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Organizers have unionized 5,000 contract workers at Apple, Facebook, Yahoo

295 points by spking 9y ago

frgtpsswrdlame 9y ago
Question for the HN crowd: do you think tech-workers will begin to unionize? It seems to me that (in general) they've got such a nice position in the economy there's probably a bit of an "if it ain't broke don't fix it" mentality. Is that correct?
- readams 9y ago
  Working in a union would be terrible. Can you imagine having to deal with seniority rules?
  - ryanworl 9y ago
    A union is whatever the members want it to be. Just because traditional unions operate a certain way does not mean a union for tech workers has to operate the same way.
    - umanwizard 9y ago
      How would a union help me at all?
      - eli 9y ago
        Is there anything you want from your employer that they don't already give you? If a lot of your fellow employees agree, it would be more powerful for you all to ask as a collective group rather than you to ask as a single employee.
      - AndrewDucker 9y ago
        Legal support if your company does something unpleasant to you. Pushing for better conditions/pay for you as part of improving them for everyone where you work.
      - ryanworl 9y ago
        I don't know if a union would help you specifically because I don't know who you are or who you work for. But in general, a union could negotiate the development practices you and your co-workers want. As an example, if you and your co-workers wanted one week per quarter devoted solely to paying back technical debt, your union could demand it. There is no reason why a union has to do anything in particular at all if you don't want it to. I'm not trying to tell you to join a union or not, just saying that a union as a legal structure does not require any of the tactics or goals as 20th century manufacturing or public sector unions.
        stale2002 9y ago
        "There is no reason why a union has to do anything in particular at all if you don't want it to." Yes there it. If a union takes over the workforce of your company, now you have to follow the union rules. If unions were just opt in, them yes you'd be right. But unions are NOT opt in for many states. One you are a union shop, you are screwed if you disagree with the union.
        Frondo 9y ago
        A union is also a democratically-run organization, so if you disagree with it, you have some recourse. A workplace is not democratically run, so if you disagree with it, you are also screwed, only this time you have no recourse.
        stale2002 9y ago
        I'd rather only get screwed by 1 group than have the possibility of being screwed by 2 groups. Voting and democracy doesn't help anything. I am just 1 vote. I'd rather have things negotiated between me, and only me and the other party.
        s73ver_ 9y ago
        So between you, and the entirety of the company.
      - tptacek 9y ago
        One way to look at Hacker News is as a part-time ranked inventory of labor grievances for tech workers. Open offices. Draconian IP clauses. Opportunities for developers to become founders. Work-life balance. Remote work. People get hung up on this because most developers feel like their profession is well-compensated. And, they are. But so are doctors and lawyers, who also belong to professional associations. There's much more to bargain for than just wages.
        TheCowboy 9y ago
        Adding another couple that are popular: better hiring and interviewing practices that don't over-burden applicants. Eliminating the number of rounds, better transparency about the overall hiring process, avoiding tests that are completely irrelevant to job performance. Better transparency regarding salary offerings, and a framework for individual negotiation that doesn't disadvantage certain groups. There are plenty of things a professional organization could excel at that don't require full-blown unionization.
        euroclydon 9y ago
        Doctors are miserable from the micromanagement and metrics these days.
      - s73ver_ 9y ago
        Legal backing if, say, you worked for Equifax, and refused to certify that their systems were secure, and they wanted to terminate you to shut you up.
    - ryandvm 9y ago
      All unions, nay all power structures, naturally evolve to serve the interests of the _current_ members. Because of this, seniority-based benefits and insulating bad apples from termination are traits that almost always show up in every union through convergent evolution.
      - tptacek 9y ago
        Your comment creates the impression that without unions, developers wouldn't have to deal with "power structures". But to a pretty good first approximation every technology firm in the industry is a "power structure" --- a rigid and overt one, at that --- run by financiers and owners. So it's hard to see what rank-and-file professionals would have to lose from exercising their own market power, at least in your analysis.
        danielvf 9y ago
        And add a union to the current situation, and now you have two power structures over you, not one.
        tptacek 9y ago
        Yes, and you'll be a constituent of one of them, which is the argument for organizing.
        apsec112 9y ago
        Being a constituent doesn't necessarily mean anything. Eg., Eric Garner was a constituent of New York City. NYC is democratically governed, and he had an equal right to vote. It didn't help him very much.
        detcader 9y ago
        Being a constituent of X (in this context) means means X is expected to advocate for you. Thus Eric Garner wasn't a constituent of NYC, he was a constituent of his representatives, who may or may not have done a good job advocating for the safety of those interviewed or detained by the police. I don't see how constituency doesn't help here, because now we can hold reps responsible for advocating for better protection, whereas if no representative power structures existed in the US, what happened to Garner would happen all the time and we would still belong to Great Britain
    - chimeracoder 9y ago
      > Just because traditional unions operate a certain way does not mean a union for tech workers has to operate the same way. Unions have all converged on operating the same way because the NLRA is very rigid, and over the decades, they've found a stable way of operating. Other operating structures have been tried over the last century, and all have failed except the current one. If anybody believes that a tech union under the NLRA would break this trend, especially while presumably still being affiliated with other traditional unions, then the burden would be on them to explain why the forces that drive other unions would somehow not apply to tech.
      - s73ver_ 9y ago
        The Screen Actor's Guild doesn't work that way.
        chimeracoder 9y ago
        > The Screen Actor's Guild doesn't work that way. SAG-AFTRA has been specially exempted from key provisions in labor law.
        s73ver_ 9y ago
        You're gonna need to provide evidence.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
  - kerkeslager 9y ago
    No. But I can imagine a union without seniority rules.
  - s73ver_ 9y ago
    A lot of places already have these, but informally. Also, why on earth do you think we'd have to? If no one wants them, why would we have them?
- SomeStupidPoint 9y ago
  I honestly think programmers are just demonstrating that they skew politically inept by not unionizing. Well, not a union as such, but if you look at other professional degrees, almost all of them have powerful trade groups that represent the workers -- doctors, engineers, lawyers, etc. I think it speaks more to political ineptitude and the newness of the field that programming doesn't even have the same support structures in place that engineers do.
  - toomuchtodo 9y ago
    The downvotes speak volumes of the cognitive dissonance. Everone is fully in control of their destiny through their rugged individualism and bootstraps until they're laid off and packing up to head back home from SFBA because they have no worker protections. I suppose everyone has to learn the hard way (again) during the next downturn.
    - psyc 9y ago
      The comment you're replying to conflated gatekeeping associations, which aim to keep people out of the field to bolster demand, with worker protections.
      - jejones3141 9y ago
        Ignoring the ethics of the matter, I suspect that those already in the field would consider that a form of protection and hence a union would take on gatekeeping functions.
    - brightball 9y ago
      Have you ever thought that programmer pay is as high as it is because of the lack of those protections? It's pretty well established that programmer interviewing is hard for businesses and when they get it wrong everybody needs to be able to part ways. The speed at which this field moved is almost entirely due to the lack of encumbrances. That includes having to pay a state licensing group to say you are professionally certified in Java, risking losing your job if you fail to renew on time, having the state lock out anybody from the profession who does not meet these requirements, having unions require these certifications and pressure companies to only hire based on them. It's a long, inefficient and useless money grab who's costs far outweigh the benefits.
- bahman2000 9y ago
  may be one way to fight age-ism in the industry
- dkhenry 9y ago
  I would hope not. I see tech-workers as professionals not as laborers. I think the great battle to be fought by tech workers is to stop having them treated as common laborers that perform some kind of rote process. Some times we call software development engineering, and if thats the case I would press anyone to show me an engineering discipline that parallels software engineering in terms of working conditions and relations.
  - s73ver_ 9y ago
    Do you see Directors and Screenwriters as professionals? They belong to a union (the Director's Guild and the Writer's Guild, respectively).
  - tptacek 9y ago
    Most professionals also belong to labor unions. They're just not called that; they're called professional associations.
    - gok 9y ago
      There are pretty huge differences between (say) the IEEE and the UAW. Collective bargaining, for example.
      - _jal 9y ago
        I think the GP was thinking more of the state Bars, the Federation of State Medical Boards, National Association of State Boards of Accountancy, etc. Those are not in the same category as the IEEE.
        gok 9y ago
        Sure, boards which look after professional certifications do have more power, especially in jurisdictions that give those certifications legal power. But those boards still don’t typically negotiate wages or organize strikes.
- wfo 9y ago
  If they are smart, they should: right now they have a lot of power in the workplace because there is demand for them. This is a problem tech business owners have identified: programmers have too much power on the job relative to their bosses. They require good wages, they require too many benefits, they complain and sue when they are sexually harassed, they demand equity and to be treated well and refuse to accept the company asserting total ownership of their person in their contract, like non competes, binding arbitration, corporate ownership of every thought they have on the job or off. Could you imagine a company tracking every movement of every programmer at all times and automatically firing those who fail to "perform" according to certain metric? Does your eye linger too long on a comment relative to your peers? Fired. Did it take you too long to write this method this one time? Fired. This is the reality for Amazon warehouse workers and it could be for you, easily. But there is a solution (from the prospective of employers) for this "problem": every time you hear someone talk about "teaching everyone to code" or "the STEM shortage" (which absolutely does not exist -- there is a shortage of qualified programmers willing to work for $12/hr, a shortage of hard science PhDs willing to do menial lab work for 10$/hr) this is coded language for "let's make millions more programmers so that they become so commonplace they become a commodity and may be treated as such". As it turns out, programming is not that hard, anyone could do it if they learned. And they are learning. Programmers would be smart to unionize before this strategy succeeds, not after, it will be much easier while they still have power. But this requires social and political intelligence, and for programmers (who lean Libertarian up until the moment they get laid off or abused by their boss) to put their egos aside and disabuse themselves of the notion that they succeeded only because they are so much more brilliant than everyone else.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
  - dkhenry 9y ago
    Your comment shows the real divide on unionization and its not about someone's political ideology, its fundamentally about how they view the profession. If like you said programmers should unionize before the army of $12/hour programmers arrives then what you are claiming is that software development could be done by someone who was trained and willing to accept $12 per hour. Essentially you are making the claim they are a common laborer much like a construction worker or delivery driver ( both of whom make more then $12/ hour ). If however you view software development as a profession requiring intelligence and a deep understanding of the subject matter then you don't care about the $12/hour laborers because they will never be able to replicate the work of a qualified professional. The people who don't want a union aren't resisting it because they want to live in some libertarian wet dream, they are resisting it because they see their profession as something that can't be reduced to common labor and they don't see a labor union as able to provide any benefits, as indeed they don't when you are dealing with a profession. The push to get people to unionize is not about workers rights its about putting technology professionals in the place business owners want them in. No one likes the idea that software is eating the world and there is a limited group of people , who are not the traditional power brokers, who are very well positioned to capitalize on that. They would much rather that software development become a commodity so they can continue their model of capital vs labor.
- _jal 9y ago
  I think this would be exactly the right time for tech-workers to unionize. Which means it won't happen. US tech workers currently have it great - I think they're somewhere close to a peak of negotiating power. That's when you want to negotiate. That's also when workers think there's no point in it. I think one thing that keeps tech engineers from unionizing is the "professional" label. Unions are iron workers, not professionals like me. I have two responses: (1) look at other professionals. Lawyers, doctors and accountants have unions, they just aren't call that. Think about it. (2) If you think your "professional" status is sticky without doing anything, take a look at programmer work conditions at overseas outsourcers. That is the future of the job if you don't do anything.
- arjie 9y ago
  I hope not. I've seen enough HNers talk about how they want immigrants out of the industry, and about how we should restrict the supply of programmers to keep pay high. No thanks. I don't want to baseline myself to a bunch of guys who can't get a good job when the market is as hot as it's been.
  - chimeracoder 9y ago
    > I hope not. I've seen enough HNers talk about how they want immigrants out of the industry, and about how we should restrict the supply of programmers to keep pay high Incidentally, this is exactly what labor unions have spent their time doing for much of their history as incorporated organizations. Labor unions fought (successfully) to exclude immigrants from certain regions from immigrating, and even fought to retroactively strip them of citizenship, so that members could seize their property after they were deported. Labor unions fought to relocate Japanese-Americans during World War II, to create jobs for members, and then fought to prevent them from returning home. The current quota system for visas and immigration that tech people frequently complain about? That was the result of legislation that the AFL lobbied for decades ago. People don't like to talk about this, because it's an ugly chapter of labor history, but especially in this day and age, it's important to remember.
    - s73ver_ 9y ago
      They don't like to talk about it because it's entirely off the subject, here. It is extremely intellectually dishonest for you to say that, implying that a tech union would do such a thing.
      - chimeracoder 9y ago
        > They don't like to talk about it because it's entirely off the subject, here. It is extremely intellectually dishonest for you to say that, implying that a tech union would do such a thing. Every time the topic of immigration and visas come up, the comments are flooded with racist comments and talk about how we need to make it harder for companies to hire people on H1Bs from Asia. The more overtly racist comments get flagged and removed, but the rest still stay. If anything, it's intellectually dishonest of you to suggest that these same people wouldn't actually fight to do that, given that's literally what they say they want to do.
- curun1r 9y ago
  My guess would be no. Unions work when labor is fungible. And while a business might view many tech employees that way, we've largely resisted seeing ourselves that way. We mythologize the 10x programmer and openly acknowledge that there is a large but hard-to-measure productivity difference between high performers and low performers. So why would a group that believes that put organizations in place that force businesses to treat and pay employees equally? Why would that group start to accept that years of service is a proxy for useful experience and ability? Fear of lawsuits mean that it's already too difficult to get rid of disruptive elements in an engineering team...are we really willing to make that process harder? Will the actual 10x programmers--the ones that have the data and recommendations on their CV to prove it--be willing to cede their individual negotiating power?
- jasode 9y ago
  >they've got such a nice position in the economy there's probably a bit of an "if it ain't broke don't fix it" mentality. Is that correct? I'd say your intuition is basically correct. If we use average programmer's salary of $84k[1], that places the income in the top 30%. If we extend the statistics further to include Silicon Valley salaries of $200k+, that places them in the top 5%. I can't think of any unionization in labor history that originated with members in the top 5% of salaries. That includes unions in manufacturing, arts (film/tv), sports, transportation, etc. Yes, NFL & MLB players make a lot today but their unions happened before the advent of TV and playing pro sports was not a highly paid endeavor. (Early MLB players had to have 2nd jobs and share hotel rooms on the road.) As a thought experiment... one might argue that if the NFL were to restart today after the invention of TV, there would not be a players union. Instead the roster of 53 football players would be 53 independent contractors. Indeed, modern players in "sports" teams like eSports are mostly independent contractors. The technology of tv magnifies individuality (Tom Brady's face also sells cars & watches for endorsement deals). Today's marketability of the individual instead of the team would make it harder to convince 50%+ of players to elect union representation. (NASCAR drivers and UFC MMA fighters had/have grumblings about union representation that have gone nowhere so far. Also, they first have to switch to from independent contractors to employees -- which is another set of hurdles.) Some airline pilots (with seniority) are 5% salary but in the 1930s they weren't when the union formed. So, when would 50%+[2] programmers willing want to pay union dues -- say 1.5% (SAG) or 1.4% (UAW) of their salary?!? When the economic conditions of programmers match the poor conditions of the previous successful unionization efforts. We're obviously nowhere near that situation with software devs (even ones without college degrees) earning good salaries. Some other commenters recommend that now is the best time to unionize because the current times are good for programmers. My question to that is... has that ever happened in history? Basically, the main driver for unionization is economic conditions instead of ideological stance. If one believes more in the the ideology rather than economics, then yes it seems realistic to think that top-5% salary earners will vote themselves into a union. Since I emphasize economic conditions, I predict they won't -- at least not within the next 10 years. If a breakthrough AI happens to make programmers a commodity equal to burger flippers, the economics stresses on the profession changes which makes unionization more realistic. [1] https://www.google.com/search?q=average+programmer+salary https://www.google.com/search?q=average+programmer+salary [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Card_check https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Card_check
- dsfyu404ed 9y ago
  If they do it will be like welders where union membership ties mostly to workplace and there's several professional associations that have certification systems and whether a particular cert is required is dependent on state regulations that pertain to the nature of the job.
- gwbas1c 9y ago
  We need professional organizations and licensing processes. Unions are for common laborers. The difference is that professionals bargain individually, because the jobs we do are specialized. Common laborers need unions for collective bargaining; because their work isn't specialized. So think of it more like: A tech company would only hire a licensed software engineer. The licensing process is mostly the tedium part of determining competency, so that the job interview is about mutual interest and personality fit. It then opens up more room for individual negotiation, because there is less of a competency risk when hiring. Unions and collective bargaining is for when there is very little competency risk when hiring.
- s73ver_ 9y ago
  I would hope they'd start. And there's no reason it has to be anything like a auto worker's union or anything like that. The Screen Actors Guild, the Director's Guild, and the Writer's Guild are all unions, and no one is complaining that SAG is hurting the ability of a "rockstar ninja actor/actress" from making huge amounts of money, which is the main complaint I hear about unions here.
  - chimeracoder 9y ago
    > no one is complaining that SAG is hurting the ability of a "rockstar ninja actor/actress" from making huge amounts of money, which is the main complaint I hear about unions here. They absolutely do prevent lots of people from being hired the theater and film industry in the first place, which is a widespread complaint against them. Obviously the lucky few who do gain membership (which is intentionally difficult) make more money as a result of the constricted supply.
- mlindner 9y ago
  I laugh when people propose this. I moved to Silicon Valley from across the country because there are good opportunities to learn from companies here. If I'm forced into a union my company will shortly be going under so I'll just find a new job. Silicon Valley workers are already the most overpaid workers in the entire country. A similar job elsewhere pays 50%-75% what I make here. If you try to unionize to force wages higher, all this does is causes the exodus of companies from Silicon Valley even faster.
  - s73ver_ 9y ago
    "Silicon Valley workers are already the most overpaid workers in the entire country." You're gonna have to provide evidence of that. And don't just quote a dollar amount, because that needs to be taken in context. That context being the amount of money the company makes, the value that the employee brings, the cost of living in the area, and other factors. "A similar job elsewhere pays 50%-75% what I make here." So what? It costs less in those areas. But that, to me, sounds like a bunch of people who haven't asked for what they're worth. "If you try to unionize to force wages higher, all this does is causes the exodus of companies from Silicon Valley even faster." Given the cost of living there, doubtful. And there are far more things to organize around besides wages.
alexc05 9y ago
> Eventually, Facebook says, it OK’d proposed terms of the contract, which hiked drivers’ average pay by half, to $27.50 an hour, and for the first time provided fully paid family health care. For those people doing the driving that's pretty great news. I hope they also took care of those working conditions issues too. Split shifts etc...
- ic4l 9y ago
  Won't last long. Few more years, and it will be a autonomous fleet anyways.
  - noobermin 9y ago
    You might have missed this discussion from a few days ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15116861 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15116861
    - yeukhon 9y ago
      We are far from "few years."
    - Density 9y ago
      That discussion is extremely weird. Posters are claiming that since Speech recognition took decades so must self driving cars. Speech recognition decades ago has nothing to do with speech recognition today. I understand the skepticism but I hope HN posters can make stronger arguments in the future.
      - jhall1468 9y ago
        I agree. Transformative technology has this effect on people. The other day I was arguing with someone that said we need true Artificial General Intellegence before full autonomy is available. I'm fine with skepticism, but these types of unfounded claims drive me crazy. If you want to argue the companies aren't really moving the tech as fast as they claim, post actual evidence, not some nonsense about speech recognition in the 90s.
DINKDINK 9y ago
Appears to be free and non coercive negotiation until you get to the actual coersion: "In San Francisco the coalition persuaded the city transit authority to make it easier to deny permits to companies facing labor strife." If your negotiations rely on the monopoly that the state provides, is it really a negotiation?
- aesh2Xa1 9y ago
  Labor unions typically rely on the state for leverage. Individuals are powerless and organizing helps only as far as they are, even as a group, not easily replaced.
- pjc50 9y ago
  > If your negotiations rely on the monopoly that the state provides, is it really a negotiation? Good question. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_union_busting_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_union_busting_in_th...
- frgtpsswrdlame 9y ago
  Is that not the exact point of the state? A large, unified actor is working against a bunch of individuals, those individuals are having problems organizing themselves into a large, unified actor so they ask the state for a little help, the state provides it, labor organizes and boom, workers and their bosses are on a little more level footing. All's well that ends well.
  - sageikosa 9y ago
    no.
- balance_factor 9y ago
  The tech giants negotiations are relying on the monopoly that the state provides. Just to pick one piece of legislation, the 1947 Taft-Hartley Act, the government disallows various worker/employer agreements that benefit those doing the work. Meaning corporate America generally outlawed certain deals that could happen, when the workers were in a good position, that the corporation was willing to do. That is relying on the monopoly the state provides. The Taft-Hartley act also bans secondary strikes, so unions are further restricted (this restriction was increased more with the Labor Management Reporting and Disclosure Act in 1959). The Taft-Hartley act also allowed the president to ban strikes in the case of a "national emergency". Of course, national emergencies were seen all over the place since then, including in 2002 on the west coast docks with the ILWU. There are the people doing all the work and creating all the wealth, then there are the heirs and such who feed off their expropriation of the surplus labor time of those doing all the work. The idle class relies on the monopoly that the state provides. In fact, if you look to history and the creation of the first states in Sumeria thousands of years ago, the raison d'etre of those states were to use violence and propaganda so that an idle class could expropriate surplus labor time from their slaves doing all the work.
dkhenry 9y ago
No its not. This is a union fluff piece. The reality is these are contractors who will get dropped as soon as it makes sense. Thats why you hire these services as contractors. I think the real test here will be how long till the union pushes facebook too far and they are just dropped. I have never seen a union that could actually compete with non-union shops unless there was a legal force preventing the competition.
- hgsigala 9y ago
  Which is exactly why we have to make it easier for people to form and join unions everywhere.
  - xyzzy_plugh 9y ago
    To paint a wall in an individual office on Market St, San Francisco, with whiteboard paint, is upwards of $10000 in labor, because of union regulations. Unions are ripe to be used as instruments for abuse.
    - eutropia 9y ago
      I can't believe this. Do you have proof?
      - xyzzy_plugh 9y ago
        I was present when a facilities manager explained why we shouldn't use spray-cleaner to clean whiteboards, because it wore down the paint faster, and repainting it cost $10k, and that they had already paid to repaint them twice.
        enraged_camel 9y ago
        That's not proof, it's hearsay.
        9y ago
kevmo 9y ago
If there is one thing I've learned from two decades of reading about labor history, it's: Every gain labor has ever made has been taken. Every gain the working class (i.e. the overwhelming majority of people) has achieved has come from organizing their majority of low-power workers and then standing strongly against the empowered minority at the top. Good for these people. They are essentially moving our society forward.
- sageikosa 9y ago
  Towards?
  - sageikosa 9y ago
    Seriously, forward towards what? The "perfect society"?
    - crimsonalucard 9y ago
      Towards a more balanced distribution of corporate resources/wages/profits leading to a more healthy economy.
      - sageikosa 9y ago
        Balanced by what standard? Don't really need an answer, most of my posts are just to let other individuals know that at one time there were critical thinkers on HN. I've been downvoted so often for asking questions and answering questions (rather than rambling on through rhetorical platitudes and high-school level history lessons) that I actually take perverse pleasure in seeing how many downvotes I can get.
        crimsonalucard 9y ago
        I'm not downvoting. By balanced I mean if everyone on earth had the same amount of money then the worlds' wealth would be perfectly balanced. I am not talking about fairness or whether or not the wealth was deserved. At two ends of the spectrum we have wealth inequality and communism. The ideal sweet spot is somewhere in between the two extremes, right now the United States is leaning towards wealth inequality.
crimsonalucard 9y ago
What do you guys think of software engineers forming a union where we have a guaranteed base pay but each of us can still negotiate higher if we wanted?
- otalp 9y ago
  It's less about base pay, and more about limits to working time, overtime and protection from exploitation.
  - mlindner 9y ago
    If you don't like your job then switch it, there's plenty of software companies that don't do that. Generally I've seen that the more bleeding edge you're working on then the more overwork you get. If you want to sacrifice working on the bleeding edge for a steady pay and steady working hours you can have that all across the country.
    - s73ver_ 9y ago
      There is literally zero reason for that overwork. None.
tptacek 9y ago
If the drivers and cafeteria workers at tech companies can organize, so can the developers. Unlike the developers, the drivers tend to be financially insecure. In this economy, they're eminently replaceable. What they do is outside the core competency of their employers. You'd think they'd have almost no leverage. And yet, in the space of just a few years, they've managed to secure higher wages and health benefits --- in a market where non-technical employees are 1099'd specifically to avoid benefits obligations! Like a lot of other occupations in the US market, tech workers have been bamboozled into believing that labor organization is something lower-status workers do. But, no: most of the classic professions, from doctors to lawyers, belong to professional associations. They may not call themselves "unions", but that's a distinction without a difference. Tech workers blow off labor organizing because they feel themselves to be well-compensated. And they're right. So are the doctors and the lawyers. There are things to bargain for besides higher salaries. If you're wondering what they are, look no further than Hacker News, a ranked inventory of tech worker grievances. Can't see organizing a walk-off over pay raises? Well then, how about: * The right to work from home when the team agrees that doing so has no negative impact on performance. * The right to hire team members outside of SFBA when the development team decides it's appropriate to do so. * The right to work on side projects alone and with your own resources without your employer claiming the fruits of your own free time. * The right to work in an office with walls between you and salespeople on the phone all day. * The right to hold on to your vested options for 10 years after you leave, rather than being forced to exercise at your own expense within 90 days. * The right to visibility into the terms of your employer's financing, including the liquidations preferences and perks of investor preferred shares. I could go on and on and on, but then, so can you, because we share this site. Here's a thing that a lot of people on Hacker News don't know --- and I think this is a genuine case of something that the ownership class in the American economy doesn't want you to know: Federal law rigorously protects your rights to organize in the workplace. We talk about "at-will employment" and "protected classes" (race, religion, gender) on HN quite a bit. We rarely talk about the other broad exemption in American law to at-will termination: labor organization. Not only can you not be fired for trying to organize a labor union (itself something that surprises a lot of people), but you can't be fired for protesting. You'll want to talk to a labor lawyer before you try this move, but: federal law prohibits the termination of an employee for engaging in "protected concerted action" to improve workplace conditions. You can, if you do it right, walk off your job and refuse to come back, and if you're disciplined for doing so, sue your employer. It is crazy to me that we're not taking better advantage of this situation. The market power of software developers has never been higher. It may very well be at its zenith. For that matter, the labor laws of the US might not stay this way either. Now is the time to put it to use to secure the best, most productive conditions for technology work, not 20 years from now, when it might be just as hard for us as it was for the Facebook shuttle drivers.
mc32 9y ago
This is a bit misleading. Union power is putting pressure on service economy companies which in turn service tech companies. Tech workers are not unionizing -and I can't imagine they would, given their pay compared to other sectors. I could see an AMA type organization perhaps. On the other hand, unfortunately, companies no longer staff vertically. When they can outsource their non core competencies they do. They don't want to be the IBMs and Xeroxes of yore. They want to remain nimble. A famous example was MS's front line IT staff managing Windows clients being contractors. So they hired contractors to manage their own core product internally!!
- gok 9y ago
  > Tech workers are not unionizing -and I can't imagine they would, given their pay compared to other sectors. Unions needn’t be only for the middle class. See professional sports players unions for example.
  - mc32 9y ago
    Isn't that a diff scenario given the sports leagues are granted legal monopoly exemptions? Not to say that obviates the need, or delegitimizes the idea, but rather the pressure for it isn't as mounting.
    - s73ver_ 9y ago
      Look at the Screen Actor's Guild, the Director's Guild, and the Writer's Guild.
    - confounded 9y ago
      Professional associations are just unions for richer people. Accountants, actuaries, doctors, etc. etc. ad nauseam.
  - walshemj 9y ago
    In the UK for example BALPA (airline pilots), Prospect (M&P grads in many industry's) and the FDA (v senior civil servants plus MI5 and MI6)
bnolsen 9y ago
Not interested in ever joining a union. Absolutely not interested in being forced to join one...ABSOLUTELY NOT.
samfisher83 9y ago
With the costs as they are in SF how can these people even afford to live in that area? Is there like low income housing like NY or rent control?
- santaclaus 9y ago
  Long ass commutes from Contra Costa County. KQED had an interesting series on the changing demographics of the bay area's exurbs. [1] [1] https://ww2.kqed.org/forum/2017/02/07/kqed-looks-inside-the-changing-bay-area-with-american-suburb/ https://ww2.kqed.org/forum/2017/02/07/kqed-looks-inside-the-...
- SilasX 9y ago
  I wish these organizers put at least as much political capital into making housing affordable ...
halflings 9y ago
> When the crowd reconvened, Andrew Barney, a former Intel cafeteria worker, drew cheers and applause when he said, “I think Google should pay the residents of this community for being allowed to squat in our backyard.” “Google’s vulnerable right now with all this building and everything they’re doing, and they need a lot of approvals,” says the Teamsters’ Aloise. “We may just pick one, one time, to get involved, and see if we can stop it and have them come to us and say, ‘What do you need?’ ” This is one of those rare times where "populism" is actually the right word to describe something. The inequalities one can see in the Bay Area are quite flagrant, but this type of mentality is not going to help.
- confounded 9y ago
  Assuming you don't mean help Google, why not?
- eli_gottlieb 9y ago
  Speaking from another metro area, that sounds like what companies do to our municipalities when offering to set up shop. Oh, sure, they'll build an office here... so long as we shovel some free public money down their throat to "incentivize" them to make a profit off our labor.
Chiba-City 9y ago
There are no lifetime guaranteed jobs. That is a peculiar idea that might only apply to being "born to farm your patch" in history at all. Institutions and entire job categories go away. Collective bargaining is OK and not usually conflictual outside down cycles or downsizing legacy industries. The conflict narratives appeal far more to general consumers. Working class hero is huge in American history for both good and ill. Where many unions go bad is running interference on liability, incompetency or even criminality. That is not unique to unions but suffers embarrassing large scale instances (cops? teachers? auto workers who stole tools). These are tough things to get right. The battles for enough and fair (predictable is a giant issue for service workers) overlap with battles that should never be waged and mostly lose.
- ericd 9y ago
  You bring up a major downside to industry-wide unions in that a single bad decision by a small group of people can make it so that an entire industry can suffer, rather than many entities battling it out with a variety of decisions, which would give employees choice, and give some opportunity for the best decisions to win out over time. Perhaps the problem is not unions, but monopolization of an industry's workers by a single union.
yegle 9y ago
Related: Google started hiring security guards as employee ~3 years ago https://thinkprogress.org/google-to-hire-security-guards-as-employees-after-wage-protests-a919722e7e71/ https://thinkprogress.org/google-to-hire-security-guards-as-...

295 points by spking 9y ago

Question for the HN crowd: do you think tech-workers will begin to unionize? It seems to me that (in general) they've got such a nice position in the economy there's probably a bit of an "if it ain't broke don't fix it" mentality. Is that correct?

readams 9y ago
Working in a union would be terrible. Can you imagine having to deal with seniority rules?
- ryanworl 9y ago
  A union is whatever the members want it to be. Just because traditional unions operate a certain way does not mean a union for tech workers has to operate the same way.
  - umanwizard 9y ago
    How would a union help me at all?
    - eli 9y ago
      Is there anything you want from your employer that they don't already give you? If a lot of your fellow employees agree, it would be more powerful for you all to ask as a collective group rather than you to ask as a single employee.
    - AndrewDucker 9y ago
      Legal support if your company does something unpleasant to you. Pushing for better conditions/pay for you as part of improving them for everyone where you work.
    - ryanworl 9y ago
      I don't know if a union would help you specifically because I don't know who you are or who you work for. But in general, a union could negotiate the development practices you and your co-workers want. As an example, if you and your co-workers wanted one week per quarter devoted solely to paying back technical debt, your union could demand it. There is no reason why a union has to do anything in particular at all if you don't want it to. I'm not trying to tell you to join a union or not, just saying that a union as a legal structure does not require any of the tactics or goals as 20th century manufacturing or public sector unions.
      - stale2002 9y ago
        "There is no reason why a union has to do anything in particular at all if you don't want it to." Yes there it. If a union takes over the workforce of your company, now you have to follow the union rules. If unions were just opt in, them yes you'd be right. But unions are NOT opt in for many states. One you are a union shop, you are screwed if you disagree with the union.
        Frondo 9y ago
        A union is also a democratically-run organization, so if you disagree with it, you have some recourse. A workplace is not democratically run, so if you disagree with it, you are also screwed, only this time you have no recourse.
        stale2002 9y ago
        I'd rather only get screwed by 1 group than have the possibility of being screwed by 2 groups. Voting and democracy doesn't help anything. I am just 1 vote. I'd rather have things negotiated between me, and only me and the other party.
        s73ver_ 9y ago
        So between you, and the entirety of the company.
    - tptacek 9y ago
      One way to look at Hacker News is as a part-time ranked inventory of labor grievances for tech workers. Open offices. Draconian IP clauses. Opportunities for developers to become founders. Work-life balance. Remote work. People get hung up on this because most developers feel like their profession is well-compensated. And, they are. But so are doctors and lawyers, who also belong to professional associations. There's much more to bargain for than just wages.
      - TheCowboy 9y ago
        Adding another couple that are popular: better hiring and interviewing practices that don't over-burden applicants. Eliminating the number of rounds, better transparency about the overall hiring process, avoiding tests that are completely irrelevant to job performance. Better transparency regarding salary offerings, and a framework for individual negotiation that doesn't disadvantage certain groups. There are plenty of things a professional organization could excel at that don't require full-blown unionization.
      - euroclydon 9y ago
        Doctors are miserable from the micromanagement and metrics these days.
    - s73ver_ 9y ago
      Legal backing if, say, you worked for Equifax, and refused to certify that their systems were secure, and they wanted to terminate you to shut you up.
  - ryandvm 9y ago
    All unions, nay all power structures, naturally evolve to serve the interests of the _current_ members. Because of this, seniority-based benefits and insulating bad apples from termination are traits that almost always show up in every union through convergent evolution.
    - tptacek 9y ago
      Your comment creates the impression that without unions, developers wouldn't have to deal with "power structures". But to a pretty good first approximation every technology firm in the industry is a "power structure" --- a rigid and overt one, at that --- run by financiers and owners. So it's hard to see what rank-and-file professionals would have to lose from exercising their own market power, at least in your analysis.
      - danielvf 9y ago
        And add a union to the current situation, and now you have two power structures over you, not one.
        tptacek 9y ago
        Yes, and you'll be a constituent of one of them, which is the argument for organizing.
        apsec112 9y ago
        Being a constituent doesn't necessarily mean anything. Eg., Eric Garner was a constituent of New York City. NYC is democratically governed, and he had an equal right to vote. It didn't help him very much.
        detcader 9y ago
        Being a constituent of X (in this context) means means X is expected to advocate for you. Thus Eric Garner wasn't a constituent of NYC, he was a constituent of his representatives, who may or may not have done a good job advocating for the safety of those interviewed or detained by the police. I don't see how constituency doesn't help here, because now we can hold reps responsible for advocating for better protection, whereas if no representative power structures existed in the US, what happened to Garner would happen all the time and we would still belong to Great Britain
  - chimeracoder 9y ago
    > Just because traditional unions operate a certain way does not mean a union for tech workers has to operate the same way. Unions have all converged on operating the same way because the NLRA is very rigid, and over the decades, they've found a stable way of operating. Other operating structures have been tried over the last century, and all have failed except the current one. If anybody believes that a tech union under the NLRA would break this trend, especially while presumably still being affiliated with other traditional unions, then the burden would be on them to explain why the forces that drive other unions would somehow not apply to tech.
    - s73ver_ 9y ago
      The Screen Actor's Guild doesn't work that way.
      - chimeracoder 9y ago
        > The Screen Actor's Guild doesn't work that way. SAG-AFTRA has been specially exempted from key provisions in labor law.
        s73ver_ 9y ago
        You're gonna need to provide evidence.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- kerkeslager 9y ago
  No. But I can imagine a union without seniority rules.
- s73ver_ 9y ago
  A lot of places already have these, but informally. Also, why on earth do you think we'd have to? If no one wants them, why would we have them?
SomeStupidPoint 9y ago
I honestly think programmers are just demonstrating that they skew politically inept by not unionizing. Well, not a union as such, but if you look at other professional degrees, almost all of them have powerful trade groups that represent the workers -- doctors, engineers, lawyers, etc. I think it speaks more to political ineptitude and the newness of the field that programming doesn't even have the same support structures in place that engineers do.
- toomuchtodo 9y ago
  The downvotes speak volumes of the cognitive dissonance. Everone is fully in control of their destiny through their rugged individualism and bootstraps until they're laid off and packing up to head back home from SFBA because they have no worker protections. I suppose everyone has to learn the hard way (again) during the next downturn.
  - psyc 9y ago
    The comment you're replying to conflated gatekeeping associations, which aim to keep people out of the field to bolster demand, with worker protections.
    - jejones3141 9y ago
      Ignoring the ethics of the matter, I suspect that those already in the field would consider that a form of protection and hence a union would take on gatekeeping functions.
  - brightball 9y ago
    Have you ever thought that programmer pay is as high as it is because of the lack of those protections? It's pretty well established that programmer interviewing is hard for businesses and when they get it wrong everybody needs to be able to part ways. The speed at which this field moved is almost entirely due to the lack of encumbrances. That includes having to pay a state licensing group to say you are professionally certified in Java, risking losing your job if you fail to renew on time, having the state lock out anybody from the profession who does not meet these requirements, having unions require these certifications and pressure companies to only hire based on them. It's a long, inefficient and useless money grab who's costs far outweigh the benefits.
bahman2000 9y ago
may be one way to fight age-ism in the industry
dkhenry 9y ago
I would hope not. I see tech-workers as professionals not as laborers. I think the great battle to be fought by tech workers is to stop having them treated as common laborers that perform some kind of rote process. Some times we call software development engineering, and if thats the case I would press anyone to show me an engineering discipline that parallels software engineering in terms of working conditions and relations.
- s73ver_ 9y ago
  Do you see Directors and Screenwriters as professionals? They belong to a union (the Director's Guild and the Writer's Guild, respectively).
- tptacek 9y ago
  Most professionals also belong to labor unions. They're just not called that; they're called professional associations.
  - gok 9y ago
    There are pretty huge differences between (say) the IEEE and the UAW. Collective bargaining, for example.
    - _jal 9y ago
      I think the GP was thinking more of the state Bars, the Federation of State Medical Boards, National Association of State Boards of Accountancy, etc. Those are not in the same category as the IEEE.
      - gok 9y ago
        Sure, boards which look after professional certifications do have more power, especially in jurisdictions that give those certifications legal power. But those boards still don’t typically negotiate wages or organize strikes.
wfo 9y ago
If they are smart, they should: right now they have a lot of power in the workplace because there is demand for them. This is a problem tech business owners have identified: programmers have too much power on the job relative to their bosses. They require good wages, they require too many benefits, they complain and sue when they are sexually harassed, they demand equity and to be treated well and refuse to accept the company asserting total ownership of their person in their contract, like non competes, binding arbitration, corporate ownership of every thought they have on the job or off. Could you imagine a company tracking every movement of every programmer at all times and automatically firing those who fail to "perform" according to certain metric? Does your eye linger too long on a comment relative to your peers? Fired. Did it take you too long to write this method this one time? Fired. This is the reality for Amazon warehouse workers and it could be for you, easily. But there is a solution (from the prospective of employers) for this "problem": every time you hear someone talk about "teaching everyone to code" or "the STEM shortage" (which absolutely does not exist -- there is a shortage of qualified programmers willing to work for $12/hr, a shortage of hard science PhDs willing to do menial lab work for 10$/hr) this is coded language for "let's make millions more programmers so that they become so commonplace they become a commodity and may be treated as such". As it turns out, programming is not that hard, anyone could do it if they learned. And they are learning. Programmers would be smart to unionize before this strategy succeeds, not after, it will be much easier while they still have power. But this requires social and political intelligence, and for programmers (who lean Libertarian up until the moment they get laid off or abused by their boss) to put their egos aside and disabuse themselves of the notion that they succeeded only because they are so much more brilliant than everyone else.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- dkhenry 9y ago
  Your comment shows the real divide on unionization and its not about someone's political ideology, its fundamentally about how they view the profession. If like you said programmers should unionize before the army of $12/hour programmers arrives then what you are claiming is that software development could be done by someone who was trained and willing to accept $12 per hour. Essentially you are making the claim they are a common laborer much like a construction worker or delivery driver ( both of whom make more then $12/ hour ). If however you view software development as a profession requiring intelligence and a deep understanding of the subject matter then you don't care about the $12/hour laborers because they will never be able to replicate the work of a qualified professional. The people who don't want a union aren't resisting it because they want to live in some libertarian wet dream, they are resisting it because they see their profession as something that can't be reduced to common labor and they don't see a labor union as able to provide any benefits, as indeed they don't when you are dealing with a profession. The push to get people to unionize is not about workers rights its about putting technology professionals in the place business owners want them in. No one likes the idea that software is eating the world and there is a limited group of people , who are not the traditional power brokers, who are very well positioned to capitalize on that. They would much rather that software development become a commodity so they can continue their model of capital vs labor.
_jal 9y ago
I think this would be exactly the right time for tech-workers to unionize. Which means it won't happen. US tech workers currently have it great - I think they're somewhere close to a peak of negotiating power. That's when you want to negotiate. That's also when workers think there's no point in it. I think one thing that keeps tech engineers from unionizing is the "professional" label. Unions are iron workers, not professionals like me. I have two responses: (1) look at other professionals. Lawyers, doctors and accountants have unions, they just aren't call that. Think about it. (2) If you think your "professional" status is sticky without doing anything, take a look at programmer work conditions at overseas outsourcers. That is the future of the job if you don't do anything.
arjie 9y ago
I hope not. I've seen enough HNers talk about how they want immigrants out of the industry, and about how we should restrict the supply of programmers to keep pay high. No thanks. I don't want to baseline myself to a bunch of guys who can't get a good job when the market is as hot as it's been.
- chimeracoder 9y ago
  > I hope not. I've seen enough HNers talk about how they want immigrants out of the industry, and about how we should restrict the supply of programmers to keep pay high Incidentally, this is exactly what labor unions have spent their time doing for much of their history as incorporated organizations. Labor unions fought (successfully) to exclude immigrants from certain regions from immigrating, and even fought to retroactively strip them of citizenship, so that members could seize their property after they were deported. Labor unions fought to relocate Japanese-Americans during World War II, to create jobs for members, and then fought to prevent them from returning home. The current quota system for visas and immigration that tech people frequently complain about? That was the result of legislation that the AFL lobbied for decades ago. People don't like to talk about this, because it's an ugly chapter of labor history, but especially in this day and age, it's important to remember.
  - s73ver_ 9y ago
    They don't like to talk about it because it's entirely off the subject, here. It is extremely intellectually dishonest for you to say that, implying that a tech union would do such a thing.
    - chimeracoder 9y ago
      > They don't like to talk about it because it's entirely off the subject, here. It is extremely intellectually dishonest for you to say that, implying that a tech union would do such a thing. Every time the topic of immigration and visas come up, the comments are flooded with racist comments and talk about how we need to make it harder for companies to hire people on H1Bs from Asia. The more overtly racist comments get flagged and removed, but the rest still stay. If anything, it's intellectually dishonest of you to suggest that these same people wouldn't actually fight to do that, given that's literally what they say they want to do.
curun1r 9y ago
My guess would be no. Unions work when labor is fungible. And while a business might view many tech employees that way, we've largely resisted seeing ourselves that way. We mythologize the 10x programmer and openly acknowledge that there is a large but hard-to-measure productivity difference between high performers and low performers. So why would a group that believes that put organizations in place that force businesses to treat and pay employees equally? Why would that group start to accept that years of service is a proxy for useful experience and ability? Fear of lawsuits mean that it's already too difficult to get rid of disruptive elements in an engineering team...are we really willing to make that process harder? Will the actual 10x programmers--the ones that have the data and recommendations on their CV to prove it--be willing to cede their individual negotiating power?
jasode 9y ago
>they've got such a nice position in the economy there's probably a bit of an "if it ain't broke don't fix it" mentality. Is that correct? I'd say your intuition is basically correct. If we use average programmer's salary of $84k[1], that places the income in the top 30%. If we extend the statistics further to include Silicon Valley salaries of $200k+, that places them in the top 5%. I can't think of any unionization in labor history that originated with members in the top 5% of salaries. That includes unions in manufacturing, arts (film/tv), sports, transportation, etc. Yes, NFL & MLB players make a lot today but their unions happened before the advent of TV and playing pro sports was not a highly paid endeavor. (Early MLB players had to have 2nd jobs and share hotel rooms on the road.) As a thought experiment... one might argue that if the NFL were to restart today after the invention of TV, there would not be a players union. Instead the roster of 53 football players would be 53 independent contractors. Indeed, modern players in "sports" teams like eSports are mostly independent contractors. The technology of tv magnifies individuality (Tom Brady's face also sells cars & watches for endorsement deals). Today's marketability of the individual instead of the team would make it harder to convince 50%+ of players to elect union representation. (NASCAR drivers and UFC MMA fighters had/have grumblings about union representation that have gone nowhere so far. Also, they first have to switch to from independent contractors to employees -- which is another set of hurdles.) Some airline pilots (with seniority) are 5% salary but in the 1930s they weren't when the union formed. So, when would 50%+[2] programmers willing want to pay union dues -- say 1.5% (SAG) or 1.4% (UAW) of their salary?!? When the economic conditions of programmers match the poor conditions of the previous successful unionization efforts. We're obviously nowhere near that situation with software devs (even ones without college degrees) earning good salaries. Some other commenters recommend that now is the best time to unionize because the current times are good for programmers. My question to that is... has that ever happened in history? Basically, the main driver for unionization is economic conditions instead of ideological stance. If one believes more in the the ideology rather than economics, then yes it seems realistic to think that top-5% salary earners will vote themselves into a union. Since I emphasize economic conditions, I predict they won't -- at least not within the next 10 years. If a breakthrough AI happens to make programmers a commodity equal to burger flippers, the economics stresses on the profession changes which makes unionization more realistic. [1] https://www.google.com/search?q=average+programmer+salary https://www.google.com/search?q=average+programmer+salary [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Card_check https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Card_check
dsfyu404ed 9y ago
If they do it will be like welders where union membership ties mostly to workplace and there's several professional associations that have certification systems and whether a particular cert is required is dependent on state regulations that pertain to the nature of the job.
gwbas1c 9y ago
We need professional organizations and licensing processes. Unions are for common laborers. The difference is that professionals bargain individually, because the jobs we do are specialized. Common laborers need unions for collective bargaining; because their work isn't specialized. So think of it more like: A tech company would only hire a licensed software engineer. The licensing process is mostly the tedium part of determining competency, so that the job interview is about mutual interest and personality fit. It then opens up more room for individual negotiation, because there is less of a competency risk when hiring. Unions and collective bargaining is for when there is very little competency risk when hiring.
s73ver_ 9y ago
I would hope they'd start. And there's no reason it has to be anything like a auto worker's union or anything like that. The Screen Actors Guild, the Director's Guild, and the Writer's Guild are all unions, and no one is complaining that SAG is hurting the ability of a "rockstar ninja actor/actress" from making huge amounts of money, which is the main complaint I hear about unions here.
- chimeracoder 9y ago
  > no one is complaining that SAG is hurting the ability of a "rockstar ninja actor/actress" from making huge amounts of money, which is the main complaint I hear about unions here. They absolutely do prevent lots of people from being hired the theater and film industry in the first place, which is a widespread complaint against them. Obviously the lucky few who do gain membership (which is intentionally difficult) make more money as a result of the constricted supply.
mlindner 9y ago
I laugh when people propose this. I moved to Silicon Valley from across the country because there are good opportunities to learn from companies here. If I'm forced into a union my company will shortly be going under so I'll just find a new job. Silicon Valley workers are already the most overpaid workers in the entire country. A similar job elsewhere pays 50%-75% what I make here. If you try to unionize to force wages higher, all this does is causes the exodus of companies from Silicon Valley even faster.
- s73ver_ 9y ago
  "Silicon Valley workers are already the most overpaid workers in the entire country." You're gonna have to provide evidence of that. And don't just quote a dollar amount, because that needs to be taken in context. That context being the amount of money the company makes, the value that the employee brings, the cost of living in the area, and other factors. "A similar job elsewhere pays 50%-75% what I make here." So what? It costs less in those areas. But that, to me, sounds like a bunch of people who haven't asked for what they're worth. "If you try to unionize to force wages higher, all this does is causes the exodus of companies from Silicon Valley even faster." Given the cost of living there, doubtful. And there are far more things to organize around besides wages.

alexc05 9y ago

> Eventually, Facebook says, it OK’d proposed terms of the contract, which hiked drivers’ average pay by half, to $27.50 an hour, and for the first time provided fully paid family health care. For those people doing the driving that's pretty great news. I hope they also took care of those working conditions issues too. Split shifts etc...

ic4l 9y ago
Won't last long. Few more years, and it will be a autonomous fleet anyways.
- noobermin 9y ago
  You might have missed this discussion from a few days ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15116861 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15116861
  - yeukhon 9y ago
    We are far from "few years."
  - Density 9y ago
    That discussion is extremely weird. Posters are claiming that since Speech recognition took decades so must self driving cars. Speech recognition decades ago has nothing to do with speech recognition today. I understand the skepticism but I hope HN posters can make stronger arguments in the future.
    - jhall1468 9y ago
      I agree. Transformative technology has this effect on people. The other day I was arguing with someone that said we need true Artificial General Intellegence before full autonomy is available. I'm fine with skepticism, but these types of unfounded claims drive me crazy. If you want to argue the companies aren't really moving the tech as fast as they claim, post actual evidence, not some nonsense about speech recognition in the 90s.

DINKDINK 9y ago

Appears to be free and non coercive negotiation until you get to the actual coersion: "In San Francisco the coalition persuaded the city transit authority to make it easier to deny permits to companies facing labor strife." If your negotiations rely on the monopoly that the state provides, is it really a negotiation?

aesh2Xa1 9y ago
Labor unions typically rely on the state for leverage. Individuals are powerless and organizing helps only as far as they are, even as a group, not easily replaced.
pjc50 9y ago
> If your negotiations rely on the monopoly that the state provides, is it really a negotiation? Good question. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_union_busting_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_union_busting_in_th...
frgtpsswrdlame 9y ago
Is that not the exact point of the state? A large, unified actor is working against a bunch of individuals, those individuals are having problems organizing themselves into a large, unified actor so they ask the state for a little help, the state provides it, labor organizes and boom, workers and their bosses are on a little more level footing. All's well that ends well.
- sageikosa 9y ago
  no.
balance_factor 9y ago
The tech giants negotiations are relying on the monopoly that the state provides. Just to pick one piece of legislation, the 1947 Taft-Hartley Act, the government disallows various worker/employer agreements that benefit those doing the work. Meaning corporate America generally outlawed certain deals that could happen, when the workers were in a good position, that the corporation was willing to do. That is relying on the monopoly the state provides. The Taft-Hartley act also bans secondary strikes, so unions are further restricted (this restriction was increased more with the Labor Management Reporting and Disclosure Act in 1959). The Taft-Hartley act also allowed the president to ban strikes in the case of a "national emergency". Of course, national emergencies were seen all over the place since then, including in 2002 on the west coast docks with the ILWU. There are the people doing all the work and creating all the wealth, then there are the heirs and such who feed off their expropriation of the surplus labor time of those doing all the work. The idle class relies on the monopoly that the state provides. In fact, if you look to history and the creation of the first states in Sumeria thousands of years ago, the raison d'etre of those states were to use violence and propaganda so that an idle class could expropriate surplus labor time from their slaves doing all the work.

dkhenry 9y ago

No its not. This is a union fluff piece. The reality is these are contractors who will get dropped as soon as it makes sense. Thats why you hire these services as contractors. I think the real test here will be how long till the union pushes facebook too far and they are just dropped. I have never seen a union that could actually compete with non-union shops unless there was a legal force preventing the competition.

hgsigala 9y ago
Which is exactly why we have to make it easier for people to form and join unions everywhere.
- xyzzy_plugh 9y ago
  To paint a wall in an individual office on Market St, San Francisco, with whiteboard paint, is upwards of $10000 in labor, because of union regulations. Unions are ripe to be used as instruments for abuse.
  - eutropia 9y ago
    I can't believe this. Do you have proof?
    - xyzzy_plugh 9y ago
      I was present when a facilities manager explained why we shouldn't use spray-cleaner to clean whiteboards, because it wore down the paint faster, and repainting it cost $10k, and that they had already paid to repaint them twice.
      - enraged_camel 9y ago
        That's not proof, it's hearsay.
        9y ago

kevmo 9y ago

If there is one thing I've learned from two decades of reading about labor history, it's: Every gain labor has ever made has been taken. Every gain the working class (i.e. the overwhelming majority of people) has achieved has come from organizing their majority of low-power workers and then standing strongly against the empowered minority at the top. Good for these people. They are essentially moving our society forward.

sageikosa 9y ago
Towards?
- sageikosa 9y ago
  Seriously, forward towards what? The "perfect society"?
  - crimsonalucard 9y ago
    Towards a more balanced distribution of corporate resources/wages/profits leading to a more healthy economy.
    - sageikosa 9y ago
      Balanced by what standard? Don't really need an answer, most of my posts are just to let other individuals know that at one time there were critical thinkers on HN. I've been downvoted so often for asking questions and answering questions (rather than rambling on through rhetorical platitudes and high-school level history lessons) that I actually take perverse pleasure in seeing how many downvotes I can get.
      - crimsonalucard 9y ago
        I'm not downvoting. By balanced I mean if everyone on earth had the same amount of money then the worlds' wealth would be perfectly balanced. I am not talking about fairness or whether or not the wealth was deserved. At two ends of the spectrum we have wealth inequality and communism. The ideal sweet spot is somewhere in between the two extremes, right now the United States is leaning towards wealth inequality.

crimsonalucard 9y ago

What do you guys think of software engineers forming a union where we have a guaranteed base pay but each of us can still negotiate higher if we wanted?

otalp 9y ago
It's less about base pay, and more about limits to working time, overtime and protection from exploitation.
- mlindner 9y ago
  If you don't like your job then switch it, there's plenty of software companies that don't do that. Generally I've seen that the more bleeding edge you're working on then the more overwork you get. If you want to sacrifice working on the bleeding edge for a steady pay and steady working hours you can have that all across the country.
  - s73ver_ 9y ago
    There is literally zero reason for that overwork. None.

tptacek 9y ago

If the drivers and cafeteria workers at tech companies can organize, so can the developers. Unlike the developers, the drivers tend to be financially insecure. In this economy, they're eminently replaceable. What they do is outside the core competency of their employers. You'd think they'd have almost no leverage. And yet, in the space of just a few years, they've managed to secure higher wages and health benefits --- in a market where non-technical employees are 1099'd specifically to avoid benefits obligations! Like a lot of other occupations in the US market, tech workers have been bamboozled into believing that labor organization is something lower-status workers do. But, no: most of the classic professions, from doctors to lawyers, belong to professional associations. They may not call themselves "unions", but that's a distinction without a difference. Tech workers blow off labor organizing because they feel themselves to be well-compensated. And they're right. So are the doctors and the lawyers. There are things to bargain for besides higher salaries. If you're wondering what they are, look no further than Hacker News, a ranked inventory of tech worker grievances. Can't see organizing a walk-off over pay raises? Well then, how about: * The right to work from home when the team agrees that doing so has no negative impact on performance. * The right to hire team members outside of SFBA when the development team decides it's appropriate to do so. * The right to work on side projects alone and with your own resources without your employer claiming the fruits of your own free time. * The right to work in an office with walls between you and salespeople on the phone all day. * The right to hold on to your vested options for 10 years after you leave, rather than being forced to exercise at your own expense within 90 days. * The right to visibility into the terms of your employer's financing, including the liquidations preferences and perks of investor preferred shares. I could go on and on and on, but then, so can you, because we share this site. Here's a thing that a lot of people on Hacker News don't know --- and I think this is a genuine case of something that the ownership class in the American economy doesn't want you to know: Federal law rigorously protects your rights to organize in the workplace. We talk about "at-will employment" and "protected classes" (race, religion, gender) on HN quite a bit. We rarely talk about the other broad exemption in American law to at-will termination: labor organization. Not only can you not be fired for trying to organize a labor union (itself something that surprises a lot of people), but you can't be fired for protesting. You'll want to talk to a labor lawyer before you try this move, but: federal law prohibits the termination of an employee for engaging in "protected concerted action" to improve workplace conditions. You can, if you do it right, walk off your job and refuse to come back, and if you're disciplined for doing so, sue your employer. It is crazy to me that we're not taking better advantage of this situation. The market power of software developers has never been higher. It may very well be at its zenith. For that matter, the labor laws of the US might not stay this way either. Now is the time to put it to use to secure the best, most productive conditions for technology work, not 20 years from now, when it might be just as hard for us as it was for the Facebook shuttle drivers.

mc32 9y ago

This is a bit misleading. Union power is putting pressure on service economy companies which in turn service tech companies. Tech workers are not unionizing -and I can't imagine they would, given their pay compared to other sectors. I could see an AMA type organization perhaps. On the other hand, unfortunately, companies no longer staff vertically. When they can outsource their non core competencies they do. They don't want to be the IBMs and Xeroxes of yore. They want to remain nimble. A famous example was MS's front line IT staff managing Windows clients being contractors. So they hired contractors to manage their own core product internally!!

gok 9y ago
> Tech workers are not unionizing -and I can't imagine they would, given their pay compared to other sectors. Unions needn’t be only for the middle class. See professional sports players unions for example.
- mc32 9y ago
  Isn't that a diff scenario given the sports leagues are granted legal monopoly exemptions? Not to say that obviates the need, or delegitimizes the idea, but rather the pressure for it isn't as mounting.
  - s73ver_ 9y ago
    Look at the Screen Actor's Guild, the Director's Guild, and the Writer's Guild.
  - confounded 9y ago
    Professional associations are just unions for richer people. Accountants, actuaries, doctors, etc. etc. ad nauseam.
- walshemj 9y ago
  In the UK for example BALPA (airline pilots), Prospect (M&P grads in many industry's) and the FDA (v senior civil servants plus MI5 and MI6)

bnolsen 9y ago

Not interested in ever joining a union. Absolutely not interested in being forced to join one...ABSOLUTELY NOT.

samfisher83 9y ago

With the costs as they are in SF how can these people even afford to live in that area? Is there like low income housing like NY or rent control?

santaclaus 9y ago
Long ass commutes from Contra Costa County. KQED had an interesting series on the changing demographics of the bay area's exurbs. [1] [1] https://ww2.kqed.org/forum/2017/02/07/kqed-looks-inside-the-changing-bay-area-with-american-suburb/ https://ww2.kqed.org/forum/2017/02/07/kqed-looks-inside-the-...
SilasX 9y ago
I wish these organizers put at least as much political capital into making housing affordable ...

halflings 9y ago

> When the crowd reconvened, Andrew Barney, a former Intel cafeteria worker, drew cheers and applause when he said, “I think Google should pay the residents of this community for being allowed to squat in our backyard.” “Google’s vulnerable right now with all this building and everything they’re doing, and they need a lot of approvals,” says the Teamsters’ Aloise. “We may just pick one, one time, to get involved, and see if we can stop it and have them come to us and say, ‘What do you need?’ ” This is one of those rare times where "populism" is actually the right word to describe something. The inequalities one can see in the Bay Area are quite flagrant, but this type of mentality is not going to help.

confounded 9y ago
Assuming you don't mean help Google, why not?
eli_gottlieb 9y ago
Speaking from another metro area, that sounds like what companies do to our municipalities when offering to set up shop. Oh, sure, they'll build an office here... so long as we shovel some free public money down their throat to "incentivize" them to make a profit off our labor.

Chiba-City 9y ago

There are no lifetime guaranteed jobs. That is a peculiar idea that might only apply to being "born to farm your patch" in history at all. Institutions and entire job categories go away. Collective bargaining is OK and not usually conflictual outside down cycles or downsizing legacy industries. The conflict narratives appeal far more to general consumers. Working class hero is huge in American history for both good and ill. Where many unions go bad is running interference on liability, incompetency or even criminality. That is not unique to unions but suffers embarrassing large scale instances (cops? teachers? auto workers who stole tools). These are tough things to get right. The battles for enough and fair (predictable is a giant issue for service workers) overlap with battles that should never be waged and mostly lose.

ericd 9y ago
You bring up a major downside to industry-wide unions in that a single bad decision by a small group of people can make it so that an entire industry can suffer, rather than many entities battling it out with a variety of decisions, which would give employees choice, and give some opportunity for the best decisions to win out over time. Perhaps the problem is not unions, but monopolization of an industry's workers by a single union.

yegle 9y ago

Related: Google started hiring security guards as employee ~3 years ago https://thinkprogress.org/google-to-hire-security-guards-as-employees-after-wage-protests-a919722e7e71/ https://thinkprogress.org/google-to-hire-security-guards-as-...