8 ms·

Don't be a sucker. This is very standard union-busting behavior: demonize the organizers and make it seem like their organizing behavior is egregious.

koheripbal 7y ago
Google isn't some dangerous smelting factory of low paid workers. These people were using the notion of unions to further their desire to push their POLITICS. They didnt care about safety or pay. They wanted to force the company to stop working with the US government on various contracts.
- neuronic 7y ago
  Safety and pay aren't the only benchmarks which employers should be required to comply with to a certain minimum degree.
  - antpol 7y ago
    Google has one of the best workspace conditions out there though
- claudeganon 7y ago
  Yeah, why would Googlers ever be concerned about their safety or pay? It’s not like the company ever fixed wages or paid out millions to an exec accused of sexually assaulting an employee. Oh wait...
  - thu2111 7y ago
    Wage fixing was crap, mostly driven by Steve Jobs and stopped when it was discovered/Jobs died. Unionization was not required to solve that, just enforcing existing laws. Isn't it even the opposite - unions are at heart wage fixing cartels, but which claim to be doing it for the benefits of "the workers" against "management". An artificial and essentially Marxist distinction, especially at a place like Google where so many employees have aspects of management responsibility e.g. any tech lead, and where individual contributors are frequently paid more than their managers. As for Andy Rubin, you seem to have assumed that accusation is the same as guilt. But Rubin was being accused by a former girlfriend he dumped: hardly a neutral party. You never heard his side of the story, but I'll give you a hint: he denied it. A senior exec being accused of some sort of sexual misbehaviour happens every day, women know these accusations are frequently treated as true-by-default without anyone caring about the details and use it. Just look at the FBI's own stats on false rape claims as proven by DNA tests. False accusations by women against men with regards to sex crimes is way more common than for any other kind of crime, like an order of magnitude more common. You can't make any assumptions Google or Rubin did anything wrong here, none of us have enough information. But finally, the complainants weren't limiting themselves to wage fixing that for many predated their employment, or Andy Rubin's bedroom habits. They're moaning about enforcement of immigration laws. They know they can't convince the general public to vote for totally open borders because it's an extreme policy that would create massive problems, as is abolition of the Department of Defence. So they've decided to try and get what they want by pressuring firms that act as component suppliers. Organising to make democratically chosen policies unimplementable is not what union protections were meant to be about.
    - DoctorNick 7y ago
      This comment is a perfect example of how reactionary the PMC can become, I'm putting this in my cringe compilation.
- dangerface 7y ago
  > These people were using the notion of unions to further their desire to push their POLITICS. They didnt care about safety or pay. Not true, the reason they where trying to organise a union was because they did not feel safe with their employer spying on them [1]. Ironicly they where fired because other employees did not feel safe being spied on. So google obviously recognising that spying on employees is a legitimate safety concern. [1] https://time.com/5709653/google-employee-spy-tool/ https://time.com/5709653/google-employee-spy-tool/
  - syshum 7y ago
    No employee has any privacy from the company on the Corporate owned computer and network
    - Nitramp 7y ago
      ... in your country maybe :-)
    - jashmatthews 7y ago
      In Germany there absolutely is this expectation. https://www.hldataprotection.com/2017/08/articles/international-eu-privacy/new-case-law-on-restrictions-for-employee-monitoring-in-the-workplace-in-germany/ https://www.hldataprotection.com/2017/08/articles/internatio... GDPR also applies to the employer and employee. You can’t log without consent, and „we might monitor stuff“ in your contract won’t hold up in court in Europe if you start invasively logging.
      - wildfire 7y ago
        Do you know of any court case testing this? My contract with a German company, specifically had clauses saying that anything on their systems is something that can inspect and/or look at. We aren't talking a small company here, but one with multiple large sites; which means multiple large workers councils ( basically a union for a specific company location ). Remember hiring in Germany has to be approved by a Worker's Council and the company has to pay for the council to receive independent legal advice as well.

koheripbal 7y ago

Google isn't some dangerous smelting factory of low paid workers. These people were using the notion of unions to further their desire to push their POLITICS. They didnt care about safety or pay. They wanted to force the company to stop working with the US government on various contracts.

neuronic 7y ago
Safety and pay aren't the only benchmarks which employers should be required to comply with to a certain minimum degree.
- antpol 7y ago
  Google has one of the best workspace conditions out there though
claudeganon 7y ago
Yeah, why would Googlers ever be concerned about their safety or pay? It’s not like the company ever fixed wages or paid out millions to an exec accused of sexually assaulting an employee. Oh wait...
- thu2111 7y ago
  Wage fixing was crap, mostly driven by Steve Jobs and stopped when it was discovered/Jobs died. Unionization was not required to solve that, just enforcing existing laws. Isn't it even the opposite - unions are at heart wage fixing cartels, but which claim to be doing it for the benefits of "the workers" against "management". An artificial and essentially Marxist distinction, especially at a place like Google where so many employees have aspects of management responsibility e.g. any tech lead, and where individual contributors are frequently paid more than their managers. As for Andy Rubin, you seem to have assumed that accusation is the same as guilt. But Rubin was being accused by a former girlfriend he dumped: hardly a neutral party. You never heard his side of the story, but I'll give you a hint: he denied it. A senior exec being accused of some sort of sexual misbehaviour happens every day, women know these accusations are frequently treated as true-by-default without anyone caring about the details and use it. Just look at the FBI's own stats on false rape claims as proven by DNA tests. False accusations by women against men with regards to sex crimes is way more common than for any other kind of crime, like an order of magnitude more common. You can't make any assumptions Google or Rubin did anything wrong here, none of us have enough information. But finally, the complainants weren't limiting themselves to wage fixing that for many predated their employment, or Andy Rubin's bedroom habits. They're moaning about enforcement of immigration laws. They know they can't convince the general public to vote for totally open borders because it's an extreme policy that would create massive problems, as is abolition of the Department of Defence. So they've decided to try and get what they want by pressuring firms that act as component suppliers. Organising to make democratically chosen policies unimplementable is not what union protections were meant to be about.
  - DoctorNick 7y ago
    This comment is a perfect example of how reactionary the PMC can become, I'm putting this in my cringe compilation.
dangerface 7y ago
> These people were using the notion of unions to further their desire to push their POLITICS. They didnt care about safety or pay. Not true, the reason they where trying to organise a union was because they did not feel safe with their employer spying on them [1]. Ironicly they where fired because other employees did not feel safe being spied on. So google obviously recognising that spying on employees is a legitimate safety concern. [1] https://time.com/5709653/google-employee-spy-tool/ https://time.com/5709653/google-employee-spy-tool/
- syshum 7y ago
  No employee has any privacy from the company on the Corporate owned computer and network
  - Nitramp 7y ago
    ... in your country maybe :-)
  - jashmatthews 7y ago
    In Germany there absolutely is this expectation. https://www.hldataprotection.com/2017/08/articles/international-eu-privacy/new-case-law-on-restrictions-for-employee-monitoring-in-the-workplace-in-germany/ https://www.hldataprotection.com/2017/08/articles/internatio... GDPR also applies to the employer and employee. You can’t log without consent, and „we might monitor stuff“ in your contract won’t hold up in court in Europe if you start invasively logging.
    - wildfire 7y ago
      Do you know of any court case testing this? My contract with a German company, specifically had clauses saying that anything on their systems is something that can inspect and/or look at. We aren't talking a small company here, but one with multiple large sites; which means multiple large workers councils ( basically a union for a specific company location ). Remember hiring in Germany has to be approved by a Worker's Council and the company has to pay for the council to receive independent legal advice as well.