4 ms·

This feels like the first time there would be serious impetus (and a perfect case) for tech workers to form a union.

toomuchtodo 3y ago
Indeed. It’s a power struggle and tech workers might as well fire back if being threatened with dismissal. Wind is at their backs. Otherwise the deal will always change and the screws turned tighter, forever the boiled frog. https://prospect.org/labor/2023-08-28-bidens-nlrb-brings-workers-rights-back/ https://prospect.org/labor/2023-08-28-bidens-nlrb-brings-wor... https://www.nlrb.gov/news-outreach/news-story/board-issues-decision-announcing-new-framework-for-union-representation https://www.nlrb.gov/news-outreach/news-story/board-issues-d...
- pcurve 3y ago
  I love the idea. I wonder how the mgmt will react short and long term. My guess is there will be even more aggressive attempt to develop engineering center outside the US. (Vs outsourcing to ibm or offshore consulting.) This was already happening.
  - red-iron-pine 3y ago
    they've been offshoring to india, the philippines, or elsewhere since the 90s. there is a reason they kept coming back to the US, and it wasn't just remote stuff.
jtode 3y ago
I am incredibly in favour of unions in all industries, but this one I have serious doubts it will ever happen. I'm gonna be un-PC and reach for a metaphor involving slavery - not because I am comparing tech workers, of which I am one, to slaves, but because I think it's the best real-world example of how oppression is distributed by hubristic figureheads of feudalistic systems. If you ever saw Spike Lee's "Malcolm X" biopic (or know about Malcolm X through other channels), there is a scene where he talks about the existence, during US Slavery, of "field" and "house" slaves, who tended to live in those same places they worked. Here is a real X speech that is very similar to what is in the movie, though the movie script distills it better for modern ears: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jf7rsCAfQCo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jf7rsCAfQCo Now if you take three groups at Amazon - warehouse workers, tech workers, and C-level executives, they all kinda slot into those roles very well, don't they? Again, not that we're slaves. But then, Jim Crow wasn't slavery either, right? Oppression comes in many flavours, some of them stronger, some of them weaker, but it has the same features, always, including the divide and conquer strategy. The axe's handle being recognizably wooden. This is all very old stuff. Ancestral. Atavistic. The problem runs deeper still. Even among the lowest working class, they have been fed on tidbits of heady turkish delight which says that if they do everything right, they can be one of the oppressor class. Like the midway lackey whose job is to walk around carrying a giant teddy bear that nobody will ever actually win, they are even given high-profile examples, lottery winners, pop stars from common backgrounds, tech "mafia" who live as monied dilletantes on megayachts, tipping their hats to Saudi princes and Russian gangsters. In the end, the workers of tech are just well-kept poodles who will heel to their masters and be loyal to the point of abject moral failure, just like the house slave. Look how much better we are treated than him. Fagedaboudit. If you want a just world, be a Socialist. Read Marx for real. And join the rest of the historically frustrated who will die watching humanity flagellate itself. If there's hope, it's in the proles.
- salawat 3y ago
  You aren't that far off. Much of what is in the realm of "management theory" is rehashed from the heady days of slavery if you trace it's inspiration back far enough, at least in the United States. Basically, if you aren't an independent trades/craftsperson, you're being handled by the same corpus of institutional knowledge that kept ye olde plantation running smoothly. Less outright violence. Still there though.
  - liquidpele 3y ago
    Moreso factories than plantations.
  - rchaud 3y ago
    Modern management science pulls heavily from WW2 organizational tactics in western militaries when conscription was common and the idea of conscientious objection was not well received.
    - salawat 3y ago
      Give https://www.amazon.com/Going-Postal-Rebellion-Workplaces-Columbine/dp/1932360824/ https://www.amazon.com/Going-Postal-Rebellion-Workplaces-Col... a good read through. Many, many facets of labor relations didn't change one iota from far before WWII. There's an elitism inherent in American culture that is just a right pain in the arse to shake off. Take Ames dumping on Reagan with a grain of salt, but he does a fantastic job of extending the line of labor relations culture quite a ways back beyond merely WWII. Though I won't argue that things got very turbid around that time specifically because of the perceived existential threat the War created. I still maintain, however, that no matter how unpopular labor movements were at the time, that they dug in was still an invaluable act of civic courage. It is at such times that resistance is most important, as the majority is all too eager to turn a blind eye to the suffering they have wrought.
- nielsbot 3y ago
  To quote a wise man: "¿Por qué no los dos?"

Indeed. It’s a power struggle and tech workers might as well fire back if being threatened with dismissal. Wind is at their backs. Otherwise the deal will always change and the screws turned tighter, forever the boiled frog. https://prospect.org/labor/2023-08-28-bidens-nlrb-brings-workers-rights-back/ https://prospect.org/labor/2023-08-28-bidens-nlrb-brings-wor... https://www.nlrb.gov/news-outreach/news-story/board-issues-decision-announcing-new-framework-for-union-representation https://www.nlrb.gov/news-outreach/news-story/board-issues-d...

pcurve 3y ago
I love the idea. I wonder how the mgmt will react short and long term. My guess is there will be even more aggressive attempt to develop engineering center outside the US. (Vs outsourcing to ibm or offshore consulting.) This was already happening.
- red-iron-pine 3y ago
  they've been offshoring to india, the philippines, or elsewhere since the 90s. there is a reason they kept coming back to the US, and it wasn't just remote stuff.

jtode 3y ago

I am incredibly in favour of unions in all industries, but this one I have serious doubts it will ever happen. I'm gonna be un-PC and reach for a metaphor involving slavery - not because I am comparing tech workers, of which I am one, to slaves, but because I think it's the best real-world example of how oppression is distributed by hubristic figureheads of feudalistic systems. If you ever saw Spike Lee's "Malcolm X" biopic (or know about Malcolm X through other channels), there is a scene where he talks about the existence, during US Slavery, of "field" and "house" slaves, who tended to live in those same places they worked. Here is a real X speech that is very similar to what is in the movie, though the movie script distills it better for modern ears: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jf7rsCAfQCo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jf7rsCAfQCo Now if you take three groups at Amazon - warehouse workers, tech workers, and C-level executives, they all kinda slot into those roles very well, don't they? Again, not that we're slaves. But then, Jim Crow wasn't slavery either, right? Oppression comes in many flavours, some of them stronger, some of them weaker, but it has the same features, always, including the divide and conquer strategy. The axe's handle being recognizably wooden. This is all very old stuff. Ancestral. Atavistic. The problem runs deeper still. Even among the lowest working class, they have been fed on tidbits of heady turkish delight which says that if they do everything right, they can be one of the oppressor class. Like the midway lackey whose job is to walk around carrying a giant teddy bear that nobody will ever actually win, they are even given high-profile examples, lottery winners, pop stars from common backgrounds, tech "mafia" who live as monied dilletantes on megayachts, tipping their hats to Saudi princes and Russian gangsters. In the end, the workers of tech are just well-kept poodles who will heel to their masters and be loyal to the point of abject moral failure, just like the house slave. Look how much better we are treated than him. Fagedaboudit. If you want a just world, be a Socialist. Read Marx for real. And join the rest of the historically frustrated who will die watching humanity flagellate itself. If there's hope, it's in the proles.

salawat 3y ago
You aren't that far off. Much of what is in the realm of "management theory" is rehashed from the heady days of slavery if you trace it's inspiration back far enough, at least in the United States. Basically, if you aren't an independent trades/craftsperson, you're being handled by the same corpus of institutional knowledge that kept ye olde plantation running smoothly. Less outright violence. Still there though.
- liquidpele 3y ago
  Moreso factories than plantations.
- rchaud 3y ago
  Modern management science pulls heavily from WW2 organizational tactics in western militaries when conscription was common and the idea of conscientious objection was not well received.
  - salawat 3y ago
    Give https://www.amazon.com/Going-Postal-Rebellion-Workplaces-Columbine/dp/1932360824/ https://www.amazon.com/Going-Postal-Rebellion-Workplaces-Col... a good read through. Many, many facets of labor relations didn't change one iota from far before WWII. There's an elitism inherent in American culture that is just a right pain in the arse to shake off. Take Ames dumping on Reagan with a grain of salt, but he does a fantastic job of extending the line of labor relations culture quite a ways back beyond merely WWII. Though I won't argue that things got very turbid around that time specifically because of the perceived existential threat the War created. I still maintain, however, that no matter how unpopular labor movements were at the time, that they dug in was still an invaluable act of civic courage. It is at such times that resistance is most important, as the majority is all too eager to turn a blind eye to the suffering they have wrought.
nielsbot 3y ago
To quote a wise man: "¿Por qué no los dos?"