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Google Had Secret Project to ‘Convince’ Employees ‘That Unions Suck’

420 points by yoelo 5y ago

dmitrygr 5y ago
What exactly did anyone think the “internal communications” department did and why it was so large, other than this sort of thing?
raxxorrax 5y ago
- throwaway75787 5y ago
  They don't need to. These companies have self-sufficient intelligence operations, and they employ seasoned experts. At an outfit like Google, and that may involve too many people overriding checks to be worth the risk of a leak. It's hard to say, I've never worked for Google. The Pinkertons are still active in union-busting, and they are retained by shiny "Great Place To Work"-type businesses. They're just covert now. When somebody is giving off too many pre-crime vibes at that kind of business, HR can easily get rid of them for unrelated reasons, and gaslight them into thinking it was their fault all along. Never talk to HR. They are the secret police.
  - whatshisface 5y ago
    They'd be secret police if anyone believed that HR's job wasn't to protect the company.
    - maybelsyrup 5y ago
      Lots of people are naive about HR's real purpose. In my experience people see them as neutral arbiters, and go to them for help with personnel issues never thinking that they're seen as potentially threatening to the organization.
  - s1artibartfast 5y ago
    >Never talk to HR. They are the secret police Like the police, they serve a function. talk to HR when you would talk to the police. When someone else is doing something illegal to you, and after you made sure that you have no exposure.
- AlexandrB 5y ago
  > Unions just spread hatred and anything they say could be classified as hate speech. Man, companies really hate negotiating wages/benefits with a party that has equal power. Reminds me of: Michael Scott : I am a victim of a hate crime. Stanley knows what I'm talking about. Stanley : That's not what a hate crime is. Michael Scott : Well, I hated it, a lot, okay.
  - raxxorrax 5y ago
    Sorry, it was an tongue in cheek comment not appropriate for HN. I believe the problem with censorship through the veneer of hate speech should be obvious. Only way to hinder corporate and state censorship being extended is if the factions that supported it come to their senses. They are far greater in numbers than those that thought it through.
    - AlexandrB 5y ago
      Oops. I'm rarely stumped by lack of a "/s" but that one got me!
mhoad 5y ago
Seems to have worked amazingly well based on all the times I recall reading the comments of stories posted here involving unions.
- noah_buddy 5y ago
  I do wonder how much of HN culture is affected by very smart people (in one domain) being subconsciously led to believe things by the machinations of tech. As smart people, they take very passionate positions on issues they believe strongly. Perhaps they wouldn't have believed them so strongly in a vacuum though?
  - BuckRogers 5y ago
    You nailed something that I've noticed. Highly competent and intelligent people tend to lean libertarian in my experience. It's only when they get cancer, or finally meet some form of humility that they see the inherent advantages they had over others for what it is. Simply a roll of the dice. Competent, capable, hardworking people often fail to see the bigger picture, and dismiss others that aren't like them. If you have all 3 of those traits, which are both from your discipline and genetic predisposition, the world looks like a meritocracy, and it isn't.
    - AndrewUnmuted 5y ago
      > Simply a roll of the dice. In that case, so is this very conversation, the fact that we're both on this website, and even the fact that we are both interested in tech. If it's simply a roll of the dice, then nearly all aspects to existence are pointless, there's no point in trying to think for oneself, etc. Perhaps this is what you truly intend to convey, but until you explicitly state this, this is an incoherent perspective.
      - shadowgovt 5y ago
        The author's point was that "inherent" advantages and third-party support are more to luck than to any intrinsic value a person brings to the table. Having conversations on a website is a choice. Interest in tech is probably a blend of luck and choice (hard to be interested in something you're never exposed to, and hard to sustain interest in an environment where people consistently discourage it; people ending up in those situations are the "roll of the dice" the author is referring to). In short, justifying a lack of empathy with "they made their choices" underestimates the amount people do not choose their circumstances in life.
mrits 5y ago
Yeah, let's focus on the company that pays their employees 15x minimum wage and has top tier vacation, healthcare, and maternity/paternity leave.
- mrweasel 5y ago
  Is that also the case for their janitorial staff?
- cool_dude85 5y ago
  None of that makes it ok to bust unions.
  - ergocoder 5y ago
    But it does point out that this is not a union that will improve worker's condition like a regular union. The Google union aims to stop Google to work on certain projects. Many don't agree with unions. What should those people do? Make another union? If people don't want to work on DoD contract, they can transfer to other teams. There are like 1000 teams in Google. Internal transfer is not hard.
- vmception 5y ago
  Its a trillion dollar company with some/many employees delivering quite a bit more value than they are paid 1) Collectively getting the better stake of the pie influences other organizations compensation methods/amounts 2) the market is telling employees what to do, meaning that it doesn’t matter that an individual can do far more work for less pay somewhere else - just don’t do those things.
  - sonotathrowaway 5y ago
    The underpayment was a top priority of google, to the point that individual executives committed crimes that should have led to their incarceration - had the DoJ interpreted the law according to its text rather than according to their political ideology. As it stands, all the DoJ was capable of was issuing guidance that acknowledged that crimes were committed that should have led to jail time, and politely asks corporate executives to not commit those crimes again, on pain of another chiding letter.
hdjjhhvvhga 5y ago
I don't believe it's only Google, and I don't think it's particularly secret.
- rsj_hn 5y ago
  Yes, that companies don't like unions and do what they can to discourage unionization isn't newsworthy. Finding a company that encourages unionization would be newsworthy!
  - AndrewUnmuted 5y ago
    > companies don't like unions and do what they can to discourage unionization Are you sure? All of the big tech companies are entering one of the most union-entrenched industries in the US: media.
- xhkkffbf 5y ago
  Exactly. The NYT had some breathless story about this supposedly once secret fact. Yet their own management was pushing back hard on the Wirecutter union. If the management wanted to really confuse the line workers, they would celebrate the union with some reverse reverse psychology.
- gjsman-1000 5y ago
  The New York Times has had an anti-tech vendetta for a while now. Most likely, in my cynical worldview, because tech has hurt their subscription numbers immensely, not because they want to do the world a service. An example of this is when they published a whole story about a guy who became radicalized from YouTube... and then became unradicalized a few months later without doing anything radical. But someone could have stayed radicalized so Google needs to censor YouTube and hand back authority to the fact checkers and trusted news, which conveniently happens to be... The New York Times. Another example would be when The New York Times wrote a whole shock article about the shocking nature of dark patterns in technology and the irresponsibility and corruption of Big Tech for using them. Except that their own unsubscribe system is loaded with dark patterns that are even worse. Do I think that YouTube isn't partially responsible? Of course they have some responsibility, but The New York Times and other news sources are capitalizing on the situation for their own interests.
mandmandam 5y ago
> Google fired the workers in 2019 after they organized against the company’s contracts with immigration detention agencies. Wooow. That was at the height of ICE being shown as deeply corrupt and racist child abusers. (They still are, but it hasn't been used as a stick to beat Biden with because 'reasons'). >the NLRB issued a federal complaint against Google for illegally firing and surveilling the four software engineers Illegal surveillance. By fucking Google. Scary scary shit. > Kara Silverstein, Google’s human resources director said that she “like[d] the idea” of the op-ed, but that it should be executed so that “there would be no fingerprints and not Google specific.” So, she knew how uncool/illegal that looks. Schwifty. Looking at how other outlets have covered this - looking at you, NYT - it's pretty fucking awful that the best coverage is coming from Vice.
- jeffbee 5y ago
  This article and other I've seen are misrepresenting the role of the NLRB in these matters. The NLRB adjudicates these cases. They don't bring them. When these journalists say that the NLRB issued a complaint or an accusation, what actually happened is the employees brought a complaint and the NLRB declined, so far, to dismiss it (and actually in this matter the NLRB did dismiss it once, but then later under a different administration they reinstated it.)
- newaccount2021 5y ago
- user_7832 5y ago
  >> Kara Silverstein, Google’s human resources director said that she “like[d] the idea” of the op-ed, but that it should be executed so that “there would be no fingerprints and not Google specific.” > So, she knew how uncool/illegal that looks. Schwifty. Guess who's currently the "Director of Integrity" at Google. I sure hope it's someone with integrity who would never want their actions hidden.
  - throwaway2048 5y ago
    I'm sure shes very interested in keeping up the appearence of Google's Integrity
queuebert 5y ago
Imputing altruistic morals to profit-seeking entities and then continually being surprised and offended when companies act shady puts employees in a pointlessly weak position. Instead, treat the relationship as adversarial and come ready for battle every day against the legal structure designed to exploit you for the benefit of distant shareholders. There is no shame in fighting for yourself. You are worth it.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- 3pt14159 5y ago
  What if adversarial systems result in asymmetric arms races and the game theoretic best move is to work for a corporation that is so short sighted as to go to battle against their own employees and to work for them diligently and intelligently? Because I see a whole lot happier employees at Tesla than I do at General Motors. I'm not saying this is an all-or-nothing thing. I'd join a union if I was working for a certain type of employer (company town, federal government, etc) but when it comes to technology companies, I got to say it's pretty good here.
  - outside1234 5y ago
    Are they happier at Tesla? Because I hear it is pretty terrible place to work as a software engineer.
    - onlyrealcuzzo 5y ago
      I assumed it must've been the non-manufacturer people who loved it. Because there have been an absurd amount of complaints from the people in manufacturing. I guess, it could be awful at Tesla, but maybe GM is even worse? I know GM had a REALLY bad reputation in the days of the NUMMI plant.
    - ejb999 5y ago
      given the job market, while it may 'suck', clearly nobody is making them stay. i.e. may suck on a day-to-day basis, but get rewarded richly after x amount of time Almost anybody can complain about their job, but in this industry, in this job market right now - anyone staying is staying because the pluses outweigh the minuses.
jimbob45 5y ago
I'm guessing that this is related to the Epic case? Seems incredible that Google/Epic/Apple have decided that the ongoing lawsuit is worth all the negative PR that these doc dumps have brought.
- mandevil 5y ago
  Different issue were Google is being sued. This is related to NLRB rulings on the four union organizers Google fired back in 2019- they sued for illegally being fired for union organizing work. Under the previous administration the behavior was ignored, but the current administration is much more charitable towards union work, so the lawsuit is back and Google is desperately trying to hide everything it can. Google can settle this by re-employing the organizers and ceasing to retaliate against union organizing work, as they are legally required to do in the US. However, they have decided on a different path.
StevePerkins 5y ago
Is there really anything here, if you remove the 'scare quotes'?
- greesil 5y ago
  You could read the article.
- noah_buddy 5y ago
  Nothing you couldn't glean with a common sense approach to material interests at play in a workplace. Of course a corporation wants to extract as much wealth with as little overhead as possible. Outside of ineffectual executives, there are few that orient companies towards making less money intentionally. Analyzing every choice made in a work place through this lens is both dead simple and continually enlightening. Some commentator once noted that those elite with the highest levels of wealth (say top 1%) don't disbelieve Marx's analysis of the world and capital distribution. They understand it quite well, they're just on the opposite side of the field from the proles and they leverage that analysis to keep it that way. The commentator continued that when you think about it this way, business papers and similar sources of info are actually quite useful for a Marxian lens. Those with capital know that capital is biggest driving force, so that's of course what they're going to focus on.
  - Aerroon 5y ago
    >Some commentator once noted that those elite with the highest levels of wealth (say top 1%) don't disbelieve Marx's analysis of the world and capital distribution. Top 1% global income is about $60,000 a year. Many Americans are above this, yet I doubt that they feel strongly about what you mentioned.
    - noah_buddy 5y ago
      Perhaps top 1% contextually would be a better upper bound, though the exact number is an issue of economic statistics and not really the point I'm making. More so that a Marxian view of choices is often a very parsimonious way to understand the world, not to say it's the only way.
switch007 5y ago
Next week: > Google Had Secret Project to ‘Convince’ Social Media users that everyone convinces Employees ‘That Unions Suck’
0xbadcafebee 5y ago
I would rather work in a co-op rather than in a union. If everyone owns the company and the whole makes decisions rather than a tiny minority, the workers get taken care of, making unions irrelevant.
chris_wot 5y ago
Well, on the flip side, unions had a not so secret project to convince employees that Google sucks.
vegai_ 5y ago
I slightly fear how much of my own thinking is there just because some corporation or another big entity wanted me to think like that and spent considerable resources to make it happen.
- hermannj314 5y ago
  I recycle, get vaccinated, care about global climate change and am concerned about police brutality all because large entities convinced me to be. Without them, I am not sure I would have enough personal experience to know these are things I am supposed to care about. Manipulating the public opinion is a tool to make change happen. It isn't inherently good or bad.
- steve_adams_86 5y ago
  It’s almost certainly true, but an accessible and rational strategy to combat that is to critically consider why you think anything that you do if you haven’t yet. Maybe that seems obvious written out, but it wasn’t to me at first. I felt a deep sense of being a product of my environment in a negative sense. I think what happened was that I began to see holes in my knowledge or understanding of things I thought I knew and it was a little unsettling. These days I just try to stop myself and ask: why do I think that? How far down the chain do I need to go in order to find concrete information? To some people this is probably very intuitive. And it is for most of us when it comes to matters of science. But what about your opinion of companies, products, or even people? I think we all get into habits of being influenced here - it’s literally in our genes and can be very covert. I guess in a sense this is like personal epistemology. It’s important to study on a macro scale, but also on a micro scale in individual day to day operations.
- AnthonyMouse 5y ago
  > I slightly fear how much of my own thinking is there just because some corporation or another big entity wanted me to think like that and spent considerable resources to make it happen. Now consider how much of the thinking of the people who believe the opposite is there just because some other big entity wanted them to think like that and spent considerable resources to make it happen. The one thing you can't outsource is critical thinking. Sorry, you have to do it yourself.
maupin 5y ago
"Do no evil." indeed.
- billyjobob 5y ago
  No, the motto was “Don’t be evil”. You can do as much evil as you like, so long as it’s justified by the goals of your totally-not-evil nature.
- dietr1ch 5y ago
  It was removed from the code of conduct long ago
  - Crash0v3rid3 5y ago
    No it wasn't.
kingkawn 5y ago
A union is a business association among people who market, sell, and deliver the labor of a single individual. To repress these associations of business results in inefficiencies that obscure the true product of the market.
- Jiro 5y ago
  Attempting to convince employees of something is not repression.
  - pogorniy 5y ago
    Deception
  - kingkawn 5y ago
    Do you really believe that’s the full extent of Google’s anti-unionism?
ravenstine 5y ago
While my personal opinion is that, in today's age, many unions suck and that some industries need unions more than others, employers who even think they should psy-op their employees into action/inaction for the benefit of the employer should get screwed. I've heard some great things about how Google does things differently to create a better workplace for engineers and employees in general, but I'd seriously think thrice before taking a job there for many reasons including this one.
literallyaduck 5y ago
Google/Alphabet needs to be broken apart: "The National Labor Relations Act forbids employers from interfering with, restraining, or coercing employees in the exercise of rights relating to organizing, forming, joining or assisting a labor organization for collective bargaining purposes, or from working together to improve terms and conditions of employment, or refraining from any such activity. Similarly, labor organizations may not restrain or coerce employees in the exercise of these rights."
- pogorniy 5y ago
  It's super strange to observe your comment downvoted
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
mgaunard 5y ago
Unions only exist to protect mediocre people, and only cause harm to top performers. Wasn't Google supposed to be a place that only hires the best and brightest?
- remus 5y ago
  > Unions only exist to protect mediocre people, and only cause harm to top performers. I think this is far too broad a statement to be useful. I personally know of several cases where a union has helped defend an employee from illegal behaviour by their employer, for example. No doubt the individuals involved could have taken the employer to a tribunal if they were suitably motivated, but having the weight of the union behind them meant the issues were resolved quickly and correctly.
- micromacrofoot 5y ago
  If you have the wherewithal to constantly be a top performer... then why are you working for someone else to begin with? I think there's a point during everyone's career when a union could be useful. Maybe it's not apparently useful to you right now, but we'll all experience hardships at one point or another.
defaultprimate 5y ago
I mean Google is genuinely evil, but unions do suck. UAW, NEA, and AFL-CIO have been absolutely terrible for their respective industries.
- Ginden 5y ago
  Unions are organizations that transfer value from employer and non-union members (including not-employed-yet employees and customers) to union members. Long term effects of that transfer are rather unpredictable, because there are too many factors in economy.
  - defaultprimate 5y ago
    No they aren't, they are organizations that utilize collective bargaining in place of productivity or efficiency increases in the labor force, thereby diluting the labor market with an artificial baseline at levels lower than the market would dictate otherwise. They don't transfer any value, they just reduce the overall value of the industry and provide the illusion that union members are receiving a satisfactory portion of this reduced value.
supergeek133 5y ago
Every major company I've worked for/with that has a large service workforce (Retail, MFG, etc) has "union avoidance" employees/training. I recall my first week as a Best Buy part time tech in 2002, we watched a video on how Unions are bad.
- masklinn 5y ago
  > "union avoidance" employees/training. The word you're looking for is "propaganda".
- moduspol 5y ago
  I mean from a business perspective if you're not doing any training then you're essentially just sitting on your hands waiting for the day employees unionize. And it's not like unions go out of their way to give a fair and complete picture of the up and downsides of a union. If you don't make the case to the employees, nobody else is going to.
reilly3000 5y ago
One of the typical arguments against unions has been that they take a lot of money from employees to pay for dues. I think that is a dated argument from a bygone era. With modern tech stack there is far less administrative overhead, and union meetings can be conducted virtually or async. Additionally, the relative dues for running a union in a tech setting are going to be a lot lower as a percentage of salaries as they tend to me much higher. If there are other arguments that somehow unions harm employees I’d love to hear them.
yupper32 5y ago
A lot of people seem confused why a lot of tech people aren't pushing for unions. For me it's simple: Tech has brought me from near poverty to pretty darn wealthy. Why mess with that? Could a union help increase wages even more? Maybe. Are we being paid too little compared to our output? Maybe. But at the same time I'm being paid more than I could have possibly imagined before I entered the field.
- tyingq 5y ago
  Makes sense. They might be initially more popular in areas where companies tend not to treat their technology folks well. Game development, for example. Though there are some things that are pretty universal and unions would help with. Things like non-compete agreements, ownership of code written in off work hours, collusion across companies to "not poach", and so on. I imagine some of that might be a lot worse if the state of California didn't happen to take the positions they do. If Texas were instead the hotbed for tech companies, I think unions might be more popular.
  - gundmc 5y ago
    I think this is a big part of it. Unions at FAANG companies these days seem to be more a vehicle for social activists than winning rights for employees. If you don't agree with the goals of the union organizers, there doesn't seem to be a benefit of joining.
- btmiller 5y ago
  I tend to agreed because I’m very likely to retire/be financially independent much, much earlier than 65 thanks to my tech career.
- ebdbdbdb 5y ago
- timmg 5y ago
  I agree. To take it one step further: I have a pretty good relationship with my employer (coincidentally, Google). I don't need or want a third party to get in the middle of it.
stjohnswarts 5y ago
Suck is relative. For google, unionization would suck as it depletes their power over employees. For employees in most situations it would help the common and probably hurt the "guru coders" more. There is plenty of evidence that unions can go awry (just like domineering employers) as well and a balanced approach and using historical references can help both sides.
bradleyjg 5y ago
It’s a real shame that the middle and upper classes in the US have abandoned having their teens work in favor of various, expensive, college application boosting fluff. I went to work at McDonalds at age 15 and was part of a union. I have direct experience with what that is like. I don’t need to get my knowledge on the subject from flamewars between people pushing ideological agendas (most of whom themselves have apparently never had direct experience.)
- busterarm 5y ago
  Shh, every time those of us who have been in actual unions and actually had terrible experiences voice our opinions we get downvoted into oblivion. It's not worth it, m8.
  - jason0597 5y ago
    So the current arrangement of service workers being paid slave wages and given disgusting conditions is working fine?
    - busterarm 5y ago
      My three union jobs were service worker jobs; what are you trying to imply here?
      - deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
    - AnthonyMouse 5y ago
      "This is fine" is not the same thing as "X is not the solution to this." Example better solution: UBI, so that those workers can tell the boss where to stick it without starving to death, and the company then has to offer better working conditions in order to convince anyone to show up.
    - bagacrap 5y ago
      I don't see how individual unions help solve this problem. A union that makes meaningful changes to conditions and wages at one employer would hobble that employer's ability to compete, they'd go out of business, and a non-unionized workforce/employer would replace them. This seems like a job for government and/or market forces. The latter actually have been working well recently near where I live, as the labor shortage has caused many employers in the restaurant industry to raise starting salaries to ~$20/hr before tips. That said, this article is about tech workers, not line cooks, so any conclusions drawn from union experiences at $COFFEECHAIN are perhaps not easily mappable to Google.
shtopointo 5y ago
There's a valid argument to be made that unions do suck. You could call it informing people just as much as "convincing" them.
- s_dev 5y ago
  That argument should be made by a professor in their college lectures. Not as part of induction procedure to the company. It should be legal but it's actually hilarious that this happens in the US. It would be like a landlord mandating a tenant watch a video on why tenancy rights are a bad idea.
  - shtopointo 5y ago
    What's the issue with that? They present a lot of BS in company intro meetings. It's "drink the kool aid time" as far as I am concerned.
    - s_dev 5y ago
      >drink the kool aid time That's slang for swallowing propaganda and committing suicide. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drinking_the_Kool-Aid https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drinking_the_Kool-Aid
      - shtopointo 5y ago
        I know – read it as "propaganda time", i.e. activate the skeptical part of your brain, and take everything they say with a grain of salt.
disabled 5y ago
With Google's reach, it can be reasonable to expect that the "Unions Suck" project extended to the American populace as a whole. We just do not know how far it went.
- dragonwriter 5y ago
  Capitalism’s “unions suck” project has a much broader target than the American populace as a whole, and has for longer than Google has existed. Any corporation joining in when it gets to nontrivial size is...not at all surprising.
4ec0755f5522 5y ago
When I was very young I worked a tough job that had a mandatory union and it was quite terrible / weak. Working conditions were pretty bad, physical labor, etc. But it was not until I worked a job with no union that I realized every element of that job that didn't suck was due to the union. For example we had supervisors but they didn't follow you around and micromanage you. You were just expected to do your job. If you didn't you would be reprimanded of course, but no one was on your case at all. Supervisors had to show you a base level of respect: there were rules on that stuff. There were a lot of rules, actually, and even though the union didn't have a lot of power I'm pretty sure every single positive one, anything that gave employees even a sliver of autonomy and power, were things that the union fought for and got for us. I still was kind of anti-union after that. "Anti Union" is the wrong phrasing, it was more... I was very suspicious of their structure, their own profit motive(s) etc. People working for the union had it so much better than the people actually doing the work, and we were the ones paying for and funding it, right? That aspect of it I never got over, but I now think that it may have been the wrong point of view. I have recently come around full swing and am 100% pro union. And it is stories like this. Starbucks, Google, Amazon, these companies will spend millions to fight unions. This is prima facie evidence to me that unions benefit workers. These companies all talk the same talk: "we believe companies work best when team members can work directly with the company with no union in the way". As though Amazon warehouse workers have some kind of communication path to improve their working conditions when they are being managed and fired by an AI. What a buncha fkn BS. Things cost. Good things cost money. You are paying for someone to fight for your interests and not the company's interest. Maybe that is worth paying for. And if you don't pay money to a union to fight you pay with your physical health, your safety, your respect, your mental health. If you work for Amazon you pay with your life when they threaten to fire you if you try to leave in order to hide from a hurricane. We should all be in unions.
- joebob42 5y ago
  Just a note: I agree that spending millions fighting unions is strong evidence unions are bad for the company. It's not necessarily obvious this means unions are good for the employees.
jjmorrison 5y ago
Google employees unionizing is super hypocritical. If you disagree with the big evil monopoly, then leave and give up the crazy salary. Can't have it both ways. As long as all the smart people stay there, they'll keep being the big evil monopoly. Best case is more placating and pretending.
- swongel 5y ago
  These damn employees, what are they thinking that they could better their employment and lives. They're a bunch of hypocrites for wanting a better piece of the cake of the billion dollar extremely profitable company they built. Won't someone please think of the poor shareholders? /s
  - jjmorrison 5y ago
    It's the opposite - Google is a giant, humanity-fucking ad platform. That can't really change, so any changes that come is just gonna be placating the employees so they stop complaining and keep building the giant, humanity-fucking ad platform. Might feel a bit better, but if you really care, quit!
parkingrift 5y ago
I don’t need to be convinced. I don’t like unions, and I think there is likely a better alternative than a centuries old idea. The thing I personally dislike the most is the all or nothing aspect. I don’t want to be compelled to join and union or compelled to pay union dues. I don’t want to be in a union, and I don’t mind bargaining on my own behalf as an individual.
ryzvonusef 5y ago
I think it's because Unions have been replaced by other mode of employee empowerment: stock options. Think from the point of the Employee: 1- Union Provides rights; but the employee feels that most of the basic rights are either already provided, or if not, should be provided by legislation not by union action now, so better vote in your favorite politician rather than fiddle with a union. 2- Union provide benefits; but employee might feel the benefit provided by stock options supersede any benefit provided by union (stonks over pensions, basically) 3- Union provided job security; but people don't care that now. For themselves, the idea of one long term job with benefits is no longer relevant, better to work a few years, encash stocks and move with a higher signup bonus and a pay increase higher than any company raise. For their fellow employees, you might NOT want to have job stability for the dick working next to you. If they are fired, all the better for your job, your stock not affected by their poor performance.If an entire department needs to be removed because their work is obsolete (say, ICE specific dept being useless in the new EV world for example) you might not want the dead weight. 4- Union provided social benefit; but linked to example above, instead of the dead weight employees being forcefully kept employed by the company, and hindering your work, you would much rather the govt allow you to kick them out, allow you to increase efficiency and raise stock price, and then TAX you... and provide them social security benefit, while they train for new work or whatever. You are still morally satisfied because the social benefit still takes care of them, but they are not hurting your work (and your stock price), so you don't feel irritated by them. -And many other such benefits in a similar vein. ---- TL;DR: employees want the benefits that unions negotiated with companies (job security, health care) to be replaced by govt provided options instead (universal medicare, social security) and they want to be left alone to succeed and earn those stock options. Basically, Tax me once a year and then leave me alone to work. ---- Caveat: I'm not American, (or from any developed country for that matter) This is just my personal understanding from observing habits and social comments and actions of silicon valley types. E&OE.
robotburrito 5y ago
What really needs to happen is the unionization of the second class they employ. These people do literally the same jobs as the people they used to sit next to. Sit through the same "OMG aren't we so great at changing the world!" team meetings, put in the same insane hours (my partner was limited to 40 hours a week, yet they are all working over time to keep up appearances and hope they get actually hired full time). She did not get paid for these hours, everyone just puts in the time so they can keep up with the people they are compared against, the full timers. Yet once time for the team to celebrate comes, the door gets shut on them, as they are contingent workers. Showing them the same rewards would possibly make them seem like real employees worthy of praise. Hence, they sit alone in their empty open office, sometimes crying, hearing the cheers of their team in the next office as they slice that cake or watching them leave the office building to go to a wonderful day in the golden gate park. Don't even get me started on having to hear the people doing identical work to them talk about buying homes in SF etc. If these people banned together, they might gain some power.
- commandlinefan 5y ago
  > second class Does this refer to contractors?
- WFHRenaissance 5y ago
  Can you elaborate on who this second class is?
  - robotburrito 5y ago
    Engineers, artists, etc hired as "temp" workers. Mostly will work there a year until they are cycled out for someone else as to not have to treat them like full timers.
mikkergp 5y ago
While I wouldn’t consider myself pro-union, I’m even more skeptical of a companies anti-union messaging.
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jcranberry 5y ago
I think I remember this. IIRC google's story were that they were fired because they were sharing internal documents and keeping track of other employees one-on-ones, medical aptmts, family meetings, etc. The NYT article does a decent job of going over a timeline of everything. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/02/18/magazine/google-revolt.html https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/02/18/magazine/goog...
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
laweijfmvo 5y ago
> Kara Silverstein, Google’s human resources director said that she “like[d] the idea” of the op-ed, but that it should be executed so that “there would be no fingerprints and not Google specific.” Should tell you everything you need to know about your company's HR department's true interests.
jedberg 5y ago
A lot of people have this terrible notion of what a union is, where they force you to do things and set wages and work hours. But I suspect a union for programmers would look more like the Actors union or screenwriters union in Hollywood. They would negotiate minimum rates and benefits, but top performers would still be able to get significantly more. The union just sets the minimums.
- floatingatoll 5y ago
  Is it possible to take a page from the "YC Standard Deal" model and create a "Union Standard Deal" for tech workers, that offers an opinionated and non-comprehensive view of the basic necessities that any tech worker union should demand? Tech is known for shooting the moon, but if we can stand up opinionated examples of "minimum viable bargains", maybe that would help everyone grasp what's being proposed, and contrast the MVB with their local union's offerings.
  - jedberg 5y ago
    Part of the reason that the writers guild and screen actors guild works is because they have a single union that represents everyone with all employers, and their union members won't work with employers who don't honor the union agreement. So it would need to be similar. A single programmers union that sets minimums, where union members won't work for companies that don't follow the union rules. So like in Hollywood a tiny production will not follow union rules but are limited to using up-and-coming actors who aren't in the union. Startups would be similar -- they could hire up-and-comers, or agree to follow the union rules, one of which is not hiring anyone not in the union.
    - floatingatoll 5y ago
      Okay, so, is there a relative comparison of available union pricing plans and their offered features and the cut they take per paycheck? We have this for AWS/GCP, and for app stores, so what’s the equivalent in tech unions?
julienb_sea 5y ago
I don't know that it's surprising or disappointing that Google was exploring PR related to their recent employee activism scandals. It would seem pretty incompetent for them to just ignore the problem and hope it goes away. As you can see from HR's comment threads, it's not an easy discussion to have and arguments for and against unions are painted as biased propaganda in either direction.
mlindner 5y ago
No surprise here, and not something I'd personally be against anyway. Not sure why any Googler would unionize anyway, they already get paid more than most of the rest of the valley. Maybe a union would drop their pay down to levels closer to the rest of the valley.
VirusNewbie 5y ago
Proponents of unions seem not understand that unions only exist to enrich existing members and not benefit society, future members, the profession, or anything else. There's a reason why new teachers, doing the same job with the same title, make less than half of what teachers with seniority do. There's a reason why many unions use credentialing as a way to restrict the free market and the only way new people can join is through nepotism. Do unions proivde some benefits? Sure. Certainly the threat of a union can also provide said benefits. But unions, like all centralized power structures, eventually become corrupt and end up doing harm at the cost of protecting a small group.
- palmetieri2000 5y ago
  This is just outright not true on a global level, maybe in the US, but even then it seems unlikely. Many of the actions a union will take will do things that do not just 'enrich' its members. Here in Australia, unions will often use their organisational power to lobby government for things like increased safety standards, fair treatment for workers regarding discrimination or after an injury, maternity leave etc. I dont know if you can call keeping your salary during a a time of hardship 'enrichment'. Further, in Australia we have something called an enterprise agreement (or an 'award' depending), which all workers whom fill the description of the task automatically fall under, this sets the minimum salaries, expected working hours, penalty rates for holiday work, etc. When the government (usually at the behest of an industry or company) wishes to alter the EA, they must negotiate with the union whom will act on behalf of the workers covered by the EA to argue for their desired changes (or things that shouldn't change). These changes are then applied to everyone who works under that EA, union or not. So, here at least, most workers passively benefit from union activity. Caveat: Probably not 100% correct with minutia of EA and awards, been a while since I took the class that covered this.
black_13 5y ago
agumonkey 5y ago
I wonder if big places like Xerox PARC were like Google. It seems (of course I'm reading the legends from Kay and others) it was a lot more innocent and never deviated from good spirit and good work. Or maybe they also turned into a game theoretic mine field.
vgeek 5y ago
Andrew Carnegie and Henry Clay Frick would be proud. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homestead_strike https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homestead_strike The whole "we're highly paid, ruggedly individualistic engineer" schtick buys into what the companies want. Sure, you may make 400k total comp as a SWE, but what if it were 500k had your employer was not been actively plotting ways to distort the labor market through collusion with competing companies. If activist shareholders understand that they need large blocks of shares to drive change, why wouldn't workers organize into blocks to drive change in their own favor? https://www.cnet.com/news/apple-google-others-settle-anti-poaching-lawsuit-for-415-million/ https://www.cnet.com/news/apple-google-others-settle-anti-po...
- gremlinsinc 5y ago
  Most of these corps have cafe's, and people commute, and if everybody in SWE field is making $500k and housing/rent shows it... the union should also then fight for people at restaurants, etc to get compensated by the same companies that employ them, because it's gonna be kinda shitty living in a big city where basically the only rec activities are work and going home because service industry is a ghost town. I agree it can make life better for people in the co, just saying unions need to join forces and create syndicates of unions and really bring teeth against the powers of big companies.
choppaface 5y ago
Wow this got run down to page 3 really fast, like mid-day. Would really be curious how many flags it got, and what's the ranking story here. In particular because the OP mentions union-busting firms doing things like writing high-profile op-eds w/out connection to Google. That's major manipulation.
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RickJWagner 5y ago
`Generally I don't favor unions. I think carried to extremes they lead to inefficiencies that make labor worse. (Others may feel differently.) But a small part of me wants Google to end up with a nice, fat union. It may teach management that they should be careful with what kind of (disengenuous) messaging they put forth.

420 points by yoelo 5y ago

What exactly did anyone think the “internal communications” department did and why it was so large, other than this sort of thing?

raxxorrax 5y ago

throwaway75787 5y ago
They don't need to. These companies have self-sufficient intelligence operations, and they employ seasoned experts. At an outfit like Google, and that may involve too many people overriding checks to be worth the risk of a leak. It's hard to say, I've never worked for Google. The Pinkertons are still active in union-busting, and they are retained by shiny "Great Place To Work"-type businesses. They're just covert now. When somebody is giving off too many pre-crime vibes at that kind of business, HR can easily get rid of them for unrelated reasons, and gaslight them into thinking it was their fault all along. Never talk to HR. They are the secret police.
- whatshisface 5y ago
  They'd be secret police if anyone believed that HR's job wasn't to protect the company.
  - maybelsyrup 5y ago
    Lots of people are naive about HR's real purpose. In my experience people see them as neutral arbiters, and go to them for help with personnel issues never thinking that they're seen as potentially threatening to the organization.
- s1artibartfast 5y ago
  >Never talk to HR. They are the secret police Like the police, they serve a function. talk to HR when you would talk to the police. When someone else is doing something illegal to you, and after you made sure that you have no exposure.
AlexandrB 5y ago
> Unions just spread hatred and anything they say could be classified as hate speech. Man, companies really hate negotiating wages/benefits with a party that has equal power. Reminds me of: Michael Scott : I am a victim of a hate crime. Stanley knows what I'm talking about. Stanley : That's not what a hate crime is. Michael Scott : Well, I hated it, a lot, okay.
- raxxorrax 5y ago
  Sorry, it was an tongue in cheek comment not appropriate for HN. I believe the problem with censorship through the veneer of hate speech should be obvious. Only way to hinder corporate and state censorship being extended is if the factions that supported it come to their senses. They are far greater in numbers than those that thought it through.
  - AlexandrB 5y ago
    Oops. I'm rarely stumped by lack of a "/s" but that one got me!

mhoad 5y ago

Seems to have worked amazingly well based on all the times I recall reading the comments of stories posted here involving unions.

noah_buddy 5y ago
I do wonder how much of HN culture is affected by very smart people (in one domain) being subconsciously led to believe things by the machinations of tech. As smart people, they take very passionate positions on issues they believe strongly. Perhaps they wouldn't have believed them so strongly in a vacuum though?
- BuckRogers 5y ago
  You nailed something that I've noticed. Highly competent and intelligent people tend to lean libertarian in my experience. It's only when they get cancer, or finally meet some form of humility that they see the inherent advantages they had over others for what it is. Simply a roll of the dice. Competent, capable, hardworking people often fail to see the bigger picture, and dismiss others that aren't like them. If you have all 3 of those traits, which are both from your discipline and genetic predisposition, the world looks like a meritocracy, and it isn't.
  - AndrewUnmuted 5y ago
    > Simply a roll of the dice. In that case, so is this very conversation, the fact that we're both on this website, and even the fact that we are both interested in tech. If it's simply a roll of the dice, then nearly all aspects to existence are pointless, there's no point in trying to think for oneself, etc. Perhaps this is what you truly intend to convey, but until you explicitly state this, this is an incoherent perspective.
    - shadowgovt 5y ago
      The author's point was that "inherent" advantages and third-party support are more to luck than to any intrinsic value a person brings to the table. Having conversations on a website is a choice. Interest in tech is probably a blend of luck and choice (hard to be interested in something you're never exposed to, and hard to sustain interest in an environment where people consistently discourage it; people ending up in those situations are the "roll of the dice" the author is referring to). In short, justifying a lack of empathy with "they made their choices" underestimates the amount people do not choose their circumstances in life.

mrits 5y ago

Yeah, let's focus on the company that pays their employees 15x minimum wage and has top tier vacation, healthcare, and maternity/paternity leave.

mrweasel 5y ago
Is that also the case for their janitorial staff?
cool_dude85 5y ago
None of that makes it ok to bust unions.
- ergocoder 5y ago
  But it does point out that this is not a union that will improve worker's condition like a regular union. The Google union aims to stop Google to work on certain projects. Many don't agree with unions. What should those people do? Make another union? If people don't want to work on DoD contract, they can transfer to other teams. There are like 1000 teams in Google. Internal transfer is not hard.
vmception 5y ago
Its a trillion dollar company with some/many employees delivering quite a bit more value than they are paid 1) Collectively getting the better stake of the pie influences other organizations compensation methods/amounts 2) the market is telling employees what to do, meaning that it doesn’t matter that an individual can do far more work for less pay somewhere else - just don’t do those things.
- sonotathrowaway 5y ago
  The underpayment was a top priority of google, to the point that individual executives committed crimes that should have led to their incarceration - had the DoJ interpreted the law according to its text rather than according to their political ideology. As it stands, all the DoJ was capable of was issuing guidance that acknowledged that crimes were committed that should have led to jail time, and politely asks corporate executives to not commit those crimes again, on pain of another chiding letter.

hdjjhhvvhga 5y ago

I don't believe it's only Google, and I don't think it's particularly secret.

rsj_hn 5y ago
Yes, that companies don't like unions and do what they can to discourage unionization isn't newsworthy. Finding a company that encourages unionization would be newsworthy!
- AndrewUnmuted 5y ago
  > companies don't like unions and do what they can to discourage unionization Are you sure? All of the big tech companies are entering one of the most union-entrenched industries in the US: media.
xhkkffbf 5y ago
Exactly. The NYT had some breathless story about this supposedly once secret fact. Yet their own management was pushing back hard on the Wirecutter union. If the management wanted to really confuse the line workers, they would celebrate the union with some reverse reverse psychology.
gjsman-1000 5y ago
The New York Times has had an anti-tech vendetta for a while now. Most likely, in my cynical worldview, because tech has hurt their subscription numbers immensely, not because they want to do the world a service. An example of this is when they published a whole story about a guy who became radicalized from YouTube... and then became unradicalized a few months later without doing anything radical. But someone could have stayed radicalized so Google needs to censor YouTube and hand back authority to the fact checkers and trusted news, which conveniently happens to be... The New York Times. Another example would be when The New York Times wrote a whole shock article about the shocking nature of dark patterns in technology and the irresponsibility and corruption of Big Tech for using them. Except that their own unsubscribe system is loaded with dark patterns that are even worse. Do I think that YouTube isn't partially responsible? Of course they have some responsibility, but The New York Times and other news sources are capitalizing on the situation for their own interests.

mandmandam 5y ago

> Google fired the workers in 2019 after they organized against the company’s contracts with immigration detention agencies. Wooow. That was at the height of ICE being shown as deeply corrupt and racist child abusers. (They still are, but it hasn't been used as a stick to beat Biden with because 'reasons'). >the NLRB issued a federal complaint against Google for illegally firing and surveilling the four software engineers Illegal surveillance. By fucking Google. Scary scary shit. > Kara Silverstein, Google’s human resources director said that she “like[d] the idea” of the op-ed, but that it should be executed so that “there would be no fingerprints and not Google specific.” So, she knew how uncool/illegal that looks. Schwifty. Looking at how other outlets have covered this - looking at you, NYT - it's pretty fucking awful that the best coverage is coming from Vice.

jeffbee 5y ago
This article and other I've seen are misrepresenting the role of the NLRB in these matters. The NLRB adjudicates these cases. They don't bring them. When these journalists say that the NLRB issued a complaint or an accusation, what actually happened is the employees brought a complaint and the NLRB declined, so far, to dismiss it (and actually in this matter the NLRB did dismiss it once, but then later under a different administration they reinstated it.)
newaccount2021 5y ago
user_7832 5y ago
>> Kara Silverstein, Google’s human resources director said that she “like[d] the idea” of the op-ed, but that it should be executed so that “there would be no fingerprints and not Google specific.” > So, she knew how uncool/illegal that looks. Schwifty. Guess who's currently the "Director of Integrity" at Google. I sure hope it's someone with integrity who would never want their actions hidden.
- throwaway2048 5y ago
  I'm sure shes very interested in keeping up the appearence of Google's Integrity

queuebert 5y ago

Imputing altruistic morals to profit-seeking entities and then continually being surprised and offended when companies act shady puts employees in a pointlessly weak position. Instead, treat the relationship as adversarial and come ready for battle every day against the legal structure designed to exploit you for the benefit of distant shareholders. There is no shame in fighting for yourself. You are worth it.

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3pt14159 5y ago
What if adversarial systems result in asymmetric arms races and the game theoretic best move is to work for a corporation that is so short sighted as to go to battle against their own employees and to work for them diligently and intelligently? Because I see a whole lot happier employees at Tesla than I do at General Motors. I'm not saying this is an all-or-nothing thing. I'd join a union if I was working for a certain type of employer (company town, federal government, etc) but when it comes to technology companies, I got to say it's pretty good here.
- outside1234 5y ago
  Are they happier at Tesla? Because I hear it is pretty terrible place to work as a software engineer.
  - onlyrealcuzzo 5y ago
    I assumed it must've been the non-manufacturer people who loved it. Because there have been an absurd amount of complaints from the people in manufacturing. I guess, it could be awful at Tesla, but maybe GM is even worse? I know GM had a REALLY bad reputation in the days of the NUMMI plant.
  - ejb999 5y ago
    given the job market, while it may 'suck', clearly nobody is making them stay. i.e. may suck on a day-to-day basis, but get rewarded richly after x amount of time Almost anybody can complain about their job, but in this industry, in this job market right now - anyone staying is staying because the pluses outweigh the minuses.

jimbob45 5y ago

I'm guessing that this is related to the Epic case? Seems incredible that Google/Epic/Apple have decided that the ongoing lawsuit is worth all the negative PR that these doc dumps have brought.

mandevil 5y ago
Different issue were Google is being sued. This is related to NLRB rulings on the four union organizers Google fired back in 2019- they sued for illegally being fired for union organizing work. Under the previous administration the behavior was ignored, but the current administration is much more charitable towards union work, so the lawsuit is back and Google is desperately trying to hide everything it can. Google can settle this by re-employing the organizers and ceasing to retaliate against union organizing work, as they are legally required to do in the US. However, they have decided on a different path.

StevePerkins 5y ago

Is there really anything here, if you remove the 'scare quotes'?

greesil 5y ago
You could read the article.
noah_buddy 5y ago
Nothing you couldn't glean with a common sense approach to material interests at play in a workplace. Of course a corporation wants to extract as much wealth with as little overhead as possible. Outside of ineffectual executives, there are few that orient companies towards making less money intentionally. Analyzing every choice made in a work place through this lens is both dead simple and continually enlightening. Some commentator once noted that those elite with the highest levels of wealth (say top 1%) don't disbelieve Marx's analysis of the world and capital distribution. They understand it quite well, they're just on the opposite side of the field from the proles and they leverage that analysis to keep it that way. The commentator continued that when you think about it this way, business papers and similar sources of info are actually quite useful for a Marxian lens. Those with capital know that capital is biggest driving force, so that's of course what they're going to focus on.
- Aerroon 5y ago
  >Some commentator once noted that those elite with the highest levels of wealth (say top 1%) don't disbelieve Marx's analysis of the world and capital distribution. Top 1% global income is about $60,000 a year. Many Americans are above this, yet I doubt that they feel strongly about what you mentioned.
  - noah_buddy 5y ago
    Perhaps top 1% contextually would be a better upper bound, though the exact number is an issue of economic statistics and not really the point I'm making. More so that a Marxian view of choices is often a very parsimonious way to understand the world, not to say it's the only way.

switch007 5y ago

Next week: > Google Had Secret Project to ‘Convince’ Social Media users that everyone convinces Employees ‘That Unions Suck’

0xbadcafebee 5y ago

I would rather work in a co-op rather than in a union. If everyone owns the company and the whole makes decisions rather than a tiny minority, the workers get taken care of, making unions irrelevant.

chris_wot 5y ago

Well, on the flip side, unions had a not so secret project to convince employees that Google sucks.

vegai_ 5y ago

I slightly fear how much of my own thinking is there just because some corporation or another big entity wanted me to think like that and spent considerable resources to make it happen.

hermannj314 5y ago
I recycle, get vaccinated, care about global climate change and am concerned about police brutality all because large entities convinced me to be. Without them, I am not sure I would have enough personal experience to know these are things I am supposed to care about. Manipulating the public opinion is a tool to make change happen. It isn't inherently good or bad.
steve_adams_86 5y ago
It’s almost certainly true, but an accessible and rational strategy to combat that is to critically consider why you think anything that you do if you haven’t yet. Maybe that seems obvious written out, but it wasn’t to me at first. I felt a deep sense of being a product of my environment in a negative sense. I think what happened was that I began to see holes in my knowledge or understanding of things I thought I knew and it was a little unsettling. These days I just try to stop myself and ask: why do I think that? How far down the chain do I need to go in order to find concrete information? To some people this is probably very intuitive. And it is for most of us when it comes to matters of science. But what about your opinion of companies, products, or even people? I think we all get into habits of being influenced here - it’s literally in our genes and can be very covert. I guess in a sense this is like personal epistemology. It’s important to study on a macro scale, but also on a micro scale in individual day to day operations.
AnthonyMouse 5y ago
> I slightly fear how much of my own thinking is there just because some corporation or another big entity wanted me to think like that and spent considerable resources to make it happen. Now consider how much of the thinking of the people who believe the opposite is there just because some other big entity wanted them to think like that and spent considerable resources to make it happen. The one thing you can't outsource is critical thinking. Sorry, you have to do it yourself.

maupin 5y ago

"Do no evil." indeed.

billyjobob 5y ago
No, the motto was “Don’t be evil”. You can do as much evil as you like, so long as it’s justified by the goals of your totally-not-evil nature.
dietr1ch 5y ago
It was removed from the code of conduct long ago
- Crash0v3rid3 5y ago
  No it wasn't.

kingkawn 5y ago

A union is a business association among people who market, sell, and deliver the labor of a single individual. To repress these associations of business results in inefficiencies that obscure the true product of the market.

Jiro 5y ago
Attempting to convince employees of something is not repression.
- pogorniy 5y ago
  Deception
- kingkawn 5y ago
  Do you really believe that’s the full extent of Google’s anti-unionism?

ravenstine 5y ago

While my personal opinion is that, in today's age, many unions suck and that some industries need unions more than others, employers who even think they should psy-op their employees into action/inaction for the benefit of the employer should get screwed. I've heard some great things about how Google does things differently to create a better workplace for engineers and employees in general, but I'd seriously think thrice before taking a job there for many reasons including this one.

literallyaduck 5y ago

Google/Alphabet needs to be broken apart: "The National Labor Relations Act forbids employers from interfering with, restraining, or coercing employees in the exercise of rights relating to organizing, forming, joining or assisting a labor organization for collective bargaining purposes, or from working together to improve terms and conditions of employment, or refraining from any such activity. Similarly, labor organizations may not restrain or coerce employees in the exercise of these rights."

pogorniy 5y ago
It's super strange to observe your comment downvoted
deleted 5y ago
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mgaunard 5y ago

Unions only exist to protect mediocre people, and only cause harm to top performers. Wasn't Google supposed to be a place that only hires the best and brightest?

remus 5y ago
> Unions only exist to protect mediocre people, and only cause harm to top performers. I think this is far too broad a statement to be useful. I personally know of several cases where a union has helped defend an employee from illegal behaviour by their employer, for example. No doubt the individuals involved could have taken the employer to a tribunal if they were suitably motivated, but having the weight of the union behind them meant the issues were resolved quickly and correctly.
micromacrofoot 5y ago
If you have the wherewithal to constantly be a top performer... then why are you working for someone else to begin with? I think there's a point during everyone's career when a union could be useful. Maybe it's not apparently useful to you right now, but we'll all experience hardships at one point or another.

defaultprimate 5y ago

I mean Google is genuinely evil, but unions do suck. UAW, NEA, and AFL-CIO have been absolutely terrible for their respective industries.

Ginden 5y ago
Unions are organizations that transfer value from employer and non-union members (including not-employed-yet employees and customers) to union members. Long term effects of that transfer are rather unpredictable, because there are too many factors in economy.
- defaultprimate 5y ago
  No they aren't, they are organizations that utilize collective bargaining in place of productivity or efficiency increases in the labor force, thereby diluting the labor market with an artificial baseline at levels lower than the market would dictate otherwise. They don't transfer any value, they just reduce the overall value of the industry and provide the illusion that union members are receiving a satisfactory portion of this reduced value.

supergeek133 5y ago

Every major company I've worked for/with that has a large service workforce (Retail, MFG, etc) has "union avoidance" employees/training. I recall my first week as a Best Buy part time tech in 2002, we watched a video on how Unions are bad.

masklinn 5y ago
> "union avoidance" employees/training. The word you're looking for is "propaganda".
moduspol 5y ago
I mean from a business perspective if you're not doing any training then you're essentially just sitting on your hands waiting for the day employees unionize. And it's not like unions go out of their way to give a fair and complete picture of the up and downsides of a union. If you don't make the case to the employees, nobody else is going to.

reilly3000 5y ago

One of the typical arguments against unions has been that they take a lot of money from employees to pay for dues. I think that is a dated argument from a bygone era. With modern tech stack there is far less administrative overhead, and union meetings can be conducted virtually or async. Additionally, the relative dues for running a union in a tech setting are going to be a lot lower as a percentage of salaries as they tend to me much higher. If there are other arguments that somehow unions harm employees I’d love to hear them.

yupper32 5y ago

A lot of people seem confused why a lot of tech people aren't pushing for unions. For me it's simple: Tech has brought me from near poverty to pretty darn wealthy. Why mess with that? Could a union help increase wages even more? Maybe. Are we being paid too little compared to our output? Maybe. But at the same time I'm being paid more than I could have possibly imagined before I entered the field.

tyingq 5y ago
Makes sense. They might be initially more popular in areas where companies tend not to treat their technology folks well. Game development, for example. Though there are some things that are pretty universal and unions would help with. Things like non-compete agreements, ownership of code written in off work hours, collusion across companies to "not poach", and so on. I imagine some of that might be a lot worse if the state of California didn't happen to take the positions they do. If Texas were instead the hotbed for tech companies, I think unions might be more popular.
- gundmc 5y ago
  I think this is a big part of it. Unions at FAANG companies these days seem to be more a vehicle for social activists than winning rights for employees. If you don't agree with the goals of the union organizers, there doesn't seem to be a benefit of joining.
btmiller 5y ago
I tend to agreed because I’m very likely to retire/be financially independent much, much earlier than 65 thanks to my tech career.
ebdbdbdb 5y ago
timmg 5y ago
I agree. To take it one step further: I have a pretty good relationship with my employer (coincidentally, Google). I don't need or want a third party to get in the middle of it.

stjohnswarts 5y ago

Suck is relative. For google, unionization would suck as it depletes their power over employees. For employees in most situations it would help the common and probably hurt the "guru coders" more. There is plenty of evidence that unions can go awry (just like domineering employers) as well and a balanced approach and using historical references can help both sides.

bradleyjg 5y ago

It’s a real shame that the middle and upper classes in the US have abandoned having their teens work in favor of various, expensive, college application boosting fluff. I went to work at McDonalds at age 15 and was part of a union. I have direct experience with what that is like. I don’t need to get my knowledge on the subject from flamewars between people pushing ideological agendas (most of whom themselves have apparently never had direct experience.)

busterarm 5y ago
Shh, every time those of us who have been in actual unions and actually had terrible experiences voice our opinions we get downvoted into oblivion. It's not worth it, m8.
- jason0597 5y ago
  So the current arrangement of service workers being paid slave wages and given disgusting conditions is working fine?
  - busterarm 5y ago
    My three union jobs were service worker jobs; what are you trying to imply here?
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
  - AnthonyMouse 5y ago
    "This is fine" is not the same thing as "X is not the solution to this." Example better solution: UBI, so that those workers can tell the boss where to stick it without starving to death, and the company then has to offer better working conditions in order to convince anyone to show up.
  - bagacrap 5y ago
    I don't see how individual unions help solve this problem. A union that makes meaningful changes to conditions and wages at one employer would hobble that employer's ability to compete, they'd go out of business, and a non-unionized workforce/employer would replace them. This seems like a job for government and/or market forces. The latter actually have been working well recently near where I live, as the labor shortage has caused many employers in the restaurant industry to raise starting salaries to ~$20/hr before tips. That said, this article is about tech workers, not line cooks, so any conclusions drawn from union experiences at $COFFEECHAIN are perhaps not easily mappable to Google.

shtopointo 5y ago

There's a valid argument to be made that unions do suck. You could call it informing people just as much as "convincing" them.

s_dev 5y ago
That argument should be made by a professor in their college lectures. Not as part of induction procedure to the company. It should be legal but it's actually hilarious that this happens in the US. It would be like a landlord mandating a tenant watch a video on why tenancy rights are a bad idea.
- shtopointo 5y ago
  What's the issue with that? They present a lot of BS in company intro meetings. It's "drink the kool aid time" as far as I am concerned.
  - s_dev 5y ago
    >drink the kool aid time That's slang for swallowing propaganda and committing suicide. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drinking_the_Kool-Aid https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drinking_the_Kool-Aid
    - shtopointo 5y ago
      I know – read it as "propaganda time", i.e. activate the skeptical part of your brain, and take everything they say with a grain of salt.

disabled 5y ago

With Google's reach, it can be reasonable to expect that the "Unions Suck" project extended to the American populace as a whole. We just do not know how far it went.

dragonwriter 5y ago
Capitalism’s “unions suck” project has a much broader target than the American populace as a whole, and has for longer than Google has existed. Any corporation joining in when it gets to nontrivial size is...not at all surprising.

4ec0755f5522 5y ago

When I was very young I worked a tough job that had a mandatory union and it was quite terrible / weak. Working conditions were pretty bad, physical labor, etc. But it was not until I worked a job with no union that I realized every element of that job that didn't suck was due to the union. For example we had supervisors but they didn't follow you around and micromanage you. You were just expected to do your job. If you didn't you would be reprimanded of course, but no one was on your case at all. Supervisors had to show you a base level of respect: there were rules on that stuff. There were a lot of rules, actually, and even though the union didn't have a lot of power I'm pretty sure every single positive one, anything that gave employees even a sliver of autonomy and power, were things that the union fought for and got for us. I still was kind of anti-union after that. "Anti Union" is the wrong phrasing, it was more... I was very suspicious of their structure, their own profit motive(s) etc. People working for the union had it so much better than the people actually doing the work, and we were the ones paying for and funding it, right? That aspect of it I never got over, but I now think that it may have been the wrong point of view. I have recently come around full swing and am 100% pro union. And it is stories like this. Starbucks, Google, Amazon, these companies will spend millions to fight unions. This is prima facie evidence to me that unions benefit workers. These companies all talk the same talk: "we believe companies work best when team members can work directly with the company with no union in the way". As though Amazon warehouse workers have some kind of communication path to improve their working conditions when they are being managed and fired by an AI. What a buncha fkn BS. Things cost. Good things cost money. You are paying for someone to fight for your interests and not the company's interest. Maybe that is worth paying for. And if you don't pay money to a union to fight you pay with your physical health, your safety, your respect, your mental health. If you work for Amazon you pay with your life when they threaten to fire you if you try to leave in order to hide from a hurricane. We should all be in unions.

joebob42 5y ago
Just a note: I agree that spending millions fighting unions is strong evidence unions are bad for the company. It's not necessarily obvious this means unions are good for the employees.

jjmorrison 5y ago

Google employees unionizing is super hypocritical. If you disagree with the big evil monopoly, then leave and give up the crazy salary. Can't have it both ways. As long as all the smart people stay there, they'll keep being the big evil monopoly. Best case is more placating and pretending.

swongel 5y ago
These damn employees, what are they thinking that they could better their employment and lives. They're a bunch of hypocrites for wanting a better piece of the cake of the billion dollar extremely profitable company they built. Won't someone please think of the poor shareholders? /s
- jjmorrison 5y ago
  It's the opposite - Google is a giant, humanity-fucking ad platform. That can't really change, so any changes that come is just gonna be placating the employees so they stop complaining and keep building the giant, humanity-fucking ad platform. Might feel a bit better, but if you really care, quit!

parkingrift 5y ago

I don’t need to be convinced. I don’t like unions, and I think there is likely a better alternative than a centuries old idea. The thing I personally dislike the most is the all or nothing aspect. I don’t want to be compelled to join and union or compelled to pay union dues. I don’t want to be in a union, and I don’t mind bargaining on my own behalf as an individual.

ryzvonusef 5y ago

I think it's because Unions have been replaced by other mode of employee empowerment: stock options. Think from the point of the Employee: 1- Union Provides rights; but the employee feels that most of the basic rights are either already provided, or if not, should be provided by legislation not by union action now, so better vote in your favorite politician rather than fiddle with a union. 2- Union provide benefits; but employee might feel the benefit provided by stock options supersede any benefit provided by union (stonks over pensions, basically) 3- Union provided job security; but people don't care that now. For themselves, the idea of one long term job with benefits is no longer relevant, better to work a few years, encash stocks and move with a higher signup bonus and a pay increase higher than any company raise. For their fellow employees, you might NOT want to have job stability for the dick working next to you. If they are fired, all the better for your job, your stock not affected by their poor performance.If an entire department needs to be removed because their work is obsolete (say, ICE specific dept being useless in the new EV world for example) you might not want the dead weight. 4- Union provided social benefit; but linked to example above, instead of the dead weight employees being forcefully kept employed by the company, and hindering your work, you would much rather the govt allow you to kick them out, allow you to increase efficiency and raise stock price, and then TAX you... and provide them social security benefit, while they train for new work or whatever. You are still morally satisfied because the social benefit still takes care of them, but they are not hurting your work (and your stock price), so you don't feel irritated by them. -And many other such benefits in a similar vein. ---- TL;DR: employees want the benefits that unions negotiated with companies (job security, health care) to be replaced by govt provided options instead (universal medicare, social security) and they want to be left alone to succeed and earn those stock options. Basically, Tax me once a year and then leave me alone to work. ---- Caveat: I'm not American, (or from any developed country for that matter) This is just my personal understanding from observing habits and social comments and actions of silicon valley types. E&OE.

robotburrito 5y ago

What really needs to happen is the unionization of the second class they employ. These people do literally the same jobs as the people they used to sit next to. Sit through the same "OMG aren't we so great at changing the world!" team meetings, put in the same insane hours (my partner was limited to 40 hours a week, yet they are all working over time to keep up appearances and hope they get actually hired full time). She did not get paid for these hours, everyone just puts in the time so they can keep up with the people they are compared against, the full timers. Yet once time for the team to celebrate comes, the door gets shut on them, as they are contingent workers. Showing them the same rewards would possibly make them seem like real employees worthy of praise. Hence, they sit alone in their empty open office, sometimes crying, hearing the cheers of their team in the next office as they slice that cake or watching them leave the office building to go to a wonderful day in the golden gate park. Don't even get me started on having to hear the people doing identical work to them talk about buying homes in SF etc. If these people banned together, they might gain some power.

commandlinefan 5y ago
> second class Does this refer to contractors?
WFHRenaissance 5y ago
Can you elaborate on who this second class is?
- robotburrito 5y ago
  Engineers, artists, etc hired as "temp" workers. Mostly will work there a year until they are cycled out for someone else as to not have to treat them like full timers.

mikkergp 5y ago

While I wouldn’t consider myself pro-union, I’m even more skeptical of a companies anti-union messaging.

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jcranberry 5y ago

I think I remember this. IIRC google's story were that they were fired because they were sharing internal documents and keeping track of other employees one-on-ones, medical aptmts, family meetings, etc. The NYT article does a decent job of going over a timeline of everything. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/02/18/magazine/google-revolt.html https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/02/18/magazine/goog...

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laweijfmvo 5y ago

> Kara Silverstein, Google’s human resources director said that she “like[d] the idea” of the op-ed, but that it should be executed so that “there would be no fingerprints and not Google specific.” Should tell you everything you need to know about your company's HR department's true interests.

jedberg 5y ago

A lot of people have this terrible notion of what a union is, where they force you to do things and set wages and work hours. But I suspect a union for programmers would look more like the Actors union or screenwriters union in Hollywood. They would negotiate minimum rates and benefits, but top performers would still be able to get significantly more. The union just sets the minimums.

floatingatoll 5y ago
Is it possible to take a page from the "YC Standard Deal" model and create a "Union Standard Deal" for tech workers, that offers an opinionated and non-comprehensive view of the basic necessities that any tech worker union should demand? Tech is known for shooting the moon, but if we can stand up opinionated examples of "minimum viable bargains", maybe that would help everyone grasp what's being proposed, and contrast the MVB with their local union's offerings.
- jedberg 5y ago
  Part of the reason that the writers guild and screen actors guild works is because they have a single union that represents everyone with all employers, and their union members won't work with employers who don't honor the union agreement. So it would need to be similar. A single programmers union that sets minimums, where union members won't work for companies that don't follow the union rules. So like in Hollywood a tiny production will not follow union rules but are limited to using up-and-coming actors who aren't in the union. Startups would be similar -- they could hire up-and-comers, or agree to follow the union rules, one of which is not hiring anyone not in the union.
  - floatingatoll 5y ago
    Okay, so, is there a relative comparison of available union pricing plans and their offered features and the cut they take per paycheck? We have this for AWS/GCP, and for app stores, so what’s the equivalent in tech unions?

julienb_sea 5y ago

I don't know that it's surprising or disappointing that Google was exploring PR related to their recent employee activism scandals. It would seem pretty incompetent for them to just ignore the problem and hope it goes away. As you can see from HR's comment threads, it's not an easy discussion to have and arguments for and against unions are painted as biased propaganda in either direction.

mlindner 5y ago

No surprise here, and not something I'd personally be against anyway. Not sure why any Googler would unionize anyway, they already get paid more than most of the rest of the valley. Maybe a union would drop their pay down to levels closer to the rest of the valley.

VirusNewbie 5y ago

Proponents of unions seem not understand that unions only exist to enrich existing members and not benefit society, future members, the profession, or anything else. There's a reason why new teachers, doing the same job with the same title, make less than half of what teachers with seniority do. There's a reason why many unions use credentialing as a way to restrict the free market and the only way new people can join is through nepotism. Do unions proivde some benefits? Sure. Certainly the threat of a union can also provide said benefits. But unions, like all centralized power structures, eventually become corrupt and end up doing harm at the cost of protecting a small group.

palmetieri2000 5y ago
This is just outright not true on a global level, maybe in the US, but even then it seems unlikely. Many of the actions a union will take will do things that do not just 'enrich' its members. Here in Australia, unions will often use their organisational power to lobby government for things like increased safety standards, fair treatment for workers regarding discrimination or after an injury, maternity leave etc. I dont know if you can call keeping your salary during a a time of hardship 'enrichment'. Further, in Australia we have something called an enterprise agreement (or an 'award' depending), which all workers whom fill the description of the task automatically fall under, this sets the minimum salaries, expected working hours, penalty rates for holiday work, etc. When the government (usually at the behest of an industry or company) wishes to alter the EA, they must negotiate with the union whom will act on behalf of the workers covered by the EA to argue for their desired changes (or things that shouldn't change). These changes are then applied to everyone who works under that EA, union or not. So, here at least, most workers passively benefit from union activity. Caveat: Probably not 100% correct with minutia of EA and awards, been a while since I took the class that covered this.

black_13 5y ago

agumonkey 5y ago

I wonder if big places like Xerox PARC were like Google. It seems (of course I'm reading the legends from Kay and others) it was a lot more innocent and never deviated from good spirit and good work. Or maybe they also turned into a game theoretic mine field.

vgeek 5y ago

Andrew Carnegie and Henry Clay Frick would be proud. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homestead_strike https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homestead_strike The whole "we're highly paid, ruggedly individualistic engineer" schtick buys into what the companies want. Sure, you may make 400k total comp as a SWE, but what if it were 500k had your employer was not been actively plotting ways to distort the labor market through collusion with competing companies. If activist shareholders understand that they need large blocks of shares to drive change, why wouldn't workers organize into blocks to drive change in their own favor? https://www.cnet.com/news/apple-google-others-settle-anti-poaching-lawsuit-for-415-million/ https://www.cnet.com/news/apple-google-others-settle-anti-po...

gremlinsinc 5y ago
Most of these corps have cafe's, and people commute, and if everybody in SWE field is making $500k and housing/rent shows it... the union should also then fight for people at restaurants, etc to get compensated by the same companies that employ them, because it's gonna be kinda shitty living in a big city where basically the only rec activities are work and going home because service industry is a ghost town. I agree it can make life better for people in the co, just saying unions need to join forces and create syndicates of unions and really bring teeth against the powers of big companies.

choppaface 5y ago

Wow this got run down to page 3 really fast, like mid-day. Would really be curious how many flags it got, and what's the ranking story here. In particular because the OP mentions union-busting firms doing things like writing high-profile op-eds w/out connection to Google. That's major manipulation.

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RickJWagner 5y ago

`Generally I don't favor unions. I think carried to extremes they lead to inefficiencies that make labor worse. (Others may feel differently.) But a small part of me wants Google to end up with a nice, fat union. It may teach management that they should be careful with what kind of (disengenuous) messaging they put forth.