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Kickstarter employees vote to unionize

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Re: Kickstarter employees vote to unionize

#901

Post by Apocryphon »

codingmess wrote: post #311
rolltiide wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We're well paid but besides that, I'd be hard-pressed to think of a way we could collectively be treated with any more contempt than we already are. Relative to other wage workers yes, but nowhere close to the ratios between wage and housing last seen 30 years ago. There are opportunities to negotiate for that sort of compensation again. As long as annual compensation doesn't let you own a house outright in 5 years…

As if companies determine the price for housing. With Sillicon Valley wages, you could easily afford housing within 5 years somewhere else. It is not companies' fault that housing prices have gone up - it is politics preventing building of available housing. It is also an example that shows that no matter how much you pay the employees, housing prices will simply adapt if more housing is not being built.

The companies are at least partly culpable for choosing to aggregate themselves in these insanely high CoL areas, contributing to the rent jumps, and failing to engage in the proper corporate social responsibility of working with their ambient communities to alleviate these living situations for both their employees and their neighbors.

Re: Kickstarter employees vote to unionize

#902

Post by whateveracct »

miscPerson wrote: post #610
ken wrote: post #595

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sexist/racist people don’t show up to union meetings and volunteer for union committees to push sexist/racist policies. It’s not like national politics where it’s a prestigious and high paying job, and corporations are throwing a ton of money behind candidates. Also, unions are usually not employer-specific. No matter how many jerks you have at one company, they can’t overpower all the voting members at all the other…

Respectfully, plenty of misandrists and anti-White racists do show up to those meetings and join panels to push their discriminatory agenda. Why do you think we talk about the lack of women in STEM, but not the lack of men in HR, education, social work, psychology, etc? Because bigots set the agenda. Having sports programs for one sex has been ruled illegal under Title IX — but how many universities have special tuto…

What a trainwreck of a comment

White men really have it rough don't they homie (lmao)

Re: Kickstarter employees vote to unionize

#903

Post by chillacy »

majormajor wrote: post #305
pathseeker wrote: post #291

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I don't know how you can fail to see how an organised and unified workforce will always benefit all workers in a firm. Because historically it hasn't in the US. Unions end up implementing a seniority-based compensation/benefits scheme and there is nothing given to employees who outperform everyone else. This even fosters an environment where top performers are discouraged by their peers for "making everyone else loo…

> This even fosters an environment where top performers are discouraged by their peers for "making everyone else look bad". You don't need a union for this. Most large companies that do software (not the FAANGs, but the non-tech-first ones) generally don't know what to do with top performers, because consistency and predictability is more valuable to them. Especially a top performer who's bad at politics so they come…

Someone who comes off as attacking other departments or teams is probably a toxic individual to work with. Even if they crank out good code quickly, at some point senior engineers are expected to influence others, and attacking others is not conducive to that.

As for rewarding top performers, most places have annual or biannual reviews where people are given bonuses based on individual and company performance. The difference between underperforming and overperforming can be a lot of cash.

Re: Kickstarter employees vote to unionize

#904

Post by chillacy »

cmod wrote: post #487

Somewhat tangential but perhaps of interest to anyone here curious about unions — the documentary American Factory [0] chronicles Fuyao Glass' creation of a factory in the US, and the subsequent attempts (and ultimate failure) of those workers to unionize. [0]: https://www.netflix.com/title/81090071

It was interesting to see the lengths management went through to prevent a union from forming. The show ends with management getting excited about their now robotic arms. Robots don't unionize and complain about healthcare.

Re: Kickstarter employees vote to unionize

#905

Post by chillacy »

sjg007 wrote: post #772
pro-duct wrote: post #686

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It being a common practice isn't relevant to whether it is best for this industry and its workers. I'm not saying I disagree, but your reasoning just doesn't support your argument

What makes software engineering different?

Many of us make more money writing software today than we could working one of those unionized jobs while having less credentialing (or not being in the top 1% like the sports players). Nothing on that list looks enviable to me.

Re: Kickstarter employees vote to unionize

#906

Post by luckylion »

arrosenberg wrote: post #766
luckylion wrote: post #616

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In well-run unions the leadership serves the membership, not the other way around. Isn't that a bit much like "in a well-run republic, the government serves the people" etc? That's certainly true in theory ... I have no experience with US unions, but I am, thanks to a previous job, very well acquainted with most of the major unions in Germany on multiple levels. The further up you go, the more corruption you will f…

> Isn't that a bit much like "in a well-run republic, the government serves the people" etc? That's certainly true in theory... Surely one has to prefer theoretical upside over the certainty of servitude. > I have no experience with US unions, but I am, thanks to a previous job, very well acquainted with most of the major unions in Germany on multiple levels. The further up you go, the more corruption you will find.…

> Surely one has to prefer theoretical upside over the certainty of servitude.

I don't think there is servitude in high tech jobs, so there's no certainty either in my view. The issue I have with the theoretical approach is that it often falls short in the real world and you end up with a mess where everybody involved is surprised.

I'd like to see those well-run unions (or republics, or corporations etc etc) before believing in them. So far, my impression is that they only exist on paper or on very small scales, but as soon as they grow to significant size, the usual processes set in and you end up with a problematic organization. Sure, one can say those aren't well-run, but that sounds too much like No-True-Scotsman to me.

Re: Kickstarter employees vote to unionize

#907

Post by boomlinde »

jbob2000 wrote: post #609
boomlinde wrote: post #377

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Workers' unions represent workers, not consumers or society as a whole, so why should they care about whether the workers they represent work at "essential" corporations?

Because some stress is more justified than others. If somebody was stressed out as a travel blogger, would you favour their unionization over a stressed out retail worker? That's essentially what I'm getting at, the stress at kickstarter isn't worth their mission. But at other companies, the stress is worth it, so therefore the unionization is worth it.

If they feel that unionization can improve the conditions of their employment, regardless of stress, I don't see the difference. Their employer is optimizing towards less expenses per unit of work, and it's only fair that an equally resourceful organization can counter balance that goal with the workers in mind.

Re: Kickstarter employees vote to unionize

#908

Post by stale2002 »

prawn wrote: post #814
bearmcbearsly wrote: post #618

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I dunno... I was a victim of this wage-fixing scheme, as were all of my coworkers at the time. And I don't know of a single one who would have preferred to have a union collectively negotiating wages. The whole scheme was that the companies stopped their recruiters from cold-calling each others' employees. That kept wages down by reducing the opportunities for people to get a better salary by moving between companies…

I'm not familiar with union laws, but couldn't those workers form a union that did exactly what they wanted and none of what they didn't want?

> did exactly what they wanted and none of what they didn't want?

Unfortunately, many workers want to do horrible things, such as to make it illegal for someone to work in engineering of they don't have a CS degree, or if they came out of a bootcamp, or the like.

Workers voting to put up barriers to entry, and keep out the competition, is both rational, democratic, common in unions, and also a completely horrible thing to do.

Re: Kickstarter employees vote to unionize

#909

Post by throwanem »

chillacy wrote: post #899
throwanem wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The short name for that notion is "democracy".

Tyranny of the majority is considered a pitfall of democracy, or consider how to enforce "the will of the majority while protecting the rights of the minority"

Until law mandates that all labor unionize - and as closed shops, at that - the rights of the minority are hardly impaired when any one shop does so. Open shops exist, as do shops with no union of any sort, and employees need not remain employees at all, of anyone, if they no longer so choose; they are free to start their own businesses, of whatever sort best suits them. Those who decline to join a union, even at a newly closed shop, are constrained only in that they no longer meet the requirements of the job at hand - and the "right to work", so called, does not extend so far as to establish, regarding any given company with a union or without one, a right to work there.

The plea to "tyranny of the majority" thus seems here to conceal a plea for the tyranny of the minority, in that they be allowed to frustrate their colleagues' strongly held and constructively expressed desire to obtain a more equitable balance of power in their workplace by recognizing their shared interest and forming a united bloc to match that which management and ownership present in support of their own shared interest.

One wonders on what basis this sort of tyranny merits more favorable consideration than any other.

Re: Kickstarter employees vote to unionize

#910

Post by codingmess »

Apocryphon wrote: post #901
codingmess wrote: post #311

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As if companies determine the price for housing. With Sillicon Valley wages, you could easily afford housing within 5 years somewhere else. It is not companies' fault that housing prices have gone up - it is politics preventing building of available housing. It is also an example that shows that no matter how much you pay the employees, housing prices will simply adapt if more housing is not being built.

The companies are at least partly culpable for choosing to aggregate themselves in these insanely high CoL areas, contributing to the rent jumps, and failing to engage in the proper corporate social responsibility of working with their ambient communities to alleviate these living situations for both their employees and their neighbors.

Well the people living there can vote, can't they? I don't see how it is corporate responsibility. Corporations can't vote.

Yes, the corporations are contributing to rent jumps, but that was part of the point: by paying higher salaries, as is being demanded by the pro union crowd here, they also increase the rents. So they can't simply pay enough so that "people can buy a house within 5 years", because housing prices rise along with salaries.

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