5 ms·

Unionize ! Unions are not just about pay. They are also an effective shield against retaliation by management.

lr4444lr 8y ago
Indeed. I never tire of the hypocrisy in how these allegedly "progressive" and "left-leaning" tech companies resist unionization.
- mikeash 8y ago
  Are they allegedly progressive and left leaning? I thought libertarianism was the unofficial state religion of the SV elite.
  - lr4444lr 8y ago
    The top brass are probably as you say. The rank and file, at least as I read, are quite sympathetic to causes and issues we'd generally say are politically supportive of union formation. Why haven't we seen any serious effort from within? Maybe it's not so bad over there. Maybe these "retaliation" stories are few and far between, and we're only hear the employee's side of the story.
    - bradlys 8y ago
      SV in itself is this: I support things as long as it benefits me or doesn't change my life. e.g. Let the immigrants in! (But don't build any housing because then they could afford it here) Global warming is real and we should do something! (Ok - let's mandate solar panels on all /newly/ built homes) etc. People here are very much self interested.
    - mikeash 8y ago
      I always assumed it’s because the workers are pretty well off and have a lot to lose. Tech workers are mostly treated and paid well, so even if one believes unions are great, there isn’t much to push them to create one for themselves.
  - weberc2 8y ago
    I'm a moderate liberal and I percieve SV as being quite a lot farther left than me. Notably Google terminating James Damore and Apple terminating Denise Young Smith for dissenting from progressive orthodoxy in the most inoccuous ways possible. Mozilla also pushed out Eich, although his transgression was more controversial, and I don't know that his particular mob was particularly concentrated in/around SV.
  - spamizbad 8y ago
    People like to make this claim because of their diversity efforts. But the fact is, it's the same stuff every other industry went through, including ones that skew conservative (like food service, oil/gas, and Real estate). They went through this stuff in the 70s, 80s, and 90s. It's just hitting the tech industry now. Anyway, leadership at these places tend to support the status quo, and maybe pay lip-service to a few issues to protect the corporate image. They're arguably the real "centrists" which in the US means a socially-permissive capitalist.
- tomt2323 8y ago
  Neoliberal "progressivism" isn't leftist or especially progressive. It has one goal- maximal utilization of labor resources. It just turns out integrating as much of the possible workforce as it can is useful (and helps ultimately drive down labor costs- see e.g. the rise of two-earner middle class households). It's not hypocritical, since these companies usually just talk about those ends rather than redistribution of ownership or other material reforms that would benefit their lower level workers.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- C1sc0cat 8y ago
  They are only left leaning when compared to the rather right wing (pre trump) republican party.
- chillacy 8y ago
  If you reduce the entire spectrum of political opinion to a single dimension with two labeled teams then you can claim something like that.
Kiro 8y ago
No. Just look at Sweden if you want to see what happens if unions get too much power. It's a doomed country at this point.
- logjammin 8y ago
  Were you gonna back any of that up?
  - sexydefinesher 8y ago
    Gp might be sarcastic
- onemoresoop 8y ago
  Doomed for whom?
- sctb 8y ago
  Please stop with the generic flamebait? You've been breaking the guidelines too much lately and eventually we do ban accounts. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
angrygoat 8y ago
This. I've been a software engineer for twenty years and a union member the whole way through. It's paid off, time and time again, not just for me but for colleagues as well. Solidarity forever.
duxup 8y ago
Having been involved in similar events in the US with unions, I would argue unions don't do NOT do good job at preventing retaliation outside of jobs with very specific and prescribed career paths and etc. Effectively they trade flexibility for super rigid job paths in order to "protect" the worker and that cuts off other opportunities. If there is any room for an employer to make a judgment call then they can make it, and a union has limited ability to deal with that. US unions are often only concerned with the aspects of the job they can / have negotiated, or things that are already illegal (and you'd be surprised what comes out of the sausage factory when negotiations end). If the job allows for any judgment calls by the employer, they get to make them just the same as a non union job. What is the answer then? You get the typical US union job where the job is hyper track driven as far as career path goes because the union feels that is the only way to control / have a say in those aspects. The employer doesn't have the flexibility to retaliate and hide it as a business decision.... but they also don't have the ability to promote someone over another for the same reasons (what is seen as retaliation by one person might be seen as a well earned promotion by someone else who got the job). Even then if your boss is a "jerk", often a union can't do anything. The results are jobs where easy to identify things like seniority, some sort of certification system, and etc determine pay, progress and etc. That is a terrible trade off IMO.
- CharlesColeman 8y ago
  > ...I would argue unions don't do NOT do good job at preventing retaliation outside of jobs with very specific and prescribed career paths and etc.... > If there is any room for an employer to make a judgment call then they can make it, and a union has limited ability to deal with that... US-style unions are really only just once instance of "unions." I can imagine another instance, where the union itself is both independent of the employer but also has a significant power in promotion decisions, that could deal with these situations better. That's getting toward a decision-making structure that formally represents multiple stakeholder grounds instead of just capital and its representatives.
  - duxup 8y ago
    >where the union itself is both independent of the employer but also has a significant power in promotion decisions I would really hate to deal with a second level of bureaucracy when it comes to promotions and such.... let alone employer's having to accept "this guy is a senior X now" and realize he is not as opposed someone else who wasn't given that chance. That still seems like a very track type of career path situation where the technology world is still fast changing and has huge amounts of variety.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
delfinom 8y ago
Meh. If we had German style unions or even guild sure. But unions otherwise would destroy the current advantage of paying highly productive workers their due share in favor of seniority and other bs. Plus like this example: >In the email, Stapleton said that she arranged a meeting with Google’s human resources division after flagging changes to her job. She was told to go on sick leave. When she replied that she wasn’t sick, Stapleton wrote, the HR director said: “We put people on it all the time.” Just drop a line to your state DoL and they would be all over that instantly with nail filled baseball bats.
iratewizard 8y ago
No thanks. We should probably try to scale back corruption rather than ramping it up.

Indeed. I never tire of the hypocrisy in how these allegedly "progressive" and "left-leaning" tech companies resist unionization.

mikeash 8y ago
Are they allegedly progressive and left leaning? I thought libertarianism was the unofficial state religion of the SV elite.
- lr4444lr 8y ago
  The top brass are probably as you say. The rank and file, at least as I read, are quite sympathetic to causes and issues we'd generally say are politically supportive of union formation. Why haven't we seen any serious effort from within? Maybe it's not so bad over there. Maybe these "retaliation" stories are few and far between, and we're only hear the employee's side of the story.
  - bradlys 8y ago
    SV in itself is this: I support things as long as it benefits me or doesn't change my life. e.g. Let the immigrants in! (But don't build any housing because then they could afford it here) Global warming is real and we should do something! (Ok - let's mandate solar panels on all /newly/ built homes) etc. People here are very much self interested.
  - mikeash 8y ago
    I always assumed it’s because the workers are pretty well off and have a lot to lose. Tech workers are mostly treated and paid well, so even if one believes unions are great, there isn’t much to push them to create one for themselves.
- weberc2 8y ago
  I'm a moderate liberal and I percieve SV as being quite a lot farther left than me. Notably Google terminating James Damore and Apple terminating Denise Young Smith for dissenting from progressive orthodoxy in the most inoccuous ways possible. Mozilla also pushed out Eich, although his transgression was more controversial, and I don't know that his particular mob was particularly concentrated in/around SV.
- spamizbad 8y ago
  People like to make this claim because of their diversity efforts. But the fact is, it's the same stuff every other industry went through, including ones that skew conservative (like food service, oil/gas, and Real estate). They went through this stuff in the 70s, 80s, and 90s. It's just hitting the tech industry now. Anyway, leadership at these places tend to support the status quo, and maybe pay lip-service to a few issues to protect the corporate image. They're arguably the real "centrists" which in the US means a socially-permissive capitalist.
tomt2323 8y ago
Neoliberal "progressivism" isn't leftist or especially progressive. It has one goal- maximal utilization of labor resources. It just turns out integrating as much of the possible workforce as it can is useful (and helps ultimately drive down labor costs- see e.g. the rise of two-earner middle class households). It's not hypocritical, since these companies usually just talk about those ends rather than redistribution of ownership or other material reforms that would benefit their lower level workers.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
C1sc0cat 8y ago
They are only left leaning when compared to the rather right wing (pre trump) republican party.
chillacy 8y ago
If you reduce the entire spectrum of political opinion to a single dimension with two labeled teams then you can claim something like that.

Kiro 8y ago

No. Just look at Sweden if you want to see what happens if unions get too much power. It's a doomed country at this point.

logjammin 8y ago
Were you gonna back any of that up?
- sexydefinesher 8y ago
  Gp might be sarcastic
onemoresoop 8y ago
Doomed for whom?
sctb 8y ago
Please stop with the generic flamebait? You've been breaking the guidelines too much lately and eventually we do ban accounts. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

angrygoat 8y ago

This. I've been a software engineer for twenty years and a union member the whole way through. It's paid off, time and time again, not just for me but for colleagues as well. Solidarity forever.

duxup 8y ago

Having been involved in similar events in the US with unions, I would argue unions don't do NOT do good job at preventing retaliation outside of jobs with very specific and prescribed career paths and etc. Effectively they trade flexibility for super rigid job paths in order to "protect" the worker and that cuts off other opportunities. If there is any room for an employer to make a judgment call then they can make it, and a union has limited ability to deal with that. US unions are often only concerned with the aspects of the job they can / have negotiated, or things that are already illegal (and you'd be surprised what comes out of the sausage factory when negotiations end). If the job allows for any judgment calls by the employer, they get to make them just the same as a non union job. What is the answer then? You get the typical US union job where the job is hyper track driven as far as career path goes because the union feels that is the only way to control / have a say in those aspects. The employer doesn't have the flexibility to retaliate and hide it as a business decision.... but they also don't have the ability to promote someone over another for the same reasons (what is seen as retaliation by one person might be seen as a well earned promotion by someone else who got the job). Even then if your boss is a "jerk", often a union can't do anything. The results are jobs where easy to identify things like seniority, some sort of certification system, and etc determine pay, progress and etc. That is a terrible trade off IMO.

CharlesColeman 8y ago
> ...I would argue unions don't do NOT do good job at preventing retaliation outside of jobs with very specific and prescribed career paths and etc.... > If there is any room for an employer to make a judgment call then they can make it, and a union has limited ability to deal with that... US-style unions are really only just once instance of "unions." I can imagine another instance, where the union itself is both independent of the employer but also has a significant power in promotion decisions, that could deal with these situations better. That's getting toward a decision-making structure that formally represents multiple stakeholder grounds instead of just capital and its representatives.
- duxup 8y ago
  >where the union itself is both independent of the employer but also has a significant power in promotion decisions I would really hate to deal with a second level of bureaucracy when it comes to promotions and such.... let alone employer's having to accept "this guy is a senior X now" and realize he is not as opposed someone else who wasn't given that chance. That still seems like a very track type of career path situation where the technology world is still fast changing and has huge amounts of variety.

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

delfinom 8y ago

Meh. If we had German style unions or even guild sure. But unions otherwise would destroy the current advantage of paying highly productive workers their due share in favor of seniority and other bs. Plus like this example: >In the email, Stapleton said that she arranged a meeting with Google’s human resources division after flagging changes to her job. She was told to go on sick leave. When she replied that she wasn’t sick, Stapleton wrote, the HR director said: “We put people on it all the time.” Just drop a line to your state DoL and they would be all over that instantly with nail filled baseball bats.

iratewizard 8y ago

No thanks. We should probably try to scale back corruption rather than ramping it up.