Could Unions At Tech Companies Gain Traction in 2020? (geekwire.com) 133
"2020 may be the year where tech unionizing efforts gain some actual traction for the first time," argues GeekWire:
The chances of this happening in 2020 reflect several factors in the industry and political landscape coming together in the right way for the first time ever. The "Streisand Effect" is basically where the actions you take to prevent what you most want not to happen actually makes it happen. Google has been in the news recently around unionizing activity and its response to that.... [T]he perceived heavy-handed response by Google and the response to it seem more likely to foster more pro-union activity at Google in the near future than to quell it. As Google is a huge presence in Silicon Valley and other cities such as Seattle, these actions can have ripple effects throughout the industry. Certainly, it seems more rather than less likely that there will be continued actions like this at Google in 2020. Since Google is such a leader in the industry, that could spread to other companies in Seattle, Silicon Valley, and beyond.
Here we turn from Google to two other tech powerhouses: Amazon and Uber. Both of these companies now have a huge presence in areas that have historically strong bastions of union activity: trucking and transportation... [T]he war around unionization and ride-sharing is happening on multiple fronts and at the state level it will be harder for Uber and Lyft to combat this.
Two other factors come into play here in the broader business and political landscape and they both mean that right now, tech companies have few friends outside of the tech industry that would be willing to come to their aid in these fights against unionization... Take all these factors and put them together and you have the makings of a true perfect storm for union activity in tech in 2020.
Here we turn from Google to two other tech powerhouses: Amazon and Uber. Both of these companies now have a huge presence in areas that have historically strong bastions of union activity: trucking and transportation... [T]he war around unionization and ride-sharing is happening on multiple fronts and at the state level it will be harder for Uber and Lyft to combat this.
Two other factors come into play here in the broader business and political landscape and they both mean that right now, tech companies have few friends outside of the tech industry that would be willing to come to their aid in these fights against unionization... Take all these factors and put them together and you have the makings of a true perfect storm for union activity in tech in 2020.
High skill, high pay industries. (Score:1, Interesting)
The reason that high-skill, highly-paid workers tend not to be in unions is that it's far more effective to vote with your feet. A tech company which can't attract and keep talent is soon to be a bundled of assets liquidated in bankruptcy.
We don't need unions, we just need to suppress those non-competes.
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So Amazon and Google are going to "sink" if their workers unionize? Sounds reasonable.
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Why do the fake news "editors" keep cramming pro-collectivist garbage down our throats?
That's called wishful thinking. Remember that most journalists have ideas on the left side of the political spectrum. They believe that, like the old days when newspapers were still relevant, they can make the news happen as long as they can influence public opinion.
If you read TFA, you'll notice that the only real example they have is Google. Amazon and Uber are considered tech companies, but that's true only partially. The retail side of Amazon is not a tech company (I would only consider AWS a true tec
Re:High skill, high pay industries. (Score:5, Insightful)
We don't need unions, we just need to suppress those non-competes.
Guess what could get rid of those non-competes? :)
I actually have some experience starting a union in a branch of one of the biggest tech companies (you've heard of it but it's not mentioned in TFA). If I have some time later today I'll share some of the findings, feedback and what was possible to achieve.
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Re:High skill, high pay industries. (Score:5, Informative)
Even though you're being a dick for no reason, I'm still going to committ the horrible crime of sharing directly relevant experience instead of spouting the usual uninformed nonsense that typically happens in these threads.
As mentioned in the original post, this is a branch of a major tech company and one of the highest rated employers here. If you're working here, you're not poor. However there are many departments and teams such as support, finance/acounting, HR and other functions. Maybe some hotshot programmer superstars can instantly get a better job offer but it's not universal, and not everyone can move anytime the management does something stupid.
Still, most people are generally pretty satisfied so there weren't crowds just running to the union once it was established, so growth is pretty slow. We talked to some lawyers who have experience with this in other companies and of course compared to retail or manufacturing, the conditions are such that the demand for unions isn't that heigh. Although I'd imagine for something like Uber, their "contractors" would be much more motivated.
We recently did an open Q&A session and a the attendees almost filled the arranged meeting room. It wasn't a huge room admittedly, but as much as we could've hoped at the point. A few decided to join, and most seemed pretty receptive to the idea. There were some revealing questions though. Some seemed concered that a union would prevent them from getting a raise or promotion. Or that every decision would have to go through the union. There also seemed to be a feeling that a union is somehow communist, even though it's like the most free market solution possible.
Speaking with the members, some people certainly came up with ridiculous demands. Some wanted free daycare, or that they were promised career opportuities but nobody just gave them a better job. The company is under no obligation to provide daycare or babysit your career of course, so instead we tried to channel this as productively as possible into discussion of possible future benefits or as HR advice support. Most people though had some legitimate issues, such as unpaid overtime or lunch breaks not being respected, etc.
A union can also be beneficial for the company. I've been in corporate long enough to see that the decisions some managers make aren't necessarily in the interest of the company, but in their own. A new guy comes in as VP of whatever and starts shuffling stuff around to demonstrate how proactive he is. Or another one keeps almost entire department as temporary staff to save headcount but wastes money on ridiculous turnover and agency fees. A union provides a mechanism to raise this concern in a much more visible way than if you told your manager that something happening two levels above them doesn't make sense. (Even if they fully agree, nothing's going to happen). It can obviously also help with employee satisfaction, which is something most companies do strive for.
Most of the time when you hear about unions, it's usually the very rare and highly visible strikes e.g. in France stopping all the trains and what not. Some branches in other countries have been unionized or have other means of employee representation, and there's never been a strike and I don't think there'll ever be. Because that's not the goal and a decent company wouldn't get even close to that point.
Re:High skill, high pay industries. (Score:5, Insightful)
A union provides a mechanism to raise this concern in a much more visible way than if you told your manager that something happening two levels above them doesn't make sense. (Even if they fully agree, nothing's going to happen).
So talk to the manager above the one causing the problem. That's possible, you know, without a union.
The moment a union starts demanding a voice and the ability to engage with senior managers the rest of the staff lose some of their own voice and influence. The union isn't exactly going to be telling senior management, "Staff are unhappy that we have too much influence and keep telling you things they disagree with."
No, if you felt the need to unionise in a technology company then you had no fucking clue how to communicate properly and/or you wanted to kick off that corrupt gravy train for your own benefit.
Want daycare? Ask for daycare. Want pay for overtime? Don't accept a salaried job. Not getting your lunchbreak? Stop working and eat fucking lunch.
What are they going to do, sack you? Oh no, you'll just have to get a better job at a company that gives a shit about its employees, instead of being caught at one that not only clearly doesn't care, but is also being encouraged to care even less by the corrupt cunts that are demanding a tithe from the employees.
Trust me, while all managers aren't acting in the best interests of the company no unions are.
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Sure it's possible however anyone who follows your advice is going to eventually be shown the door. Employees that go around their line managers about company decisions are showing complete disrespect and disdain for them and may not even end up speaking to the right person.
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People like you are holding all technology workers from getting the kind of pay increases required for such an intense mental effort
Technology workers get paid insanely large amounts of money to sit on their fat arses and do something that they actually enjoy.
Well that's a lot better than sitting around on your fat arse doing something that you don't enjoy, however that doesn't really change anything. Generally people in that situation are more focused on doing what they do and their inability to negotiate properly is a problem for their peers as much as it is for them.
It's in everyone's *self* interest for individuals to have a capacity to negotiate. Further I think you view of modern information technology is holding on to the quaint hobbyist past whilst wha
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When was the last time you analyzed a piece of technology law and lobbied government. A. probably never and even if you did few will listen to you because you have no constituency that wields any political power, therefore IT workers as a whole have no voice
Directly? Any time new technology law is considered. Although admittedly it's a few years since I spoke in person to a Cabinet Minister.
Yes directly, can you name the last piece of proposed legislation you analyzed and lobbied government on? How many have you done, how many years have you been doing it for?
Of course, I'm also a member of a professional organisation that provides a role in supporting ministers and other members of parliament in understanding the issues and complexities around technology. They don't ever talk to my employer, never interfere with my employment contract, merely promote the profession and standards within it.
Well if the status quo was working for people then no one would be talking about unions and you wouldn't be objecting to people exercising their right to free assembly. History shows us dozens of examples of industries that grew up without unions as the people that worked in the were exploited more and more. It's not working Cederic, hi
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Yes directly, can you name the last piece of proposed legislation you analyzed and lobbied government on? How many have you done, how many years have you been doing it for?
European Union (Withdrawal) (No. 2) Act 2019, since you ask. Dozens, for over two decades.
What, do you think this is hard? Do you really think that takes a fucking union? Fucking hell, you need a union, it's the only way you have a hope of getting someone to do your thinking for you.
Stop being a cunt and calling me a liar when you can easily check my fucking posting history and see the comments I've made on multiple pieces of legislation. You miserable fucking clown, fuck off and take your shitty fucking un
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Yes directly, can you name the last piece of proposed legislation you analyzed and lobbied government on? How many have you done, how many years have you been doing it for?
European Union (Withdrawal) (No. 2) Act 2019, since you ask. Dozens, for over two decades.
What, do you think this is hard? Do you really think that takes a fucking union?
No it doesn't take a union. All it means is any individual doing it has less power when presenting it and poses no threat that would make a politician or company pay attention. This is the status quo you think we should maintain. Unions balance that power and that seems to terrify you even though many of the rights we have to day were earned with the effort and sometimes the lives of union members.
Fucking hell, you need a union, it's the only way you have a hope of getting someone to do your thinking for you.
No I don't, I've never been in one. I'm a pretty good negotiator. What I am beginning to see is unions are
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Thank you for taking the time to describe your experiences. I know that you'll get lots of "duh, I hate unions" crap responses, but I appreciate your post.
I'm not convinced that my job would benefit from unionization, but I suspect that many companies (with worse management and worse working conditions) might benefit. And I always like hearing things which challenge my assumptions, as long as they are well thought out or based on actual experience.
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Is not child care a top ask for professionals? It's not obvious to me what I'd be getting for my union dues that isn't already provided by the company's appointed ombudsman.
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Is not child care a top ask for professionals? It's not obvious to me what I'd be getting for my union dues that isn't already provided by the company's appointed ombudsman.
Subsidized daycare is already provided by the state here so it's more of a "I fucked up and my kid didn't get in" or "I want a nicer/more convenient daycare" thing. It's a great benefit for employees with small children of course so it was brought up with the company, but in the local context it didn't make sense to make this as a life-or-death fight.
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I'm still going to committ the horrible crime of sharing directly relevant experience
Thank you, and thank you for your efforts.
Did you forget what unions do? (Score:2)
Maybe you hadn't had your coffee yet, and forgot what uniins do. What unions do is set is put together huge non-compete arrangements, where everybody gets to same mediocre salary, rather than competing on skill, abilities, etc.
I sure as heck don't want a union - I'm in demand, with a bidding war to hire me whenever I'm available. I hage no interest an an arrangement where I get the same pay as the stoned guy who doesn't have any idea what he's doing, thanks.
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Requiring the company to pay severance equal to its duration, regardless of whether or not it's enforceable, because asking someone not to work is not different than engaging them to wait. I believe some more sane legal systems already do something similar, especially of the non-compete is over 90 days or so.
Union get rid of non-compete? (Score:2)
Why would a union want to get rid of non-competes? A union doesn't want you leaving the company because it likely means you are leaving the union - ie they are incentivised to keeping you where you are.
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Unions are about power. If you don't have much, you can improve your lot by giving what little you have to the union. Since your power wasn't worth much, anything you get back will be worthwhile.
As a high-skill worker, you still have to give your power to the union. But you actually had a lot of power on your own. The union has to return an awful lot before sacrificing your power to it proves worthwhile. I'm dubious about that prospect. Very dubious.
Re: High skill, high pay industries. (Score:3)
Re: High skill, high pay industries. (Score:1)
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For most jobs, the only thing worse than working in an union shop is working in a non-union shop. Wages, benefits, safety standards, employee treatment,etc. are almost always better with an union. Rumours to the contrary, there are very few workplaces where the cost of union dues amounts to anything near the value of the financial (and other) benefits.
To see a successful plan which prevented unionization in the workplace, look at the drilling and exploration portion of the Canadian oil industry. Traditiona
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The two shittiest companies I've worked for were also the two most highly unionised companies.
One of them refused to even negotiate with non-union staff. Fuck that, and no, it was no surprise when they suffered substantial losses some time after I left.
Wages weren't better, benefits weren't better, safety standards weren't different and employee treatment was significantly worse.
If I'd joined the unions then nothing would have improved for me. Instead I'd have ended up paying to be ignored instead of it hap
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The two shittiest companies I've worked for were also the two most highly unionised companies.
Ok, that explains your post below.
One of them refused to even negotiate with non-union staff. Fuck that, and no, it was no surprise when they suffered substantial losses some time after I left.
Why would they, it's not as if individuals have any power to use in a negotiation. Why would a company waste its time? You've essentially illustrated one of the key reasons why unions are necessary.
Wages weren't better, benefits weren't better, safety standards weren't different and employee treatment was significantly worse.
Is it possible that the union was formed *because* they were shitty employers?
If I'd joined the unions then nothing would have improved for me. Instead I'd have ended up paying to be ignored instead of it happening anyway.
I guess you'll never know.
Unions are anti-democratic anti-business social engineering corruption.
Unions are a expression of the right to freely associate. A fundamental expression of democracy required to conduct business.
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Union dues are very expensive. In exchange for what?
Unions get to sit at a table by law. Employees get an "open door" policy which is only as good as long as what your saying jives with the company. The second you have something that runs against the company's agenda, they technically don't have to open door anything for you. So the second that employees get a legal right to sit in the decision making of the company to some degree, is the exact second this country no longer needs unions. Till that day, we're just given empty promises and told that when t
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Generally unionized shops pay higher wages? So, not unionizing?
That is a meaningless comparison. Unions generally pay more on average, but that doesn't mean wages for everyone goes up. Good IT staff can see their pay triple in their first 10 years in the industry, while most see their pay go up by around 75% (this comes from my anecdotal experience, not good data). That is not true for teachers or auto workers. If IT salaries were governed by collective bargaining agreements, pay for top staff would almost certainly go down. If it didn't, work would need to more aggres
Re:High skill, high pay industries. (Score:4, Insightful)
I can see this helping the gaming industry, which is well known for having a grueling pace.
And a bit more forward-thinking -- there's been a massive push by tech companies (Hour of Code etc.) to increase the number of developers. If they are successful, there will be significantly less balance of power for the next generation of devs.
Re: High skill, high pay industries. (Score:2)
Re: High skill, high pay industries. (Score:1)
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Union dues are not expensive, and are in almost every case more than made up for by higher wages.
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Wait, do you mean in the real world or in bizarro i-hate-unions-and-facts world? I think I see the problem...
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So wait, you say pay rates would drop, yet somehow unions will make video games more expensive to make? Someone isn't telling the truth here...
It''s not very mysterious. Pay rates will drop because the companies can't pay developers at their old hourly rate if they have to pay for every hour worked. Costs go up because developers are now getting time-and-a-half for hours over 40 in a week. Alternatively, costs go up because the company prohibits overtime, resulting in longer schedules.
Re: High skill, high pay industries. (Score:2)
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I think you are saying that the companies' business models cannot afford paying their employees for the hours they actually work, right? Well, that sucks for those companies, but, seriously, why do you want to support companies with poor business models? That seems weird, but to each their own. I like the free market myself; I'm sorry you don't.
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You misunderstand. Nowhere did I express support for these companies; I merely reiterated the way they work. I am not a gamer or a game developer. As far as I'm concerned, the whole industry could go under tomorrow and not much of value would be lost.
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The reason that high-skill, highly-paid workers tend not to be in unions is that it's far more effective to vote with your feet. A tech company which can't attract and keep talent is soon to be a bundled of assets liquidated in bankruptcy.
We don't need unions, we just need to suppress those non-competes.
You're confusing a union with a local. High-level workers might organize to push industry-wide policy changes, rather than short-term demands at one company. No one-company union can eliminate those non-competes for just one example, but an industry-wide organization can.
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They can lobby for changes in state law. Getting union support for aggressive state laws has helped them pass.
Re: High skill, high pay industries. (Score:1)
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If I understand you, we don't need unions as long as we have a strong government which enforces regulations on companies when the companies misbehave? I agree, but that doesn't help people in states which don't have regulations on companies. Those people must find their own solutions.
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And the issue where most techies are forced to be salary, yet don't qualify as such under IRS and Supreme court guidelines?
The fact they are being forced to work 50,60,.80 hour weeks without extra pay?
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That works, until companies start talking through back channels to limit wages on certain positions
Such actions are illegal and are easily solved without some magical union.
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I think you are saying that we need better regulations which limit what companies will do, enforced by a strong government? I agree, but what should people do when they are in an area without a strong government?
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Oh, I agree. I just find that the same people who want to get rid of strong government want to get rid of unions, with explanations that come down to "we don't need unions because we have strong government, also we should get rid of strong government because I don't understand irony."
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we just need to suppress those non-competes
It's almost like you're self aware here but miss the point. The industry puts itself together in a way to ensure that voting with your feet becomes a non-option or as painful an option as possible at the very least.
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I've been in the industry for a quarter of a century and have yet to have an enforceable non-compete get in my way. If your experience has been different, I'd love to hear your story. YOUR story, not the story of some guy you heard about third hand.
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have yet to have an enforceable non-compete get in my way
Oh, my time before last position was one of those too. The problem being, I didn't want to include a protracted lawyer review of the terms and legal challenge to my employer as part of my changing jobs. That's the thing, it's not that it totally is enforceable, it's that no one is really going to take the time to legally challenge it. Some may, I'm not excluding that as an option. I worked for a company that produces a line of components for a kind of consumer product, and they are facing some litigatio
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First, thank you for sharing. That takes guts.
Second... that sounds sorta self-imposed to me. Like someone said, "You can't do that," and you said, "Oh, okay" without ever wondering if it was true.
You could have gone to any other company and said, "Hey, I have a confidentiality and non-compete agreement with Company X. I don't think there's a problem with the work I'd do for you but if you put me on something similar to proprietary work I did there, we'll have to check it with the lawyers first."
Two things
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We don't need unions, we just need to suppress those non-competes.
You just mentioned one thing unions could help with. Unions are not only created to bargain wages. There are plenty of professional organizations such as the American Bar Association and American Medical Association which act as trade unions for their profession but rarely if ever take part in salary negotiations. I would guess an IT trade union would work more like these trade unions than the UAW.
Regulating non-competes and negotiating outsourcing / cloud migration decisions would be very useful activities
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And besides, are there really unions in India?
Let's hope not (Score:4, Insightful)
Unions work for blue collar jobs. It won't work for jobs where your salary and benefits are based on skill and performance. What benefit is there for a tech company to agree to a union? They are looking for the best performing candidates and need the flexibility to negotiate for them. Traditionally, that's the opposite as to whom a union helps.
And no, unionizing is not gaining traction. This article is wishful thinking at best. I'm willing to bet that most people with skill, who earned their position, are now even further against unions in general.
Re:Let's hope not (Score:4, Interesting)
Re: Let's hope not (Score:2)
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Why would top skilled hard working well paid tech worked -want- collective bargaining? You meant to say, "take a much lower total comp so some incompetent slacker can make more while being even harder to fire for killing projects with their stupidity".
There are many counter examples. Professional sports and entertainers unions don't seem to have this type of issue. And there are many, many, many more examples of skilled hard working well paid workers being taken advantage of due to their low power situation within the business structure.
Surely you are aware that being part of a collective bargaining system can bring the power structure into a more balanced situation?
Of course there are costs and downsides to working within any given collective bargaining
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I think a tech union is beneficial in that it allows for collective bargaining on the part of employees. However, I wouldn’t ever want one that’s mandatory to belong to, spends my dues on politicians or campaigns, or really does anything outside of serving as a vehicle for collective bargaining when I think that’s in my best interest.
That seems reasonable at first glance, but of course one of the benefits of forming a collective is that it increases a group's political power. The 40 hour work week, sick pay, worker safety legislation and a huge amount of other political stuff only came about due to pressure from groups outside of just collective employment bargaining.
I don't have any good, simple way of preventing union bureaucracy from abusing its power other than the same things that work towards any political bureaucracy from getting
Re: Let's hope not (Score:2, Interesting)
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My guess: you're a millennial and you earned a great many participation trophies through your 30+ year childhood.
My guess: you should have checkled BytePusher''s UID before posting that obvious tripe.
Re: Let's hope not (Score:2)
Re: Let's hope not (Score:3)
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You know very little about blue collar jobs. I would wager that you have never worked a blue collar job for any appreciable amount of time.
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The tech company doesn't have to agree to a union. If the employees decide to form a union, there's nothing short of closing down that can stop them.
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Software Engineer here: I'm in a union, and it works just fine.
I work 40 a week, get good health benefits.
" jobs where your salary"
I'll take a moment to point at the the VAST majority of software jobs don't actually qualify for salary. There are rules to exempt and non-exempt.
Do you even know what those rules are?
So right there is most software developers being abused.
"are based on skill and performance"
That's almost never true. Most corporation give a flat increase, regardless.
Ironically, My union only all
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Most of the people working in tech are not writing code. Most are IT. Hired on a scale with specific certifications or skills.
Anyway none of that is an issue for unions. Wage scale negotiations is not all they do.
Brought to you by (Score:4, Funny)
The Department of Redundancy Department
You want to tell them, or should I? (Score:4, Informative)
-- Barbara Jordan, civil rights icon and first black woman elected to Congress from the South. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TMywOal05s0 [youtube.com]
In his 1995 State of the Union address, President Bill Clinton said: "Illegal immigrants take jobs from citizens or legal immigrants, they impose burdens on our taxpayers...That is why we are doubling the number of border guards, deporting more illegal immigrants than ever before, cracking down on illegal hiring, barring benefits to illegal aliens, and we will do more to speed the deportation of illegal immigrants arrested for crimes..."
He received a standing ovation in Congress for saying this. That's what a pro-Union president sounds like. Not what the people at Google and Amazon want any part of.
Re: You want to tell them, or should I? (Score:2)
Unions are pro-Trump? (Score:2)
[citation needed]
By all means, list some unions that have endorsed Trump either in 2020 or 2016. Outside of law enforcement, I don't remember a single one. Feel free to provide the names of ones I've missed.
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You live in a weird world. I hope you have support when you come back to reality. It's going to be jarring.
Could unions could gain??? (Score:4, Interesting)
Do we have editors, or not? It's bad enough when we get dupes in the same day, but dupes in the same TITLE?
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Do we have editors, or not? It's bad enough when we get dupes in the same day, but dupes in the same TITLE?
Yet another example of the typical outcome resulting from corporate ownership. Corporations always need to maximize profits so they cut costs, eventually, and inevitably, the cost cutting becomes pathological and dysfunctional. This is isn't help by the fact that the management is largely incompetent as a result of the Peter Principle. See ~ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Happy to (Score:1)
Does not want its workers to enter a union...
The charm of working for an ad company.
No. They will not. (Score:4, Interesting)
Why would I want to have another boss?
In the tech industry, if I don't like my job or my pay, I move on to one of the zillions of jobs that recruiters or one of my friends have told me about. Problem solved.
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Can you elect your boss? (Score:2)
You can elect your union membership. So have you always hated democracy and wanted to return to a monarchy (since you are too dumb to have any say in how things are run) or just since reading Atlas Wanked?
In the land of the brave (Score:1)
United we prosper, divided we perish (Score:1)
Join the Software Workers Union. When we stop working the Internet stops working.
I hope so (Score:2)
If companies had profit sharing (Score:4, Interesting)
and were democratic, we wouldn't need unions. If democracy is so great, why aren't our companies democracies? Instead we have what is basically a despotic tyranny with the elite upper class at the top and the rest of us at the bottom. It's unethical and amounts to nothing less than modern economic slavery.
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You didn't invest millions of dollars of risk to start the company. You get no say in running it. You show 10-4 with a long lunch and get well compensated for checking critical bugs into the main branch everyday that someone else is fixing after you went home early (again). You are already overcompensated for your time, effort, skill, and contributions. The rest of your Marxist screed is just laughable and unworthy of reply.
lol, typical fascist bs, :-) most rich people didn't get that way by investing their own money, most investments are heavily leveraged, furthermore, the truth is that most personal wealth is not earned but transferred, to believe otherwise is both being naive and complicit, third fact, globally speaking, most employees are not "well paid" most are wage or salary slaves. Most corporations make more off their employees than the employee gets in remuneration, clearly this is true as the owners are more affluen
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They tried it your way. If you had studied history you'd know it. It was a disaster. Turns out workers don't know shit about managing a company and doing it democratically creates an inefficient behemoth that can't survive without constant cash infusions from the government. Nations collapsed because of this, comrade.
bs, they tried it, when and where? no citations, figures, just unsupported upper class propaganda that affluent people tell themselves so they can feel better about themselves despite evidence to the contrary
a counter example would be the kibbutz movement, which are quite successful to this day see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
nice try "comrade" (why do people always try to label others as communists, didn't that go out in the fifties?) ;-)
No (Score:2)
There was a time... (Score:2)
Why would anyone want to join? (Score:2)
Tech is not like a factory town where neither workers nor owners have much choice except being stuck with each other and negotiating a deal. If you have some demands for a potential strike, you can likely get these demands met by switching to one of dozens of available positions for your skillset.
Re: (Score:2)
They concept you think all Coronation are abusive is adorable.Couple that with the in fact you think it's ok for corporation to abuse people becasue they can just shift careers willy nilly.
Bad solution to a real problem (Score:3)
Unions in theory make up for the imbalance in bargaining power between an employer - typically a large enterprise with a very large number of job candidates with varying degress of desperation - and the worker - an individual with limited financial assets and comparatively fewer employers to choose from. When employers are too exploitative, they can't complain if workers start to find unions appealing.
But they don't work that way in real life. Unions in general are anti-meritocratic and wilfully blind to any perspective other than that of their members.
Ask a union member why unions are great, and see how many generations into the past they have to reach to find something constructive that unions have achieved besides inflating wages beyond market rates.
Re: (Score:3)
I like working only 40 hours a week, and I do that now, not "many generations into the past". I can work more than 40 (and I'm salaried, so I won't get any real benefits), and I do sometimes, since I like my company. But I don't have to, and I usually choose not to. And since the 40 hour a week, 8 hour a day system came from labor movements, I really like unions.
It really sounds like you are saying "I am not in a union and my life has not benefited from unions". Which is of course wrong, as I just point
Re: (Score:2)
the 40 hour a week, 8 hour a day system came from labor movements
That's going three generations into the past. Unions are not the reason labour rights exist in 2020.
Re: (Score:2)
But of course they are. Amazon would be happy to make you work 80 hours a week with no overtime except for the actions of unions.
Stupid anti-union tautologies are the real problem (Score:2)
The highest paid workers in the world are members of unions. The average professional baseball player makes a few hundred thousand a year - so go tell the highest paid one of all time, Alex Rodriguez, that he didn't actually make $450 million of the course of his career because there is no meritocracy and it was all his imagination.
You are willfully blind to the fact that the well-being of any unio
Nope. (Score:2)
No, becasue most techie are educated just enough to be able to have hubris, but not so educated they realize it or can reflect on it.
I'm not interested in being a union coder (Score:2)
I've turned down opportunities to be in a unionized workforce. To me being a union coder means my compensation is based on group negotiation rather than my productivity. I work hard, I'm good at what I do, and I get compensated accordingly. I don't want to be compensated at some fixed "coder grade X level" the same as everyone else.
Re: (Score:3)
I'm pretty sure that your company, if it's big enough, also has classifications like "coder grade X level" - they may dress them up with names like "Software Engineer 4" or "Systems Analyst II", but rest assured, they have them and which level you are on constrains your compensation as tightly as any union contract - no matter how productive you are. You're also very mistaken in your belief that compensation is strongly correlated with productivity in any organization - it don't work that way, unless you're
Re: (Score:2)
You're also very mistaken in your belief that compensation is strongly correlated with productivity in any organization - it don't work that way, unless you're paid piece rates.
Have you spent much time working in investment banks? Personal productivity and commercial effectiveness are huge factors in your annual total comp. And if you are on the low side in either of those you (1) wont get paid and (2) will probably get fired in the annual "bottom 20% elimination round".
We have to, now - FAST (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
"employees doing walkouts & protests against their own company is absolutely harmful to all companies & all industries
that the point, dumb dumb.
"would employees ever runout of reasons to keep doing more walkouts & protests against their own company"
Yes. None of this is in a vacuum, employees generally don't get paid.JFC, just stop, you are clearly ignorant of the entire subject.