4 ms·

I mean, you can be certain the big heads of companies are unionizing / conspiring against you (meeting behind closed doors to keep wages down, not poach, fix pr

by diob 3y ago

I mean, you can be certain the big heads of companies are unionizing / conspiring against you (meeting behind closed doors to keep wages down, not poach, fix prices / rent, etc.). It's fascinating how the lower class has been indoctrinated against them.

ath3nd 3y ago
Yes, I can swear that we either have professional union busters among us, or people have been heavily indoctrinated to willingly take it from their corporate overlords. I simply can't believe why even the high paid workers like the software engineers that we are are okay with a single grandpa on the top to take millions or billions of profit while we slave our days and nights creating value for them. They are nothing without us, their workers. We deserve a much better share of the profits, and since our individual bargaining positions are weakened now, the only way we fight back is by doing it together. Tell me how Tesla, then Spotify, then AWS, then Microsoft, then Facebook flooding the market with devs that THEY hired is not a coordinated (you could say "unionized") collective action from the corporations? That created an ideal climate for the corps to stagnate wages, cut costs, bump their stock price, and for you to be competing with other fellow engineers for the few positions that they so gracefully bestow upon you. How about WE also do some collective action and fight back?
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
tristor 3y ago
I am anti-union, but not because of any indoctrination, but because when I was younger I worked in union shops before I got my first tech job and I saw how corrupt the union was, it was a complete racket, and it encouraged people to do mediocre work and mess around all day. In theory I support all the goals people say a union has, but in practice most unions are a way to protect slackers and incompetents while bilking money from your paycheck to do little to advance your interests as an individual. One of my primary interests as a high-performer is working with other high-performers, meanwhile when I was at a union shop I'd get chastised by coworkers for doing /too much/ and being /too good/, because it made the rest look bad and increased expectations. There was a heavy heavy amount of bureaucracy caused by the union insisting on working to rule most of the time, which lead to everything being much worse every day in the workplace and generally being miserable as someone that just wants to get shit done. I have been burnt out in my life a few times, but never by the workload, always by the work environment. Working in a union environment was a recipe for burn out, because I can't take a lackadaisical approach to my work, that's not my personality or who I am as a person. Anything worth being done is worth being done right and well. My direct experience is that unions are run by, attract, and retain people who like to lolly-gag around with their thumbs up their asses and get paid for it, and basically have zero ambition or desire to improve the world around them for themselves or for others.
- righthand 3y ago
  This doesn’t sound like a union issue this sounds like a company culture issue. I’ve worked in a company of slackers too and that’s usually the case when leadership doesn’t have defined deadlines or opportunities to work hard. Yes the majority are going to slack if the work place incentivizes it but I don’t see how that’s a reason to be against organizing around workers rights. There are entire divisions of Google for example that do nothing but churn out meaningless work and yet they are not unionized.

by diob 3y ago

ath3nd 3y ago

Yes, I can swear that we either have professional union busters among us, or people have been heavily indoctrinated to willingly take it from their corporate overlords. I simply can't believe why even the high paid workers like the software engineers that we are are okay with a single grandpa on the top to take millions or billions of profit while we slave our days and nights creating value for them. They are nothing without us, their workers. We deserve a much better share of the profits, and since our individual bargaining positions are weakened now, the only way we fight back is by doing it together. Tell me how Tesla, then Spotify, then AWS, then Microsoft, then Facebook flooding the market with devs that THEY hired is not a coordinated (you could say "unionized") collective action from the corporations? That created an ideal climate for the corps to stagnate wages, cut costs, bump their stock price, and for you to be competing with other fellow engineers for the few positions that they so gracefully bestow upon you. How about WE also do some collective action and fight back?

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

tristor 3y ago

I am anti-union, but not because of any indoctrination, but because when I was younger I worked in union shops before I got my first tech job and I saw how corrupt the union was, it was a complete racket, and it encouraged people to do mediocre work and mess around all day. In theory I support all the goals people say a union has, but in practice most unions are a way to protect slackers and incompetents while bilking money from your paycheck to do little to advance your interests as an individual. One of my primary interests as a high-performer is working with other high-performers, meanwhile when I was at a union shop I'd get chastised by coworkers for doing /too much/ and being /too good/, because it made the rest look bad and increased expectations. There was a heavy heavy amount of bureaucracy caused by the union insisting on working to rule most of the time, which lead to everything being much worse every day in the workplace and generally being miserable as someone that just wants to get shit done. I have been burnt out in my life a few times, but never by the workload, always by the work environment. Working in a union environment was a recipe for burn out, because I can't take a lackadaisical approach to my work, that's not my personality or who I am as a person. Anything worth being done is worth being done right and well. My direct experience is that unions are run by, attract, and retain people who like to lolly-gag around with their thumbs up their asses and get paid for it, and basically have zero ambition or desire to improve the world around them for themselves or for others.

righthand 3y ago
This doesn’t sound like a union issue this sounds like a company culture issue. I’ve worked in a company of slackers too and that’s usually the case when leadership doesn’t have defined deadlines or opportunities to work hard. Yes the majority are going to slack if the work place incentivizes it but I don’t see how that’s a reason to be against organizing around workers rights. There are entire divisions of Google for example that do nothing but churn out meaningless work and yet they are not unionized.