7 ms·

The problem is that workers don't have leverage like they used to due to globalization and a general labor surplus. We need to think of something that would wor

The problem is that workers don't have leverage like they used to due to globalization and a general labor surplus. We need to think of something that would work better than a union.

unityByFreedom 10y ago
What? It's literally your right to vote to join a union. If a majority of coworkers vote for one, you've got a union. Look up the National Labor Relations Act.
- tptacek 10y ago
  Not only is this true, but the NLRA also bars employer retaliation against concerted actions by employees both to organize and also to take actions in protest of work conditions. It's a huge exception to at-will employment. I had no idea about any of this stuff until I started talking to the Tech Solidarity people. I'd always thought the reason nobody goes on strike is that you'd simply be fired for doing so. But, no! That was dumb of me! Striking --- really, most forms of employee protest against working conditions --- is protected federally. I'm particularly interested in how these laws interact with the employment laws for salaried workers. In addition to it being unlawful (in most cases) to fire an employee for striking, it's also (usually) legally risky to dock a salaried employee's pay.
  - jbronn 10y ago
    While technically true, the enforcement is up to the Department of Labor. Do you honestly believe that Puzder (now Acosta) is really going to enforce these rules? It's the whole reason they were chosen for the position in the first place.
    - tptacek 10y ago
      No, enforcement is not up to the Department of Labor. If you're terminated for organizing and protesting against working conditions, your recourse includes the courts. People should, of course, talk to labor lawyer before organizing. Tech Solidarity is working with several now, and collecting employment contracts from the best-known tech companies in order to provide standardized organizing advice.
      - jbronn 10y ago
        Really? Alright I'll bite. They only promulgate the regulations that are enforced. And if you're being pedantic enough to insist it's the DoJ, then my point still stands under one led by Sessions.
        tptacek 10y ago
        Check out the statutes. The 8(a)(1) unfair labor practices have liquidated damages associated with them. You can sue in civil court over them. Again, talk to a lawyer. I think you're going to find that you are not in fact required to convince the Trump administration of your rights.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
  - Alex3917 10y ago
    > the NLRA also bars employer retaliation against concerted actions by employees both to organize and also to take actions in protest of work conditions. I also learned about this from the Tech Solidarity people. The key here though is that actions are only protected if they're taken collectively by multiple employees. A single employee protesting can still be fired without recourse.
  - mysticmarvel 10y ago
    This is all totally true. It is also totally true that you are not squeaky clean in your employment (never been late once? Never missed a deadline?), and that your performance management targets are set by the people against whom you are protesting. You can be performance managed out of a position in months, even if your right to protest is protected and you are literally a Saint in the workplace. I'm not saying it's right, just that it's true.
  - mysticmarvel 10y ago
    This is all totally true. It is also totally true that you are not squeaky clean in your employment (never been late once? Never missed a deadline?), and that your performance management targets are set by the people against whom you are protesting. You can be performance managed out of a position in months, even if your right to protest is protected and you are literally a Saint in the workplace. I'm not saying it's right, just that I've seen it done. There is always a way to remove "difficult" employees regardless of protection laws.
    - tptacek 10y ago
      So, I believe this, but what gives me comfort here is having seen companies try to performance-manage people out (for legit reasons!) and fail because of protected-class problems. As soon as you can credibly allege retaliation, your case gets 100x more expensive to dispose of. In two companies, one of which I had a senior role at at the time, I've seen the companies cave and pay out to make them go away.
  - ahh 10y ago
    Wait a minute, wait a minute: if I just decide I'm not going to work anymore, they can't fire me if I say it's because I'm protesting for higher wages? And they have to keep paying me?
    - tptacek 10y ago
      Google "protected concerted action" and spend $75 on a consult with a labor law attorney. Some catches: 1. The protest has to involve more than one team member, and depending on circumstances that other person possibly can't be a manager. 2. The protest has to be defensibly about some kind of working conditions issue. You need a concrete, defensible ask. 3. You can in fact have your pay docked for not working, though you (probably) can't be fired. But remember, you're an FLSA exempt employee (if you're a developer), so you can make it difficult for them to dock your pay, too. I probably wouldn't make the protest about higher wages.
- santaclaus 10y ago
  Ehh, when my previous workplace was voting to unionize I wasn't able to vote because I was a remote worker, and didn't have the disposable income to fly in and vote... being disenfranchised is a drag.
tptacek 10y ago
Software developers have incredible leverage right now, perhaps more than any cohort of employees in the country, and while most don't have salary to organize around, there are plenty of other practices --- transparency and liquidity of equity compensation being a great example --- that generate a broad base of support across the whole industry. People hear the term "union" and they think "shop rules" and "union contract salary". There's no reason that's what has to happen. Substitute "professional association" for "union" and you've got all the degrees of freedom you could want for us all to profit from organization without over-complicating our work lives.
- Eridrus 10y ago
  So what organising principles should a software developer union have? It's easy to say they could be anything we want it to be, but I'm not sure there's a real consensus on any particular principle. Lots of people who talk about unions seem to value privacy protections for consumers, but there are clearly software developers writing this software who have a different view. Ubers reputation has been trash for almost as long as Uber has existed, I feel like most people are there to get rich, do you expect those people to go on strike for a grievance that doesn't affect them?
  - knucklesandwich 10y ago
    Without a fair equity package, none of those employees are going to get any kind of payout from an exit. And given the number of fundraising rounds Uber has undergone: https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/uber/funding-rounds https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/uber/funding-rounds and their difficulty in actually turning a profit: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-08-25/uber-loses-at-least-1-2-billion-in-first-half-of-2016 https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-08-25/uber-lose... it seems a little questionable that anyone from the rank-and-file is going to get rich at Uber. A union is what gives you the ability confront management about these kinds of things.
  - TheCoelacanth 10y ago
    There are a lot of labor practices that most software developers would agree on changing: unpaid overtime, unreasonable on-call requirements, lack of transparency in equity compensation, unreasonably short windows for exercising vested stock options after leaving the company.
cf 10y ago
Yes but in this particular instance Uber recruits heavily in the Bay Area. If all workers in the Silicon Valley office refused to work and discouraged others to work for Uber it could be quite effective.
matchagaucho 10y ago
It's either unionize or a class action lawsuit. Silicon Valley tends to prefer the latter. Many IT roles already fall under collective bargaining units (CBU), particularly in the public sector. If stories like Susan's become common, and there is blatant gender discrimination, then the Government will have no choice but to acknowledge a private-sector CBU and Union.

The problem is that workers don't have leverage like they used to due to globalization and a general labor surplus. We need to think of something that would work better than a union.

unityByFreedom 10y ago

What? It's literally your right to vote to join a union. If a majority of coworkers vote for one, you've got a union. Look up the National Labor Relations Act.

tptacek 10y ago
Not only is this true, but the NLRA also bars employer retaliation against concerted actions by employees both to organize and also to take actions in protest of work conditions. It's a huge exception to at-will employment. I had no idea about any of this stuff until I started talking to the Tech Solidarity people. I'd always thought the reason nobody goes on strike is that you'd simply be fired for doing so. But, no! That was dumb of me! Striking --- really, most forms of employee protest against working conditions --- is protected federally. I'm particularly interested in how these laws interact with the employment laws for salaried workers. In addition to it being unlawful (in most cases) to fire an employee for striking, it's also (usually) legally risky to dock a salaried employee's pay.
- jbronn 10y ago
  While technically true, the enforcement is up to the Department of Labor. Do you honestly believe that Puzder (now Acosta) is really going to enforce these rules? It's the whole reason they were chosen for the position in the first place.
  - tptacek 10y ago
    No, enforcement is not up to the Department of Labor. If you're terminated for organizing and protesting against working conditions, your recourse includes the courts. People should, of course, talk to labor lawyer before organizing. Tech Solidarity is working with several now, and collecting employment contracts from the best-known tech companies in order to provide standardized organizing advice.
    - jbronn 10y ago
      Really? Alright I'll bite. They only promulgate the regulations that are enforced. And if you're being pedantic enough to insist it's the DoJ, then my point still stands under one led by Sessions.
      - tptacek 10y ago
        Check out the statutes. The 8(a)(1) unfair labor practices have liquidated damages associated with them. You can sue in civil court over them. Again, talk to a lawyer. I think you're going to find that you are not in fact required to convince the Trump administration of your rights.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- Alex3917 10y ago
  > the NLRA also bars employer retaliation against concerted actions by employees both to organize and also to take actions in protest of work conditions. I also learned about this from the Tech Solidarity people. The key here though is that actions are only protected if they're taken collectively by multiple employees. A single employee protesting can still be fired without recourse.
- mysticmarvel 10y ago
  This is all totally true. It is also totally true that you are not squeaky clean in your employment (never been late once? Never missed a deadline?), and that your performance management targets are set by the people against whom you are protesting. You can be performance managed out of a position in months, even if your right to protest is protected and you are literally a Saint in the workplace. I'm not saying it's right, just that it's true.
- mysticmarvel 10y ago
  This is all totally true. It is also totally true that you are not squeaky clean in your employment (never been late once? Never missed a deadline?), and that your performance management targets are set by the people against whom you are protesting. You can be performance managed out of a position in months, even if your right to protest is protected and you are literally a Saint in the workplace. I'm not saying it's right, just that I've seen it done. There is always a way to remove "difficult" employees regardless of protection laws.
  - tptacek 10y ago
    So, I believe this, but what gives me comfort here is having seen companies try to performance-manage people out (for legit reasons!) and fail because of protected-class problems. As soon as you can credibly allege retaliation, your case gets 100x more expensive to dispose of. In two companies, one of which I had a senior role at at the time, I've seen the companies cave and pay out to make them go away.
- ahh 10y ago
  Wait a minute, wait a minute: if I just decide I'm not going to work anymore, they can't fire me if I say it's because I'm protesting for higher wages? And they have to keep paying me?
  - tptacek 10y ago
    Google "protected concerted action" and spend $75 on a consult with a labor law attorney. Some catches: 1. The protest has to involve more than one team member, and depending on circumstances that other person possibly can't be a manager. 2. The protest has to be defensibly about some kind of working conditions issue. You need a concrete, defensible ask. 3. You can in fact have your pay docked for not working, though you (probably) can't be fired. But remember, you're an FLSA exempt employee (if you're a developer), so you can make it difficult for them to dock your pay, too. I probably wouldn't make the protest about higher wages.
santaclaus 10y ago
Ehh, when my previous workplace was voting to unionize I wasn't able to vote because I was a remote worker, and didn't have the disposable income to fly in and vote... being disenfranchised is a drag.

tptacek 10y ago

Software developers have incredible leverage right now, perhaps more than any cohort of employees in the country, and while most don't have salary to organize around, there are plenty of other practices --- transparency and liquidity of equity compensation being a great example --- that generate a broad base of support across the whole industry. People hear the term "union" and they think "shop rules" and "union contract salary". There's no reason that's what has to happen. Substitute "professional association" for "union" and you've got all the degrees of freedom you could want for us all to profit from organization without over-complicating our work lives.

Eridrus 10y ago
So what organising principles should a software developer union have? It's easy to say they could be anything we want it to be, but I'm not sure there's a real consensus on any particular principle. Lots of people who talk about unions seem to value privacy protections for consumers, but there are clearly software developers writing this software who have a different view. Ubers reputation has been trash for almost as long as Uber has existed, I feel like most people are there to get rich, do you expect those people to go on strike for a grievance that doesn't affect them?
- knucklesandwich 10y ago
  Without a fair equity package, none of those employees are going to get any kind of payout from an exit. And given the number of fundraising rounds Uber has undergone: https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/uber/funding-rounds https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/uber/funding-rounds and their difficulty in actually turning a profit: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-08-25/uber-loses-at-least-1-2-billion-in-first-half-of-2016 https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-08-25/uber-lose... it seems a little questionable that anyone from the rank-and-file is going to get rich at Uber. A union is what gives you the ability confront management about these kinds of things.
- TheCoelacanth 10y ago
  There are a lot of labor practices that most software developers would agree on changing: unpaid overtime, unreasonable on-call requirements, lack of transparency in equity compensation, unreasonably short windows for exercising vested stock options after leaving the company.

cf 10y ago

Yes but in this particular instance Uber recruits heavily in the Bay Area. If all workers in the Silicon Valley office refused to work and discouraged others to work for Uber it could be quite effective.

matchagaucho 10y ago

It's either unionize or a class action lawsuit. Silicon Valley tends to prefer the latter. Many IT roles already fall under collective bargaining units (CBU), particularly in the public sector. If stories like Susan's become common, and there is blatant gender discrimination, then the Government will have no choice but to acknowledge a private-sector CBU and Union.