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Kickstarter employees vote to unionize

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Re: Kickstarter employees vote to unionize

#781

Post by HarryHirsch »

heavyset_go wrote: post #761
HarryHirsch wrote: post #674

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In a union or a cooperative, the members actually have an opportunity to decide who gets to be at the top.

Ultimately, company culture is a product of what the owners and their appointees allow and incentivize. In Uber's case, its culture is directly tied to Kalanick's management. I agree in that unions give employees leverage in management and decision making, and that a union might have provided incentives for Uber to behave differently towards its employees. But a union isn't going to change who owns the company, unles…

There are some airlines that will not take accept delivery of a Charleston-assembled Boeing 787. The fact that you can speak up with less repercussions in unionized Everett when too many corners are cut obviously has influence on product quality and company culture, even though the union doesn't get a seat at the board.

Re: Kickstarter employees vote to unionize

#782

Post by tensor »

calderarrow wrote: post #235

Coming from a public accounting background, I’ve seen a variety of businesses. Somewhat obviously, I’ve seen some be successful with unions and others be successful without, which makes sense, as unions are neither inherently good nor bad. They are a tool which can change the power dynamic and incentive structure of workers and employers throughout an organization, but there is nothing inherent about having a union t…

> Clearly they haven’t, and given how easy it is to appease developers, this is particularly damning.

In my experience, developers are probably among the hardest to appease. It's probably a tie between developers and sales. Both groups are primarily money driven and keen to negotiate, but developers also feel entitled to influence or control other aspects of the business based on their personal idea of morality (e.g. developers are not inclusive of the opinions of other groups of employees).

Re: Kickstarter employees vote to unionize

#783

Post by rrobukef »

nelsnelson wrote: post #611
rrobukef wrote: post #526

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

That's actually great! But what will the actual terms and conditions be? Some existing examples: a maximum number of psych visits, (medical) dental work up to xxx$ per year (if you had a checkup last year), limited coverage for experimental treatments for like cancer.

The US is not (wont be) the only one which seperates dental (as in infections, teeth removal) from orthodontic like braces and fake teeth.

Maybe important, I'm not American.

Re: Kickstarter employees vote to unionize

#784

Post by jdminhbg »

Herrin wrote: post #677
djrogers wrote: post #667

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you point to an example of a large US union that doesn't collectively bargain wage scales?

The Screen Actors Guild, and the players unions for most professional sports (NFL, NBA, MLB, etc). They recognize that their members have different levels of talent, and allow the stars to make more, while still ensuring basic rights for every member.

> the players unions for most professional sports (NFL, NBA, MLB, etc)

This is wrong. The major sports unions all collectively bargain minimum salaries, and in some cases maximum salaries as well.

Re: Kickstarter employees vote to unionize

#785

Post by aidenn0 »

mprovost wrote: post #743
ChuckMcM wrote: post #584

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tech workers could have effectively used the leverage associated with unionization since at least 1984 during the semiconductor recession. Considering that the revenue per employee number is at an all time high, and the amount of money the company spends on the employee's working environment[1] is at record lows pretty much explains why this is going to be effective now when it wasn't before. There is also the issue…

And the amount spent on actual hardware must be at an all time low. The first lab I interned at in high school in the early 90s, every programmer had both a Symbolics workstation and a NeXTcube on their desk. (In a private office, of course). That represented a pretty significant investment. At my first "real" job, I got a Sun Ultra 5 workstation. These days you get the same Macbook Pro that everyone else can pick up…

Right, it was not uncommon in the 80s and 90s for your workstation to cost significantly more than your car did. The Ultra-5 was the cheap Sun work-station at $4k base price, as by 1999 Intel based workstations were starting to put pressure on Sun from below.

Re: Kickstarter employees vote to unionize

#786

Post by [deleted] »

mdonahoe wrote: post #411
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…

"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.

[deleted]

Re: Kickstarter employees vote to unionize

#787

Post by klyrs »

lawnchair_larry wrote: post #744
carapace wrote: post #407

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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...

That’s already illegal and was punished accordingly, so no need for a union. Labor laws are a better tool.

> Labor laws are a better tool.

Historically, unions have largely been responsible for advancing the state of labor laws. Individuals can't afford the legal representation to win precedent-setting cases against large corporations. By pooling their resources, collectives can bring a gun to the gunfight. Strong unions can similarly match lobbying efforts when corporations attempt to weaken labor laws through legislation.

Re: Kickstarter employees vote to unionize

#788

Post by aidenn0 »

Herrin wrote: post #677
djrogers wrote: post #667

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you point to an example of a large US union that doesn't collectively bargain wage scales?

The Screen Actors Guild, and the players unions for most professional sports (NFL, NBA, MLB, etc). They recognize that their members have different levels of talent, and allow the stars to make more, while still ensuring basic rights for every member.

SAG and all the professional sports unions do set minimum pay scale. In the case of the NBA, the maximum pay is set well below open-market levels.

Re: Kickstarter employees vote to unionize

#789

Post by austincheney »

kerkeslager wrote: post #658
austincheney wrote: post #644

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Some issues are systemic across an industry. The biggest problems I have with this industry most developers don't want fixed. So unless a union offers something like a certification, licensing, or credentialing program for its members, like the security industry does, I don't see a union solving the software industry problems most frustrating to me. A license or certification is valuable because it provides a commo…

Developers don't want this because 1) at least in the US, our educational system is prohibitively costly, and your solution proposes putting the cost of that on developers, including not having time off for education, and 2) that's mostly a problem for employers, not developers--I'm quite capable of working with poorly-qualified and poorly-skilled developers and my work looks better by comparison. You're proposing th…

> You're proposing that developers pay to solve their employers' problem.

Education is completely orthogonal to licensing or certification. If education is your primary basis of qualification then you are at best a beginner.

I am proposing that developers pay to justify higher wages and cut through subjective hiring bullshit as part of their union dues they would pay for anyways to be a member of said union. When have you ever seen software candidate selection be at least partially objective?

The rest of your points don't make any sense. You don't need any education to be a developer. For example, I am completely self taught. I have also worked with some incredibly talented developers who have no college at all. How do you, objectively speaking, determine if that makes somebody less or more qualified? You don't, because there isn't any objective measure by which to rate qualification.

Without some value added quality like licensing why would I ever pay union wages when I could simply jump ship and go work somewhere else? Every time I have changed employers my wages have gone up by 10% or more.

I also suspect the developers who are most strongly opposed to licensing or certification are those who have never completed a certification in any field.

Re: Kickstarter employees vote to unionize

#790

Post by proc0 »

jariel wrote: post #771
arrosenberg wrote: post #455

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

"pessimistic way to look at it. Without a union or being a high-skilled worker, you are 100% serving your corporate overlord." And 'serving a corporate overlord' is not 'pessimistic'? You have skills, you work with others to make something hopefully productive, you get paid, and that's the deal. The company usually takes on most of the risk and the bigger chunk of the upside. That's the deal, it works well in most ca…

I can see unions being useful in some situations, however in my opinion the worse part of a typical job, is the fact that you work for someone else. No matter how nice your boss, you still have to follow orders. Joining a union is just duplicating this dynamic, because now you have to also follow union rules. I can see in many cases that this is worth it because the type of job has extremely low mobility. However for any position that has market options, joining a union seems pointless as your bargaining rights are simply leaving and joining another company because you can (and any successful company would recognize successful employees, thereby giving you bargaining rights via the market).
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