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Kickstarter employees vote to unionize

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Re: Kickstarter employees vote to unionize

#691

Post by _sbrk »

biztos wrote: post #666
_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…

But doesn't the "not your job" thing exist in order to protect actual jobs worked by actual people from being arbitrarily "rationalized" out of existence, because hey someone else can do that? Potentially your job as well? I get that it would be frustrating to not do your own hardware setup as a techie. Just like it must be frustrating sometimes to not do your own lighting as a camera operator in Hollywood. But in Ho…

> But doesn't the "not your job" thing exist in order to protect actual jobs worked by actual people from being arbitrarily "rationalized" out of existence, because hey someone else can do that? Potentially your job as well?

I'm not concerned about any specific job, including my own.

I will learn, adapt, and excel at whatever I need to do to survive.

Re: Kickstarter employees vote to unionize

#692

Post by SpicyLemonZest »

biztos wrote: post #666
_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…

But doesn't the "not your job" thing exist in order to protect actual jobs worked by actual people from being arbitrarily "rationalized" out of existence, because hey someone else can do that? Potentially your job as well? I get that it would be frustrating to not do your own hardware setup as a techie. Just like it must be frustrating sometimes to not do your own lighting as a camera operator in Hollywood. But in Ho…

That is the reasoning, and it's exactly why it concerns me. I'm imagining a world where the national SRE union comes by, and tells me I should never write any monitoring code or change any configuration flags because that's an SRE's job I'm taking.

Re: Kickstarter employees vote to unionize

#693

Post by big_chungus »

karatestomp wrote: post #253
iandanforth wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Comments like the above fascinate me. The emotional appeal of "choice" seems to have no end. You can employ it to fight unions, health care, public schools anything you want. Similarly if you can successfully attach "right" (as in "a right") to your rhetoric you can draw out pride, anger, indignation, all sorts of powerful emotions. I recently learned that Frank Luntz ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_Luntz ) is…

Weirdly, this kind of "freedom" is often freedom that's of zero or negative value to me. Take the "freedom" lost by switching to single payer healthcare or similar: oh, no, I don't get to rely on private insurance and deal directly with private medical provider billing departments anymore, and spend tens of hours fixing their mistakes and attempts to screw me every time I use medical care, plus all the time trying to…

> Weirdly, this kind of "freedom" is often freedom that's of zero or negative value to me.

As you said, _to you_.

> Take the "freedom" lost by switching to single payer healthcare or similar: oh, no, I don't get to rely on private insurance and deal directly with private medical provider billing departments anymore, and spend tens of hours fixing their mistakes and attempts to screw me every time I use medical care, plus all the time trying to understand their deliberately-complicated policies to make any kind of mostly-useless attempt at comparison shopping, all while paying a premium for it, and instead I just pay taxes and get medical care when I need it.

Well, this is a whole other can of worms, but here goes nothing. As a brief aside, possibly the only system more complicated than American medicine is the American tax code; both are horribly byzantine and have entire industries dedicated to wrangling the bureaucracy. Government involvement is what led to both being so messy. That aside, I oppose single-payer medicine for reasons out side of "which one costs more". I don't trust the government, and think it ought to stick to keeping the peace and enforcing property rights and contracts. There are a few other important things that can be done at the state and local level, and most things ought to be left up to the individual. I don't trust other people to run my life, be they union bureaucrats or federal ones, or even my fellow citizens. Leaving aside my concerns about the growth of federal government, why do you want everyone to use your government system instead of just offering it as an option? What business of yours is it if others choose to stay private?

Re: Kickstarter employees vote to unionize

#694

Post by bakuninsbart »

jcampbell1 wrote: post #586
elicash wrote: post #566

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Basically every institution in the U.S. has racism in its history. But the reason the civil rights movement has been so aligned with the labor movement historically is because racial and economic progress are linked. That's one reason why there's more pay equity in union jobs. Worth noting that Dr. King was assassinated, he was in the city because he was striking with sanitation workers. https://www.theroot.com/dr-ki…

I am clearly biased based on my experience, and agree with MLK that you can’t make progress if you don’t have a voice. Maybe if the union is setup with parliamentary style representation it would avoid some of the nasty problems I have seen first hand.

I honestly don't know about unions in the anglophone world, but here in continental Europe they did a rather splendid job. I think it might be a mix of propaganda by corporate media and lack of transparency that led to the downfall of unions in NA and Britain, but it really doesn't need to stay that way. Build up the system again, and this time better.

I also don't see why there shouldn't be an international union of IT workers. We are an extremely flexible workforce, generally sharing similar concerns, and usually with a strong urge to cooperate on a number of issues. We could even band together to crowdfund certain open source projects we really want but never get around to.

Re: Kickstarter employees vote to unionize

#696

Post by watwut »

TylerE wrote: post #651
kerkeslager wrote: post #646

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also, frankly, fsk free snacks. Pay me the money you were going to spend on snacks, and I'll choose whether to spend it on snacks or not. And since the money spent on free snacks was probably about $20/week, it won't be a significant consideration in any of my decisions. Bus service might be more significant in some places, but every place I've ever lived had that subsidized by the government, and long commutes are a…

They are buying more than the snacks. They are buying you time, since you never need to make office grocery runs to stock your desk. Might not be a huge deal, but elimination of chores really is a perk.

Unless you left all shopping on partner or parents, it is like 5 seconds to grab stuff for office too while in store.

And even if your partner does it all, "honey would you buy also some crackers" is quick.

Re: Kickstarter employees vote to unionize

#697

Post by save_ferris »

djsumdog wrote: post #585
save_ferris wrote: post #492

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s not just wage-fixing, tech companies wield an absurd amount of power in other aspects of people’s lives. I was once let go due for “performance” reasons that involved major company politics behind the scenes. I’d just gotten my annual review from my boss emailed to my work email about a week before my termination, which showed stellar performance across the board. When I looked into filing for unemployment, I di…

You should be able to subpoena those e-mails and other documents. Depending on your municipality, there is usually a court/tribunal process just for unemployment claims, or you could get an employment lawyer. It is going to eat up some of that unemployment, but it's worth it to not let a company get away with that kind of shit.

> but it’s worth it

Is it, though? I chose to focus on finding the next gig and luckily got one in a couple weeks. The emotional toll of subjecting yourself to the legal system against an entity with a team of lawyers sounds absolutely horrible.

Re: Kickstarter employees vote to unionize

#699

Post by jrochkind1 »

umvi wrote: post #201
jrochkind1 wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some have experienced egregious tyranny and abuse of power in the workplace, and might think it is worth deterring there too.

IMO with companies, the stakes are not so high that democracies (i.e. unions) need to be implemented right from inception. If a company demonstrates repeated abuse of employees, then sure, retrofit it with a union to keep future abuses in check. But unions have several significant downsides too, and for companies with a clean record, strong leaders with a vision, good pay and benefits, high morale, etc. I don't see a…

If you haven't been in a position where workplace tyranny and abuse of power don't seem so high stakes, you are fortunate, but your experience is not universal or necessarily typical.

Re: Kickstarter employees vote to unionize

#700

Post by baron816 »

swang wrote: post #459
baron816 wrote: post #451

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree. Professional sports leagues are both monopolies and monopsonies (meaning they’re the only ones hiring those specialized athletes). So the market dynamics are very different from that of tech. If you’re a NFL linebacker, you don’t really have an option to switch leagues if you’re unhappy with how it’s run. If you’re a software engineer, you can switch companies very easily.

what if apple, google, intel, adobe, pixar, lucasfilms all conspire to suppress your wages? great you can switch to another company that doesn't pay you your worth. https://www.latimes.com/business/technology/la-fi-tn-tech-jo...

It’s already illegal for them to do that. The solution to collusion by firms is not collusion by workers.
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