17 ms·

Honestly seems like we may be headed toward unionization, it may not happen within the next 5 years or so but silicon valley mega-giants sell a bill of goods to

• mc32 8y ago
  Unionization is not a panacea. Unionization may be able to preserve jobs and defend employees from employer strongarming tactics but on the converse, it can protect employees who would have otherwise been fired for improprieties and other less attractive ideas as well as those simply not pulling their weight any longer.
  • commandlinefan 8y ago
    There's good and there's bad to unions, absolutely. There's good and there's bad to lack of unions, too, though. At some point, the negatives of unionization outweigh the positives - if employers were smart, they'd work to make sure that doesn't happen.
    • sethammons 8y ago
      seems to me that employers are working to make sure that doesn't happen. Pay is very, very good. Most of us make multiples of median household income in our respective areas. Plus have better working conditions.
      • heavyset_go 8y ago
        Engineer pay hasn't kept up with productivity gains, inflation and increases in cost of living expenses. The fact is that engineers create an increasing amount of value, and their compensation hasn't increased sufficiently to reflect that. In fact, Adobe, Apple, Google, Intel, Intuit, Pixar and eBay were found guilty of colluding to keep engineer pay artificially low through anti-poaching agreements[1]. [1] Apple, Google, Intel, Adobe will pay $415 million in anti-poach deal - http://fortune.com/2015/09/03/koh-anti-poach-order/ http://fortune.com/2015/09/03/koh-anti-poach-order/
        • mc32 8y ago
          Do you think this really concerns Joe and Jill staff member at these companies, because I don’t think they cared about Joe and Jill but more about your senior people working on core products and services.
      • ionised 8y ago
        > seems to me that employers are working to make sure that doesn't happen. Pay is very, very good. Most of us make multiples of median household income in our respective areas. Plus have better working conditions. Most software developers are not on HN, or making anywhere near Valley salaries.
  • mschuster91 8y ago
    > but on the converse, it can protect employees who would have otherwise been fired for improprieties I know of these cases in the US, but that wouldn't fly in a German union. They only stand up for you when the employer acts out of reason, but not if you're fired with a valid reason (e.g. sexual misconduct). Maybe a look at the German system could be of help here, though I sympathize more with the French model as their unions sometimes go the extra way for the employees.
    • walshemj 8y ago
      Absolutely UK unions are like lawyers in this regard you represent the member even if you know they will be found guilty, to make sure their rights are protected and more importantly to "keep the company honest" as one senior manager said to me once. I suspect that Mr Danmore (x googler) did not get fired fairly as google did not I suspect follow its internal procedures to the letter.
• 49531 8y ago
  Getting past 40 years of hardcore anti-union propaganda won't be easy, especially in tech which essentially came into its own in tandem with neoliberalism.
• munk-a 8y ago
  I hope so, companies have agendas that are not aligned with those of their employees. Collective bargaining is practically a profanity in the US and it'd be good to see that silly prejudice eroded.
  • lbeltrame 8y ago
    > Collective bargaining is practically a profanity in the US While this is not true for all Europe, excessive "collective" (quotes intended) bargaining in my country has ensured indeed a sort of equality... an equality where everyone is put at the bottom with regards to wages. That's because everything is decided at national level (there are contracts for workers, teachers, engineers...) with close to zero local flexibility. New professions are kind of shoehorned into previous contract types (heck, I'm a researcher, and my contract applies to the "retail industry"). Major national unions (which have mostly retirees in their ranks) prefer it like this because they can have political power. That's why they are vehemently opposing any kind of local negotiation between employees and local unions, because that would strip them off their power. tl;dr: Implementations differ, some might even yield worse results than before.
  • humanrebar 8y ago
    > ...it'd be good to see that silly prejudice eroded. This is too dismissive. The fact is that unions are politically engaged. Being concerned about lobbying and political advocacy isn't silly. If you were an employee for/against software patents, how would you feel if the union actively campaigned and donated in the opposite direction? Even worse, what if the union tended to support candidates on the opposite side of issues you cared more about, like public schools, gay rights, or abortion?
    • 49531 8y ago
      This is such a backwards way of thinking about collective bargaining. The corporations you work for the the exact same thing (lobby for things they want) and it's rarely for your own benefit. The difference between a union and a corporation is that unions are democratic organizations. Good luck voting your boss out of their job. All you can do now is quit and find a new job, which for a lot of workers isn't easy to do. This is the argument used in the recent Janus ruling of the SCOTUS. It's part of the last 40 years of anti-union propaganda shoved into our faces by corporations.
• news_to_me 8y ago
  I'm not against unionization, but I also wonder whether employee representation on the board of directors is a better approach in many cases. It seems like it may suit the culture of tech better, and avoid some of the unfortunate bureaucracy of a true union.
  • smallgovt 8y ago
    I've heard this concept brought up before, but are there real world examples where this has been effective? It seems to me like any minority form of employee representation on a board (e.g. requiring 1 seat) would just be paying lip service to employees since the majority of the board would still make decisions based on what drives future profits.
    • scrumbledober 8y ago
      it's currently law in Germany. As an American I don't have any first hand experience with how well it works out. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Codetermination_in_Germany https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Codetermination_in_Germany
    • jamiepenney 8y ago
      Harder to hide board decision making process when the employees have a seat at the table though. Might make it easier for employees to organise against problems before they become entrenched decisions.
  • r00fus 8y ago
    How do you implement this without a) government mandate a la Germany or b) some form of employee collective (unions) to balance the power the company wields? Alternative is it’s a mascot/figurehead appointed or “voted in”.
  • 49531 8y ago
    "union bureaucracy" is mostly just anti-union propaganda, unions are no more bureaucratic than the corporations they live in, the difference is they are typically democratic organizations. You have little to no control over the bureaucracy of the company you work for as an ordinary worker. In a union you can.
• cobookman 8y ago
  This is a vocal minority pushing for this. The majority may not be for unionization.
  • toomuchtodo 8y ago
    You don’t need to be in the majority to effect change. You just need leverage. Bernie Sanders used publicity and shame to force Amazon to pay fulfillment center workers a higher minimum wage, and he’s only one person (albeit a person with a platform). So find the leverage. Everyone has pain points.
    • robrenaud 8y ago
      And they now apparently are paying the high performing workers less. https://techcrunch.com/2018/10/03/despite-minimum-wage-increase-some-amazon-workers-say-losing-stock-options-and-bonuses-means-they-will-make-less/ https://techcrunch.com/2018/10/03/despite-minimum-wage-incre...
      • toomuchtodo 8y ago
        Amazon didn’t have to reduce the pay of high performing workers. They chose to. That says more about Amazon than workers attempting to raise their wages.
        • ddingus 8y ago
          Exactly. All that is on Amazon, not those fighting for a living wage.
      • perfmode 8y ago
        A move which is more likely retaliatory than it is about Amazon’s profitability and concerns about going under.
  • supercanuck 8y ago
    The majority may be waiting for the tipping point.
• ChuckMcM 8y ago
  I am impressed that these employees are able to talk about this stuff and not get managed out of the company :-). Unionization itself though has had mixed effects in the US. From workers having their conditions and lives improved to city governments driven to bankruptcy. So it isn't all good or all bad. Perhaps technology workers have reached critical mass at this point.
  • deogeo 8y ago
    > From workers having their conditions and lives improved Like the 40-hour work week: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eight-hour_day https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eight-hour_day
  • epicureanideal 8y ago
    What's your opinion about why it hasn't worked out well for city governments? Maybe a tragedy of the commons? "Well, it's not my money being spent, why not give the unions a bigger pension"? Whereas in a private company there is always someone who wants the company to continue to be profitable.
    • manfredo 8y ago
      California has over a trillion dollars in pension obligations. Politicians make deals with unions that the government cannot afford because unions often become very politically powerful.
    • ChuckMcM 8y ago
      There are lots of opinions on this, and there are several cities in California who have gone through or started the Chapter 9 process[1]. When I read the material on these I see a fundamental tension between committing to planned future payments vs the ability to scale revenue to make those payments. As a result, any "baked in" payments, whether they are wage increases in union contracts or interest payments on general obligation bonds, can consume more than the available revenue. Bottom line is that things like pension obligations contribute to the problem but it takes a couple of things going south at the same time to drag a city under. That said, responsible city management which is unable to arbitrarily change the tax rate by law (the fabled CA requirement of 2/3 majority vote) would not enter into contracts that would put the city's solvency at risk, and yet they still do. [1] The factors contributing to a local government's decision to file for relief under Chapter 9 typically are varied and complex. From the information that has been made available to date, it appears that Stockton and San Bernardino's bankruptcy filings were driven by some similar factors including: long–term imbalances in revenues and spending, reduced tax revenues associated with the downturn in the economy, some constraints to reducing expenditures in the short term, and increasing costs to provide retiree benefits. Additionally, substantial borrowing appears to be a factor in Stockton's filing, and prior budgeting practices, such as borrowing from internal funds, appears to be a contributing factor in San Bernardino's case. By contrast, the bankruptcy filing by Mammoth Lakes appears to be driven by a single significant event—a recent legal judgment that required it to pay an amount more than twice its annual General Fund budget. -- https://lao.ca.gov/reports/2012/localgov/local-government-bankruptcy-080712.aspx https://lao.ca.gov/reports/2012/localgov/local-government-ba...
• ocschwar 8y ago
  It may not be unionization per se, but it's well past time for our organizations (IEEE/ACM/Usenix) to start defending our interests by establishing standards for employment contracts that don't include this kind of crap.
  • 49531 8y ago
    Many unions in the US are not multi-organization groups. A lot of folks unionize their co-workers without collaborating with, or joining, a trade or national union. I like it this way better because it gives you the ability to have more control over the organization as a normal worker. All that scary "union dues going to big bad bosses" rhetoric goes out the window when you know the union leadership as your co-workers.
    • walshemj 8y ago
      Doesn't really work longer term you need scale and external resources eg lobbying, legal support research. You do need better democratic oversight than you have in the USA cough in my opinion.
      • JoshTriplett 8y ago
        > Doesn't really work longer term you need scale and external resources eg lobbying, legal support research. So have multiple independent unions that have each other on speed dial for when they need to amplify influence. And lobbying should be opt-in by individual members on a cause by cause basis.
        • walshemj 8y ago
          1 Secondary action is illegal in the UK and restricted in many other countries. 2 Again in the UK there are very heavy restrictions placed on union lobbying and I suspect in the USA to. I am sorry balloting members individually on every policy is madness that's what conference is for.
          • 8y ago
• ddingus 8y ago
  I am in full support.
• el_nahual 8y ago
  I'm...pretty sure unions would end up being heavily anti open source. "I'm sorry, the union is opposed to postgres. You can either roll your own DB or use Oracle. Oh, and you're not allowed to store more than half a million rows without a Union Approved database administrator."
  • tptacek 8y ago
    You think an organization composed of rank-and-file software developers would work to oppose open source? That seems extremely unlikely. When you form an organized labor bloc, it's not like the Teamsters come in and manage your field for you. The people deciding what workplace changes to push for are the developers themselves.
  • robert_foss 8y ago
    That strikes me as being Anti-Union FUD.
    • wutbrodo 8y ago
      Can you elaborate on what you mean? I'm not the parent commenter, and personally have no reason to spread FUD, and yet the parent comment aligns with my (admittedly low-confidence) model of how institutions in general and unions in particular tend to work and have worked historically
  • Jim_Heckler 8y ago
    Wait what? What does that even mean? An engineer's union wouldn't be dictating programming practices, it would just be an instrument of worker empowerment and protection from employer negligence/greed. Besides, unions would most certainly be more pro-open source than any corporate entity. Open source gives everyone the opportunity to be heard and have their feelings and thoughts actually affect outcomes; this is more or less the same goal of a workers union.
    • chcknsammich 8y ago
      > it would just be an instrument of worker empowerment and protection from employer negligence/greed. Oh you sweet summer child..
• ucaetano 8y ago
  > Honestly seems like we may be headed toward unionization Nope. For the simple reason that unions have borders, tech jobs don't.
  • amputect 8y ago
    "Tech jobs don't [have borders]" That's going to be a huge surprise to the people, both tech workers and otherwise, who live in one of the major tech hubs where all the tech workers congregate.
    • ucaetano 8y ago
      Yep, and when workers in that hub become too expensive and less efficient because of unions, where do you think the jobs will move? US unions rely largely on holding a monopoly on the supply of labor. When that monopoly disappears, they lose all power.
      • xur17 8y ago
        Workers in hubs are already more expensive, but jobs don't seem to be moving.
        • ucaetano 8y ago
          Are you claiming that the jobs won't leave no matter how expensive the workers are?
          • xur17 8y ago
            I'm merely pointing out that the costs are already more expensive, and this doesn't seem to be causing many to relocate.
  • kiliantics 8y ago
    > unions have borders there are international unions and federations of unions actually
• jopsen 8y ago
  I live in Denmark, work for a SV company, and I'm union. It doesn't mean much, but should I someday need legal assistance they've got my back. I don't use them for negotiation, etc, few engineers do. But they run a decent news paper, and highlight topics like this.
• megaman8 8y ago
  It's impressive that they have so much bargaining power to do so. With so many people lining up to work at google, i would imagine people would be more fearful of their jobs.