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 that guarantees ineffective operations, just as the absence of a union does not indicate that employees are getting shafted.
Generally speaking for well run, ethical companies, whose management actively try to do the right thing, unions add unnecessary redundancy and bureaucracy. When there is a sense of trust between employer and employee, communication flows between employees and managers, employee working conditions are safe and healthy, and compensation is reasonably fair. For companies that are shady and treat employees poorly, unions help enforce structured communication and transparency between managers and employees.
Usually I look for symptoms of bad management when hearing about employees who want to unionize. In tech, we can generally assume reasonable working conditions and pay, so Kickstarter unionizing screams “toxic management” for me, personally. I haven’t heard management’s defense, but ultimately the burden is on management to convince a majority of its employees that they don’t need a union. Clearly they haven’t, and given how easy it is to appease developers, this is particularly damning.
> Generally speaking for well run, ethical companies, whose management actively try to do the right thing, unions add unnecessary redundancy and bureaucracy.
The only type of "well run, ethical companies" where unions are redundant are worker-owned cooperatives. Otherwise, an employer, regardless of how ethical they are, can never replicate the most critical aspect of unions: collective bargaining rights. Sure, an employer can essentially just implement the kind of benefits that would be negotiated by a union, but it does not replace the fact that until a union exists employees have essentially no means to collectively demand changes to compensation and working conditions unless they unionize.
I think the tech industry was, at least for a while, an exception here. Developers were so hard to get and retain that the power of individual workers did a lot to keep things sane. But I think that power is, for a variety of reasons, waning. If we want to keep our unusually good working conditions, and especially if we want to make sure our colleagues enjoy them as well, then I think collective action is going to become more and more necessary.
(For those wondering why, a key part is the intrinsic size difference. It's much easier to lose one employee than to lose your full-time job. This inherent power imbalance is easily exploited.)
For the next thing I start, I've been looking into worker- and member-owned co-op structures. It turns out some of my favorite businesses are run that way, from my local bakery (Arizmendi) to my favorite outdoor goods company, REI. My explorations are early yet, but I'm seeing a lot to be optimistic about. I think it's possible to combine the discipline of a value-for-money business with the mission orientation of a not-for-profit. For example, imagine if WhatsApp had been a worker- or member-owned co-op. If instead of selling to Facebook, they'd just kept making the thing they thought the world needed.
If this resonates with people, feel free to contact me on email or Twitter. Maybe we can get a mailing list together for further discussion.
If it were possible to sell out, of course. But that depends a lot on the bylaws. And selling out also depends on the people who join.
I'll also note that there's nothing incompatible between being a worker-owned co-op and making a lot of money. Whatsapp had plenty of potential to generate revenue. Forbes estimates that it's making $4 billion/year. They could have paid their small staff incredibly well without having to sell out.
And one thing that people can't easily buy is interesting work. Even at my modest-for-a-tech-worker income, I'm choosing work by who I'm with and how interesting it is. If people already have more money than they can plausibly spend, would they take even more money to stop doing something they love, something that lets them influence the world at enormous scale? Some would, I'm sure. Some wouldn't.
You should contact Human Agenda and join their Mondragon Trip (http://www.humanagenda.net/tour-the-mondragon-cooperatives/). Mondragon, as you probably know, is the home of the world's largest worker-coop federation's HQ and its namesake. Through Human Agenda you can get a tour of their HQ and potentially a chance to meet worker owners and see their facilities (a number of which are in the town.) You can also check out their university and quality of life. I've been there myself and it's highly recommended if you want to go this direction.
Also, the Arizmendi cooperative is named after the founder of Mondragon, Jose Maria Arizmendiarrieta.
Mondragon is an ethnocentric, nationalist organization with strong political orientations. It's not a general example of what anyone would think of as a regular cooperative.
If a small part of Vermont where 'its own country' and constantly under threat of economic annexation from the US or Canada, well, people might organize differently than they do in California.
Mondragon is about as "nationalist" and "ethnocentric" as Ford, Samsung, or Sony. I'm not sure what "strong political orientations" is supposed to mean; I can easily point to just about any international corporation and find evidence of strong political "orientations" expressed by the board or its corporate executives and evidence of the corporation pursuing their political interests as well.
Also, Mondragon cooperative is regarded as a world leader in worker coops, so unless you're talking about people who know absolutely nothing about cooperatives, I think Mondragon remains a pretty "general" example of what's possible for cooperative business. In any case, it's certainly not clear what you think is a "regular cooperative."
> If a small part of Vermont where 'its own country' and constantly under threat of economic annexation from the US or Canada, well, people might organize differently than they do in California.
Well, Basque is not under threat of economic annexation from Spain; it's already annexed. People in Basque do often oppose the Spanish government for nationalist reasons, but it's just one of many reasons considering that the internal struggle in Spain is a country-wide issue and not reserved to Basque. And nationalism in the region is hardly evidence that Mondragon itself is a nationalistic entity. Lastly, it's very unlikely that a region "under threat of annexation" would choose to develop cooperatives to maintain economic autonomy. The reason Mondragon succeeded was primarily because of the influence of Arizmendiarrieta, and he spent around 10 years trying to convince people to start a cooperative in Basque (in other words, people in Basque did not automatically acclimate to the idea of a worker owned cooperative.) Arizmendiarrieta himself was not from Basque and did not speak Euskera natively, and did not entreat his followers to see cooperatives as a uniquely Basque enterprise, hence why it is now an international organization rather than secluded to the northern Spanish region.
Additionally, worker owned cooperatives aren't unique to Basque, Spain, or even Europe. And it's not like everyone in Basque worships Mondragon either. I am no expert on this, but I've been to Basque, visited Mondragon, and interviewed a number of people on the subject of cooperatives in Spain. From what I can tell, your perspective here is quite warped from reality.
Mondragon employs almost 100K people in a 'nation' of 3.5M people. It's inexorably tied to the national struggle of 'Basque People' in their attempts to achieve some degree of economic autonomy while ostensibly 'controlled' by another group with whom they have had historical antagonisms.
If there were no 'Basque People' I submit there would be no Mondragon.
In Quebec, where I live, there's a similar dynamic, and a host of national entities: telecoms, energy, finance etc. were taken over in an ethnocentric fashion, quite literally stated by the managers of the organizations. As a non-Quebecer, when I opened my bank account at 'Desjardins' (French/Quebecois almost cooperative style bank), they referred to themselves as 'nous' (meaning 'us') and to myself as 'vous' (meaning you, plural), as though there was a clear distinction in their minds. Their employment at Desjardins bank is accepted at least some extent as a 'cause', tied to the nationalist movement. I'm not offended by it as I'm not really ethnically 'Quebecois' but the boundary lines were crystal clear.
This type of thing is common and normal in the world, something that 'New Worlders' often struggle with because we view things through a different lens. I think this causes us to misinterpret important dynamics, and not grasp what's actually happening with causes such as Mondragon, and certain kinds of socialized services in other European countries.
> For more than 50 years, Windings has provided engineered electromagnetic solutions for critical applications in Aerospace, Defense, Automotive, Medical, Oil & Gas and general Factory Automation. As a full-service provider, Windings is a leader in the design, test, manufacture and support of custom electric motors, generators and related components including rotors, stators, lamination stacks and insulation systems.
> Windings business structure was converted to an Employee Stock Ownership Plan (ESOP) in 1998 and we have been 100% employee owned since 2008. Being 100% employee owned means that every one of our 100+ employees, and only our employees, is either an owner or is on the path to becoming an owner.
Bargaining rights don't come for free. At the end of the day, unless you are the owner of the company or union leaders, you are basically serving two masters.
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.
> 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 find. They are run as cross-overs between political party and corporation, with large salaries for the executives, networks deciding over promotions and mostly based on political & personal affiliation, not on merit. They tend to say "we have to see eye-to-eye with management to negotiate", which roughly translates to "we have to be paid as well as upper management".
Don't get me wrong, I'd probably still recommend joining a union if you're starting out today, but I wouldn't give you any of that ideological crap. It'll get you more pay, and you'll have a lawyer for any issues with your job. Do it, don't tell anyone about it (illegal or not, if you apply for a job, they will look you up and if you're known for being active in a union, they will not hire you), and keep your head down, because they can also make your life hell if you get on their bad side or insult some local boss.
> 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. They are run as cross-overs between political party and corporation, with large salaries for the executives, networks deciding over promotions and mostly based on political & personal affiliation, not on merit. They tend to say "we have to see eye-to-eye with management to negotiate", which roughly translates to "we have to be paid as well as upper management".
I have no first-hand experience with German unions, so I won't comment beyond observing that in either case, the issue comes down to a lack of a meritocratic reward structure. Unions are neutral on that front, it all comes down to the laws and culture. American unions were born out of capitalist greed run amok, so they tend to be pretty antagonistic and confrontational. I get the impressions that German unions are more of a cooperative with capital to ensure work stoppages are minimized.
> Don't get me wrong, I'd probably still recommend joining a union if you're starting out today, but I wouldn't give you any of that ideological crap. It'll get you more pay, and you'll have a lawyer for any issues with your job. Do it, don't tell anyone about it (illegal or not, if you apply for a job, they will look you up and if you're known for being active in a union, they will not hire you), and keep your head down, because they can also make your life hell if you get on their bad side or insult some local boss.
I didn't think my statement was particularly ideological, and I don't personally feel an ideological bent toward unions. I wouldn't personally join one because I don't need it, but a union would benefit most of the developers I know from a practical standpoint. Getting on the bad side of the union is no different than getting on the bad side of an executive - at least with a union you have 2 centers of gravity to pull on instead of one.
"certainty of servitude" -> "I didn't think my statement was particularly ideological"
Have the self-awareness to concede that describing 'a job' particularly in high tech which can pay quite well and has great conditions, is tantamount to servitude is effectively ideological.
Why do the salary and conditions matter? Either you are ownership or you serve their interests in exchange for money. There is nothing ideological about calling a thing what it is.
> 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.
"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 cases.
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).
Though technically the truth, the inherent understanding is that at-least at the union side , you can have your voice heard, a.k.a a minimal guarantee that you will be heard by one of those masters.
Agreed, completely. I support unions, but I see the best way forward to both increase equality and reduce corporate corruption is the Mondragon model of worker-owned cooperative federations. Unions are not an advance in this direction at all, merely a check on corporate ownership. It's better than nothing, but it's not the end-all to worker protections.
1. union benefits are redundant in worker owned-cooperative, not in typical corporations
2. and that's because corporate employers cannot emulate collective bargaining rights (but co-ops can)
Please, I'd really like you to explain to me how how "an employee can at any time choose to work somewhere else" emulates collective bargaining rights.
Collective bargaining is one way to do better for yourself but the other is to change jobs and negotiate for better pay and conditions as part of the hiring process.
This has other advantages too, like meeting new people and learning new things.
It's also possible that some organizations have a high concentration of folks who have a particular viewpoint on unions, regardless of whether they're being treated poorly or not. For example, Vox's newsroom unionized, even though I would suppose that they are likely treated better than most journalists -- at least to the extent the business' economics allow. I'm not saying this is necessarily the case with Kickstarter, just that this strikes me as possible. I'm also not trying to imply any judgment for or against the move.
I get the impression a lot of tech companies aren't doing it out of particular absolute need for such a strong a hammer, but because they can and it suits their ideology for legitimately bad stuff they see happening in other industries.
It always made 100x more sense to me on some factory floor in the early 20th century than it does in a tech startup like environment in 2020, plus some labour jobs in between.
I can just imagine the thousands of additional mandatory meetings across the entire company, the needless costs, and hoop jumping that will be added for very little ROI. But because they see gig delivery workers facing shitty conditions under weak contractor and unemployment law designed for a past century, so they think it's justified and want to start it somewhere.
The laws that get passed that make non-union members pay dues even though they volunteer not to be part of the union is the kind of stuff that drives me crazy. Or how they make it impossible to fire egregiously bad workers. Or how in the small town I grew up in these union jobs were coveted and hiring was super nepotism driven, you had to know the right people to get the job - which to me is the opposite of "diversity and inclusion", which is (unsurprisingly) the 2nd bullet point on their political union website, right after "equal pay for equal work" which is a statement riddled with mythology over data.
>It always made 100x more sense to me on some factory floor in the early 20th century than it does in a tech startup like environment in 2020.
Why does that make more sense? The point of unionization is collective bargaining. Collective bargaining is effective whether you have 30 rockstar ninja developers or blue collar workers on a factory floor.
In either case the collective action helps amplifying the workforce's ability to negotitiate. It's the developers who create the company's value. It's time they see that they actually have the power to determine how their companies are run.
Google's employees frequently protest when their management decides to engage in unethical practise like say, developing censoring software for the Chinese market. Instead of throwing a tantrum and leaving the building and holding a protest they could imply unionize and leverage their position.
Are you exactly equal to the worker next to you? If so collective bargaining makes sense because a good deal for everybody is the best deal you can get. If not, then collective bargaining is keeping some great people down.
The fact that you said rockstar developer says you believe that there are some non-rockstar developers who are presumably worth less.
Note that athletic unions do not bargain for wages in general (they will put in minimum and sometimes maximum, but not individual wages)
Collective bargaining doesn’t need to bargain for equal wages. There’s all sorts of things that would be easier to collectively bargain, such as:
- Allowing monetary gain from side projects
- Eliminating non-competes
- Establishing routes to stop unethical projects
Among other things. Pay can certainly be part of the conversation, but collective bargaining in general, as you pointed out in the case of athletic unions, doesn’t mean each individual is getting the same wage.
I used the term rockstar developer sarcastically. No I don't believe that the differences between individual developers outweigh the benefits of bargaining collectively. What I do believe is that there's a great reality distortion among developers that makes them think they're more unique than they actually are, which is a culture the tech sector has deliberately cultivated. Just like say, the image of the "nice CEO" who comes to work in a hoodie and pretends to save the world rather than doing what shareholders ask him or her to do. It's all just a stunt to obfuscate hierarchies.
And I'd stress again that I think the biggest thing to bargain for isn't necessarily wages, it's control over how these firms conduct themselves. Tech workers, almost more than anyone else, seem to have forgotten that they can be stakeholders in their firms.
Why do you equate collective bargaining with collective negotiation of wages?
It is the second comment [0] on this thread that I reply conflating those aspects into one as if that is how every union and collective bargaining work, why?
“Are you exactly equal to the worker next to you?”
From the point of view of management one or two levels up from you, you are viewed as exactly the same. Most companies have narrow salary ranges for each level and you get more money mainly by being promoted. In a union shop this is no different.
Management gives different people different raises. They do regular reviews to decide how much those raises will be, and not every person gets the same raise. Therefore management two levels above me does in fact believe there are differences. They show up over the years both in how fast you move to the top of your level, and in how fast you move up to the next level.
In a factory union shop you get a raise based on years of service, and promotions are tied to new skills. (If you currently put tires on and become a certified welder you will get a raise even though you don't weld anything). Again, not all unions force pay scales like this, but unions that don't lose one of their reasons for existing.
”In a factory union shop you get a raise based on years of service, and promotions are tied to new skills. ”
That’s not how it works for example in Germany. I worked in a union company We had several pay levels and I negotiated with management to skip a few. No difference to the non union company in the US I am working now. The only difference is that the employees aren’t involved in setting pay levels and working conditions.
Did you work in a factory job? That is putting bolts in, or making the same cut on an assembly line, or other such repetitive manual labor job? A position where the limit how fast you can go is the speed the line is set at/the slowest person on your line? A position where you are setup for success for the quality standards?
Unions do exist in Germany for non-factory workers and they can measure performance and pay accordingly. This weakens the union a bit because employees do not stand
for each other as much as you can get a head even if the next guy is bad.
This suggests that you are unfamiliar with modern compensation structures at tech companies. Stock awards are the major differentiator. In a union shop, this is very different.
In a union shop, you can vote on how payscales will vote and campaign for a system that you believe is fair. Without a union, you have to take whatever the bosses offer.
No, you have to take whatever the market offers, and the market forces are more powerful than an individual boss, for better or for worse. In a tech hub, it’s overwhelmingly “for better” as far as workers are concerned. Otherwise, their company doesn’t survive.
Early 20th century predates OSHA and most federal labor regulations in general. Its not that collective bargaining in the abstract is worth less, but there are far more federal guarantees.
Reminds me of arguments against social benefits like welfare, Medicare for all, etc in the US. Sure it's effective in a lot of places but it's different in this particular case, people, so we don't need to do it.
> Vox's newsroom unionized, even though I would suppose that they are likely treated better than most journalists -- at least to the extent the business' economics allow.
Better treatment also involves better pay. Being nice to your employee is not enough. Vox may treat employees nicely, but you'd be surprised how low they pay to their occasional writers who are scattered in a bunch of niche vehicles.
Do you have personal familiarity with their payment practices? Are the occasional (presumably non-employee) writers also part of the union? Do they get votes like full employees?
I mean the other thing is does vox really have much money to be folding into higher comp? I have always assumed that it's a break-even venture like most news media these days but I'd be interested to learn otherwise.
But in 2018, a heated disagreement broke out between employees and management about whether to leave a project called “Always Punch Nazis” on the platform, according to reporting in Slate. When Breitbart said the project violated Kickstarter’s terms of service by inciting violence, management initially planned to remove the project, but then reversed its decision after protest from employees.
Following the controversy, employees announced their intentions to unionize with OPEIU Local 153 in March 2019.
If this story is accurate Kickstarter employees aren't unionising because of bad treatment by management but because management wanted to stop them badly treating other people. If this story isn't accurate then Kickstarter and this new union need to loudly sue Vox right now because this story makes them look like hateful extremists.
This is especially true because Kickstarter management gave in to their employees demands. Now they're unionising anyway. For what? To protect the right for the hard left to encourage violent extremism against their political opponents? What kind of union is this?
In case anyone is in any doubt what "punching Nazis" means the project is here:
It says very explicitly their definition of "Nazi" includes anyone with "anti-immigrant ideologies" or really anyone who isn't woke.
Kickstarter's management look like utter fools. How did they not crush this right at the start? They have every right to fire every single one of their employees who objected to the original decision.
Took a while to find it all the way down in that image of the inside cover, but I can't see how that isn't promoting violence against anyone considered to be alt-right or far-right. Do they have to accept "Always Punch Antifa" projects now?
I would think that in well run ethical companies the relationship with unions would also be harmonious. That’s at least how it works in Germany with unions like IG Metall. Seems to me that problems mostly arise when management becomes unreasonable.
Mentioned this before, but I would posit that US law essentially requires a minimally effective union to have an adversarial relationship with the company. Every member has to get equal protection, and unfortunately, not every member deserves it. (Not a knock on unions — every large organization has its share of lackwits)
Who was first doesn't change the fact that unions are sometimes unreasonable.
Though I have to say most companies I've seen with evil unions have management that deserves the worst a union can do. I've seen cases of good management with bad unions harming everybody (except the union leaders), but they are generally rare.
Yes it's accurate, though the "Always Punch Nazis" controversy was just the tip of the iceberg. Employees were being treated like enemies by some in upper management.
Edit: I've been rate limited by HN mods (thanks!), so not replying on this account anymore. All the best!
The article is ambiguous, but I guess those organising the union were taking the side of leaving the project up? Or is the union demanding total freedom of speech in the terms of service? I'm guessing not.
Doesn't that bother you, at least a little bit? How can whether or not to leave up "always punch nazis" be the union's signature issue? Unions are meant to fight for the common man against the elites.
alwayspunchnazis.com has a cartoon of the US President being punched in the face at the top of it, and every article on that website calls the Republicans Nazis. Given how many ordinary working class Americans voted for Trump, painting them all as Nazis and then insisting that such a fundraise remains live would seem to be the opposite of what unions historically stood for.
> Given how many ordinary working class Americans voted for Trump, painting them all as Nazis and then insisting that such a fundraise remains live would seem to be the opposite of what unions historically stood for.
The Nazis won a plurality of the popular vote, so it’s not exactly a great distinguishing factor for Trump.
I'm not American, but I really don't think this counts as satire. What's it satirising, exactly? You can't just encourage people to be violent and call it satire.
BTW even though I support free speech, like most people I draw the line at explicit exhortions to beat people up. I thought it was quite basic.
Perhaps mainstream conservatives would be cooler with this type of violent agitprop-masquerading-as-satire if it they weren't often called Nazis and physically attacked.
You have it backwards. The employees treated management like enemies, and still are. Now everyone else is legally required to as well. What a disaster.
I'm with you on the theory, up until your last statements - the vote to unionize was 46 to 37; 55% in favor with no breakdown in the roles means we can't be sure the dissenting voice wasn't the development staff.
It could be the support and community management roles (or any other 'soft skill' role which is less scalable and no less valuable but perceived as more easily replaced) carried the vote.
It is also worth noting that NY is not a right to work state. This means that the 37 people who voted against the union have no right to not-pay-dues to the union.
If the workers change their mind then, in theory, they will have the opportunity to vote to decertify the union, later in their employment (a minimum of 3 years). Approximately 0 unions a year are decertified this way in the US.
It's not really that big of a problem. In an ideal situation, sure, the union could represent union members and the non-union member would be banned from receiving any benefits bargained for by the union. Unfortunately, if the union has to represent everyone then everyone should pay, which isn't much different than if the <1% in leadership positions at a company makes a dumb decision costing the company money and people their jobs, the entire company is forced to follow the decision and totally uninvolved workers pay the consequences for it. At least in a union, the workers have say in how it operates and what its goals are.
There are 3 options. Non members can free ride, they can pay an agency fee, or they can pay full union dues. The Beck decision (not always well enforced) says that union members have a right not to pay for union costs outside of the agency fee.
They aren't required to, but they have the legal right to insist on it and most unions do. The concern is that, if you choose not to represent everyone, the non-union employees can negotiate better deals than you and they'll still benefit from many kinds of working condition improvements you might want.
"...support and community management roles..." are less scalable? Does this mean companies are finding it more difficult to fill community management roles than developer roles? Also, what do you mean by "no less valuable"? I don't think you can have a company who's product is software without developers. You do not, however need community managers. You make an interesting point: I do wonder if those in "soft skill" roles perceive their roles as equally valuable as software developers. I personally do not.
Support and community management are less scalable in the sense that the relationship between user interactions and time needed from staff is fairly linear. Each one is therefore less valuable, but collectively (no pun intended) essential when there are other, hungrier alternatives.
At it's current stage of maturity, the Kickstarter platform needs maintainers (SREs, Security, etc.) and staff to interact with creators and backers. I don't know to what degree new features or efficiencies will help Kickstarter become more profitable on 5% than it has been since 2010 - the product is essentially the same.
Hmm... If I worked as customer support at Tesla, I would not expect to be compensated, or frankly valued the same as say an electrical engineer at Tesla. And really, isn't community management just another word for customer support?
>Somewhat obviously, I’ve seen some be successful with unions and others be successful without
From the company perspective maybe, but I've not seen a union in the US that successfully rewards high performing employees over mediocre lifers. Overachievers end up leaving and you're left with no innovation. Do you have any examples of unions that have solved this problem?
I disagree. The NBA players association looks out for the mid level role players (who make up a vast majority of the league) over the highest performing players. The top tier of NBA players are essentially "underpaid" compared to their worth due to maximum salaries. This makes room for mid level guys to make 10-15 million per year. If there was no maximum salary there would be a massive bidding war for the top tier players, and the remaining small slice of pie would have to be split among everyone else.
Judging from this post, I’m not sure you fully grasp how basketball works nor the underlying concept of “team sports.” Even MJ needed 4 other guys on his side to win.
While it may be true that team sports need multiple players, several players have currently signed "supermax contracts." Since they signed a maximum contract, their team would be willing to pay them more, so they are underpaid.
If you call US$ 201 million underpaid, sure. Or maybe US$ 229 million.
This is a ridiculous amount to play ball, if that cap means that mid level players get a decent life I think it's more than fair enough. I don't think a salary cap of a couple hundred millions of dollars would stop any human being innovating to get to such a job, I'm sorry.
It's interesting that those are all effectively monopolies on the talent. I wonder if that just counters the brain-drain the parent comment was referring to since high performers can't leave the union for a non-union role.
When most sports unions started professional players were not well paid. In the 1950s many of the best baseball players didn't play for professional teams because a local hardware store in some small town offered them better wages if they would work during the day and play on the town team on weekends!
>> I know that NBA players have a union, and top players definitely get rewarded well.
relative to what? the top players have always gotten big paydays, and the economics suggest without a union they would get paid even more. They are effectively subsidizing mid and lower tier players.
You may think you can do without a union if business is good and management OK. When shit hits the fan, that is when you'll learn that you need them.
I work in a German unionized company and I think unions can be quite well-aligned with workers and business interest.
IIRC certain aspects of US law make unions be the way they are in the US on purpose to lower their acceptance among employees. For example work councils which are commonly established in unionized companies aren't allowed in the US iirc, they can be a nice alternative from going all in into unionizing, a democratic representation of all employees.
> 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).
The (original) article only mentioned one grievance, that Kickstarter removed a "punch nazis" project and the employees revolted. Honestly it sounds like they had it pretty good.
That's correct. Simply disagreeing with Nazis is ineffectual and is very common among those with sympathies toward them as a shield from criticism. I'd prefer to work with people who are actively opposed to them. Sorry if that wasn't clear somehow.
If everyone disagreed with them, they wouldn't get any new recruits and it would die out. Technically, if everybody disagreed with them then they would disagree with themselves and quit. But more realistically, if people disagree with them they will stew forever in political impotence.
So in your best-case scenario, all we have to do is wait for the current nazis (many of whom are mid-20's or 30's) to pass away? And I guess until then, just deal with the pain and loss they create? I hope you can understand why that doesn't appeal to me.
To say nothing of the reality of the situation, which is that they're not dying out -- they're actively recruiting and growing their ranks.
People grow up and grow out of stuff, but people like having secret knowledge that is being "suppressed" by the mainstream and they'll cling to that forever. Nobody is coming to antivax or anti-climate change conclusions by sitting down, doing research, and reading textbooks. They see stupid facebook posts where somebody makes up a story about their kid being harassed/oppressed by doctors/teachers/everyone for being antivax, and they want to side with the underdog. Their stories are BS and fortunately most people know that.
Now what takes neonazis a step further is they say there's a conspiracy where "they" are trying to destroy them through any means possible and they need to be ready to fight. Nazis grew support 80 years ago because they invented stories of violence and oppression against them. If you really want to empower them today, give them documented threats of violence--they'll be grateful for you playing right into their hands.
Nazis were pretty solidly on the way out until the internet made them into a new boogieman. People who absolutely did not care about them or saw them as a joke started sympathizing. That's the first step to being persuaded. We managed to virtually eliminate anarchists by not giving them the time of day, and we can do it with nazis as well.
Don't feed the trolls. The "Nazis" s/he's referring to aren't actual (neo-)Nazis, that's just extreme left's slur for anyone right-of-center (e.g. being against unrestricted immigration, unrestricted abortion, etc.). Nothing to do with actual Nazi-style policies.
I'm aware of center-right platforms distinct from nazism, a good bit of our research involves tracking how these various groups cohabitate right-wing spaces (or don't). In this thread I'm referring to neo-nazis in the US -- and I haven't mentioned any of these adjacent issues you bring up.
Sometimes it's helpful to take a cursory look at resources like wikipedia for things like this. There are also numerous independent research groups which put together dossiers so you can be informed about any of this activity in your area.
Of course, this is what you thought all along. And it's absolutely not true in the US or Canada. But even in places where there isn't an active sect of actual neo-nazis, there is usually a smattering of violent white supremacist organizations who will work with them.
What I suspect you meant is that, for you, it's not really a problem.
What I’m saying is that, if you take 10,000 people from the population at random, there probably isn’t a single person whose experience of Nazis is anything other than consuming media about them.
Could be, where you're from. In the US you may need to speak to minorities, people of color, people in the LGBTQ+ communities, or Jewish Americans. Or anyone from a certain number of cities where there has been prominent neo-nazi activity, like Charlottesville or Portland.
Honestly, I really want tech workers to unionize and push for companies to install ethics committees.
Particularly at Facebook and Google -- tech workers should unionize there not because they need better work conditions but because otherwise all business decisions are in the hands of executives for whom unethical or sociopathic behaviour is often an advantage.
I don’t think there is much that management can do in this case. What you say is true where unions have historically shown up. But these times are different. Like most people pushing an agenda and participating in twitter outrage mobs, I think this is ideologically driven, and the employees have a very limited understanding of how unions work and when they are needed. It’s essentially a meme.
Generally speaking for well run, ethical companies, whose management actively try to do the right thing, unions add unnecessary redundancy and bureaucracy. When there is a sense of trust between employer and employee, communication flows between employees and managers, employee working conditions are safe and healthy, and compensation is reasonably fair. For companies that are shady and treat employees poorly, unions help enforce structured communication and transparency between managers and employees.
Usually I look for symptoms of bad management when hearing about employees who want to unionize. In tech, we can generally assume reasonable working conditions and pay, so Kickstarter unionizing screams “toxic management” for me, personally. I haven’t heard management’s defense, but ultimately the burden is on management to convince a majority of its employees that they don’t need a union. Clearly they haven’t, and given how easy it is to appease developers, this is particularly damning.