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Bandcamp Unionizes
- wootland 4y agoI wonder if there can be more ephemeral union like entities that help the labor market. I'd love to see a community that helps people organize strikes and coordinate between multiple companies. Strikes are one of the strongest tools a union has, but you don't need a union to organize them. It feels like we have the technology to create ad-hoc unions and support general labor advocacy and direct action without the need for a formal union (not saying they are necessarily bad).
- pasquinelli 4y agowildcat strikes, which you're describing, are illegal in the united states.
- wootland 4y agoWildcat strikes aren't illegal if you're not in a union: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wildcat_strike_action#Legality https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wildcat_strike_action#Legality
- unreal37 4y agoIt's not a wildcat strike if you're not in a union. It's just refusing to show up to work.
- kevviiinn 4y agoBut if it's an organized effort in order to get management to do something, it is a strike
- kevviiinn 4y agoNot sure why you think that, here's the first line from your source >Wildcat strikes have been considered illegal in the United States since 1935 Sounds to me like the only time it becomes legal is if you were in a union and then leave while still employed at the same place
- wootland 4y agoFrom the article: > Nevertheless, US workers can formally request that the National Labor Relations Board end their association with their labor union if they feel that the union is not adequately representing their interests. At this point, any strike action taken by the workers may be termed a wildcat strike, but there is no illegality involved, as there is no longer a conflict between sections 7 and 9(a) of the NLRA.
- kevviiinn 4y agoThat is described by the last part of my comment, it is only legal under a very specific circumstance and not generally
- wootland 4y agoThat's not stated in the Wikipedia post or the National Labor Relations Act: https://www.nlrb.gov/guidance/key-reference-materials/national-labor-relations-act https://www.nlrb.gov/guidance/key-reference-materials/nation...
- kevviiinn 4y agoIt's literally what your reply to my first comment is stating What do you think "formally request to end their association with their labor union" means? >formally request that the National Labor Relations Board end their association with their labor union if they feel that the union is not adequately representing their interests >At this point, any strike action taken by the workers may be termed a wildcat strike, but there is no illegality involved Which is stated in wikipedia after: >Wildcat strikes have been considered illegal in the United States since 1935 >Under the 1935 National Labor Relations Act (NLRA), federal courts have held that wildcat strikes are illegal and that employers may fire workers participating in them.
- wootland 4y agoYour interpretation doesn't hold. All it's saying is that you have to not be affiliated with a union, then a wildcat strike is legal ("no illegality involved").
- juujian 4y agoAnd even if they were illegal, there are so many creative ways to stage action that do not technically constitute a strike.
- aaomidi 4y agoOnly because the govt promised to protect unions. They’re not really keeping their side of the promise.
- rodgerd 4y ago> I'd love to see a community that helps people organize strikes and coordinate between multiple companies. Unfortunately solidarity strikes were so successful for workers for much of the 20th century, they were criminalised in parts of the English-speaking world from the 80s onward.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- UtopiaPunk 4y agoThere are exceptions, but strikes are usually the result of an organized group of workers exhausting other bargaining options. Strikes are the result of very intentional, long periods of organizing. They (usually) don't happen all of a sudden. Barring something egregious, strikes are hard to pull off and requires a lot of buy in. The most successful way to accomplish this level of organizing is forming a union.
- chasd00 4y agostrikes, or the credible threat of a strike, is the only power a union has. well except for the dues paid but those usually just go to a handful of pockets.
- thylacine222 4y agoEvery few years someone thinks that they have a new plan to revolutionize labor organizing, usually involving some sort of app that will somehow replace the work necessary to organize a union, and they are always wrong. Building a union that's strike-ready requires a lot of on the ground work that you simply cannot automate.
- wootland 4y agoWould you say that things like Blind or Levels.fyi have had an impact on labor organization? I would argue that they have.
- thylacine222 4y agoI certainly think they're emblematic of changes in attitudes, but I think the direction of causation is not so clear.
- chernevik 4y agoUnions are needed to provide the social structure to suppress worker dissent against a strike and to label all willing to work on terms offered as "scabs". "Union solidarity" is an important cover story for a host of behaviors that would otherwise be simply shocking.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- pauldbourke 4y ago"The music and tech industries are at a juncture, and it’s time that we as workers have a seat at the table to weigh in on the challenges and opportunities of this moment." Can someone explain this in plain english?
- tmtvl 4y agoThey want a say in certain decisions being made at the higher levels.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- iworshipfaangs2 4y agoI don’t really understand “juncture”, but money flows in the music and tech industries is changing, so it is nice if the people that produce the work make sure a good amount of money flows to them.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- swatcoder 4y agoThe union might literally want a seat reserved on the board, at licensing and terms negotiations, etc — to make sure the company stays/moves in a direction that employees support and that doesn’t squander employee loyalty in agreements that negatively impact them.
- fsckboy 4y agoi suppose that could happen, it's not unheard of, but usually in exchange for wage/benefits concessions in a troubled industry as happened in the Rust Belt. In the case of a newly organized union they're much more likely talking about their seat at the negotiation table that unionizing creates.
- thornewolf 4y agoThe music and tech industries are undergoing large changes and we need to make decisions NOW to make sure the industry stays healthy. We are unionizing to make sure that us workers are part of the decision making process.
- ineptech 4y agoCan anyone involved describe, perhaps more frankly than the linked site, what drove this? I think of unions as typically being a response to some kind of abusive behavior from management, and am wondering what it is in this case. Most of the specifics described seem like stuff that is common in tech companies already (eg good pay and benefits) or stuff that sounds hard to enforce (eg input into company direction).
- gen220 4y agoI'm not involved, but they were recently sold to Epic Games, which, I imagine, represents a fairly large shift in character of management. It might be a defensive move to protect the worker culture that evolved before then.
- waboremo 4y agoIMO this stems from the massive layoffs across the field which align more closely with timing here than the acquisition and change of management. Not that either are exclusive reasons.
- aaomidi 4y agoUnions are not necessarily a response to bad management. Often they can be because the workers want to force the good management to stay good. It’s far more effective to unionize when things are going well rather than when things are going bad.
- ETH_start 4y agoUnions are simply a rent-seeking mechanism to extract more wealth from the shareholders by restricting their contract rights. Detroit was the wealthiest city in the US in 1950, with the highest per capita GDP in the country. Over the course of the 1950s, 60s and 70s, the UAW union took over, with membership eventually peaking in 1978. What followed was industrial collapse, and eventually, Detroit becoming a ghost town. Unions are not good for labor at large, just the labor that is on the winning side of the zero sum rent extraction scheme.
- LesZedCB 4y agoawesome work to the organizers and congratulations to the employees!
- iworshipfaangs2 4y agoThis is an interesting place for this to come from, since bandcamp has really been a model for fairness in how artists can distribute their work and get paid. And it was sadly recently bought by Epic Games. I know nothing about Epic, but I know the game industry is far from the paragon of fair labor or fair content distribution. I wish them luck.
- jszymborski 4y ago> And it was sadly recently bought by Epic Games. I wasn't aware of that, that deeply sucks. Bandcamp was the premiere place for me to buy DRM-free music and know my money was going to the artist at a transparent and fair price. Unionising certainly seems especially important for these folks in light of that, I wish them all the very best.
- stonepresto 4y agoI think as it currently stands that's still the case, however with Epic at the helm there's indeed a high risk of negative changes.
- copymoro 4y agowhat gives me hope that they won't, is that they probably only bought Bandcamp to use it as a salvo in their legal battle versus Apple.
- jszymborski 4y agoHow so? You mean along the Apple Music vertical?
- dahdum 4y agoTo prove you can run a marketplace with lower commissions since the Epic Store was shown to be running at a loss, which hurt their case against Apple. Or so I’ve read.
- tarkin2 4y agoUnionisation, I'd wager, will come to the tech world a lot more. No one cared about unions when they could easily find new jobs. Now that's not so certain with the rise of AI. (Edit: and all these redundancies, yes)
- warbeforepeace 4y agoThe rise of AI isn't causing a drop in tech jobs. Its the crazy over hiring that happened during 2020/2021, the lack of confidence in the economy, and rising interest rates. The AI boom overall will most likely add more jobs to tech with everyone wanting to invest resources in it.
- scaramanga 4y agoNot even. It's the total failure of management to find any useful work for those people to do. They are supposed to be the smart guys who make the big bucks in return for efficiently allocating capital to productive activities. They, apparently, couldn't think of any productive activities, and instead have spaffed it up the wall inventing "taxis, but worse", an automatic plagiarizer, and a variety of unprofitable websites whose goal is to herd and trap users before making the website shit in exchange for money so they can milk cash from entrapped users before a competitor manages to scale their moat. It's bizarre considering the scale of problems humanity faces (not even including the serious stuff like climate change) that these people cannot find any useful work for all those talented hands to be set to. People are right not to have confidence in a system that seems to so have obviously and clearly failed to do things that you imagine any reasonably bright person would be able to do (ie. find useful and profitable things for talented people to get on with, given an unlimited free-money faucet for a decade and a half).
- Apocryphon 4y agoIt's not even something as speculative as AI. Just not having ZIRP has changed the game.
- f6v 4y agoI bet people said the same about AI when Watson won Jeopardy. A more real catalyst could be the recent tech sector cooldown. The again, would someone dare unionizing when your position could be cut.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- eikenberry 4y agoI wish non-union worker organizations would get more traction, not everything really works well in the labor union model. Eg. professional workers more traditionally organized into guilds yet I've never seen any movements toward organizing modern professions into guilds.
- thylacine222 4y agoWhat's an example of a non-union worker organization that you've seen work well for its members?
- eikenberry 4y agoI'm not sure as I don't belong to any of these but here are some examples (US) that seem like they "work well"... Screen Actors, Directors, Writers all have guilds. Real-estate and Lawyers have decent looking guilds, they just don't call them by name. Doctors, Dentists and Nurses also have guilds (they call them associations).
- thylacine222 4y agoSAG, DGA, and WGA are all labor unions. The other cases I'll grant you, but it's less clear what their direct benefit to their members is besides acting as lobbying organizations.
- peruvian 4y agoSAC, WAG, etc. are all labor unions similar to the one Bandcamp just created. Don't be confused by the name. -- As for the other examples, what I like about tech is that anyone can join the industry. I think the way attorneys and doctors have set up their profession works for them but it really makes it hard for anyone who didn't choose the golden path to join.
- anticensor 4y agoProfessional trade associations, such as chambers of engineers.
- ZoomZoomZoom 4y agoHope this union will voice out any possible changes in Bandcamp's organisation which can hurt the common creator using the platform, even though I understand this is absolutely not the goal of creating one. It will be a bleak day when BC hits the skids, as inevitably happens with any such service (unless not backed by a solid non-profit).
- solarkraft 4y agoI hope it'll last another few years. It's a great platform.
- flas9sd 4y agome too - at the moment it is uniquely positioned for both what creators and (some) fans want. Can't see unionizing in a bad light at all especially in the realm of arts.
- omegaworks 4y ago>even though I understand this is absolutely not the goal of creating one. Not necessarily. All a union is is a way of collectively negotiating. Whether those terms include stipulations about the way creators are treated is up to the union's members.
- elicash 4y agoTo give folks a term to search for, also known as "bargaining for the common good."
- culi 4y agoRight, but in practice unions often confer a lot of benefits to creators. See the other major tech company to unionize: Kickstarter. They basically unionized in response to management bending to the whims of Brietbart who threatened to sue. Stronger worker voices means more backbone to stand up to external influences like that
- FractalParadigm 4y ago
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- web3-is-a-scam 4y agoGreat news. Tech industry in general needs more unions. Slowly but surely getting there…
- LastTrain 4y agoI’m pro union and I’m in the tech industry, but it is tone deaf when members of best paid and most well treated of industries speak as if they are oppressed. It kind of makes a mockery of the plight of the actual working class.
- chasing 4y agoYou don’t have to be oppressed to form a union. Most professional athletes, for example, are unionized. And they’re often very well paid.
- umeshunni 4y agoAlso, Doctors, Actors etc
- LastTrain 4y agoNowhere did I say Bandcamp engineers can't have a union, or even whether it makes good business sense for them. It might, it might not. Maybe this will end up being better for Soundcloud engineers in the long run if you know what I mean. I was reacting to the idea that it somehow furthers the cause of organized labor, it doesn't.
- PaulDavisThe1st 4y ago> I was reacting to the idea that it somehow furthers the cause of organized labor, it doesn't. It absolutely does, by helping to (re)normalize the idea that the employer/union duality is the common, sensible, ubiquitous arrangement.
- abandonliberty 4y agoDon't we call those guilds, associations, academies, etc.? Unions traditionally refer to blue collar/factory work. I don't know what the difference is.
- scaramanga 4y ago
- antiquark 4y agoThat's prolly why they banned Tim Pool without any justification.
- brap 4y agoHow can I short Bandcamp?
- culi 4y agoAfter Kickstarter are they the second "major" tech company to do so? (do I need to add "non-gaming" as a qualifier here too?)
- tomcam 4y agoDoes BandCamp actually make money?
- rationalfaith 4y ago[dead]
- ishvanl 4y ago> Bandcamp has a clear path forward to future success, and it starts with our union having a seat at the table. Not sure whether this is saying that Bandcamp has already established a cooperative stance with the union, or if it's saying that doing so should be Bandcamp's next step. I'm hoping that it's the first option, but otherwise this is definitely a positive development.
- andsoitis 4y ago> We are committed to protecting the benefits we have, fixing historical disparities within and across departments, and promoting equitable conditions and economic stability for all of our colleagues. Whether it’s access to paid time off or the security of knowing our salaries will grow to meet economic necessity, and > When we use our voices, we do so because we care about the future of Bandcamp These two "principles" are in tension with each other, so it will be interesting to see how selfless (do what's best for Bandcamp, even it means I need to lose my job or get paid less or get less time off etc. etc.) or how selfish this group will be.
- CuriousCosmic 4y ago> These two "principles" are in tension with each other, so it will be interesting to see how selfless (...) or how selfish this group will be. These aren't really in tension with each other at all. > (do what's best for Bandcamp, even it means I need to lose my job or get paid less or get less time off etc. etc.) Unions aren't particularly afraid of layoffs. They'll fight reductions in force (RIF) and unnecessary layoffs but the main focus is guaranteeing that those individuals who are let go get compensated adequately and are provided a sufficient cushion to bounce back and find their next job. When it comes to priorities, number 1 and 2 are equally that the company survives and benefits are not cut. If you have to let people go to meet those priorities that is fine but as soon as you start carving away at peoples' hard earned benefits, then all of a sudden any perceived bump in the road can be used to undermine the union and your benefits.
- zztop44 4y agoThere will be times when those principles are in tension, yes, but they’re not contradictory. Bandcamp is created by workers. In most instances, what’s best for the workers as a collective is also what’s best for Bandcamp as a company.
- andsoitis 4y agoRank and file employees are neither in a position (vantage point, perspective), nor have the judgment (should a new grad have equal “say” to someone more experienced) to make big strategic decisions. One “solution” is to make big decisions by committee / vote, but then there’s no accountability or responsibility. If workers want to control their destiny they should buy the company so they have real skin in the game, not tell shareholders/owners that they know what’s best…
- nmeofthestate 4y agoIn their mission statement they make themselves sound quite heroic I have to say. And, unsurprisingly, there's the obligatory nod to intersectionality. I'd be interested to know how actually popular it is. The headline makes it sound like everybody has joined but perhaps not (yet).
- andsoitis 4y ago> With our union we will fight for equity Important to note "equity" not "equality". Equality means each individual or group of people is given the same resources or opportunities. Equity allocates the exact resources and opportunities needed to reach an equal outcome. Not my kind of place.
- camdenlock 4y agoYeah, it’s disheartening how labor unions seem to attract this ideological poison. Can’t a labor union just be about collective negotiation with the employer? -_-
- alex_sf 4y agoMost don't. It's just the ones where there is very little at stake or that they need to bargain for. Tech worker unions can't really strike because the ratio of red and blue M&Ms in one of the thirty free snack rooms is slightly off. They need something else to rile people up.
- PaywallBuster 4y agoright > We are committed to protecting the benefits we have, fixing historical disparities within and across departments, and promoting equitable conditions and economic stability for all of our colleagues
- wyre 4y ago>ctrl+f equity, 0 results They mention equitable conditions and economic stability for their colleagues. Which, imo, is a main purpose of a Union.
- andsoitis 4y agoWhen you click on the “read more” button on the bottom of the page you go to quotes from employees: https://www.bandcampunited.org/our-stories https://www.bandcampunited.org/our-stories Here you find plenty of “equitable” and “equity” comments…
- 4y ago
- kundi 4y agoFor the reasons behind the recent acqusition, new places such as Formaviva.com are thriving. Wish them luck
- CombMatter33 4y agoI was very worried when Epic Purchased them but so far so good.