10 ms·

Good for them. During economic downturns, when fewer resources are available for redistribution, collective action across population groups can help address wor

• hellojesus 10mo ago
  To an extent. There is always the chance that the collective action discounts the impact to the business too heavily and ends up driving the company under, making the outcomes worse for everyone. We saw this a couple years ago with Yellow Trucking.
  • venturecruelty 10mo ago
    Yes, because companies never go out of business or kill products for no reason under our glorious people's free market. Google, famously, never ends good products for no reason.
  • popalchemist 10mo ago
    If the company's existence depends on the unfair exploitation of its staff, its foreclosure is inevitable and justified, and that is simply the price everyone involved must pay to maintain equilibrium.
    • scrollaway 10mo ago
      Your theory only holds in the case that there is unfair exploitation happening. This is not that easy to define beyond salary averages…
      • hobs 10mo ago
        How about comparing wage theft vs shrink - how much is everyone stealing from each other - almost 1 in 5 workers experience wage theft.
      • popalchemist 10mo ago
        The scope of the "theory" is precisely limited to exactly that scenario... so, yeah.
    • venturecruelty 10mo ago
      "We can't end slavery! The cotton industry would collapse!"
    • seneca 10mo ago
      > If the company's existence depends on the unfair exploitation of its staff, its foreclosure is inevitable and justified, and that is simply the price everyone involved must pay to maintain equilibrium. Claiming that all non-union companies are inherently operating via "unfair exploitation of its staff" is ridiculous. It's entirely possible for a labor union to go too far and drive a company to become noncompetitive. These sort of canned answers are empty claptrap and not really fit for an honest discussion.
      • c-hendricks 10mo ago
        The statement wasn't really pro or against unions. Simply put, if your company can only survive while exploiting its workers it shouldn't survive. Whether that's due to constant turnover from poor treatment of their employees, or due to union strikes, doesn't change the statement.
        • seneca 10mo ago
          That's not at all what the statement I replied to says in context. hellojesus said "There is always the chance that the collective action discounts the impact to the business too heavily and ends up driving the company under, making the outcomes worse for everyone." popalchemist said "If the company's existence depends on the unfair exploitation of its staff, its foreclosure is inevitable and justified" That response is implying that the only way the business could go under due to unionization is because the business was formerly exploiting its staff. It's not just pro-union, it's outright zealotry that ignores reality.
          • nickthegreek 10mo ago
            You’re reading an extra claim into it. It’s not saying “all post-union failures prove exploitation.” It’s saying “if survival requires unfair exploitation, then losing that advantage exposes an illegitimate model.” I see no implication that all failing businesses after unionization is due to exploitation.
          • popalchemist 10mo ago
    • prewett 10mo ago
      That assumes that the union never unfairly exploits the company. I think historical evidence shows that unions sometimes do exploit the company (and that union leaders sometimes exploit the members). Humans exploiting other humans is a flaw of all of us, not just corporate management.
      • LadyCailin 10mo ago
        Sometimes, but that’s better than the opposite, which is the default condition.
      • vkou 10mo ago
        > That assumes that the union never unfairly exploits the company. Is that the bar we want a corporate environment to meet? No unfair exploitation of anyone ever? If so, the existing structures sure as shit don't meet it. Why carry water for them?
      • autoexec 10mo ago
        Yeah, I'm not sure Id Software, backed by their billion dollar parent company ZeniMax Media, who in turn is backed by their parent company Microsoft, has to live in fear of being exploited by the 165 employees who just signed onto a union.
        • pie_flavor 10mo ago
          You're trying to minimize the power of the union by quoting dollar amounts, when the whole point of the union is to have power, and the whole point of unionization is to defeat superior dollar amounts by capturing the organizational memory that money cannot buy. You cannot replace your entire gamedev team at once without destroying what makes your company, your company. You cannot respond to your entire gamedev team refusing to work other than by replacing them or by getting them to stop striking, either by aggressively union-busting or by negotiating with the union. That is the reason unions work at all.
          • salawat 10mo ago
    • Manuel_D 10mo ago
      The workers aren't drones, they have the agency to choose another job. If a company is underpaying workers relative to the rest of the market, they'll struggle to hire and retain employees without the interference of a union.
      • IshKebab 10mo ago
        This is the magical "perfect competition" view of the market that often doesn't match reality at all.
        • Manuel_D 10mo ago
          What's keeping any one of these Id software developers from accepting a competing job offer elsewhere? Yes, there are scenarios where employees are stripped of agency. E.g a factory owner taking and holding foreign worker's passports. But if you're going to allege that something is preventing these works from accepting competing offers, you have to offer evidence for that claim.
          • buellerbueller 10mo ago
            WHat's keeping a company from providing fair wages, fair labor practices such that unions are unnecessary? EDIT: I guess you can just downvote, sure, but why not engage?
            • popalchemist 10mo ago
              You are correct. Unions do not exist to exploit employers, they exist precisely to make working conditions acceptable (livable) and no more, most of the time. There are outliers, like Police unions, which have ulterior motives, but on the whole it is a labor movement meant to prevent the abhorrent conditions to which capitalism naturally backslides, which we saw after the industrial revolution.
          • Daishiman 10mo ago
            > What's keeping any one of these Id software developers from accepting a competing job offer elsewhere? * Employer-bound health insurance in the US * Industry blacklists to exclude uppity employees and union members * Noncompetes and NDAs * Extremely localized jobs and an ever-shrinking number of larger and larger conglomerates as employers
    • bigstrat2003 10mo ago
      Perhaps. But that's cold comfort to someone who doesn't have a job because the company went out of business. You would have to be an enormous asshole to say "it'll result in a better equilibrium" to someone who just lost his job.
      • LadyCailin 10mo ago
        People in the game industry are pretty often out of work anyways, so I don’t know how much there is to lose there. But industry wide unions can help with this, by providing financial assistance to workers laid off from union organized strikes.
      • overfeed 10mo ago
        > But that's cold comfort to someone who doesn't have a job because the company went out of business I suppose only those who lose their jobs because of a merger, or the CEO making poor decisions ought to get the warm and fuzzies because someone on the Internet won't blame them for their own misfortune. Somewhere on the spectrum between "egalitarian, flat organization Utopia" and "Slavery", one has to draw a line where entities below that line should not exist.
        • appreciatorBus 10mo ago
          You forgot that collective ruin is also an option and we have seen this many times when societies attempted to do away with economic & market concepts.
          • vkou 10mo ago
            We've also seen collective ruin many many times when societies have embraced economic and market concepts. Seen the rust belt anytime lately?
            • AnthonyMouse 10mo ago
              That's probably not a great example given that the rust belt was thick with unions. And in general the US has a cost of living problem because the various levels of government keep getting captured by people who want regulations that make costs to go up because they're the ones getting the money. That makes US workers less competitive because of the corruption-induced regulatory costs, which is exactly the opposite of markets working as they should, except insofar as "industries move out of countries with high corruption and inefficient laws" is supposed to apply pressure to countries to get more efficient rules.
    • reactordev 10mo ago
      So basically almost all game studios should shutdown is what you’re saying.
    • foobarian 10mo ago
      What if that unfair exploitation is perfectly normal behavior in overseas markets that happen to be competing? I guess we've been over the consequences of the globalization-driven equilibrium ad nauseam so no need to harp on it but it's still unfortunate.
    • appreciatorBus 10mo ago
      Employees being paid less than they would prefer to get paid for a given type of work does not imply "unfair exploitation"
      • vkou 10mo ago
        Employers having to pay more than they'd prefer to pay for a given type of work/provide better working conditions does not imply "unfair exploitation" of the company by the union, either. It's just a market reaching equilibrium. It's always weird how employees are forever to be expected to be at the mercy of market forces much greater than they are, while employers have to be shielded from them.
        • seneca 10mo ago
          > It's just a market reaching equilibrium. It's always weird how employees are forever to be expected to be at the mercy of market forces much greater than they are, while employers have to be shielded from them. It's not a market, at all. It's only possible because of federal law that prevents a business from firing employees for unionizing. If it were a market, the business would have to choose to keep unionzed workers voluntarily. The fact that they don't means it's more like the business being held hostage. The equivalent would be employees being required by law to stay at a company they don't want to work for. Essentially indentured servitude.
          • vkou 10mo ago
            That argument is bullshit, and I'll tell you why. An employer can't fire people for unionizing, but there's no law that requires them to accept a union's negotiating demands... Or prevents them from bringing in scabs if the union chooses to strike without pay. The existence of a union by itself doesn't do anything. The only power that a union actually has is not showing up to work. And when the union doesn't show up to work, the employer is free to hire someone else to do the work. It's wild to comparing people not showing up to work because an employment agreement hasn't been reached to 'being held hostage'.
    • jimbokun 10mo ago
      [flagged]
      • autoexec 10mo ago
        > There are lots of outcomes where having the wages the company can profitably offer are far better than having zero wages. Like sweatshops for example. The idea that getting anything at all is far better than getting nothing is not new or compelling. It's exactly that kind of race to the bottom mentality where workers are expected to shut up and take whatever scraps their masters give them that causes labor movements to rise up and start demanding better.
    • aidenn0 10mo ago
      Many markets today only exist due to unfair exploitation of its staff, and the exploitation will continue for quite a long time if everyone who unionizes ends up without a job, since that will discourage unionizing at other companies. We have spent most the last 50 years undoing all of the checks on corporate power that were enacted in the first half of the 20th century. There were literal pitched battles that happened when workers demanded their rights. Here's hoping the transition this time will be less painful (and actually gets repeated at all).
  • c-hendricks 10mo ago
    They got ... $700 million bailout from the government and put part of the blame on not being able to secure a $50 million benefits package?
  • NewJazz 10mo ago
    There is always a chance that management's misguided choices impact the business too heavily and drive the company under or at least greatly decrease the value of their output.
    • Gud 10mo ago
      Very common. I work for a factory that produces a type of heavy machinery that is in extreme demand. Any person with any semblance of foresight, would understand that in the near to medium term, this will be the case. During COVID, there was a large dip(~30%) of orders. In the infinite wisdom of our business leaders, it was decided to shut us down. Coincidentally, our equipment was (supposed to be) transferred to our step-sibling factory, where most of the upper management is from… I say step sibling, although we make similar products, we come together due to a merger. 6 months after our supposed shutdown, after a lot of equipment has been transferred and a lot of good people have gone, suddenly demand was back to normal, and our customer are no longer asking how much our product costs, but if they can have one… and it turns out, our step-sibling can’t make our product very well. It’s all politics, short-sightedness and personal greed, in upper management, UNLESS MAYBE, they founded the company(and still a big IF).
  • micromacrofoot 10mo ago
    Yellow was in massive debt due to poor management decisions and the union fought against a move that would have combined driver seniority lists from various companies they managed, which they suspected was going to be used to cut people's jobs . The union did what it thought was best for all its members, and the company was in so much debt it couldn't figure out how to fulfill those needs another way. This is not a "see unions are bad" example.
    • hellojesus 10mo ago
      My point is exactly that the union didn't do what was best for its members because their actions collapsed the company. Unions are subject to the constraints of operations. LTL is a very debt-heavy industry, and yellow pushed the envelop too far. But the union could have tried to negotiate a contract contingent on operating costs and debt load. They didn't. Instead they chose their line and then striked until the company went under. Maybe not the best example, but it was the one on my mind.
      • rootusrootus 10mo ago
        Looking through the history of the company, it seems like the lack of making a profit for the last 25 years and taking on huge debt may have contributed way more to their demise than anything the union did.
      • c-hendricks 10mo ago
        > because their actions collapsed the company The company blamed the collapse on their actions, different things.
  • Braxton1980 10mo ago
    Since that harms the union members the it wouldn't make sense for them to do that intentionally.
  • didibus 10mo ago
    I think there's a false perception that unions negotiate against the companies best interest. Unions negotiate for a bigger slice of the same pie against leadership, executives, and shareholders/owners. They have the same incentives as those to see the pie grow, but band together to negotiate that their pie be bigger and those of the above smaller than what would have been otherwise. Most of the time when it results in squeezing the company itself it's because leadership wasn't willing to share downsides. And this is the primary reason for unions. When things go well, leadership is rarely willing to share upsides. When things go bad, leadership is often unwilling to share downsides. Workers join union to pressure leadership in sharing both upsides and downsides.
  • vablings 10mo ago
    I don't think workers are to blame when it the business who makes the deals both with the employees and other business. If I make a series of bad deals running my company and my employees take up collection action to demand a reasonable market rate increase in pay my business didn't fail because of collective action. It failed because I failed as ab businessman https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellow_Corporation#cite_note-WSJ_2023-07-30-7:~:text=It%20had%2030%2C000,blocking%20this%20integration https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellow_Corporation#cite_note-W...
  • DANmode 10mo ago
    Yeah, it was the Unionization that did them, not the fact they were running a poorly-organized, filthy, low-morale operation…
• venturecruelty 10mo ago
  The problem is that there is actually an abundance of resources available, they're just horribly imbalanced. There's an entire megathread complaining about RAM prices, and very few people have said "maybe one single person shouldn't be allowed to make computers expensive for the entire rest of the planet".
  • willis936 10mo ago
    Actually a lot of people are saying that. Almost everyone except for those very few people and the bubble/membrane in their orbit.
• oncallthrow 10mo ago
  Wrong, collective action doesn’t change anything. It simply interchanges who gets poorer.
  • criddell 10mo ago
    But sometimes that's the goal. In professional sports, the player's union helps raise athlete salaries and improve working conditions and that does ultimately come out of the owner's pockets.
  • unionmember99 10mo ago
    Easy counterexample: safety. Unions have historically been on the forefront of safety improvements. Not having workers mutilated or killed -> increased wealth for all. That's not a zero-sum game. And if you think this doesn't matter for game programmers, look at how many overworked people in the past few years have gotten in car crashes while driving home. Fatigue kills.
• khannn 10mo ago
  I don't understand the video game industry from an insider perspective, but is it wise for id Software to unionize after Doom: The Dark Ages didn't do as well as Eternal? I haven't spoken to anyone who mentioned D:TDA IRL, but knew a fair amount of people who preordered Eternal.
  • ge96 10mo ago
    TDA was so good timing the parrying. Eternal too, once you play these games the other games are slow in comparison imo.
    • khannn 10mo ago
      I'm not a fan of parrying in any game and mentally put Eternal into the "Wait for cheap Steam sale" pile when I saw the shield. I wanna rip and tear in Doom.
      • ge96 10mo ago
        Parrying in this game is like extra bullets, the attacker's attack bounces back to them does damage This is one of the few games where it's so fast/clicking my hands hurt, especially the challenge rooms
• acomjean 10mo ago
  The devs probably looked at what happened to the music dept at Id as a cautionary tale.
  • DarkNova6 10mo ago
    What happened to it? Last time I heard only good things about those guys, but that was around the release of DOOM in 2016.
    • acomjean 10mo ago
      It was a mess behind the scenes for the music contractor. Seemed badly planned and kinda scummy. The blog: (a long rant) https://medium.com/@mickgordon/my-full-statement-regarding-doom-eternal-5f98266b27ce https://medium.com/@mickgordon/my-full-statement-regarding-d...
      • avereveard 10mo ago
        The way author was treated seem terrible, but I don't understad an accomplished composer would accept a contract where all penalties for deadline are on him, instead of having variable deadlines based on deliverables? And starts working before the contract is finalized but sign the contract with the original delivery dates, starting on a project already late? Was he under coercion?
• tbrake 10mo ago
  interesting to see in the replies such incredible pearl clutching on behalf of the poor, poor businesses whenever unionization gets brought up. brain folds lighting up like a fireworks show just to combat the idea of [checks scroll] uhh not exploiting workers.
• billy99k 10mo ago
  When companies aren't doing well either, demanding more money will only result in bankrupt companies and out sourcing. It's probably the worst time to do it. I've only seen unions work well in the long-run with government jobs. The USPS is a good example. Mostly because you really can't fire the workers and the main entity won't ever go out of business because of government bailouts.
  • izacus 10mo ago
    Companies are doing amazingly well by any metric. They just refuse to share with their employees.
• torginus 10mo ago
  Well, this economic downturn might have something to do with the games industry continuing to push out products that nobody wanted (or were no good in the first place) at absolutely lavish budgets. It didn't seemingly come out of nowhere. Cue Concorde. If you spend half a billion, to make a game that's five multiplayer maps, fail to do any market research, to find out that the part of your audience that isn't indifferent to your game actively hates it, playing the role of innocent victim subject to the whims of evil studio execs, is somewhat unproductive.
  • FrustratedMonky 10mo ago
    There are movie flops, yet also there is an actors union. Workers are allowed to be paid even if management makes bad decisions. The company can go bankrupt, doesn't mean workers shouldn't get paid.
    • qwe----3 10mo ago
      Aren't less movies now being made in hollywood? Seems
      • heavyset_go 10mo ago
        I'm in an area where Netflix and other production companies are building massive studios. When they're up and running, workers will still be unionized under the same SAG-AFTRA as workers in Hollywood are.
    • torginus 10mo ago
      Are being wages owed here? If so, the company either can't pay them, and should be considered bankrupt, or is unlawfully holding them back, in which case they should be sued. But is this actually the case here?
      • FrustratedMonky 10mo ago
        The parent was implying a common argument that a union will drive a company out of business. I'm saying, if there are poor decisions that drive a company out of business, then employees should still be paid. It doesn't make sense that employees should prop up the company by taking a pay cut.
• hinkley 10mo ago
  In an 'economic downturn' where the rich keep getting richer, at least. This is a very weird downturn.
• desmoulins 10mo ago
  This is true, but there's still the problem of how things are distributed within the collective groups. When the labor market gets competitive, you start to see long probationary periods, two-tier pay and benefit scales, hiring people on as casuals instead of permanent members, and other bargaining concessions that end up favoring some union members over others. I know some unions over the last few years have managed to fight against two-tier systems, but if there's any sort of serious economic downturn I'd expect them to become commonplace again. I'm curious to see if they can come up with a way to organize that works for everyone, or if it'll end up as something like the Longshoreman's union: a fantastic deal, provided you won the lottery to get in and then stuck around long enough to be a permanent member.
  • Pet_Ant 10mo ago
    Unpopular opinion but I'm okay with treating union members better than non. It's good to know that once you make it you are safe. It's okay to grind and give 110% on the come-up. Unsustainable drive, passion, fire. But there has got to be a point where you can ease off to giving 90%, even 85%. Jobs are a part of society, and the society needs to create structures that make room for people to pull back and focus on other things like raising a family.
    • spopejoy 10mo ago
      Not just unpopular, undesirable and unworkable. There's a reason unions have long opposed two-tier as a cynical divide-and-conquer management strategy. Indeed what are you actually "okay with" here? Being on the upper tier, due to a strategy that explicitly wants to chip away at said tier until it's gone? When it goes away will that also be "okay"?