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> The anti-union messages in North American work culture were so effective it takes an incredible amount of abuse before a workforce actually seeks out a union

• mschuster91 3y ago
  > Just because you want to work on say, video games or VFX doesn't mean you should accept a job that compels you to work horrendous hours for little pay. Just say no and move on... the market forces will correct and adjust accordingly out of necessity. Yeah, they'll go offshore instead while you try to navigate an intentionally kafkaesque maze of red tape to apply for fucking food stamps.
  • Alupis 3y ago
    > try to navigate an intentionally kafkaesque maze of red tape to apply for fucking food stamps This is a bizarre, and unrealistic take. Realities are, so long as there's a zillion capable people willing to step in and replace you with a moment's notice, then your job will have downward pressure on compensation. However, just because you can't get a good paying job in VFX doesn't mean you're now doomed to food stamps. There's no reality where that makes any sense...
    • mschuster91 3y ago
      > This is a bizarre, and unrealistic take. Is it? Ever tried to file for unemployment? No matter the country, it will always be a nightmare of bureaucracy, intentionally designed to make it as difficult as possible to "nudge" people to rather accept shitty work conditions than to try to get money from the government. The hoops and hurdles that have been placed in front of getting unemployment insurance money are, hands down, the biggest enabler of workplace exploitation. > However, just because you can't get a good paying job in VFX doesn't mean you're now doomed to food stamps. Either you accept a shit pay job, or you move towards a different career, or you file for unemployment. (Or you're lucky and have a partner or family that can support you)
      • Alupis 3y ago
        > than to try to get money from the government. The government doesn't have money to give. It's worker's money. Let that point sink in... Nobody is owed money from the government. That mentality is wild and ridiculous. > Ever tried to file for unemployment? No matter the country, it will always be a nightmare of bureaucracy, No it's not. It's literally an online form and a follow-up phone call. It couldn't be easier actually, and it's a system filled with abuse. People live on it for months to years without seeking actual employment - stealing money away from hard working individuals. > Either you accept a shit pay job, or you move towards a different career, or you file for unemployment. Your outlook on work life is insanely bizarre and not grounded in any reality. You should check your assumptions, because they are absurdly false.
        • mschuster91 3y ago
          > Nobody is owed money from the government. That mentality is wild and ridiculous. Or it's European. We expect that our governments take care of all our citizens, no matter their ability to work. > No it's not. It's literally an online form and a follow-up phone call. Supplying a truckload of documents, detailed financial statements and whatnot is definitely a bunch of work, particularly if the affected person has lost their home and/or possessions (e.g. homeless people), or can't read. Like half the US is barely literate enough to pass 6th grade reading proficiency. On top of that, processing of claims can take weeks to months because of understaffing. All of that was a massive issue during the COVID pandemic, across all Western countries but I also remember a lot of HN discussions at the time. > Your outlook on work life is insanely bizarre and not grounded in any reality. You should check your assumptions, because they are absurdly false. As said, I'm European. That y'all don't even seem to know how good a life Europe provides is a continuous source of disappointments.
• jedberg 3y ago
  You’re thinking of a blue collar union. Creative unions establish minimum pay and working conditions but not maximum or promotion. Otherwise you wouldn’t have actors making millions.
  • Alupis 3y ago
    Actors make millions the same way Sport Stars make millions - their name alone fills seats. Actors say no to a lot of opportunities because they don't compensate well enough, or don't align with the actor's goals. No VFX person will ever earn millions, no matter how cool their intro title screen is or whatever. Nobody cares... which limits compensation.
    • jedberg 3y ago
      The point is the downsides to a union that you called out don’t apply to creative unions.
      • Alupis 3y ago
        Who's to say VFX would be a creative union? Majority of the work your average VFX person does is cookie-cutter stuff. It's more similar to being a cog in a SaaS shop than being an actual artist.
  • gruez 3y ago
    > You’re thinking of a blue collar union. >Creative unions establish minimum pay and working conditions but not maximum or promotion. Is the type of union that you're getting up for debate when people are voting for unions? My impression is that "voting for a union" just sets up the organization, but you'd need to wait for it to be established and for the representatives to be voted in to know how it turns out. Absent a concrete plan that's being voted for, "voting for a union" could easily turn out to be a brexit type of situation, where people have different ideas on what a "union" (or brexit) is, but no single idea actually has majority support, so most people end up not liking the outcome.
• AndrewKemendo 3y ago
  I’m sorry but this is a perfect example of how anti-union messaging worked. These are literally anti union talking points dressed up as some kind of “reasonable considerations.” No If you choose not to be a part of collective bargaining then you are actively ceding power to the board and your management. You’re saying neither you nor your coworkers deserve equal say in how the organization treats you all. None of what you say actually happens in the real world. Find me a court case or any actual third party judgement, not hearsay, that has found a Union to be shielding one of these “unproductive peers” from doing work or otherwise somehow breaking contract. Pure unwitting propaganda
  • Alupis 3y ago
    It's amazing how you can call something propaganda, while offering nothing but propaganda yourself. Few of us actually need a union to advocate for us. We're perfectly capable of securing higher pay, and benefits through performance or threat of leaving for greener pastures. That's not propaganda. That's worker's rights... which pro-union people are supposedly in favor of. These days, Unions protect under-performing staff and enrich the Union leadership - all while negotiating a token raise once in a while. You can see it with your own eyes - just go work somewhere that has a union for at least one group of it's employees. > Pure unwitting propaganda Laughable...
    • AndrewKemendo 3y ago
      > You can see it with your own eyes - just go work somewhere that has a union for at least one group of it's employees. I gladly had ~500 AFGE employees under me as CTO two jobs ago. I worked regularly with the Union representatives and we had multiple high stakes situations that I was glad to have them there for (I was not covered by the Union because I was too high rank). What has been your first hand experience with unions such that you can make such claims? I suggest you be more open to those who may be less capable, if you are so capable as to be in such high demand. Think about others.
      • Alupis 3y ago
• krisoft 3y ago
  > In those environments, unions typically protect unproductive peers, and limit high-performer's maximum compensation. What made it shake out differently for the Screen Actors Guild? Clearly there the high-performers earn top money, yet they are in a union.
  • bugglebeetle 3y ago
    See also, the NBA. The average person in tech is no where near as talented at their job, hard-working, or disciplined as the average NBA player, yet the latter has a union while the former do not.
  • Alupis 3y ago
    I would posit the SAG doesn't actually do much for your Brad Pitt's and Angelina Jolie's. Those top-tier actors represent the SAG more than they are protected or benefited by the SAG. Your top tier actors literally fill seats - so like Sports Stars they are compensated by their star power more than anything else. Brad Pitt deciding to accept or decline a role can earn or lose a movie millions. Meanwhile, your typical working union compels high school kids to pay dues for what exactly? Minimum wage, and a lunch break? A union in SFX will result in gatekeeping a ton of people out of the industry. It will raise wages for a select few that were blessed by the union and allowed to work in the industry, and everyone else will have to find alternate industries to work in. Doesn't sound like a net-win for everyone... With SFX in particular, the issue is there's a zillion people willing to replace you and work for less with even more demanding hours. I don't know how you fix that industry-wide, but I'm betting a union's solution isn't as rosy as people think. As an aside - where was the SAG during all these Weinstein and Polanski situations? These went on decades and nobody was protected from being abused by powerful gatekeepers. What does SAG even do?
    • labster 3y ago
      Somehow I feel like asking a union to stop an employer’s criminal behavior is outside the scope of a union. Maybe you’re thinking about law enforcement?
• rtpg 3y ago
  > For starters, fewer industries need unions these days. Unions don't help most office-work and white-collar careers, where pay is on-average sufficient or high, and hours are standardized already (nobody in Accounting or HR is working 12 hour days on the routine). I routinely hear about people doing super long hours in loads of industries. Sit-down jobs. Hell, loads of people in IT get put through the wringer. > Additionally, in some sectors, unions are a net-negative. Take software for example, where folks routinely make bananas money for regular work. In those environments, unions typically protect unproductive peers, and limit high-performer's maximum compensation. Would you rather make the obscene amount of money or work with a bunch of people who aren't permanently stressed out from internal rat races? How many stories about people getting chewed up at places like Amazon do we need to hear about? > As an aside, people do need to learn to say no to work. Just because you want to work on say, video games or VFX doesn't mean you should accept a job that compels you to work horrendous hours for little pay. Just say no and move on... the market forces will correct and adjust accordingly out of necessity. Unions and labor action can make all of this happen on a way smoother time scale, and without squeezing half a generation of people dry. Why sit around and wait for a bunch of companies to collapse, people to go jobless, when you could instead coordinate efforts, figure out what people want, and move towards that in a coordinated way? There's nuance, but employers negotiate as a bloc (in that even a single company has its own overall policies), having employees do the same just feels like common sense. A bit of an aside: I do think it's important to look at what actual union agreements look like. Places like Netflix got better deals when they were smaller. Unions often end up with tiered payments anyways. Agreements get made over multi-year periods offering a good amount of stability. The idea that a union forces everyone to get paid the same and for a strike to be inevitable the instant the kind bars disappear from the break room is prevelant, but the reality is much more nuanced (partly because people usually just want to do work and get paid and do what they want to do).
  • Alupis 3y ago
    > Would you rather make the obscene amount of money or work with a bunch of people who aren't permanently stressed out from internal rat races? You offer this like they're mutually exclusive. They're not - and that point needs to be understood by pro-union people. Just because a place is non-union does not mean the staff are automatically abused. Plenty of places offer lucrative compensation and sane work hours. > How many stories about people getting chewed up at places like Amazon do we need to hear about? Despite the narrative, there's still thousands of engineers happily working for Amazon. Has it ever occurred to the pro-union folks that maybe some people don't share that "experience"? Or perhaps that "experience" was being touted by disgruntled, unproductive employees that found Amazon difficult to coast at...? > There's nuance, but employers negotiate as a bloc (in that even a single company has its own overall policies This isn't true for every company of course - and eve for companies where it is true, there's often exceptions that can be carved out for desirable people or high performers. > Unions and labor action can make all of this happen on a way smoother time scale Or people can just stop accepting crappy jobs? Unions once-upon-a-time fought for a standardized 8 hour workday. Today, if unions disappeared tomorrow, would anyone agree to work standard 14 hour days again? I think not... The problem with VFX and that sub-industry in particular is the glut of people willing to do the work for next to nothing and endure absurd hours just for the opportunity of working on some project. So unions will come in, demand absurd pay, and gatekeep tons of people out of the industry. A select blessed few will be allowed to work, and the rest will have to find a different industry anyway... so what's the difference?
• somsak2 3y ago
  People in software are not making "bananas money," they are capturing just a tiny amount of the wealth that they are creating. If you think a negotiation between a single individual vs. a company of tens of thousands (or, likely, a cartel of companies of millions of combined employees a la https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-Tech_Employee_Antitrust_Litigation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-Tech_Employee_Antitrust_L...) is anywhere close to an even fight, you're naive.
• toast0 3y ago
  > nobody in Accounting or HR is working 12 hour days on the routine Do you know anybody in Accounting? Quarter end closing is a lot of work that can't be done until after the end of the quarter and must be done within a small amount of time. Public accountants suddently get an awful lot of work come the ides of March when everyone realizes their taxes are due in a month. And another bunch when the extension filers all come back when the real due date hits.
• 3np 3y ago
  I figure unions can be very helpful in addressing actual contemporary worker concerns, like setting ethical code of conduct and norms when it comes to ethics surrounding for example treatment of personal data of users.
• P_I_Staker 3y ago
  Lol, so fuck you, I've got mine basically. Just because the pay is decent doesn't mean they can't exploit you. When you talk about "protecting unproductive peers" are you sure they aren't protecting minorities, people with disabilities, or who may be marginalized from the group, and not given a fair chance? It's interesting that you think we should take it for granted that "maximizing high performer's pay" is a good idea. You seem to be convinced you're one of those. Maybe you're just friends with the boss. I have some beef with unions, but there's plenty of reasons to have them in the office.