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Bandcamp's Entire Union Bargaining Team Was Laid Off

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Re: Bandcamp's Entire Union Bargaining Team Was Laid Off

#91

Post by sonzohan »

nemo44x wrote: post #57
ivolimmen wrote: post #49

I find it so weird to read these stories on how Americans cope with unionizing. In the Netherlands where I live it is very common and normal to be member of a union. Most branches have a union, IT sector is a "free sector" and does not have a union. My wife works as a teacher and she is member of a union.

IT doesn’t traditionally gafe unions in the USA. Teachers are unionized here and are one of the most powerful political forces. They are also a likely reason why so many people here don’t like unions.

IT Teacher (professor) part of a union here. Unions in the U.S. are incredibly weak. U.S. unions can barely represent, much less collectively bargain. That's why software engineers keep failing to unionize. My union wants to pay tenured CS/IT folks less than non-tenured English Professors. English profs here had the biggest raise in decades, going from 62k to 80k. They want to pay IT/CS profs 69k. Where I am (Seattle) that's considered Low Income...

Re: Bandcamp's Entire Union Bargaining Team Was Laid Off

#92

Post by 0xpgm »

Cthulhu_ wrote: post #54
hipadev23 wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They just acquired the company two weeks prior and layoffs are extremely common after one.

I don't think anyone is too worried about the layoffs, but these look like targeted layoffs, reinforcing the notion that union members / representatives are troublesome. At the very least, for the sake of optics, they shouldn't have fired the union reps. Not all of them anyway.

> At the very least, for the sake of optics, they shouldn't have fired the union reps. Not all of them anyway.

We're all making assumptions here, but let's assume they had legitimate business reasons for the layoffs. What you suggest is that they make less optimal decisions for the sake of optics.

In a free-market economy, the companies that make less optimal decisions will have their lunch eaten by those that don't.

Re: Bandcamp's Entire Union Bargaining Team Was Laid Off

#94

Post by drcongo »

dsign wrote: post #62
kundi wrote: post #46

We've been developing a curated alternative to Bandcamp for electronic music, which also replaces Soundclound and Mixcloud. It's called Formaviva ( https://formaviva.com ) We are a bootstrapped team of musicians, loyal to independent music so we want out platform to stay that way. We're also hiring: https://formaviva.com/jobs PS: I'm one of the team members

I had a quick look at your site. From the "Terms of Service": > Unless otherwise stated, Samorastnik d.o.o. and/or its licensors own the intellectual property rights for all material on Formaviva. Where's the "otherwise" for people that post music on your platform? I was actually searching for your legal status (which kind of legal persona you are and in which jurisdiction). I couldn't find a thing on your website.

Yikes.

Re: Bandcamp's Entire Union Bargaining Team Was Laid Off

#95

Post by jsiepkes »

Cthulhu_ wrote: post #60
ivolimmen wrote: post #49

I find it so weird to read these stories on how Americans cope with unionizing. In the Netherlands where I live it is very common and normal to be member of a union. Most branches have a union, IT sector is a "free sector" and does not have a union. My wife works as a teacher and she is member of a union.

IT here is also a priviledged sector, in that it's in most cases an employee's market - few people in IT have their job or the wages at risk, layoffs are rare, etc. There are some unions for IT personnel, but they aren't very popular or well-known. There's also the mandatory employee representation (called the Ondernemingsraad in Dutch); every company over 50 employees is required to have one of those. But again, thi…

In practice the OR (Ondernemingsraad) is also going to give you limited protection during lay-offs.

What happens during lay-off is they just present the OR with multiple plans.

Plans which include more people laid off but leaving departments where the OR members are in out of it versus plans which effect less people but which included departments which included the OR members themselves. Good chance people will choose self preservation over the greater good. I've seen it happen at companies.

Re: Bandcamp's Entire Union Bargaining Team Was Laid Off

#97

Post by nabla9 »

ivolimmen wrote: post #49

I find it so weird to read these stories on how Americans cope with unionizing. In the Netherlands where I live it is very common and normal to be member of a union. Most branches have a union, IT sector is a "free sector" and does not have a union. My wife works as a teacher and she is member of a union.

American unions are not like European unions.

In Europe sectoral unions and sectoral bargaining is the norm. In the US federal law does not allow that. Each firm must unionize individually.

In the US unions and enterprices play zero sum game against each other. If the firm unionizes, the firm loses relative to non-unionized competition.

Example: the current UAW (United Auto Workers) dispute in the US. If UAW wins, unionized enterprises lose to Tesla.

Re: Bandcamp's Entire Union Bargaining Team Was Laid Off

#99

Post by rsolva »

Bandcamp has served me well for many years, but I don't use it anymore.

I would really like to see something like Castopod [0], but for artists! Spinning up a website where you showcase and sell your music should (and could!) be as easy as using Wordpress, either via a subscription or self-hosted – on your own domain.

Being plugged into the Fediverse makes it much easier to interact with fans and build a connection with your audience. It also makes it easy for people to share and talk about a track or and album. None of this requires that you tie yourself to yet another VC-funded startup and a closed garden.

Maybe someone is building something like this already, that I am not aware of?

[0]: https://castopod.org/

Re: Bandcamp's Entire Union Bargaining Team Was Laid Off

#100

Post by logifail »

smcl wrote: post #63
fsckboy wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Applying stereotypes to a person is not the same as saying a phenomenon exists (in this case they said nearly-exclusively) in country. By way of examples: "Americans are fat" is a (negative) sterotype. "Americans get poor value for money in healthcare" isn't.

> "Americans are fat" is a (negative) sterotype

Of course it could do with some context, and some might see it as offensive, but:

"Is America really the most obese country in the world? Well, not quite, it ranks as the 12th most obese country worldwide, but number 1 when considering high-income countries"

https://www.forbes.com/sites/omerawan/2023/01/25/has-the-obe...

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