Google Workers Unionize, Escalating Tension With Management (bloomberg.com) 200
Employees of Google and parent company Alphabet announced the creation of a union on Monday, escalating years of confrontation between workers and management of the internet giant. From a report: The Alphabet Workers Union said it will be open to all employees and contractors, regardless of their role or classification. It will collect dues, pay organizing staff and have an elected board of directors. The unionizing effort, a rare campaign within a major U.S. technology company, is supported by the Communications Workers of America as part of a recent tech-focused initiative known as CODE-CWA. Googlers who join the Alphabet Workers Union will also be members of CWA Local 1400. The group, which represents more than 200 workers in the U.S., plans to take on issues including compensation, employee classification and the kinds of work Google engages in. "We will hire skilled organizers to ensure all workers at Google know they can work with us if they actually want to see their company reflect their values," Dylan Baker, software engineer at Google, said in a statement. A letter from the union organizers published in the New York Times said workplace concerns at the company have been dismissed by executives for too long. Google has clashed with some employees in recent years over contracts with the military, the different treatment of contract workers and a rich exit package for an executive ousted for alleged sexual harassment.
About time for an Tech union now other big ones (Score:5, Insightful)
About time for an Tech union now other big ones need to do the same.
Also amazon for tech and warehouse / drivers.
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It is Amazon. They screw their workers right left and centre.
We can all help by not buying stuff from Bezos. He has more than enough money already.
Proudly Amazon free since 2018.
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Amazon's turnover rate is crazy. It's hard to even argue for a union when you're already looking for your next job shortly after you've hired on at Amazon.
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I assume you are talking about laborers working in the warehouses, and not the actual tech employees. I only know two employees of Amazon, both software developers, and both love their jobs. I even tried to get one of them to move over to my company when we were paying a $50k head-hunting fee and despite similar on-paper benefits, an estimated 15-20% increase in pay, and no need to relocate, he didn't even take the interview.
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You don't watch The Expanse?
Re:About time for an Tech union now other big ones (Score:5, Insightful)
Let's see, there is a certain amount of the union controlling the employees... though with 200 people, it's not going to do much.
The rest of what you said is ABSOLUTELY BULLSHIT PROPAGANDA AS TO WHY WE DON'T NEED UNIONS. Are you being *PAID* to post that?
Oh, companies treat their emploees ok... Really? A late friend had a book on recipes and entertaining, from 1950. In the preface, it mentioned "with the advent of the 8 hour day and the 40 hour week, even men are home to entertain".
Tell me, how many people do YOU KNOW who work 40 hour weeks. And are NEVER expected to receive or respond to texts and phone calls 24x7x365.25? How many never get to use their vacation time, because they're overworked? How many times has the company cranked up the employees' "contribution" for benefits... and raised ROI at the same time, rather than swallow the costs?
And companies tend to lay off? Look, you ignorant idiot, that's because THEY HATE UNIONS, and have been massively union-busting since Ronnie Raygun. Back in the seventies, almost 25% of the workforce was unoinized; it's now barely 10%.
And a lot of that is YOUR PERSONAL FAULT FOR ARGUING WE DON'T NEED THEM.
Go bugger yourself.
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If you're comparing being on-call to the loss of limbs or being beaten black and blue by a Pinkerton then you're the one that's buggered.
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This isn't a real Union in the tradition sense. They have no actual power.
It's a collection of a few hundred employees, out of a couple hundred thousand. They'll probably get some more members, but I'll be surprised if they ever reach even 5% membership. Alphabet employees know that we're overpaid and spoiled, so there's fairly little of the traditional motivation for unionization -- to improve pay and benefits through collective bargaining.
It appears to me that this group is mostly about trying to push the company to take political positions which companies should not take. Wh
Where? (Score:4, Informative)
None of the above (Score:5, Insightful)
A bunch of employees got together and formed a "union." They didn't organize a vote, or get enough employees to force collective bargaining, they just declared themselves a union. I guess that works, but I'm not sure how effective they will be.
Re:None of the above (Score:5, Funny)
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Or for pointing out facts about Google hiring practices, just as James Damore was fired for pointing out Google's gender equity practices as interfering with hiring based on merit.
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Emilio J. Castilla, a professor at MIT’s Sloan School of Management, has explored how meritocratic ideals and HR practices like pay-for-performance play out in organizations, and he’s come to some unexpected conclusions.
In one company study, Castilla examined almost 9,000 employees who worked as support-staff at a large service-sector company. The company was committed to diversity and had implemented a merit-driven compensation system intended to reward high-level performance and to reward all employees equitably.
But Castilla’s analysis revealed some very non-meritocratic outcomes. Women, ethnic minorities, and non-U.S.-born employees received a smaller increase in compensation compared with white men, despite holding the same jobs, working in the same units, having the same supervisors, the same human capital, and importantly, receiving the same performance score. Despite stating that “performance is the primary bases for all salary increases,” the reality was that women, minorities, and those born outside the U.S. needed “to work harder and obtain higher performance scores in order to receive similar salary increases to white men.”
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Hiring based on merit appears to only re-enforce bias in the workplace
https://www.theatlantic.com/bu... [theatlantic.com]
I think this is what is known in the broadcast industry as a "whipsaw." You make a comment about hiring practices, then quote an article that quotes a research study on compensation. Those aren't the same thing.
A better analog would be symphonies doing blind auditions. In some symphonies, diversity increased. In some symphonies, diversity decreased. Which is to be expected, as talent and ability does not fall evenly amongst the population everywhere.
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Hiring based on merit may cause problems (your link doesn't demonstrate that), but ignoring merit will definitely cause problems.
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That's not quite what that quote says. They implemented what they thought were meritocratic processes and ended up with non-meritocratic results. In other words, they screwed up.
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Hiring based on merit appears to only re-enforce bias in the workplace
Unless you're Asian, Indian, Russian, Irish, Italian, Jewish- you know one of the dozens of minorities that have immigrated to the United States and yes, faced obstacles at first, but then became assimilated and as successful as any "native" born American. Of course, those minorities are not favored by the left and thus don't count.
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Indeed, it would have been nice if the study had examined the reasons for the merit discrepancy, rather than jumping to the conclusion that it was racism/sexism.
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Indeed, it would have been nice if the study had examined the reasons for the merit discrepancy, rather than jumping to the conclusion that it was racism/sexism.
Didn't bother to read the blurb, did you? Had you done so, this very important part would stand out:
received a smaller increase in compensation compared with white men, despite holding the same jobs, working in the same units, having the same supervisors, the same human capital, and importantly, receiving the same performance score.
In other words, women and minorities were doing the exact same everything as white men but not getting the same raises. So yes, racism and sexism are to blame in this case.
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In other words, women and minorities were doing the exact same everything as white men but not getting the same raises. So yes, racism and sexism are to blame in this case.
Logic fail.
If they got the same performance score, why didn't they get the same raises? You jumped to the conclusion that it was sexism without evidence.
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Well, there's more nuance than that.
Basically, they showed that raises labeled 'merit' did not correlate with any metrics designed to show 'merit', and thus claims of merit based compensation are apparently false. There is a correlation along racial and gender lines, then the question becomes:
-How much of it is direct discrimination, where the supervisors tend to just treat marginalized groups poorly.
-How much of it is 'inherited' discrimination, where a particular group learned a different method of intera
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You have to actually post a misogynist screed to Google's internal forum to be fired like this, they can't just BS this problem into existence like a bad performance review;
Damore was trying to help women at Google (Score:2, Insightful)
For those not paying attention, Damore was fired for posting an blatantly sexist manifesto,
For those not paying attention, the person is outright lying about what Damore did.
Damore simply posted a document about how Google could improve some working conditions to help improve the number of women working at Google, by pointing out that women in general may work better under some different conditions and posting how Google could make some changes to accommodate women better.
People like Somer here, seem to fee
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The document is a rather long document, and in part he seems to be trying, but his own TLDR has the takeaways as being:
Differences in distributions of traits between men and women may in part explain why wedon't have 50% representation of women in tech and leadership.
Discrimination to reach equal representation is unfair, divisive, and bad for business
He also makes statements like women are more prone to neuroticism, that men are just naturally attracted to leadership roles, and such.
At the end of the day, his work was a guy saying what women need from the workplace, when there are plenty of women that can speak and do speak for themselves. To have a man come along and second guess policies about women in the workplace largely created by
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So where are you links to physiological papers that discuss if those points are true or not?
Well, plenty of people debunked his science, but the real point is that he, as a man, is basically saying that women are wrong about what women want out of the workplace. This is obviously going to be a PR nightmare and will alienate a great deal of people you might need him to work with. While you may think 'well there should have been a discourse instead of cutting it off', the reality is that people have to recognize where they are coming from and not make blatantly bad looking requests if you want your
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He isn't, and I am tired of pretending he is. Red the document.
I did, but you have to consider the wider context. He doesn't explicitly say that women don't know what they want, but he wrote a manifesto on how the Google leadership gets inclusion of women wrong and here's how to do it right. I guarantee that Google had women help shape the policies he is decrying as the wrong way to help women in the workplace, and that he knows better. The only reason it would make sense to write this is that he, a software developer that googles up some sociology, knows better than t
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If you can't see how insulting it is to say "Women, on average, have more neuroticism," then you're either lying, in-denial, or really ignorant.
Neuroticism is one of the Big Five higher-order personality traits. It's not good to have too much of it (or too little!) but as long as those extremes are avoided it's neither inherently good nor bad. It may even be associated with greater success in certain fields so long as the negative aspects are properly addressed. The statement that levels of neuroticism are higher in women is well-supported fact, not discrimination:
Research in large samples has shown that levels of N [neuroticism] are higher in women than men. This is a robust finding that is consistent across cultures (Costa et al., 2001). This is especially the case during the reproductive years, but is also visible in children and elderly (Jorm, 1987).
Ormel, J., Bastiaansen, A., Riese, H., Bos, E. H., Servaas, M., Ellenbogen, M., ... Aleman, A. (2013). The biological and psychological basis of neuroticism: Current status and future directions. Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews, 37(1), 59â"72. doi:10.1016/j.neubiorev.2012.09.004 [doi.org]
Knowing the statistical correlation between gender and higher levels of neuroticism s
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For those not paying attention, Damore was fired for posting an blatantly sexist manifesto, among other things arguing that maybe women were held back by biology for careers in tech, to all Google Employees.
It's kind of funny how people claim he wrote a blatantly sexist manifesto, and than completely misrepresent his "observations". He specifically talks about statistical distributions, and how there are gender differences between Men and Women as a whole. None of this is sexist, it's scientifically accurate. Perhaps his statistics, observations, and/or conclusions are wrong, but attacking someone personally for making mistakes in a piece that is clearly designed to be helpful is just rude.
Furthermore, it is q
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First of all, he literally said "Women, on average, have more neuroticism," Pretty sexist to me and every person I know.
Neuroticism is one of the Big Five higher-order personality traits. It's not good to have too much of it (or too little!) but as long as those extremes are avoided it's neither inherently good nor bad. It may even be associated with greater success in certain fields so long as the negative aspects are properly addressed. The statement that levels of neuroticism are higher in women is well-supported fact, not discrimination:
Research in large samples has shown that levels of N [neuroticism] are higher in women than men. This is a robust finding that is consistent across cultures (Costa et al., 2001). This is especially the case during the reproductive years, but is also visible in children and elderly (Jorm, 1987).
Ormel, J., Bastiaansen, A., Riese, H., Bos, E. H., Servaas, M., Ellenbogen, M., ... Aleman, A. (2013). The biological and psychological basis of neuroticism: Current status and future directions. Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews, 37(1), 59â"72. doi:10.1016/j.neubiorev.2012.09.004 [doi.org]
Knowing the statistical correlation between gender and higher levels of neuroticism s
Re:Your opinion doesn't matter, Google's does (Score:4, Insightful)
First of all, he literally said "Women, on average, have more neuroticism," Pretty sexist to me and every person I know.
Two can play at this game.
You said "You're welcome to disagree and that's your opinion." which is pretty fucking racist to me and every person I know. You are a fucking racist.
See, both of us can make shit up completely.
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For those not paying attention, Damore was fired for posting an blatantly sexist manifesto, among other things arguing that maybe women were held back by biology for careers in tech, to all Google Employees.
To be more specific, it appears it wasn't the memo that got him fired, it was other messages published on internal message boards (which weren't released) that got him fired.
Which isn't surprising, he seems to have turned into a kind of racist weirdo after he got fired.
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The "union" isn't made up of employees. It is made up of "workers". This included people who are employed by completely different companies, like the transport company that runs the Google shuttle-bus, the food service company that prepares Google cafeteria food, the janitorial services company that cleans Google office buildings.
The most telling thing to me is how the formation of this club, which should be seen as "non news", is on the front page of the New York Times.
Competition (Score:2)
Nice, the union should well-hobble Google, so competitors might get a bit of a chance, assuming Google doesn't keep buying them - hopefully more anti-monopoly attention will help prevent that.
Those who fail to learn from history... (Score:4, Insightful)
Nothing about this should be a surprise to companies. In the past they abused their positions of power and as a result we got labor unions. Today companies are abusing their positions of power but they are somehow expecting a different outcome.
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The comparison is totally wrong. Abuse workers? What was listed.
1) Contracts with the military. This is called business children. This is not abuse. You might not agree with it, but you're not in control of the company. If you want to change that, become CEO or something. Otherwise, the door is over there.
2) "want to see the company reflect their (the employees) values" This is called the tail wagging the dog. Sorry, you don't demand your company does something because it's your beliefs. Again, i
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1) Contracts with the military. This is called business children. This is not abuse. You might not agree with it, but you're not in control of the company. If you want to change that, become CEO or something. Otherwise, the door is over there.
Interesting because whenever a company gets punished for management committing a crime, it's the entire business that suffers, not management. You cannot have it both ways. Furthermore, Alphabet is free to reject the union and fire them all. It may be costly but it's their choice. Do not belittle others because they do not want their knowledge used to kill other people because you only make yourself look small.
2) "want to see the company reflect their (the employees) values" This is called the tail wagging the dog.
I find that interesting because tech companies often hire people under the guise of supporting
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1) Of course you can have it both ways! This isn't Fairville. If management does a crappy job, the business goes under and everyone loses their job. If they commit a crime, it all goes down hill. Not sure where you get committing a crime from contracts to the military. If workers don't want their knowledge to "kill people" then refer to what I said before. There is the door. Go, and find a company that more aligns with you beliefs. Heck start one and compete. And if you say I look small, thank you
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The comparison is totally wrong. Abuse workers? What was listed.
1) Contracts with the military. This is called business children. This is not abuse. You might not agree with it, but you're not in control of the company. If you want to change that, become CEO or something. Otherwise, the door is over there.
2) "want to see the company reflect their (the employees) values" This is called the tail wagging the dog. Sorry, you don't demand your company does something because it's your beliefs. Again, if you think the company should go in another direction, become management and move it there. Otherwise, the door is over there.
These fine emotionally-charged examples should be of no surprise to anyone.
Hire and abuse hardworking adults? You end up with actual unions.
Hire and "abuse" spoiled children? You end up with this stupid shit.
Every body wants to rule the world! (Score:5, Insightful)
Google has clashed with some employees in recent years over contracts with the military, the different treatment of contract workers and a rich exit package for an executive ousted for alleged sexual harassment.
Two of the three items have nothing to do with working conditions.
If you want a say in that, buy stock so you get a vote at shareholder meetings.
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They are going to be surprised, especially when the union starts taking $100 or more a month.
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1 out of 3 (Score:2)
As for buying stock, even Google employees don't make enough to buy enough stock to get a useful vote. This isn't a demo
Re:Every body wants to rule the world! (Score:5, Interesting)
If you want a say in that, buy stock so you get a vote at shareholder meetings.
I haven't worked for Google, so I have no direct knowledge of this, but in my experience large corporations run a non-stop internal propaganda outfit. There will be a "company home page" on an intranet, filled with articles about how wonderful the directors/senior managers are... there will be articles "show-casing" the latest hot young talent, or people who have "overcome adversity" to be "hugely successful", or who, "saw something wrong and spoke up about it, bringing about positive change" and the intent is for everyone on the payroll to buy in to this idea that "the opportunity is here, ready for you to reach up and take it..." It's Corporate Kool-Aid in it's purest form.
The truth is that most US corporations have a pyramid-like structure, with a few very powerful roles at the top and hundreds or thousands of "drones" at the bottom.
In other words, there is a better-than-average chance that management at Alphabet have been running the "Management BS" line of "we'd love to hear from you..."... alongside a homepage article about how they are supporting the military. That being the case, it isn't unreasonable for relatively young and inexperienced hires to compute that 2+2=4 and take up the company on their invitations for feedback. Of course, older, wiser heads might have decided that certain topics were best left ignored... so the less experienced might have been puzzled/distraught/upset/annoyed at being rebuffed, *especially* if that reply wasn't handled sensitively.
It's also worth pointing out that some of the very best technologists also track high on the autism spectrum (I believe but am not sure that James Damore might be someone in that group), which gives them the additional burden of finding it very difficult to calibrate their reactions to some situations (including handling rejection).
So whilst I see the "cold hard truth" in your comment - and I don't dispute that you have accurately reflected the way that the world works, I think it's worth accepting that, at least in some cases, these big companies might be getting exactly the outcome they have set themselves up for.
And whatever the progenitor of this change in the workplace, it is undeniable that large companies have become far too powerful when it comes to the making and breaking of careers.
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The rich don't need a labor union. (Score:2, Interesting)
Re: The rich don't need a labor union. (Score:4, Insightful)
It will be interesting to see who and how many sign up. I will make the observation that not everyone who works at Google is a 6 figure white collar techie. I'm guessing that there are a number of blue collar workers such as custodial personnel.
That aside, I don't have a problem with private sector employees deciding to form a union especially if they work for a huge, monopolistic behemoth like Google. Unions deal with issues important to white collar workers besides pay. Plus, I somewhat enjoy the irony that a large progressive company like Google is anti-union, at least for its employees.
Re: The rich don't need a labor union. (Score:4, Interesting)
I saw in relation to this story that a full half of Google employees are contractors, so the 6 figure white collar techies would be some fraction of the other half.
Expanding what unions are for isn't a bad idea.
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$100/mo is nothing for a white-collar SF tech worker and quite affordable to many people who make mere mortals' money, and can pay itself off in increased pay and improved working conditions. Union leaders don't make anywhere near executive pay - maybe upper-level management pay for a large and wealthy union. Meanwhile this can fix problems like your company paying an executive accused of sexual assault enough money for a midrange fighter jet as a severance package. You won't see any of that money pass thro
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$100/mo is nothing for a white-collar SF tech worker and quite affordable to many people who make mere mortals' money, and can pay itself off in increased pay and improved working conditions.
How are they going to increase the pay at one of the top paying firms in their sector? How will they better working conditions at a company that has every perk known to man. Free meals, snacks, gym, childcare, transportation, onsite health/wellness centers, paid parental leave, tuition reimbursement, etc. etc.
The fact is, this union is going to have to work very hard to prove themselves worth the time, effort, and cost of being a member. Time will tell whether or not they succeed.
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The unionization of white-collar workers who make six-figure salaries is pretty much the last warning sign that unions don't serve the purpose they were originally intended for. If you work at a place where deciding which free corporate restaurant to eat lunch at you are not being unfairly oppressed by management.
Meanwhile, doctors laugh at your self defeating attitude.
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An interesting point. Software engineer could have become a profession like other branches of engineering, or at least a trade, with only licensed practitioners allowed to write commercial software.
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As it stands, demand for software developers hugely outstrips supply. People who can barely use a keyboard are passing themselves off as computer programmers and getting hired.
A licensing requirement that includes a solid competency test would reduce the labor supply even further. No business wants that. A licensing requirement that does not include a solit competency test would serve no purpose.
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The demand for physicians outstrips supply as well, primarily due to deliberate restrictions on med school capacity. That's why it's an interesting comparison. One of the major functions of a professional or trade association is to restrict supply in order to allow members to demand high fees, and to maintain the guild mystique.
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The article didn't seem to emphasize such points as working conditions, fair compensation, work-life balance, protection from agism or senior-ism (laying off experienced workers due to cost and replacing them with junior workers), etc. I understood these are usually the issues that tend to inspire unions.
The article did mention "values," and clashes over military contracts and not punishing an executive harshly enough. So, based on that (which is far too little), I wonder if this union is really more of
The devil is in the details (Score:2)
The unionization of white-collar workers who make six-figure salaries is pretty much the last warning sign that unions don't serve the purpose they were originally intended for.
Not all unions are the same. I can see unions as helpful in ensuring people are paid consistently and exploited less. If done really well, it can increase the quality of output at work. Many toxic labor practices are not only bad for the worker, but bad for the product. Exploiting workers cause burnout and terrible collaboration, which can harm the quality of code written.
You realize most anti-Union stories are exaggerated right-wing propaganda, right? I hear so many unverified anecdotes about how
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You realize most anti-Union stories are exaggerated right-wing propaganda, right? I hear so many unverified anecdotes about how unions are criminally inefficient mobsters.
How about just plain criminal? [wikipedia.org]
Here's your "inefficient." [archive.org]
Note: I'm not anti-union as a rule of thumb. I have a lot of respect for IBEW, for one, and used to have a lot of respect for UMWA (not so much in recent years, as it seems they're in many cases captured by their industry), and I certainly don't ignore the legacy of protections that Unions were instrumental in helping to bring about. I've met many line techs who were CWA members and were both knowledgeable and dedicated.
However, many unions are inde
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>However, many unions are indeed nothing but graft, corruption, and inefficiency, existing for no other reason than to skim some percentage of payroll and persist in protecting bad employees.
And that is how inequality skyrockets and corporations maximize profits while the bottom of society slips further behind.
In 2019 it was 10.3% in the United States, compared to 20.1% in 1983.
So tell me pray tell, less than 10% of the US population is in a union, so what does that mean for the other 90% of the populati
Rich Exit Package (Score:2)
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That does make way more sense than any other explanation I've heard or thought of.
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Union is not about pay or work conditions. (Score:3)
I am not a fan of the direction of Google either, but if you don't agree with them why continue to work for them?
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Quitting a job, particularly quitting a job because you do not think the job is ethical, isn't "giving up." Employment is a an agreement to sell your time and skill for money. Refusing to accept money to do something you think is unethical is noble, and the world would be a better place if more people did so.
Why is that so hard? (Score:5, Insightful)
I live in Europe and everybody I know is in a Union, Google- and Amazon-workers included.
Re: Why is that so hard? (Score:2)
The Rockefellerian business culture and Mont Pelerin Society with their 500(!) lobby tanks is why.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
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I lived in Europe and very little persons I know were in an union, Google- and Amazon-workers especially.
So please define where in Europe. Different countries have very different notions of "unions"; their role and usage is very different country-to-country.
Re:So what do the unions get you? (Score:5, Insightful)
Europe has better pro-worker laws than US, thanks to unions.
And unions are still useful to keep these laws, and to obtain pro-workers laws on new subject (e.g. teleworking).
This *is* the invisible hand of the free market. (Score:5, Interesting)
It is the employer side of the balance between supply and demand in a world where orgsnization is possible for both sides.
Just in case any neo-libertarians croak against unions again, showing that they actually hate the free market because others will use their freedom from them aswell, and actually just want *themselves* to be free from the freedoms of others on that market. (So monopolism.)
Re:This *is* the invisible hand of the free market (Score:5, Insightful)
Only comment that seems to mention "balance" in the important sense.
My take is that there are many players, often called affected parties, and unless each of the parties has influence, the best balance cannot be found. Individual employees can always be crushed by the interests of individual managers, but collectively (via unions) they may have sufficient influence to find a better equilibrium point.
Amusingly enough, the customers were supposed to be important players, too. The main recent innovation of corporate cancers like Facebook, the google, and even Apple, has been to weaken their influence by manipulating the customers more cleverly with brain hacking and other forms of "advanced" marketing. Zucked is the best book I've read on that topic, and yes, we are.
Perhaps most amusingly, the shareholders have been the main excuse for the shenanigans, but they are the ones who are going to get burned most badly when the bubble bursts. Or is it even more amusing that the timing of the burst is probably China's call now?
Anyway the American union movement was quite effectively corrupted by cunning managers. That was one side of busting the unions. The other side was the "right to scab" laws, but a quick websearch will show you why that side is poisoned. (But I still wonder if the poisoning might have been done by useful idiots.)
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For the free market to work, it has to be free from this sort of industry-wide manipulation - both by corpor
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A company tries to maximize profits, which means they try to raise prices - like by making more interesting or better products, and lower costs, by raising productivity and reducing resource usage. Companies that do this well tend to thrive. This is the invisible hand working; the companies managing their individual resources make better products available more cheaply, benefitting society as a whole.
Unions don't have these signals - as they grow, they take more and produce less (not just more weekends/vaca
The result of cutting Don't Be Evil? Unions. (Score:2)
This is really intriguing -- and perhaps is karma for the company that used to go by the mantra 'Don't be evil'.
My opinions of unions was pretty bad in the 80's, especially with Reagan decertifying PATCO, the Air Traffic Controller's union (summer of '81). Seeing how badly teachers and nurses have been treated, I'm glad that they've unionized -- it's a counterbalance to the power that managers have over workers.
It's not a perfect system, but it's better than the old system where management could fire someon
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How can one entity reflect values of all people? (Score:2)
We will hire skilled organizers to ensure all workers at Google know they can work with us if they actually want to see their company reflect their values
How does that work exactly? How can one single union possibly reflect "the values" of all the members, each of which are (presumably) individuals with differing values?
Are the "values" thew property to further listed anywhere?
hahahhaha (Score:2)
What google will find - as JK Rowling has figured out, Louis CK learned belatedly, etc - is that you can never bend over far enough to please everyone.
You can't.
There will always be some whingy bitch that wants just a little bit more power, more recognition, more ridiculous demands fulfilled...and the moment you say "well no, that's stupid" you are THE ENEMY.
They voted for Biden, what could possibly go wrong (Score:2)
Watch out! (Score:2)
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Slashdot has changed since the 90's, remember the original slashdot nerds feared hardware and software DRM, the modern slashdot nerd (if they could be called that), is an mmo lovin, steam drm lovin pseudo intellectual.
The last 20 years the corporate world has been stealing software on industrial level scales from a deeply ignorant computer illiterate population, this is why windows 10 has drm and is the beginning of client-server OS.
Which can only happen in an idiocracy of computer illiterate people.
So afte
The fear of DRM didn't go away (Score:2)
Idiocracy was a funny movie but it's premise was obviously wrong. If it wasn't then we'd never have dug our way out of the dark ages. Intelligence is way more complicated then "your parents are dumb". If you c
The fear of Intellegence (Score:2)
"If you care about an intelligence citizenry get on the environmentalist bandwagon. It's been pretty well shown that dirty air massively impacts intelligence."
Intelligence will always have an issue when a major political party openly mocks those who live in ivory towers, who specialize in intellectual disciplines, who use facts and evidence to support cases, and has a general distain for those who are well educated but don't have "street smarts".
Street smarts has a place and can be valuable, but that isn't
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How about those of us who prefer GoG? Problem is, you can't buy everything you want on GoG. But they're still pretty good.
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>How about those of us who prefer GoG? Problem is, you can't buy everything you want on GoG. But they're still pretty good.
You don't seem to get in the pre-steam days every day was gog day until the masses took up corproate hacked software known as ultima online, everquest, which gave valve the idea for steam, any time you buy an "MMO" you literally bought a stolen rpg that had its multiplayer code ripped out, go get a copy of quake 2, notice the ability to host your own games.
That was taken away from us
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Oh good, trying to blame MMOs again are we? I've seen this tripe before. If the average PC gamer is a "retarded computer illiterate monkey", why do you even care?
Take your bullshit somewhere else. Buy your games from GoG and just shut up.
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You don't seem to understand you're the pseudo intellectual non nerd that gave birth to steam, seeing you complain about it on anandtech was enlightening enough. All software is scientifically the same. Windows OS, quake 3 and wow are Just hex values, that is what your stupid mmo mouthbreathing computer illiterate ass doesn't get.
There is no rational reason for ANY game to shut
down unless it's had its networking code stolen.
Go get a copy of Ridge racer UB
https://steamcommunity.com/app... [steamcommunity.com]
Then go dl a pirate
"Fear" of DRM (Score:2)
Slashdot has changed since the 90's, remember the original slashdot nerds feared hardware and software DRM, the modern slashdot nerd (if they could be called that), is an mmo lovin, steam drm lovin pseudo intellectual.
The last 20 years the corporate world has been stealing software on industrial level scales from a deeply ignorant computer illiterate population, this is why windows 10 has drm and is the beginning of client-server OS.
Which can only happen in an idiocracy of computer illiterate people.
So after watching video game industry steal PC games by client-servering the shit out of everything on PC and mobile beginning with the rebrand of RPG's as mmo's to steal PC game software from the public, why the fuck would anyone expect slashdot to be home of the nerds any longer? Everything the original slashdot nerd feared came too pass.
No more dedicated servers in quake, no more level editors like QeRadiant in AAA gaming space. Origin, uplay, steam, epic game store, rockstar social club....
All those things can only exist in a world of computer illiterates and non nerds.
Wow. What an arrogant rant. You "fear" hardware and software DRM. Why? Because it prevents you from pirating or copying content? Consumers are free to choose, and if anyone doesn't like platforms like Steam for whatever reason, no one is forcing them to buy. According to you, such markets can only exist in a world full of "deeply ignorant computer illiterates". I suspect your definition of computer illiterate means "lacking the technical knowledge required to circumvent DRM". Rather than purporting to speak
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> I suspect your definition of computer illiterate means "lacking the technical knowledge required to circumvent DRM".
Or it simply could be that game companies are committing fraud because stupid consumers like you are too dumb to see you're games are literally being broken.
Ridge racer unbounded and Transformers fall of cybertron, had it's multiplayer disabled because the multiplayer code was sitting on some remote server that could be shut down by the game company, this way they can build designed obsol
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I don't own a smartphone. Sadly, I think that keeps me in the "nerd" category these days.
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So after watching video game industry steal PC games by client-servering the shit out of everything on PC and mobile beginning with the rebrand of RPG's as mmo's to steal PC game software from the public, why the fuck would anyone expect slashdot to be home of the nerds any longer? Everything the original slashdot nerd feared came too pass.
You don't seem to understand that the public never owned software. They owned a license to use software.
You're exactly the kind of pseudo intelletual non nerd we're talking about, anyone with a clue knows that America is a lawless oligarchy that has been rubber stamping infinite Copyright extensions for decades because the average citizen of most capitalist states are morons. Which is why our world is so fucked up.
Endless IP extension
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
America has been using copyright as a backdoor to dispossess the masses, this is what I was talking about slashdot not being home of the nerds.
Re:So the Assange extradition from the UK... (Score:4, Interesting)
I think endless copyright and the advent of more server-side applications are somewhat related but mostly different things.
Also, I suspect (hope? dream?) the days of extending copyright indefinitely are over. One of the big excuses with the Bono act was that it put us in line with the rest of the world (read: Europe), I don't think there have been any extensions to Copyright beyond the status quo globally to support that. I also think the 98 fight woke a lot of people up to this racket and there will be major push back.
We live in an age where the ability to create new works is more democratic than ever and my guess is people will be more enthused about leveraging that to reimagine and elaborate on older works than ever. I'm looking forward to seeing what people do with The Great Gatsby and The Trial.
Having said all of that, maybe I am naive. I certainly expect Big IP to put forward some nonsense nakedly self-serving argument to extend again but I think a lot of the consolidation we've seen on media production side indicates they know the jig is probably up.
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Also, I suspect (hope? dream?) the days of extending copyright indefinitely are over. .
Disney will turn your dream to a nightmare...
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>The nerds never feared hardware and software DRM
You're an idiot if you believe this, no one who is a functioning adult wants giant security risk on their PC, steam and any client-server piece of software is fraud for anyone who is computer literate and not a dumbass. You've proven my original point in that the average PC user and gamer on slashdot is a flaming corporate mouthbreathing moron spewing corporate talking points because you get in a tizzy realizing you got conned with mmo's, drm and wow, whe
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Better than keeping a killer on your state payroll.