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There's a long case history in front on the NRLB about whether or not employees can use employer's resource (ie notice boards, email system, slack) for organizi

There's a long case history in front on the NRLB about whether or not employees can use employer's resource (ie notice boards, email system, slack) for organizing. In general the rule has been that if employees can use something for general non-work purposes (e.g. setting up a baseball game on the weekend) then the company can't stop them from using it for organizing. However the specifics (e.g. what if there is a policy about what topics are OK, but some OK topics are non-work, or what if there is a general work-only policy that is selectively enforced against organizing) have gone back and forth depending on the administration. Apple's behaviour is probably a result of a 2019 ruling [1] which opend the door to this kind of thing. Given that the administration has swung back to being fairly labor friendly, it'll be interesting if this gets to the NRLB to see if they find a way to make this illegal. [1] https://news.bloomberglaw.com/daily-labor-report/labor-board-paves-way-for-employers-to-ward-off-union-emails https://news.bloomberglaw.com/daily-labor-report/labor-board...

foepys 5y ago
Meanwhile in Germany an employer has to provide rooms and resources for a works council (Betriebsrat) to meet and organize, and has to pay all necessary trainings, including all related travel expenses.
- Glawen 5y ago
  It is the same in France, but they are still powerless because they are not present on the company's board unlike Germany. In France it is only the government owned companies who can strike, strikes in private companies are rare. It only happens when they are all fired, but it is too late..
  - sofixa 5y ago
    > It is the same in France, but they are still powerless because they are not present on the company's board unlike Germany Not exactly powerless, some decisions and some changes need to be accepted by the worker's councils. But they cannot make decisions and force the company to go in a certain direction.
    - realityking 5y ago
      Grand parent might refer to the fact that German companies with > 2000 employees have to have a supervisory board where 50%-1 vote a held by representatives of employees: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mitbestimmungsgesetz https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mitbestimmungsgesetz Interesting side note, in mining and steel companies by law the vote is split 50% between employee and owner representatives and there’s a neutral member as tie breaker. This is often justified by safety arguments but actually stems from the WW1 and WW2 experience of these industries were pushing for war (good for business) and a neutral member was thought to temper these tendencies.
      - inter_netuser 5y ago
        who are the neutral members? where does one find them, and how is their neutrality ensured? Seems like a nontrivial task.
        realityking 5y ago
        They’re usually (former) politicians. For example RAG AG has the former president of the federal parliament as the neutral member.
- luckylion 5y ago
  That's after the employees vote though, and only if the unions win the vote. The employers do not have to provider resources before the vote has been done.
- diebeforei485 5y ago
  The works council system in Germany and Switzerland (and some other countries) works a lot better than American unions. I'm not sure why. It seems they are more co-operative and have fewer BS rules.
  - nickff 5y ago
    I am not an expert on German unions, but I think one key factor is that German unions tend to have company-level decision-making and representation. In the USA, it is common for unions to be industry-wide, with little or no significant company-level decision-making authority. These monolithic unions strike at one company or another according to what will most benefit the rest of the union. This means that the union is 'attacking' one company, and helping their competitors, subsidizing the costs to members at that company with money earned by members from the competitors. This is something like blackmail, and is bound to cause animosity with management.
    - rb2k_ 5y ago
      > In the USA, it is common for unions to be industry-wide A lot of the ones in Germany are as well. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_trade_unions_in_Germany https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_trade_unions_in_German...
      - nickff 5y ago
        Yes, I've read about that, but it seems like those unions give each branch/local/company significant independent decision-making authority, which is uncommon in top-down US unions.
  - GuB-42 5y ago
    The biggest reason is that in Germany, unions actually take part in decisions. It means that in addition to representing workers they take the company interests into account, after all, employees can't be paid if the company doesn't make money. In other countries they can only protest and so, they work by opposing management instead of trying to find a solution that suits everyone.
- mschuster91 5y ago
  The problem is Betriebsräte still aren't unions :( Collective wage agreements are rare in the tech industry, it's a real shame.
- VirusNewbie 5y ago
  I've been wondering why German Software Engineers are paid so much more.
  - foepys 5y ago
    Funny that you say that, in fact I was waiting for someone to say it, because pay is considerably higher in companies with a works council than without. Tech companies are famous for lacking works councils. You can go to your works council and request to see the salary and bonus structure for your peers that work the same job as you. Exactly the thing that is being shut down in the OP. So instead of making a point about how a works council lowers tech workers' pay, you made a point for creating them.
    - Longhanks 5y ago
      No, he makes a point for leaving Germany for higher pay. As a talented individual, one needs not rely on unions to fight for some mediocre salary everyone gets, one can negotiate it on their own and get a salary worth the skills. Talents leaving the country is an actual problem (for Germany, not the software engineers), no wonder there’s a term for the shortage: The famous Fachkräftemangel.
      - kennywinker 5y ago
        And yet most of those same "talented individuals" are having their wages kneecapped by wage fixing (https://time.com/76655/google-apple-settle-wage-fixing-lawsuit/ https://time.com/76655/google-apple-settle-wage-fixing-lawsu...), lack of wage transparency (this article), etc. The system we have (in north america) benefits a handful of individuals at the expense of MOST people. That's not a good system. Also, speaking as a Canadian, we've got plenty of "brain drain" here, and it's not because we've got socialist labour laws - because for the most part we don't.
        noir_lord 5y ago
        > The system we have (in north america) benefits a handful of individuals at the expense of MOST people. That's not a good system. The US system can be summarised as "Fuck you, I got mine". That said if we are honest we have to discover the positives of an individualist system vs a more collective system. One of which is that exceptional people do on average do better than they would in a more collective system. It's whether those people doing better is sufficient to offset all the people doing worse that is the debate and I think on balance no, it's not. That said I'm also not one of those exceptional people either (not many of us here actually are) so that will colour my view, I'm a decent to good developer who writes stuff that works, provides value and gets paid so to me strong worker protections whether enforced by government or union make sense otherwise the power is all on the other side of the table.
- walshemj 5y ago
  Don't remember hearing about Rocket Internet firms having works council's or recognition agreements.
- brianwawok 5y ago
  Right. But now how much does the average software developer make in Germany vs the US? I don't think the German way is all roses either...
- kanbara 5y ago
  and yet my company’s betriebsratswahl was plagued with fear, managers having meetings saying why unions are bad, and so on. and it failed by 1/3 of 1 vote.
tehjoker 5y ago
Regardless of what the NLRB thinks, we can have our own opinions. If employees want to talk pay equity, let 'em.
- morpheos137 5y ago
  I disagree. It is almost as if at work talk on work provided media like slack, should be work related. What is next? People complain about mutiny related chat rooms being banned by the Navy?
  - _vertigo 5y ago
    Not comparable.
  - saagarjha 5y ago
    Discussing salaries is a federally protected activity, unlike mutiny.
  - bcrosby95 5y ago
    Lol. In what society is pay unrelated to work?
  - kelnos 5y ago
    Ok, then perhaps Apple should ban the channel about fun dogs. Looking at my company slack, we have a ton of channels with a "soc-" prefix, which we use to designate a channel that's there for social purposes rather than work. I think my employer would have a mutiny on their hands if tomorrow they decided to shut that down.
  - sxp 5y ago
    How much people are paid clearly matches the scope of “... Apple business and must advance the work, deliverables, or mission of Apple departments and teams,”. Paying people fairly advances the Apple teams.
  - tehjoker 5y ago
    We're not the military. Employers are an exploiting class. Workers must fight for every avenue to organize and overthrow the exploiting class to create a democratic and equitable society. In 1917, the military had soldiers councils, turned against the Tsarist regime and helped overthrow it with the help of armed workers. We're so far from anything like that, we're arguing over whether workers should be able to slack each other lol.
paxys 5y ago
Heck Apple should want employees discussing this stuff in an internal channel rather than all over the internet. Employees getting together and talking about pay, job titles, tenure, team structures, project names, executives and probably more on a random Discord server with no way to verify user identity sounds like a security nightmare.
mc32 5y ago
This is a kind of tangent, but I'll put it out there.. What would happen is Twitter the company employees tried to unionize and used the twitter service to organize. Could twitter ban them or suppress them? Would twitter have to let them do their thing regardless?
- advisedwang 5y ago
  It would probably be an unfair labour practice for Twitter to do so, as it's pretty clear that twitter employees can use twitter at will and such a policy would be purely suppressing their organizing. Of course twitter is a terrible medium for organizing anyway, so maybe Twitter would want them to use it! I hope if twitter employees do try to unionize they don't try and do it in tweets.
  - mc32 5y ago
    I guess I’m curious whether Twitter would be compelled to allow tweets that “violate” its tos. Let’s say it’s a rally: “Let’s organize and prevent Twitter from requiring proof of immunization status.” It’s about unionization and demanding that Twitter not demand proof of immunization (if they were to require it), but it could be any number of things that are contrary to their liking including unionization.

foepys 5y ago

Meanwhile in Germany an employer has to provide rooms and resources for a works council (Betriebsrat) to meet and organize, and has to pay all necessary trainings, including all related travel expenses.

Glawen 5y ago
It is the same in France, but they are still powerless because they are not present on the company's board unlike Germany. In France it is only the government owned companies who can strike, strikes in private companies are rare. It only happens when they are all fired, but it is too late..
- sofixa 5y ago
  > It is the same in France, but they are still powerless because they are not present on the company's board unlike Germany Not exactly powerless, some decisions and some changes need to be accepted by the worker's councils. But they cannot make decisions and force the company to go in a certain direction.
  - realityking 5y ago
    Grand parent might refer to the fact that German companies with > 2000 employees have to have a supervisory board where 50%-1 vote a held by representatives of employees: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mitbestimmungsgesetz https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mitbestimmungsgesetz Interesting side note, in mining and steel companies by law the vote is split 50% between employee and owner representatives and there’s a neutral member as tie breaker. This is often justified by safety arguments but actually stems from the WW1 and WW2 experience of these industries were pushing for war (good for business) and a neutral member was thought to temper these tendencies.
    - inter_netuser 5y ago
      who are the neutral members? where does one find them, and how is their neutrality ensured? Seems like a nontrivial task.
      - realityking 5y ago
        They’re usually (former) politicians. For example RAG AG has the former president of the federal parliament as the neutral member.
luckylion 5y ago
That's after the employees vote though, and only if the unions win the vote. The employers do not have to provider resources before the vote has been done.
diebeforei485 5y ago
The works council system in Germany and Switzerland (and some other countries) works a lot better than American unions. I'm not sure why. It seems they are more co-operative and have fewer BS rules.
- nickff 5y ago
  I am not an expert on German unions, but I think one key factor is that German unions tend to have company-level decision-making and representation. In the USA, it is common for unions to be industry-wide, with little or no significant company-level decision-making authority. These monolithic unions strike at one company or another according to what will most benefit the rest of the union. This means that the union is 'attacking' one company, and helping their competitors, subsidizing the costs to members at that company with money earned by members from the competitors. This is something like blackmail, and is bound to cause animosity with management.
  - rb2k_ 5y ago
    > In the USA, it is common for unions to be industry-wide A lot of the ones in Germany are as well. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_trade_unions_in_Germany https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_trade_unions_in_German...
    - nickff 5y ago
      Yes, I've read about that, but it seems like those unions give each branch/local/company significant independent decision-making authority, which is uncommon in top-down US unions.
- GuB-42 5y ago
  The biggest reason is that in Germany, unions actually take part in decisions. It means that in addition to representing workers they take the company interests into account, after all, employees can't be paid if the company doesn't make money. In other countries they can only protest and so, they work by opposing management instead of trying to find a solution that suits everyone.
mschuster91 5y ago
The problem is Betriebsräte still aren't unions :( Collective wage agreements are rare in the tech industry, it's a real shame.
VirusNewbie 5y ago
I've been wondering why German Software Engineers are paid so much more.
- foepys 5y ago
  Funny that you say that, in fact I was waiting for someone to say it, because pay is considerably higher in companies with a works council than without. Tech companies are famous for lacking works councils. You can go to your works council and request to see the salary and bonus structure for your peers that work the same job as you. Exactly the thing that is being shut down in the OP. So instead of making a point about how a works council lowers tech workers' pay, you made a point for creating them.
  - Longhanks 5y ago
    No, he makes a point for leaving Germany for higher pay. As a talented individual, one needs not rely on unions to fight for some mediocre salary everyone gets, one can negotiate it on their own and get a salary worth the skills. Talents leaving the country is an actual problem (for Germany, not the software engineers), no wonder there’s a term for the shortage: The famous Fachkräftemangel.
    - kennywinker 5y ago
      And yet most of those same "talented individuals" are having their wages kneecapped by wage fixing (https://time.com/76655/google-apple-settle-wage-fixing-lawsuit/ https://time.com/76655/google-apple-settle-wage-fixing-lawsu...), lack of wage transparency (this article), etc. The system we have (in north america) benefits a handful of individuals at the expense of MOST people. That's not a good system. Also, speaking as a Canadian, we've got plenty of "brain drain" here, and it's not because we've got socialist labour laws - because for the most part we don't.
      - noir_lord 5y ago
        > The system we have (in north america) benefits a handful of individuals at the expense of MOST people. That's not a good system. The US system can be summarised as "Fuck you, I got mine". That said if we are honest we have to discover the positives of an individualist system vs a more collective system. One of which is that exceptional people do on average do better than they would in a more collective system. It's whether those people doing better is sufficient to offset all the people doing worse that is the debate and I think on balance no, it's not. That said I'm also not one of those exceptional people either (not many of us here actually are) so that will colour my view, I'm a decent to good developer who writes stuff that works, provides value and gets paid so to me strong worker protections whether enforced by government or union make sense otherwise the power is all on the other side of the table.
walshemj 5y ago
Don't remember hearing about Rocket Internet firms having works council's or recognition agreements.
brianwawok 5y ago
Right. But now how much does the average software developer make in Germany vs the US? I don't think the German way is all roses either...
kanbara 5y ago
and yet my company’s betriebsratswahl was plagued with fear, managers having meetings saying why unions are bad, and so on. and it failed by 1/3 of 1 vote.

tehjoker 5y ago

Regardless of what the NLRB thinks, we can have our own opinions. If employees want to talk pay equity, let 'em.

morpheos137 5y ago
I disagree. It is almost as if at work talk on work provided media like slack, should be work related. What is next? People complain about mutiny related chat rooms being banned by the Navy?
- _vertigo 5y ago
  Not comparable.
- saagarjha 5y ago
  Discussing salaries is a federally protected activity, unlike mutiny.
- bcrosby95 5y ago
  Lol. In what society is pay unrelated to work?
- kelnos 5y ago
  Ok, then perhaps Apple should ban the channel about fun dogs. Looking at my company slack, we have a ton of channels with a "soc-" prefix, which we use to designate a channel that's there for social purposes rather than work. I think my employer would have a mutiny on their hands if tomorrow they decided to shut that down.
- sxp 5y ago
  How much people are paid clearly matches the scope of “... Apple business and must advance the work, deliverables, or mission of Apple departments and teams,”. Paying people fairly advances the Apple teams.
- tehjoker 5y ago
  We're not the military. Employers are an exploiting class. Workers must fight for every avenue to organize and overthrow the exploiting class to create a democratic and equitable society. In 1917, the military had soldiers councils, turned against the Tsarist regime and helped overthrow it with the help of armed workers. We're so far from anything like that, we're arguing over whether workers should be able to slack each other lol.

paxys 5y ago

Heck Apple should want employees discussing this stuff in an internal channel rather than all over the internet. Employees getting together and talking about pay, job titles, tenure, team structures, project names, executives and probably more on a random Discord server with no way to verify user identity sounds like a security nightmare.

mc32 5y ago

This is a kind of tangent, but I'll put it out there.. What would happen is Twitter the company employees tried to unionize and used the twitter service to organize. Could twitter ban them or suppress them? Would twitter have to let them do their thing regardless?

advisedwang 5y ago
It would probably be an unfair labour practice for Twitter to do so, as it's pretty clear that twitter employees can use twitter at will and such a policy would be purely suppressing their organizing. Of course twitter is a terrible medium for organizing anyway, so maybe Twitter would want them to use it! I hope if twitter employees do try to unionize they don't try and do it in tweets.
- mc32 5y ago
  I guess I’m curious whether Twitter would be compelled to allow tweets that “violate” its tos. Let’s say it’s a rally: “Let’s organize and prevent Twitter from requiring proof of immunization status.” It’s about unionization and demanding that Twitter not demand proof of immunization (if they were to require it), but it could be any number of things that are contrary to their liking including unionization.