5 ms·

> I didn't talk bad about the company that I was getting my paycheck from Have you ever been in a union workplace?

by dls2016 6y ago

throw_m239339 6y ago
> Have you ever been in a union workplace? why would he want to be in a union when he is a top earner compared to great majority of people in the same country? and aside from a relative freedom of speech he works in very favourable conditions with a lot of perks and a generous severance package if he gets fired? working at google is the very definition of privilege.
- ClumsyPilot 6y ago
  Maybe then he would not have to tow every pr line in fear of being dismissed
  - ThrowawayR2 6y ago
    Heaven help him, though, if he says anything critical of the union. Tire slashing and other forms of intimidation routinely made newspaper headlines in UAW territory in the era before the Big 3 automakers collapsed. At least dismissal doesn't involve people following you to your home. It isn't businesses that make US unions look bad, they did it to themselves.
    - dls2016 6y ago
      What other balance to corporate power do workers have?
- marcus_holmes 6y ago
  Unions are for more than just getting higher pay. If Google (perish the thought) decided to pull some shady reviewing stunts and make your work life so intolerable that you felt your only option was to force the issue and threaten to resign - being part of a union could have helped with that. HR is a bunch of people who represent the company's interests in negotiations and transactions. Unions are the same thing for employees. We've been told, repeatedly, that unions are socialist organisations that want to destroy capitalisim and bankrupt employers. This isn't true.
- whimsicalism 6y ago
  > union when he is a top earner compared to great majority of people in the same country Why does that make creating a union/engineer council less desirable? It seems good to have a democratically elected representative of Google engineers who can talk to management, even if those engineers don't feel like negotiating on wage stuff, they still have a real avenue to air concerns.
- dls2016 6y ago
  > why would he want to be in a union when he is a top earner compared to great majority of people in the same country? Didn't Google get busted fixing wages along with other tech companies? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-Tech_Employee_Antitrust_Litigation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-Tech_Employee_Antitrust_L...
xiphias2 6y ago
No, but my work life was amazing. There are important things to address at Google, like not having enough sitting toilets for men (there's 3 times as much for women even though there are much less women in the office where I was working) that an union may help with, but that's different from the product PR.
- mosselman 6y ago
  Forcing men to poop standing up is probably some productivity hack.
- purple-again 6y ago
  My first inclination was just to move on but you didn’t post on a throwaway so I will take the bait. Why do you think the toilet issue you described is a problem that needs to be fixed? My experience in every corner of life in America to date has been separated bathrooms by sex and the men’s restroom containing far fewer sitting toilets. We all know this is because women sit for both natural duties and men, generally in the US at least, only sit for one. This is so basic I assume it’s not what you are talking about but please correct me if not so we can engage on that front. What I assume you mean is Google is 90% male and 10% female (no idea what it really is) and yet the bathrooms are 50% male and 50% female. You specifically mention sitting toilets which is what I am having trouble understanding the relevance of. Are men regularly forced to stand in line instead of being able to walk right in and go? If so that sounds like a facilities growth issue and not a sex imbalance issue. You could propose turning some female restrooms into male but generally restrooms are placed far enough apart from one another that there would have to be 0 females in the area serviced by those restrooms for that to work. The presence of even one would require facilities assigned to females or mixed gender restrooms (a different argument I fully support). That leaves your only other option as I see it for the female restrooms to be smaller than the male restrooms which is just ridiculous. No one would build the building with that hopefully temporary imbalance in mind and you can’t just repurpose half a bathroom as long as the sexes are being separated.
  - extropy 6y ago
    I will bait too, as someone who has stood in line for male toilets in a Google office. In the office I was in there where generally 1 sitting and 2 standing seats per male toilet. The standing one are quick in / quick out and almost always free. But good luck finding vacant sitting spot after lunch. Edit: female restrooms generally had 3 sitting spots, so same size.

> I didn't talk bad about the company that I was getting my paycheck from Have you ever been in a union workplace?

> Have you ever been in a union workplace? why would he want to be in a union when he is a top earner compared to great majority of people in the same country? and aside from a relative freedom of speech he works in very favourable conditions with a lot of perks and a generous severance package if he gets fired? working at google is the very definition of privilege.

ClumsyPilot 6y ago
Maybe then he would not have to tow every pr line in fear of being dismissed
- ThrowawayR2 6y ago
  Heaven help him, though, if he says anything critical of the union. Tire slashing and other forms of intimidation routinely made newspaper headlines in UAW territory in the era before the Big 3 automakers collapsed. At least dismissal doesn't involve people following you to your home. It isn't businesses that make US unions look bad, they did it to themselves.
  - dls2016 6y ago
    What other balance to corporate power do workers have?
marcus_holmes 6y ago
Unions are for more than just getting higher pay. If Google (perish the thought) decided to pull some shady reviewing stunts and make your work life so intolerable that you felt your only option was to force the issue and threaten to resign - being part of a union could have helped with that. HR is a bunch of people who represent the company's interests in negotiations and transactions. Unions are the same thing for employees. We've been told, repeatedly, that unions are socialist organisations that want to destroy capitalisim and bankrupt employers. This isn't true.
whimsicalism 6y ago
> union when he is a top earner compared to great majority of people in the same country Why does that make creating a union/engineer council less desirable? It seems good to have a democratically elected representative of Google engineers who can talk to management, even if those engineers don't feel like negotiating on wage stuff, they still have a real avenue to air concerns.
dls2016 6y ago
> why would he want to be in a union when he is a top earner compared to great majority of people in the same country? Didn't Google get busted fixing wages along with other tech companies? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-Tech_Employee_Antitrust_Litigation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-Tech_Employee_Antitrust_L...

xiphias2 6y ago

No, but my work life was amazing. There are important things to address at Google, like not having enough sitting toilets for men (there's 3 times as much for women even though there are much less women in the office where I was working) that an union may help with, but that's different from the product PR.

mosselman 6y ago
Forcing men to poop standing up is probably some productivity hack.
purple-again 6y ago
My first inclination was just to move on but you didn’t post on a throwaway so I will take the bait. Why do you think the toilet issue you described is a problem that needs to be fixed? My experience in every corner of life in America to date has been separated bathrooms by sex and the men’s restroom containing far fewer sitting toilets. We all know this is because women sit for both natural duties and men, generally in the US at least, only sit for one. This is so basic I assume it’s not what you are talking about but please correct me if not so we can engage on that front. What I assume you mean is Google is 90% male and 10% female (no idea what it really is) and yet the bathrooms are 50% male and 50% female. You specifically mention sitting toilets which is what I am having trouble understanding the relevance of. Are men regularly forced to stand in line instead of being able to walk right in and go? If so that sounds like a facilities growth issue and not a sex imbalance issue. You could propose turning some female restrooms into male but generally restrooms are placed far enough apart from one another that there would have to be 0 females in the area serviced by those restrooms for that to work. The presence of even one would require facilities assigned to females or mixed gender restrooms (a different argument I fully support). That leaves your only other option as I see it for the female restrooms to be smaller than the male restrooms which is just ridiculous. No one would build the building with that hopefully temporary imbalance in mind and you can’t just repurpose half a bathroom as long as the sexes are being separated.
- extropy 6y ago
  I will bait too, as someone who has stood in line for male toilets in a Google office. In the office I was in there where generally 1 sitting and 2 standing seats per male toilet. The standing one are quick in / quick out and almost always free. But good luck finding vacant sitting spot after lunch. Edit: female restrooms generally had 3 sitting spots, so same size.