company are required to be represented by the same union; they have no choice in the matter. Once the union is established, it is almost impossible to decertify it, so the union corporate structure will never feel any real pressure from the employees.

In almost every other country, employees can choose alternative representation, which means the unions are forced to compete with each other for membership, and they are not guaranteed to represent employees at that company in perpetuity. This creates a healthier and less exploitative dynamic.

Re: Kickstarter’s staff is unionizing

#675

Post by chimeracoder » Wed, Mar 20, 2019, 1:36 PM UTC

JamesBarney wrote: post #592

lacey wrote: post #573

I haven’t had a large number of interactions with unions but I have seen some things that definitely turn me off of them, e.g. requiring two or three people from as many different unions to set up a booth at a conference because multiple skills are required and the unions negotiated with the venue to have each step done by union employees with those specific skills. So eg the people assembling the structure couldn’t…

I think a tech workers association similar to the AMA would be helpful. I think the best work it could do would be to push for standardized contracts around intellectual property(company doesn't own everything you touch even in your free time) and non-competes(for instance must be paid some % of salary while non-compete is enforced). And the second best work it could do would be to push for standardized on-call/overt…

> I think a tech workers association similar to the AMA would be helpful.

A voluntary organization that less than 25% of people in the industry are members of, and which doesn't seek recognition by the NLRB?

That's very different from a union.

Re: Kickstarter’s staff is unionizing

#676

Post by mcv » Wed, Mar 20, 2019, 1:43 PM UTC

conanbatt wrote: post #512

megy wrote: post #477

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You can't get good results through bad means. Like a 5 day work week from 6 days? Like 8 hour work days? Like safe conditions for workers. All things unions helped deliver.

Higher worker productivity achieved those things, not unions. Those gains so-called 'worker rights' were achieved in countries without unions as well. It's also unmentioned how much unemployment and misery unions also caused in this narrative.

What unionless countries achieved these things? It seems to me that workers in countries with unions tend to have far better working conditions than those in countries without unions. The only alternative to unions to get these things is to get them directly enshrined in law, but in most countries that only happened after unions fought for it.

Re: Kickstarter’s staff is unionizing

#677

Post by moate » Wed, Mar 20, 2019, 1:43 PM UTC

CryptoPunk wrote: post #593

moate wrote: post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>>What if you're better than the majority of "us". I can negotiate a better deal for myself than they can get or justify; now I subsidize the group for "the greater good". Yes. This is also how insurance works. Also, statistically speaking, most people aren't better than the majority. The union then yolks the top half to make things better for the majority. People see this as unfair because they think they somehow go…

>>There is absolutely an imbalance between the rates being paid to western white-collar workers and the value they create for their companies. If there wasn't, we wouldn't continue to see stockholder shares increase and growth in income inequity. What do you mean by "stockholders shares increase"? You're saying shares increasing in value is a sign that there's an imbalance between wages paid to workers and value crea…

>>As for the growth in income inequality, there are many other possible explanations besides a free market in labor being inherently unfair to workers.

Such as?

>>What do you mean by "stockholders shares increase"? You're saying shares increasing in value is a sign that there's an imbalance between wages paid to workers and value created by them?

Quick answer: Yes. If I create $200 worth of value for my company, and I'm paid $100 dollars and the other $100 is given to the company coffers, I'm underpaid relative to the value I create. Capitalism is based on the idea that this has to happen in order for a business to function. I don't believe this to be the only way.

>>it doesn't follow that a cookie cutter intervention that treats labor as one homogeneous mass

That does't tend to be how unions work. Some go with specific rates based on seniority, some simply require wage floors or ranges based on title. Some simply bargain for benefits that help the masses (grievance resolution, healthcare options, etc). Unions are only a blunt tool if you let them be. Collective bargaining is only bad if you feel you're the specialist exceptional boy, which Western culture encourages but statistics point out are rare.

Re: Kickstarter’s staff is unionizing

#678

Post by cpursley » Wed, Mar 20, 2019, 1:51 PM UTC

EliRivers wrote: post #459

cpursley wrote: post #344

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or you can go work for a normal company that treats its employees well. There's plenty of them out there; it's a competitive market for good staff. *Edit: I don't understand the downvotes. If you're in tech at the moment and somewhat competent, you can basically name your price and benefits.

If you're in tech at the moment and somewhat competent, you can basically name your price and benefits. In some regions of some countries.

Which countries? I know software developers in countries like Russia who make more than the average American either working for local companies or remote western companies.

Re: Kickstarter’s staff is unionizing

#679

Post by notheruser » Wed, Mar 20, 2019, 2:09 PM UTC

moduspol wrote: post #246

notheruser wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The managers of the corporation are not spending their money either, unless they own the corporation.

They're voluntarily authorized by the controlling interest of the people whose money it is.

In many cases the controlling interests are index and pension funds. Members of these funds do not get a say in political donations. Corporations are people spending other people's money with little consequence all the way down.

Re: Kickstarter’s staff is unionizing

#680

Post by moate » Wed, Mar 20, 2019, 2:13 PM UTC

chimeracoder wrote: post #674

mlillie wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How would you qualify US style vs non-US style unions? The prevalence of business unionism here?

> How would you qualify US style vs non-US style unions? The prevalence of business unionism here? The big difference, which nobody seems to have mentioned here, is that unions in the US are guaranteed exclusivity by law over representing people within a bargaining unit, as well as unilateral and retroactive control over defining the bargaining unit. In practice, this means that all employees at a given company are r…

Sure, but if you didn't force an exploitative monopoly by the existing unions, how would you build anti-union sentiment and drive union membership lower and lower year over year? /s

The difficulty is that it feels like the current labor organization laws in the US has supporters on both sides. The existing unions enjoy their strength and wouldn't want to have to fight off upstarts and the capital class keeps seeing less and less union representation under our current system and can just keep feeding anti-union sentiment.

I agree that some competition could help in this matter since so many unions at this point no longer need to fairly represent their members as a whole due to their ubiquity in the industry. Also I feel that many of them are so large that they would have too many conflicting interests within the union and could be harming as many people as they help with a choice.