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Union Is Formed at Los Angeles Times and Publisher Put on Leave

nytimes.com

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Re: Union Is Formed at Los Angeles Times and Publisher Put on Leave

#71

Post by cookiecaper »

dizzystar wrote: post #32
ng12 wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The unions aren't for the A-list, they're for the struggling actors who would get paid minimum wage otherwise (or worse, you'd see a lot of "unpaid internships").

Ask the non-union folk about that. Getting into a movie industry union is very difficult and rather expensive to boot. You don't just get into these unions by showing up at the door. The correlation to software would be having a list of progressively difficult things you have to do, so that, ultimately, only 10% of people make it in. The rest pay their dues by working minimum wage jobs and unpaid internships.

Yes. So much of this stuff is just credentialism and maintaining barriers to entry. A union will come with arbitrary requirements that some committee decided were must-haves before one was a bona fide programmer. This laundry list will include 5 years full-time practice in the language you personally most despise. Any attempt to argue that 5 years of experience in that language is non-essential will be met with scorn and mockery, and taken as proof that you are not a serious professional.

Unions, professional societies, licensing bodies, etc., all function primarily to shore up the in group. These groups then live off of annual license fees, dues, and other types of lechery. This group grows more and more detached, sitting in an office worrying about the meta-scale instead of actually doing any real work. Eventually the union and licensing bosses consume massive quantities of the otherwise-productive value just for sitting there in the middle. By this point, their approval has been codified into major corporate contracts if not literally made legally prerequisite. Good luck extracting them at that point. Right-to-work at least keeps that apparatus somewhat in check.

I knew a young woman aspiring to become a professional actor. She had spent years trying to earn her way into SAG, and had years left to go before she realistically had a shot of actually getting in. Unions are not charities. They exist to serve themselves and the people they decide to like, and no one else.

Re: Union Is Formed at Los Angeles Times and Publisher Put on Leave

#72

Post by p_monk »

For those people suggesting programmers shouldn't unionize, read the op-ed in Financial Times written by Sequoia's Michael Moritz this week to see why programmers should unionize ASAP:

https://www.ft.com/content/42daca9e-facc-11e7-9bfc-052cbba03...

In this article, he suggests Silicon Valley engineers should be worked to the bone like their Chinese counterparts. Some of the things he suggests in the articles:

1) End vacation days (he refers to taking a vacation day as "stealing")

2) Workers should get used to not seeing their kids

3) End the weekend (employees should work 14 hour days, 6-7 days a week)

4) Buildings should turn off the heat. Instead, employees can wear coats and scarves at their desks.

5) Physical fitness should be discouraged.

Re: Union Is Formed at Los Angeles Times and Publisher Put on Leave

#73

Post by tonyarkles »

untog wrote: post #55
dmix wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In what way could they stop the company from doing this? Besides making firing (even bad) employees difficult? Any future growth that may have previously resulted in hiring full time workers could easily now be redirected to freelance, temp work, and p/t workers regardless of the union. I remember watching a Tronc video when it was trendy to make fun of them and they were already talking heavily about digitizing much…

> could easily now be redirected to freelance, temp work, and p/t workers regardless of the union Not if the union is willing to go on strike. This is one of the main things a union can achieve.

And negotiating it into the collective agreement. It's pretty common to require that all work done be done by union members.

Re: Union Is Formed at Los Angeles Times and Publisher Put on Leave

#74

Post by tylerhou »

geofft wrote: post #36
neuland wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I will quit from any employer that forces all programmers to negotiate as a unit, because I believe that compensation should be based purely on your individual skills and the market. I also believe that forced collective bargaining is unconstitutional, because it requires people to associate with a group that they don't want to associate with. If a group of people wish to collectively bargain with their employer, tha…

> I will quit from any employer that forces all programmers to negotiate as a unit, because I believe that compensation should be based purely on your individual skills and the market. But that is the market, is it not? If your employer chooses to require all employees to negotiate as a unit, and is not required to do so by law, aren't they just doing that because they're a rational actor in the market? The law is a…

And if the poster you replied to quits from his employer, isn't he just doing that because he's a rational (by his own metric of rationality) actor in the market? Presumably there is at least one un-unionized employer where he could get a job.

Re: Union Is Formed at Los Angeles Times and Publisher Put on Leave

#75

Post by Karunamon »

earthtolazlo wrote: post #30
icelancer wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> It is interesting that programmers (as a whole) seem resistant to it Software developers and people in IT are probably two orders of magnitude more likely to be libertarian / anarcho-capitalist and conservative in economic views than your average union worker in another field. That's definitely a large impact as well.

I think this is the gist of it. Most of the arguments I’ve seen against unionization seem to appeal to the inflated egos that a lot of developers possess.

That's a bit unfair, isn't it? Arguments with regard to dues, easy mobility, necessity, agility, and so forth don't seem at all ego-driven.

Re: Union Is Formed at Los Angeles Times and Publisher Put on Leave

#77

Post by JoshTriplett »

frgtpsswrdlame wrote: post #33
neuland wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I will quit from any employer that forces all programmers to negotiate as a unit, because I believe that compensation should be based purely on your individual skills and the market. I also believe that forced collective bargaining is unconstitutional, because it requires people to associate with a group that they don't want to associate with. If a group of people wish to collectively bargain with their employer, tha…

Except collective bargaining won't exist without that law. The free rider problem will destroy any possibility of collective bargaining. That's why I think it's disingenuous to say: If a group of people wish to collectively bargain with their employer, that's wonderful. But, they can leave me out of it, and I can do without whatever pay schedule and benefits they manage to extract from the employer. Well you can't re…

Not necessarily true. If enough people find the union valuable, believe in its aims, and want to participate in it, then the employer can't afford to lose or alienate the union employees, so the union has negotiating power (proportional to the employees that participate). If enough people don't find the union valuable, don't believe in its aims, and don't want to participate in it, then the union will correctly have less negotiating power because it represents fewer people.

People should be free to voluntarily associate with groups that represent them and their interests.

Re: Union Is Formed at Los Angeles Times and Publisher Put on Leave

#78

Post by andrewprock »

The LA Times is long time anti-union organization, but bad leadership at the top was the issue. It appears that forming a union was a last ditch effort to get rid of the bad leadership. It seems to have worked.

In some ways, this looks like a reflection of what happened at Uber. Ousting bad leadership can be a difficult and complex process sometimes.

Re: Union Is Formed at Los Angeles Times and Publisher Put on Leave

#79

Post by Karunamon »

Avshalom wrote: post #41
neuland wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I will quit from any employer that forces all programmers to negotiate as a unit, because I believe that compensation should be based purely on your individual skills and the market. I also believe that forced collective bargaining is unconstitutional, because it requires people to associate with a group that they don't want to associate with. If a group of people wish to collectively bargain with their employer, tha…

>>compensation should be based purely on your individual skills First: Profit seeking organizations don't care about skill they care: about wait for it... profit which is the money you add vs the money you cost, which may be completely divorced from skill. Second: Literally nobody can accurately measure a specific individuals contribution, through skill or otherwise.

Well... you can try, to varying degrees of success. Commits, tickets, MTTR, sLOC. Not that any of those things can't be gamed if the culture demands it

Re: Union Is Formed at Los Angeles Times and Publisher Put on Leave

#80

Post by maxxxxx »

ng12 wrote: post #5
chollida1 wrote: post #2

I thought this was interesting because if knowledge workers like journalists can do so, why not programmers, or what ever term you'd prefer to be called?

Why do we need a union in a seller's market? If I'm unhappy with my job I can quit and get a new one in a week. It's not about being a knowledge worker. Screenwriters are unionized because there are many more people who want to write than there are gigs, therefore there's a high potential for abuse.

I think especially in a seller's market a union would have a strong negotiation position to raise salaries and improve conditions. I don't think a union can help much in a declining industry.
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