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Kickstarter’s staff is unionizing

• gbear605 8y ago
  This is a big move on their part. If it’s successful for them, it could inspire a lot of others. I’m curious what their reason for unionizing is. Wanting more reasonable hours, perhaps?
  • moomin 8y ago
    Don’t get me wrong, I’m 100% supportive of unionising for better conditions, but the thing I keep hearing from tech companies is that people want to unionise to have a voice in the ethical practices of their firms. I wouldn’t be surprised if this was as much about that as working conditions.
  • lazyasciiart 8y ago
    According to The Verge “The goal of our union is to have a formal seat at the table to negotiate with management,” the Kickstarter Union organizers write in their email to staff. “We’re negotiating to promote our collective values, and ensure Kickstarter is around for the long haul. We care about preserving what’s great about Kickstarter and improving what isn’t.”
• nanokilo 8y ago
  If this works out, this has the potential to be huge for the industry. I would love to see more unionization in tech, and this could be a first step in that direction.
  • segmondy 8y ago
    It's going to end badly, unlike factories where a walkout would but a strain on production. A walkout necessarily doesn't put a strain on tech. Companies are going to embrace distributed teams/remote teams very fast and unionizing will just be a reason to close up shop in that location. That's what I imagine happening, predicting the future is hard tho.
    • mlillie 8y ago
      I think it would be comparable, but not equal, to a factory walkout. Without active bug-squashing, DevOps and server maintenance, there is an increased risk of a major outage, which would even affect previous customers as well. Also, most tech companies collect revenue incrementally, via subscriptions, ads and the like, rather than up-front like most factories would. And getting a scab developer up to speed would likely take a lot longer than getting scab factory workers up to speed. There are some differences as you said. If you're an auto factory that goes on strike, the management is likely still making money—they have all the cars made yesterday and the day before to sell. Of course, the pressure would rise much quicker in a factory vs a tech company; where the latter could presumably float itself for a few weeks, the former would start losing money within days.
    • hajile 8y ago
      A programmer walk-out is way worse. The Bus Factor is a real thing. Hire a new team to replace the old one on a complex project and it'll be months or years before they start doing anything productive. Making things worse, bit-rot is real and threatens existing software with failure if complaints aren't addressed.
      • cableshaft 8y ago
        If everyone in my department walked out and a new team had to be hired, they'd just be screwed. There's not enough documentation and the system is pretty complicated, with bits of it hiding everywhere and a bunch of ancient code that we never got around to refactoring (especially after they laid off half our department and another half quit afterwards, without replacement). I'm sure whenever I get a new job and resign they're going to be like 'oh shit', because there's just not anyone left to replace what I do, really (I'm the last person in the department with a good amount of knowledge on their proprietary and stupid complicated phone systems, and they've kept me too swamped to be able to do any knowledge transfer worth a damn). And in phone systems, there's always something going wrong or down, it seems like, often network related.
    • rexpop 8y ago
      You're right that distributed/remote teams present challenges to collective labor organizing. You're mistaken in thinking that a walkout is the only, or even primary, method of direct action organized collectives can employ. Here are 197 others: https://www.aeinstein.org/nonviolentaction/198-methods-of-nonviolent-action/ https://www.aeinstein.org/nonviolentaction/198-methods-of-no...
• cableshaft 8y ago
  If Kickstarter can do it, the game industry can do it! Come on, game industry, it's your time to unionize!
  • Animats 8y ago
    Came up at GDC last year.[1] There's Game Workers Unite, but they haven't accomplished much.[2] The biggest success remains The Animation Guild, IATSE local 839.[3] They represent most of the Hollywood studio animators. Much of what their members do is very similar to what game industry employees do. But they get overtime. From the IATSE contract with Disney: "... all time worked in excess of eight (8) hours per day or forty (40) hours per week shall be paid at one and one-half (1½) times the hourly rate provided herein for such employee’s classification. Except as otherwise herein provided: Time worked on the employee’s sixth (6th) workday of the workweek shall be paid at one and one-half (1 ½) times the hourly rate provided herein for such employee’s classification. Time worked on the employee’s seventh (7th) workday of the workweek shall be paid at two (2) times the hourly rate provided herein for such employee’s classification." "Crunch time" gets very expensive for employers. [1] https://www.polygon.com/2018/3/22/17149822/gdc-2018-igda-roundtable-game-industry-union https://www.polygon.com/2018/3/22/17149822/gdc-2018-igda-rou... [2] https://www.gameworkersunite.org/ https://www.gameworkersunite.org/ [3] https://animationguild.org/ https://animationguild.org/
    • maxxxxx 8y ago
      Paid overtime is an excellent tool to get some time management discipline into an organization.
      • kevindqc 8y ago
        Yeah.. Who needs time management when you have crunch time!
      • Rogger 8y ago
        Hola
    • 8y ago
• maxxxxx 8y ago
  I wish the US would adopt the German model where unions are for whole sectors. That way it's a level playing field for all companies.
  • xienze 8y ago
    Where did you get the idea that there aren't industry-wide unions in the US? UA is, for instance, a national plumbing union, with numerous local chapters.
    • maxxxxx 8y ago
      That's good! My girlfriend works for SEIU and they have different contracts with pretty much every employer. this causes a lot of friction.
  • egypturnash 8y ago
    There's a lot of lobbying and work between the current generally anti-union situation of the US and that sort of setup. I'm quite sure the German model is the result of no small amount of work on the part of the unions. Join the union at your job, ask why there isn't a union at your job if there isn't one, find a freelancer's union if you're not working for The Man, give some of your time/money/skills to people fighting for unions...
  • duxup 8y ago
    When I've described my experience with American unions it I hear a lot for Europeans who report their unions are far different than my experience. The American union tradition / behavior seems quite different than what I hear about elsewhere. I'm interested in the European systems, but very very wary of the US systems. Too many US unions are really just bureaucracies on their own, emphasize seniority for pay, advancement, and etc, and seem to limit options for workers in terms of flexibility. And to some extent american unions become their own bureaucracy serving the folks embedded in that bureaucracy. Granted for some jobs that probabbly is ok, but for technical things, I'm very wary about flexibility and etc. My experience with American unions has been highly disappointing and I'm skeptical about their ability to handle a more technical / fast changing world.
• bwestergard 8y ago
  This is fantastic news. I'm one of the software engineers who was fired for organizing a union at a SF/DC based startup last year. The National Labor Relations Board found in our favor and we won a large cash settlement. But what we wanted was a union. Seeing others pick up the torch is extremely gratifying. Below are some links to news coverage of our case. https://gist.github.com/bwestergard/a77744dc6f3095fd3fb769dd3d6562ad https://gist.github.com/bwestergard/a77744dc6f3095fd3fb769dd... If anyone has questions about the process, I'm happy to answer what I can.
  • sf_rob 8y ago
    Has being in the news as an organizer significantly harmed your job search?
    • JoshTriplett 8y ago
      Here's an interesting question: The NLRB says you can't fire someone for union organizing, but does it say you can't refuse to hire someone for union organizing?
      • bwestergard 8y ago
        Yes, under section 8(a)(3) of the National Labor Relations act. The NLRB publishes a helpful guide to your rights: https://www.nlrb.gov/sites/default/files/attachments/basic-page/node-3024/basicguide.pdf https://www.nlrb.gov/sites/default/files/attachments/basic-p...
      • ken 8y ago
        Yes. A friend of mine in college (who had the highest LSAT score of anyone I knew, and went on to become a lawyer) joked that his strategy would be to announce during an interview that he planned to organize, and if he didn't get the job that he would sue them on the grounds that they rejected him for this.
      • kevindqc 8y ago
        Good luck proving that though
• Apocryphon 8y ago
  Kickstarter was founded as a public benefit corporation, so they've always been friendly towards social consciousness. Are there any other tech companies that are PBCs or worker co-ops?
  • deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
• holymacaral 8y ago
  I have long thought crowdfunding is ripe for disruption. We should not need a middleman to send people money over the internet. It can be accomplished via a smart contract and creator listings could be self-hosted (think openbazaar). It could also fix the censorship issue inherit to these platforms. With Patreon raising prices and now this, maybe someone will crowdfund an alternative.
  • SlowRobotAhead 8y ago
    Throw the word blockchain in there and you’ll have a winner :)
    • holymacaral 8y ago
      It would use a cryptocurrency of course and probably a stablecoin. That means there's a blockchain somewhere along the line although crowdfunding would be an excellent use case for lightning-style payment channels to compress fees. If you pay a recurring fee every month then that's 12 fees a year. With payment channels we can reduce it to 2 - the fee to open the channel and the fee to close it.
• baby_wipe 8y ago
  So if they succeed, does that mean nobody can work for Kickstarter unless they are part of the union?
  • chrisseaton 8y ago
    I don't know how unions work in the US, but most unions in the UK fund a single political party, which means you could be forced to pay to support a party with views you find abhorrent in order to work, so I hope not.
    • afandian 8y ago
      The Labour party (the official Opposition party, and the previous ruling party) has very strong links to trade unions in the UK. The current ruling party, the Conservatives, introduced new law in this area: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trade_Union_Act_2016 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trade_Union_Act_2016
    • magissima 8y ago
      At least you have a vote in the union, unlike when your employer decides to use the products of your labor to lobby for policies or support parties you find abhorrent.
    • Trisell 8y ago
      Due to a supreme court case you can opt out of having your union dues used to support the political machinations of your union. https://www.forbes.com/sites/realspin/2015/08/26/not-just-in-right-to-work-states-union-workers-can-opt-out-of-membership/#71db6b917141 https://www.forbes.com/sites/realspin/2015/08/26/not-just-in...
    • alasdairnicol 8y ago
      You aren’t forced to pay the political levy in the UK, you can opt in/out.
      • chrisseaton 8y ago
• apl002 8y ago
  what are the pros/cons of unionizing? I dont know jack about this
  • freshcatch_ 8y ago
    The way I heard it best explained is no one would try to start a union if it made them less money. Better pay and benefits - my maximum out of pocket was lower than most deductibles. Democratizes the workplace - really helps keep management in check. You get real job security - firing is much less arbitrary with a steward fighting for you. However, if people aren't active in union elections, bargaining etc. it can get really stale really fast
    • justaman 8y ago
      Software developers are so "in demand" right now, it seems like it would be better to not become a union worker and instead just shop around. It's really a sellers market for talent.
    • chrisseaton 8y ago
      > The way I heard it best explained is no one would try to start a union if it made them less money. People could start a union so _they_ make more money, but _you_ could make less money. For example pay by seniority. Great for the senior people in the union, not so great for you.
      • gamblor956 8y ago
        Pay by seniority is a thing that developers keep bringing up and not understanding the basic concept that seniority-based pay is a decision that unions can adopt or reject. Hollywood unions, for example, do not use a seniority-based pay scale.
        • chrisseaton 8y ago
          If there’s an industry-wide closed-shop union and it votes for seniority pay then I’m out of luck. It’s replacing tyranny of the employer with tyranny of the majority.
• themagician 8y ago
  Prediction: if whoever is leading the charge is even moderately successful in getting employees to rally, they will be offered in job in management (at Kickstarter or somewhere else) at twice their current pay and the whole thing will crumble.
  • deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
• the_bear 8y ago
  Is anyone aware of an example where (a) a really small company unionized and/or (b) a workforce unionized without any real demands? I run a 17 person company and I've heard employees mention that they think all companies should be unionized even if there aren't currently any problems that the union would seek to address. I strongly support the big tech companies unionizing and so it would be hypocritical of me to be opposed to it for my own company, but at the same time it seems like the overhead for such a small company would be really significant and I'm not sure what it would accomplish given that I'm not aware of current employees having any demands that we haven't satisfied already. Even if nothing comes of it, I think it's an interesting thought experiment.
  • WesleyLivesay 8y ago
    I think in that case the value of unionization might not be in the present but instead guarding against future problems that the union would seek to fight against. It is much easier to proactively organize, and then keep those problems out, then to try to organize and fight after they already are present.
  • lazyasciiart 8y ago
    What is the overhead?
    • the_bear 8y ago
      I'll admit I'm not very knowledgeable about the logistics of unions, but I imagine there's some kind of up-front legal overhead. Like, maybe there are contracts between the union and the company, or within the union itself to determine how it's governed? I also get the impression there is some overhead in an ongoing basis in the form of extra meetings, more complicated negotiations, etc. All of those things seem like relatively minor costs when spread out across a large employee base, but I could see it being prohibitive for a smaller company. Or maybe this is a solved problem and you can just find some boilerplate stuff online that takes care of the whole process.
      • pjc50 8y ago
• justaman 8y ago
  Software developers are a far cry from auto workers or even teachers. Its interesting to see the differences between early SV startups 10-15 years ago that would brag about the benefits of working for them and now. Things like ping pong tables, free dry cleaning, and daycare would be things people would go out of their way for years ago. Can someone explain what the Kickstarter employee's hope to gain? “promote our collective values: inclusion and solidarity, transparency and accountability; a seat at the table,” sounds very left wing in an already left wing company in a left wing area.
• msghacq 8y ago
  It will be interesting to see what this does for developer salaries at Kickstarter. If, as a top performer, I get penalized by joining the union then obviously Kickstarter looks less attractive to me. For unions in our industry to work they are going to have to be very explicit about how they are going to raise developer salaries.
  • untog 8y ago
    Salaries aren't the only thing unions are good for. I'd be very interested in a job that had cast-iron guarantees about working hours, on-duty overtime, no open offices, stuff like that.
    • soheil 8y ago
      Why can you not ask for those things directly for the company you want to work for? I’m not getting my office? no thank you. I have to be on page duty in the middle of the night? No thank you. There are companies that offer all those maybe you sacrifice salary a bit. Someone has to pay the cost, I don’t think unions magically can give you the same salary or more at the same time you getting everything you wish for above. And if they do promise that maybe at best it’s their marketing PR and at worst look what communism did in Russia.
      • ahelwer 8y ago
        As someone who has pushed back against on-call overreach, all it achieved was a negative remark on my next performance review. The company attempted to make an "intermediate-severity" class of incident, where on-call workers were required to respond between the hours of 8 am and midnight (the next-lowest severity required response only during business hours, and the next-highest required 24 hour response - both reasonable if applied reasonably). Of course this new severity class was instantly abused to enact permanent crunch time. Even my humble suggestion of changing it from 9 am to 11 pm so I could have time for 8 hours of sleep with buffer time on each end was shot down. Individual workers are powerless, only able to bring their own labor to the negotiation table. I was lucky to be able to just switch teams to get away from it, but would have much preferred the option of enacting positive change without changing jobs.
• czbond 8y ago
  Why are tech company staff wanting to unionize? For the most part, aren't tech staff reasonably to well paid - with good working conditions and moderate hour expectations (say 40-50)?
  • lazyasciiart 8y ago
    Well, when the Kickstarter staff unionized, they said "The goal of our union is to have a formal seat at the table to negotiate with management. We’re negotiating to promote our collective values, and ensure Kickstarter is around for the long haul. We care about preserving what’s great about Kickstarter and improving what isn’t.” In the last year, employees at Google and Microsoft have begun to agitate collectively to end sexual harassment and their companies’ respective involvements in the military-industrial complex and overseas censorship. Employees at Amazon and Salesforce have also implored their executives to stop selling technology to the US government. All of these requests could have more impact if made with a union behind them. All of this information was in the article linked in this post.
  • Apocryphon 8y ago
    Maybe not at Kickstarter and mature startups specifically, but tech is notorious for having bad hours during crunch time, weekend work and all-nighters. Plus even the best-funded of startups there can be corruption and abuse that HR will not help employees with, see the experience of Susan Fowler. A union serves to provide individual workers with leverage with collective protection.
  • droobles 8y ago
    Depends on where you're at, I've heard at some big companies you're going to work 70 - 80 hours and be on call.
  • ashelmire 8y ago
    > For the most part, aren't tech staff reasonably to well paid - with good working conditions and moderate hour expectations (say 40-50)? That can vary wildly. And just like other industries, there can be management abuses - like demanding regular, unpaid overtime, substandard wages, sexism, unreasonable behavior, etc. Think about all the basically permanent contractors working for tech companies that might not have healthcare or other benefits, etc. Allowing company management to organize and act as a collective while not doing so as an employee puts you at a disadvantage in every negotiation and conflict.
• msghacq 8y ago
  "America’s political climate is changing; among other things, the 2016 presidential election brought up the issue of wealth inequality in this country and made people consider more closely the structural forces that define class here." What on earth does the 2016 election have to do with wealth inequality (or unions for that matter)? Inequality has been on the rise for decades and Clinton was also a member of the 1%. This seems like a non-sequitur.
  • ceejayoz 8y ago
    The 2016 election had very clear wealth inequality consequences where tax policy is concerned. https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/12/2/16720952/senate-tax-bill-inequality https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/12/2/16720952/s...
  • justaman 8y ago
    There are a lot more socialists in the US than there were 5 years ago. Some attribute that to Bernie Sanders and his run for the dem's nomination.
  • magissima 8y ago
    They're probably mostly referring to Bernie Sanders, who ran a campaign very focused on wealth inequality. The union link is that when people become more aware of inequality and by extension class, they become more likely to participate in class-based politics and organizations such as unions, in theory at least.
    • citilife 8y ago
      The part I seem to be missing, is that most of the people working at Kickstarter are the top 2-5% of the U.S.. Their business caters to many people who want to start projects, who aren't living pay-check-to-pay-check anyway. I don't really understand the purpose of the unionization effort, beyond the facade of just wanting to in some way "fit in" with a social movement.
      • speedplane 8y ago
• philwelch 8y ago
  With apologies to Isaac Asimov, I did not realize they were ionized to begin with :)
• fareesh 8y ago
  > America’s political climate is changing; among other things, the 2016 presidential election brought up the issue of wealth inequality in this country and made people consider more closely the structural forces that define class here. What is a structural force that defines class in America?
  • Djvacto 8y ago
    I'm not claiming to be any sort of expert, but I would guess the tax system (not taxing the ultra-wealthy as much as you could/should, and corporations not carrying as much of the tax burden as they used to, once again arguably not as much as they should). There is also a lot of structure around consumerism, debt, and the like, though this is split between societal/cultural structures and government/business structures.
  • magissima 8y ago
    Inherited wealth, disparities in access to education, racism, and a weak labor movement are a few of the many forces that impede upward social mobility.
    • czbond 8y ago
      Whats wrong with inherited wealth? Literally anyone can pass on wealth to their heirs. It takes no brains, and no special access. Just spending less. People shouldn't be taxed more because they have more foresight or impulse control than others. Yes, maybe it doesn't happen in one or two generations - but it can. Also - lots of people have moved up in the world from nothing - and it wasn't "inherited wealth" keeping them down previously. edit: as minikites mentioned below, it is education that wealth can be transferred is what needs to happen.
      • monocasa 8y ago
        "Have the poor just considered not being poor?"
        • 8y ago
• perlgod 8y ago
  Never understood the desire for unions in the tech industry. Thankfully the USA has plenty of right-to-work states.
• soheil 8y ago
  kinda ironic, a platform that relies on a community of people and donors and leans on the socialist side of the spectrum is hit by a socialist leaning ideology.
  • sethammons 8y ago
    That's not irony. Irony is when something happens that is explicitly not expected to happen.
    • soheil 8y ago
      I disagree, I think you're describing what a surprise is.
      • sethammons 8y ago
        > Typically, the expression of one's intended meaning through language which, taken literally, appears on the surface to express the opposite—usually for humorous effect (http://www.oxfordreference.com/view/10.1093/oi/authority.20110803100011437 http://www.oxfordreference.com/view/10.1093/oi/authority.201...)
• anonymousJim12 8y ago
  Incoming screed in libertarianese about why unions are bad by Paul Graham on twitter in 5..4..3..2..
  • czbond 8y ago
    Mostly libertarian here, but not aware of the full views of the party, so I looked it up. Apparently the 2016 election view states on unions as below which I don't see contradictory to unions. [did this for my own knowledge] "We support the right of private employers and employees to choose whether or not to bargain with each other through a labor union. Bargaining should be free of government interference, such as compulsory arbitration or imposing an obligation to bargain." https://www.lp.org/platform/ https://www.lp.org/platform/
    • magissima 8y ago
      So "abolish the NLRB" then.
      • czbond 8y ago
        That's their stance, yes, I'm personally not fully libertarian and think an NLRB is useful.
• dec0dedab0de 8y ago
  I think there needs to be an overall IT union, with apprenticeships and the whole thing. Make new people do QA testing, or tech support as they work on their other skills and level up. Get mandatory overtime to finish a project, then get laid off and collect unemployment until the Union needs you again. Just like carpenters and glaziers and all. EDIT: Instead of replying to everyone individually. Over the last ~15 years I've held jobs from tech support to network engineer to full stack developer. In each of them I have noticed that recent college grads are almost always clueless, and basically have to start from scratch. These are kids with massive student loan debt that could have started working earlier and learned through an apprenticeship.
  • robbyt 8y ago
    I almost agree. Have you talked to anyone who does professional entertainment/movie work about their thoughts on unions? Unions are expensive, corrupt, and don't actually do much to help most of the workers. The unionized workers hire contractors to do the real work for many features, and are parasitic organizations that mostly just drive up the cost of making movies. There was recently an article in the Times about a local NYC union president who's office is decorated with such high-end fixtures & furniture that he has a second office on another floor just to appear more humble. I can't find it at the moment...
  • mprev 8y ago
    That sounds more like a guild, which became effectively a system of maintaining price levels and scarcity of a particular skill.
  • dvdkon 8y ago
    What would be the benefit? I really don't see the point. Employees collectively demamding something from their employer, that I understand, but why create a new directive structure above the whole industry?
• syntaxing 8y ago
  Is there such thing as "tech" that makes unionizing easier? AI that helps with the paperwork, some sort of app the allows structure organization easier, etc?
  • kartan 8y ago
    > Is there such thing as "tech" that makes unionizing easier? e-Mail, instant messaging, etc. Any form of communication makes unionizing easier.
• joejerryronnie 8y ago
  Well, there goes the high salaries, flexible working hours, and generous RSU grants for tech employees. Have fun fighting and scraping for 2% raises, paying exorbitant union fees for questionable benefits, and dealing with the nepotism and personal politics of your union leaders. And thanks in advance for adding to the unfunded pension liability crisis.
  • 49531 8y ago
    You know unionizing isn't something people do lightheartedly. A lot of planning and working goes into it, planning and working done by the folks who want to unionize. The idea that you only get benefits if you don't agitate your boss too much sounds pretty sad. People don't join unions if they are going to be worse off materially.
    • alasdair_ 8y ago
      >People don't join unions if they are going to be worse off materially. Tell that to anyone whose workplace unionizes against their wishes and lives in a "closed shop" state. (Yes, closed shops are illegal, but agency fees lead to essentially the same thing). Being forced to pay a fee to a union that does not represent you and that you did not vote to join is absolute bullshit.
      • 49531 8y ago
        You can say that about any job, union or non union. You don't join a job not knowing it's a union job. But in a non union workplace, if you don't like how things are you can change them. Good luck doing that without a union.
        • alasdair_ 8y ago
          I am talking about places that turn into union jobs after you have been there a few years.
    • crumpets 8y ago
• CodeSheikh 8y ago
  Unions in tech companies is a very interesting idea. A lot of people never speculate this idea because lets be honest most of them get paid really well or visa workers are simply too scared to join such "abominable" unions etc etc. If any one can start materialize unions would be the workers at FAANG companies. And I am pretty sure rest will follow suit. As a tech worker, I see this as a positive change. As a CTO, this should scare me. As an honest CTO, I would see this as a balanced change for my subordinates and slightly shifting the power dynamics towards them.
• gtirloni 8y ago
  Maybe the US has a different experience with unions but in Brazil, they are simply hated. They were made mandatory by law and very rarely (never?) step in to help employees. It's only at big factories that they show up when more than X number of people are fired and do a big show out of that. Meanwhile, all the employees not working for big factories paid their union fees and saw nothing back. It's often a platform to launch their political careers. Luckily, they are not mandatory anymore and now employees have to opt-in which was a great change. They have to work to earn respect and those fees back... but I'm not seeing much movement in that direction. So far they have been going the legal route, trying to cancel the changes to the law (and have lost). In theory, the concept of unions is great but in practice, at least here, it was a terrible thing, from my IT bubble perspective.
  • StudentStuff 8y ago
    Unions are voted on by workers at each workplace (and can be ejected and replaced) in most countries, sounds like Brazil had something similar to the mandatory, toothless union that China enforces on larger businesses like Walmart.
  • i_am_proteus 8y ago
    Not everyone in the US likes unions. Union-driven high labor costs are one of the reasons why lots of auto manufacturing left Michigan for various points foreign and domestic. Some unions do a great job negotiating benefits for workers. Others do a great job only for union leadership, to the ultimate detriment of companies' profitability and workers' salaries and job security. If tech unions are new organizations by, for, and of tech workers, they might result in positive change for tech workers. If they fall in line with AFL-CIO et al., stand by for trouble.
  • freewilly1040 8y ago
    I'd be interested to learn more about the German system, where the union sits on the board of the company. They would seem to then have an actual interest in the success of the enterprise as a whole, rather than just trying to extract as much as they can from it. Of course in other places they have no power and just extract fees from workers.
• Schnitz 8y ago
  Nice!
• edoo 8y ago
  I've been in a union before. The work ethic wasn't good. They had seminars on how to work less and push back against complaints. They directed the members to engage in behavior that was best for the union while bad for the workers and the company. The union itself is a big business, what would they think of unionizing the union? Unions allow substandard work for equal pay. That tends to hold back the major opportunities for individual success.
  • circa 8y ago
    This has been my experience too. I think they were good a long time ago when jobs needed to be created but there is not much use for them now.
  • 49531 8y ago
    > what would they think of unionizing the union Unions in the US are democratic institutions, so if there is a problem with your union you can change things.
    • rexpop 8y ago
      To be fair, some are more democratic than others. However, because the private firm is not legally, or practically democratic at all, it makes sense for those who love democracy (and themselves) to unionize, yes.
    • jiveturkey 8y ago
      lol. i guess you've never actually been in a union.
      • 49531 8y ago
        I've been in, am currently in, and have been involved in unionizing workplaces. Companies are extremely motivated to undermine unions. Unions tend to get stale as they age and lose their militancy. That's why wildcat action is so common. It sucks but even a workplace with a stale union is better off than one without collective bargaining. The hardest part of organizing, like so many things, is going from 0 to 1. Once you've got a union you have a lot more power. Thinking you don't is what the company wants you to think.
• JTbane 8y ago
  Unionizing is still good because at the end of the day you can be fired for any reason.
• CalChris 8y ago
  Crunchbase says they were founded in 2009 and have 50-100 employees. They are pre-IPO and 10 years old. Maybe if employees were more owners I think (not knowing the inside story) this might have been less of an issue. Secondary grant? https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/kickstarter https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/kickstarter
• madrox 8y ago
  One thing this article didn't cover was how kickstarter's management reacted to this news and why it's happening now. Are there issues at kickstarter that will be addressed through collective bargaining? Was this move considered necessary in order for leadership to take developer concerns seriously? I'd love to know more.
• tomohawk 8y ago
  I wish them well, but having family members and friends work in unionized workplaces, it's not something I would ever do. It always seems to degenerate into an "us vs them" sort of thing whenever I talk to them about where they work. Why would I ever work some place where things are so adversarial? You also end up with this 3rd party involved in everything, creating all kinds of "rules" to make things "fair". Want to go on vacation? To make things "fair", the most senior people get to pick their times first, and the new guys get the not-so-good times. Don't care about the union's bullshit "industrial action" and just want to work and earn some money? Get used to being called a "scab". You get the point - it becomes more about knuckling under to what the union wants than getting work done or having a career.
  • minikites 8y ago
    >It always seems to degenerate into an "us vs them" sort of thing whenever I talk to them about where they work. Why would I ever work some place where things are so adversarial? Every workplace is adversarial, it's you versus the C-suite who profit from the surplus value created by your labor. A union just evens out the bargaining power between you and them.
    • ticmasta 8y ago
      >> A union just evens out the bargaining power between you and them. What if you're better than the majority of "us". I can negotiate a better deal for myself than they can get or justify; now I subsidize the group for "the greater good". This is not why unions where created. They were to address the monopoly of power when all employees could offer was their labour. This is definitely not the case in the western white-collar labour market.
      • gamblor956 8y ago
        Hollywood unions set wage and salary floors and generally focus on work-place conditions. Individuals are allowed to and encouraged to negotiate their salaries above that floor if they're talented enough to have the market power to do so. Programmer unions could copy the Hollywood model--salary floors, with no caps on salary negotiated by so-called "superstar" programmers.
• badcede 8y ago
  Nice of the hipsters to be the test case like this.
• burtonator 8y ago
  The biggest challenge we have with unions is game-theoretic. Specifically, the issue of defection. The company can make it very easy for users to defect or FORCE them to defect. They can give bonuses to people not in the union (with plausible reasons for the bonuses so it's not illegal) or do what Walmart does and simply shut down the entire store in that location to prevent the union forming. We need some way to solve this problem ...
  • navigatesol 8y ago
    >We need some way to solve this problem ... It's called solidarity, and respect for your co-workers.
• normal_man 8y ago
  The anti-union rhetoric in America is staggering. You like weekends? Then stop ragging on unions.
  • adamrezich 8y ago
    I have a friend who worked at a grocery store for a few months while waiting for his teacher's certification to get processed and sent to the state he'd moved to. It was a minimum-wage job, yet mandatory union membership at this grocery store chain meant that a cut of each of his minimum-wage paychecks was taken from him without anything he could do about it. The idea that unions are inherently, universally good is just as silly as the idea that unions are inherently, universally bad.
    • cgag 8y ago
      we all just join hands and free money and time rain down upon us, how is that not universally good?
    • enraged_camel 8y ago
      >>The idea that unions are universally good is just as silly as the idea that unions are universally bad. You are arguing against a strawman. No one is saying unions are "universally good". However, it is an irrefutable quality of capitalism that collective bargaining is superior to bargaining as an individual. If you truly understand how capitalism works, and the way it puts the interests of employers in conflict with those of employees (i.e. employers want to maximize profits, whereas employees want to maximize their pay and benefits, and this game is zero-sum), you will realize that, on average, having a union represent you will yield better results for you (and your fellow coworkers) than you representing just yourself.
      • adamrezich 8y ago
        Okay so how did the Kroger union help my friend at all? Once again, membership was mandatory for employment, and a cut of each of his minimum-wage paychecks went to it, with him seeing zero benefit in exchange. Is there some hidden benefit both he and I (being his roommate at the time) just weren't seeing? (Trust me, we looked.)
• imnotlost 8y ago
  Just make free (paid in pizza) overtime illegal at the federal level and most of the work-life-balance issues would go away. Add federal minimum vacation time too, 20 days at least. "but but my margins!!!"
• laspegren 8y ago
  The merits of unionization aside, I don't understand how Kickstarter is referred to as a major tech company. There are only 140 ish people listed on The Verge site.
• baybal2 8y ago
  > If recognized, Kickstarter would be the first major tech company with union representation in the United States. What has happened with Microsoft's union?
• oh_sigh 8y ago
  What would tech unionizing realistically look like in the US? Lets say, at some FAANG company?
• citilife 8y ago
  Based on the comments in the article, it's not really clear why the unionization is taking place? Anyone with an insider knowledge want to elaborate?
  • deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
• jeffreybaird 8y ago
  Congratulations Kickstarter! I hope this becomes a trend in the tech industry. A union is not only about getting better pay, or more vacation - it is about having a voice in the future of the company.
• goldcd 8y ago
  My humble take is that unionization is valuable as a counter-balance in a company and can benefit it and all within. Let's take extreme examples: 1) CEO sees a blip coming in the quarterly income results. CEO disposes of enough people to reduce costs, hit profit target and claim their bonus. CEO is better off, company is worse off. Repeats each quarter until the CEO retires. 2) CEO tries to focus company by laying off unionized employees in legacy area. Union blindly prevents this, company is stuck on legacy path, company suffers and so ultimately do the employees when it all implodes. The problem in both cases is simply due to a misalignment of personal goals/compensation within the company. When it's "working right" The CEO can defend their "not randomly firing employees" as being too expensive due to their unionized status. Converse is that the union can accept that some employees need to go to be replaced with other employees in another field to reflect the world changing (and help relocate/pay off/re-train as needed). In summary - plans rarely work out and ideally there's an internal buffer/slush-fund to cover this. When you're publicly traded, there's always going to be somebody demanding you cash in this buffer to the shareholders in the short term. Unionization provides a nice external buffer.
• annexrichmond 8y ago
  What's still unclear to me from the article is what problems employees at Kickstarter is facing for lack of a union and how, precisely, organizing a union will address those problems. Maybe I'm being presumptuous but being a tech company and all aren't the employees are already relatively pampered?
• samstave 8y ago
  #GoFundMy Benefits
• ace_of_spades 8y ago
  To make this discussion maybe a little bit more solution oriented, what would be your solution to problems of labor mistreatment? Or do you suggest that nothing like that exists? I recently came across an interesting talk by Richard Wolff at Google [1] which suggests that a great solution would be the democratization of the work place in the form of worker coops. It’s actually a tried and true model that works well in a variety of contexts. It would probably solve the problem you outline as well as make labor mistreatment a lot less common. 1: https://youtube.com/watch?v=ynbgMKclWWc https://youtube.com/watch?v=ynbgMKclWWc
  • tomohawk 8y ago
    Start a "consulting" business that provides really good pay and benefits to all of the workers. Be very selective about who you let in. You're now in the business of providing workers for companies that produce stuff. If they want access to your workers, they sign a contract with your company. If some workers don't like working for some particular company, transfer them to places where they like to work. You've now created a private union that operates on a consensual basis rather than a coercive / adversarial basis.
    • TheLuddite 8y ago
      Wasn't this the way the Guilds were operating in the Medieval era?
      • deleted 8y ago
        [deleted]
    • bluntfang 8y ago
      Some of my peers have thrown around the idea of team hires. Interviewing as a team and working as a team. The team is hired and quits together and is generally a collective that works within itself.
      • ekanes 8y ago
• dismalpedigree 8y ago
  There are 2 types of unions (in general). There are skilled trade unions (plumbers, electritians, etc) and strictly labor unions (TSA, agriculture laborers, etc). If they are unionizing as a skilled trade union and the union is thus ensuring training and quality of the labor, then i think it is a great idea. If they are unionizing as a strictly labor union, then i see no value to either management or the employees in the long term. From reading the article, it looks like it is likely the later instead of the former.
  • omegaworks 8y ago
    > i see no value to either management or the employees in the long term. The term for this "class consciousness." It's not that the value isn't there, it's that you don't see it.
    • dismalpedigree 8y ago
      Perhaps you could enlighten us all as to what the benefits are to either management and/or employees rather than just making vague comments that have little to no meaning.
      • omegaworks 8y ago
        I could, but not for free. Google it. It is politics 101.
        • dismalpedigree 8y ago
          Nice way to shirk your responsibility to back up your statements.
          • omegaworks 8y ago
            Pay me.
• deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
• laurex 8y ago
  Wonder how much their management troubles played into this https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/daveyalba/kickstarter-perry-chen-founder-worship-turmoil https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/daveyalba/kickstarter-p...
• iceninenines 8y ago
  We also need more tech co-ops so employees can profit more fairly from their crucial work, because a pittance of low-priority employee shares doesn't really count.
• sarim 8y ago
  Who else read unionizing as un-ionizing?
• nerder92 8y ago
  As a EU citizen, it always surprise me how the popular retoric about unions is to associate it with lazyness. I think is just undermining of what union actually really are. I personally found this as a first step toward a perception shift about tech from which we can all benefit. Unions for instance can help fight this constant non extra paid "after-hours" working culture that force you to do all-nighters and all this kind of crazy shits just because the industry is seen as a bunch of nerds that are that passionate about programming that stay long hours just for the sake of love/passion for the job itself.
  • scarmig 8y ago
    Europeans and union members are so lazy, with their 40 hour work weeks and paid time off and extra compensation for being on-call.
    • deleted 8y ago
      [deleted]
  • jdavis703 8y ago
    My sister worked at a charter school. Because of previous labor violations teachers were not allowed to show up before class started (they could only be there for the official class hours). They also were not allowed to stay late after class. My sister thought this was ridiculous, how was she supposed to setup her classroom and answer questions afterwards? Unfortunately her boss warned her that coming early and staying late was not allowed. Once unions start adding work rules like this you'll see a push to disable after-hours emails, banning weekend work, etc. So while the trope of the lazy union worker is deeply flawed, there are some problems for workers who want to go above and beyond (and while most non-tech workers don't get extra compensation for unpaid overtime, tech workers who go above and beyond actually are rewarded with equity)
    • JauntyHatAngle 8y ago
      Would a potential solution to this be to negotiate with the Unions to raise pay but increase hours worked to include the before/after class setup times? I don't know the particulars, but these sort of disputes can often arise due to a perceived slight on pay increases or similar, which leads to things going a bit batty.
• subpixel 8y ago
  This on the same day that the CEO steps down, for the second time. Sounds like a lot is going on over there.
• mesozoic 8y ago
  This should go well. Good time to be a Kickstarter competitor I figure.
• barbecue_sauce 8y ago
  The article only says "staff". Does this include developers and technical operations, or is it just office staff?
• stevespang 8y ago
  There goes the farm . . . . Kickstarter will now increase it's "cut" or fees taken out of start ups - - - and other start up websites will gain more business. It's all downhill from here. Years ago S W Bell yellow Page Advertising was faced with unionizing and too high wages. There reaction was beautiful - - - The principals hire fancy lawyers and the entire company was sold to a new incorporation with an ever slightly so different name (a sideways "hustle"). The so called "new owners" fired everyone. Then they ran employment ads nationwide like crazy, anyone who dared to come back was started at like half wages of before. Problem solved.
• yibg 8y ago
  I'm not against unions in general or in principle, but some implementations are not great. I suspect like some folks here, my personal (negative) interactions with unions have turned me off of unions in general. I worked at an unionized shop when I first graduated and while I recognize some of the positives the union brought, there were also many downsides. Some examples: - Nepotism. We had an open position we couldn't fill for over a year because one of the union leader's son was graduating soon and that position was reserved for him. - General complacency. Raises and promotions for the most part weren't based on performance, but rather tenure. Many people start off ambitious but end up just doing the minimum over time because there is no reward in trying too much. - Strange (from my perspective) rules. I couldn't have more than one CAD going at one time, and because CAD is backlogged the turn around time was super long. This meant for long stretches of time I couldn't do any work. But I also couldn't leave. I read a lot of wikipedia pages during this time. Eventually I got super bored, didn't see any growth potential and wasn't learning much so I left. I assume not all unions are like this, but I do hear things similar to this from others (many on this thread) quite often as well.
  • zaksoup 8y ago
    > Nepotism. We had an open position we couldn't fill for over a year because one of the union leader's son was graduating soon and that position was reserved for him. I don't know of any industry where this doesn't happen. Certainly in tech there's plenty of anecdata about nepotism in hiring, no unions required. > General complacency. Raises and promotions for the most part weren't based on performance, but rather tenure. Many people start off ambitious but end up just doing the minimum over time because there is no reward in trying too much. Again, this doesn't differ much from non-union industry. Anecdotally (I know) almost every silicon valley tech company seems to have poor ratings in their internal polls for "we fire/retrain low performers". This isn't a problem that is unique to unions, nor can I see any evidence that it's worse in unionized workplaces. Here's a fact about unions: Average union wages are 18% higher than non-union wages. [1] [1] https://www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/2013/04/art2full.pdf https://www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/2013/04/art2full.pdf
    • plainOldText 8y ago
• Toine 8y ago
  I'm astonished by the reaction of some people here. They seem to live in a alternate reality where every CEO is kind, doesn't try to reduce labor costs at every opportunity, doesn't treat his employees like cattle, etc. 20th century unions had their issues of course, but using extreme cases of dysfunctional unions is not a argument to totally disregard unions as a concept.
  • joeblau 8y ago
    It doesn't look like Kickstarter will have a CEO anymore either[1]. [1] - https://www.theverge.com/2019/3/19/18273318/kickstarter-ceo-resigning-perry-chen-chairman-board https://www.theverge.com/2019/3/19/18273318/kickstarter-ceo-...
    • pseudalopex 8y ago
      "Chen has picked a successor as interim CEO: Aziz Hasan, who currently heads Kickstarter’s design & product teams."
  • mattknox 8y ago
    I've actually been treated exceptionally well by the half-dozen or so CEOs I've worked for. This is pretty common in tech, at least in SF and NYC, in my experience.
• lacey 8y ago
  I haven’t had a large number of interactions with unions but I have seen some things that definitely turn me off of them, e.g. requiring two or three people from as many different unions to set up a booth at a conference because multiple skills are required and the unions negotiated with the venue to have each step done by union employees with those specific skills. So eg the people assembling the structure couldn’t plug in computers and the people who plugged in computers couldn’t assemble the booth structure. What I have heard a couple times now from relatives of union members is that senior people who know union leadership sometimes end up on “disability”, meaning there is nothing wrong with them but they don’t work and get paid. They have doctors in the loop to certify the disability. I have no idea if this is actually widespread. My own personal reluctance with joining a union is that I feel like I do pretty well negotiating for myself. Having said that, perhaps a tech worker’s union could result in 30-hour four-day workweeks with reasonable minimum vacation, and that would be worthwhile if it became the industry norm.
  • chillacy 8y ago
    You can already achieve rest and vest at some of the big companies. I hear stories of 20 hour weeks if you’re good at managing perceptions. Salaries aren’t bad either.
  • subway 8y ago
    The rules certainly drive me up the wall. An event I attend annually in a conference hall has an ongoing joke about being sure you know which chairs in the venue are union chairs, and which aren't. As an attendee, nobody minds if you move the non-union chair, but if you so much as move a union chair a few feet to join an adjacent table, expect to be reprimanded.
  • JamesBarney 8y ago
    I think a tech workers association similar to the AMA would be helpful. I think the best work it could do would be to push for standardized contracts around intellectual property(company doesn't own everything you touch even in your free time) and non-competes(for instance must be paid some % of salary while non-compete is enforced). And the second best work it could do would be to push for standardized on-call/overtime multipliers. These things are harder to negotiate for than salary and would be healthy for the industry.
• sodosopa 8y ago
  I grew up in a blue collar union family, dad was a Teamster Master Steward and my mom was a Secretary in the printers' union. I don't know how well it translates to larger tech companies.
• CryptoPunk 8y ago
  This is the end of Kickstarter as a dynamic company.
• hackerpacker 8y ago
  " first major tech company " I don't think that is even remotely an accurate statement, unless EVERY company with a website is now a "tech company". I took a peek at the data object in https://www.kickstarter.com/team https://www.kickstarter.com/team And to me it looks like an art company, with very little focus on tech. "favorite category" counts by # team members Art: 32 Film & Video: 29 Design: 27 Publishing: 15 Games: 14 Technology: 8 Music: 5 Comics: 3 Food: 3 Photography: 2 Theater: 2 null: 2 Journalism: 1 # of backed projects by "favorite category" Film & Video: 6264 Design: 2372 Games: 2325 Art: 2238 Technology: 1228 Publishing: 777 Theater: 310 Music: 181 Food: 119 Comics: 44 Photography: 28 Journalism: 5 null: 0 I would add that I find it incredibly ironic for a "creative" company to have such rigid categories for what it deems "creative".
• TheMagicHorsey 8y ago
  Given my experience with unions, I’ll quit when the union forms at my employer. Unions increase the importance of political skills over performance. If you do work but are bad at politics you’ll do worse in a union shop. Plus the nepotism and collusion between management individuals and union leadership to the detriment of shareholders, customers, and young workers is disgusting. The only people who benefit are old underperformers in management and union leadership. They form coalitions of mutual support and screw the rest of us. Screw unions. They are for useless people that don’t trust their own abilities. They are only useful if the oligarchs block market competition for labor. But we aren’t there yet ... and we can be vigilant by supporting action taken against instances of collusion. Unions are no cure. They are like caking dung on the wound.
• BerislavLopac 8y ago
  Unions, like charity, mean that the government has failed in its job.
• BerislavLopac 8y ago
  I think that the main problem with unions for software developers, especially at this particular time, is that tech recruitment is very much a sellers' market at the moment. Most of the companies have a lot of troubles finding quality developers of all levels, remuneration is growing to absurd levels and short-term contracting is almost a norm rather than an exception. For a moderately experienced developer, changing jobs is both a) trivial, and b) often the best way to ensure promotion and pay rise. Unions were designed for a market where employers were taking advantage of job scarcity and insecurity, and where changing jobs often meant difficult re-training for new equipment and methodologies, which was often provided by unions. That does not exist today, at least in the software industry; a solid GutHub account is a much better certification than any training or even a university diploma. My point is that, for the majority of software people, traditional unions can barely give any benefits over the power they can have themselves. And for the best people it can even provide disadvantages by lowering the standards.