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Google hired union-busting consultants to convince employees “unions suck”

arstechnica.com

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Re: Google hired union-busting consultants to convince employees “unions suck”

#81

Post by blululu »

nerbert wrote: post #22

Seeing comments from previous posts on this forum, I'd say they kind of succeeded.

Resistance to Unions in America is pretty deep. This is a 150 year old issue that previously involved hiring consultants with guns to shoot at anyone who dared to ask for an 80 hour work week. I doubt that a crew of modern consultants did much more than run up some bills on a corporate expense account.

*Note that support/opposition to Unions is often form from petty core experiences (first hand and family relations). For me it is a contest between a 2 minute promotional video, three years of my professional life, and 25 years of my uncle's work experience. Given these forces, you would be pretty hard pressed to change my thoughts on the matter in the abstract (particulars are what matter here).

Re: Google hired union-busting consultants to convince employees “unions suck”

#82

Post by weakfish »

fallingknife wrote: post #40

If I were to join a union it would have to have the following: 1. No protection for incompetent people 2. No seniority based pay or privileges 3. Narrow focus on comp and quality of life Any of these would be a deal breaker for me. And I just don't see it happening. The people who seem to be into unions are the type of people that can't STFU about politics at the office. And if I hear one word about pronouns instead…

No post body was provided.

Re: Google hired union-busting consultants to convince employees “unions suck”

#83

Post by pydry »

judge2020 wrote: post #64
dccoolgai wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People _can_ be awful. I've seen founders, managers and execs bleed people dry - squeezing the life out of critical contributors whole stringing them along with promised of "getting their piece of the pie" that they had no intention of ever sharing. Telling anecdotes about "that one lazy guy who got paid for doing nothing" is tired. We've done that for the last 40 years. Time to try unions again, please.

Once a union is in place, it's hard to remove it, especially if you end up with a lot of union employees that act like the above. It's important for the workforce starting a union to choose, but they surely need to know both the pros and cons, right?

Simply existing in a capitalist society is enough to have the cons explained at you.

If not in the almost exclusively investor owned media then in the attendance-mandatory antiunion propaganda meetings you will be forced to attend if managment start to fret.

There's no danger of not hearing the cons.

Re: Google hired union-busting consultants to convince employees “unions suck”

#84

Post by brightstep »

fallingknife wrote: post #40

If I were to join a union it would have to have the following: 1. No protection for incompetent people 2. No seniority based pay or privileges 3. Narrow focus on comp and quality of life Any of these would be a deal breaker for me. And I just don't see it happening. The people who seem to be into unions are the type of people that can't STFU about politics at the office. And if I hear one word about pronouns instead…

It won't happen because those criteria are antithetical to the purpose of a union. Unions are about solidarity as a working class against corporations. It doesn't work unless members see eachother as on the same side regardless of perceived competence

Re: Google hired union-busting consultants to convince employees “unions suck”

#85

Post by helios_invictus »

ranuzz wrote: post #50
0xbadc0de5 wrote: post #17

A related topic would be collective bargaining - which is often (but not always) associated with a unionized workplace. If you're a sub-standard employee, you win big through collective bargaining because pay bands will move toward the mean. If however, you are a high-performer, you will likely be under-compensated in a collective bargaining environment because your excess effort will be used to compensate those who…

This line of thought might be something that makes employees think that “union sucks”. At a place like Google I assume that everybody thinks they are high-performers and in most cases they are since they got into google. So the majority will always think that they will be “under compensated” and never attempt to unionize. What I want to know is, is it really just another way to convince employees against unions ?

"Everyone is a high performer or thinks they are at....", but not everyone can be with in a given cohort. But who really knows? The employer might know based on their internal metrics, but is that info worth sharing accurately to the employee? Wouldn't you want your high-performers to think they just might be just good enough to keep "performing up" and costs down?

Re: Google hired union-busting consultants to convince employees “unions suck”

#86

Post by chrisseaton »

bennysomething wrote: post #73
dccoolgai wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People _can_ be awful. I've seen founders, managers and execs bleed people dry - squeezing the life out of critical contributors whole stringing them along with promised of "getting their piece of the pie" that they had no intention of ever sharing. Telling anecdotes about "that one lazy guy who got paid for doing nothing" is tired. We've done that for the last 40 years. Time to try unions again, please.

You say let's try again, I think before doing that it would be wise to look at why we got rid of them. I'm the UK, I know people who are doctors and teachers, they all have stories of how their unions are hurting the public.

The thing with teachers unions and doctors unions you have to remember is that they represent the interests of the teachers or the doctors. They don't represent the interests of pupils, patients, or the public. In fact they have to work directly against those groups for the interests of their members.

Re: Google hired union-busting consultants to convince employees “unions suck”

#87

Post by brightstep »

colejohnson66 wrote: post #53
brightstep wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With regard to the lazy worker, honestly, who cares? You still get paid. The company isn't going under. No doubt like most situations of abuse, this is a minority case because in general people like being productive.

The issue many have is the union dues. If the union doesn't help me, but still take 5% (or whatever) of my paycheck, I'd be pretty peeved off. It's the same issue many people have with raising taxes: politicians tout all the benefits it'll allow, but then costs go up and no visible product results.

that's a different thing than a less-productive worker not being fired

Re: Google hired union-busting consultants to convince employees “unions suck”

#88

Post by gunapologist99 »

1121redblackgo wrote: post #65
gunapologist99 wrote: post #55

At one place I worked, I discovered that an employee had intentionally broken a machine that resulted in more than $8m in losses, but because of union negotiations, no one would do anything about it. At a different company, a union worker actually aimed a forklift at me, apparently because I was in IT. Unions historically served an important role, but they're an anachronism in the U.S. -- especially for coders at Goo…

I am not sure that anything in that long winded diatribe says anything about the usefulness of unions.

Unions protect people who should have long since been fired, even when they literally cost the company millions.

That (huge) company actually completely moved overseas. The second (also huge) company moved 100% of their manufacturing to Mexico.

In another place that I worked at fresh out of college, they actually covered their signage on trucks because the truckers were being beat up in truck stops and getting their tires slashed. One of the truckers told me that he made top of the industry wages and he was happy with management and didn't see any need to join a union, but that he was worried about getting beat up if he didn't vote to join.

Re: Google hired union-busting consultants to convince employees “unions suck”

#89

Post by brightstep »

streblo wrote: post #67
brightstep wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With regard to the lazy worker, honestly, who cares? You still get paid. The company isn't going under. No doubt like most situations of abuse, this is a minority case because in general people like being productive.

I'd care if I were an investor in such a company.

unions are about workers, not investors

Re: Google hired union-busting consultants to convince employees “unions suck”

#90

Post by pradn »

nosequel wrote: post #20
endisneigh wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If Google does indeed suck, wouldn’t employees leave for a company that doesn’t? I wonder what the attrition looks like

Money. As soon as a lot of people leave a team or location in Google, Google responds by giving everyone bonuses. When a bunch of people started quitting from the Boulder office a few (5?) years back, they offered to send everyone on a trip to Hawaii. Google's Do No Evil has been gone for a long while, but people stick around because they are making so much goddamn money.

I think that trip to Hawaii was a reward trip for one team which had a large presence in Boulder.

That sort of thing seems to be pretty clearly in the rear-view mirror.

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