Tech company Lanetix fired software engineers seeking to organize, union claims | Hacker News Reader

Tech company Lanetix fired software engineers seeking to organize, union claims

sfchronicle.com

114 pointsknieveltech91 comments

Also discussed here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16271005 (1 month ago, 268 points)

The Tech Worker's Coalition organized a protest outside Lanetix's office this morning; it had good turnout.

Edit: Check out https://techworkerscoalition.org/ if you're interested in joining future actions.

Software engineers and people who work in IT departments in general should unionize, because outside of the big five tech companies, these employees are mistreated relative to other employees at their company.

Consider:

1) Workers in IT departments are less likely to get bonuses.

2) They are often asked to put in longer hours than people in other departments, because of deadlines.

3) They often have to work weekends because of “emergencies” and DevOps-related tasks that can’t take place on weekdays. Guess who’s patching the servers this Saturday? I’ll give you a hint: it’s not Bob in Sales.

> 1) Workers in IT departments are less likely to get bonuses.

Sincere question - why should they? Are they denied bonuses that they are contractually obligated due to their compensation package?

> 2) They are often asked to put in longer hours than people in other departments, because of deadlines.

Sales people are often asked to travel away from their family and their homes. To me this seems like a normal 'part of the job' you sign up for.

> 3) They often have to work weekends because of “emergencies” and DevOps-related tasks that can’t take place on weekdays. Guess who’s patching the servers this Saturday? I’ll give you a hint: it’s not Bob in Sales.

Who else should do it? Isn't that factored into their compensation and outlined in their responsibilities before they take the job? It seems like it's part of their job to do that, more so than clicking around on HN or Reddit during the week.

Those arguments could be used against any sort of worker mobilization ever. I do agree that they aren't great reasons to unionize. The real reason the workers should unionize is because they can, and if they do they can capture a greater percentage of the profits that the company attempts to keep for themselves

> Are they denied bonuses that they are contractually obligated due to their compensation package?

No. The usual explanation given (in large corporate company's IT Departments) is that IT is a 'Cost Center' and not a 'Revenue Generating' center. Forget the fact that it's the software and services that these 'Cost Centers' build and maintain, which is helping Bob in sales close his sale.

Source: Me. Worked at 5 different Enterprise IT companies. Got the same response from every Manager. What's even more obscene is the Managers in IT get bonuses, but not the Engineers who are doing the actual work.

> outside of the big five tech companies

It is in the employees of these companies' interests, as well.

Adobe, Apple, Google, Intel, Intuit, Pixar, Lucasfilm and eBay [0] colluded to prevent competition, and thus increased pay and mobility, among their employees.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-Tech_Employee_Antitrust_L...

Quitting to start your own business is lauded in the annals of Americana because it positively reinforces certain tenets capitalism that are valued by the ruling class.

Organizing a labor union however is vilified in American society as it directly challenges the inherent class structure of capitalism. Workers in the past have been beaten, murdered, and imprisoned not because they sought better pay and more amicable working hours, but because they dared to challenge the success and profit of the classes above them.

Which is why a https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cooperative is a more ethically-defensible way to organize humans.

Or pretty much any business model where all the laborers share in any profits by the collective.

Are there any notable tech coops?

Here's a good list: https://github.com/hng/tech-coops

See this Ask HN from four years ago for a few good examples from around the world: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7634152

How is democratic voting control fair to the people that have put significantly more work and history into the company?

How is a command hierarchy where a board of investors appoints a CEO fair to the people who actually built the company?

There are lots of people who vote against unions that don't care one bit about the "inherent class structure of capitalism".

Choosing the status quo is still a choice, in this case in favor of the inherent class structure of capitalism.

Tyranny of the many has dangers just as does tyranny of the few. There can be significant downsides to unions, so it's a bit reductive to think they're a universal good and that to disagree with them in any case is necessarily about "the inherent class structure of capitalism"

Unions (or similar labor organizations) are not only a universal good, capitalism only works when ^both* labor and capital keep each other restrained. The problems start when either side is allowed to "win". Power always needs to be restrained with checks and balances.

Sure, and this is a good case of things being kept in check.

A union that only subsists because it gets special state powers is not a union, its government.

> special state powers

Like the limited liability granted to corporations?

I'm not sure you understand what that means. The limited liability applies to the people. The corporation is still fully liable.

The corporation is a legal fiction created by government to shield the people from liability for harm those people cause through their agents while seeking profits; it's the original (well, at least an early) manifestation of socializing risk while privatizing gains, done through the power of the State.

"The corporation is still fully liable." is incoherent. Pfizer (the corporation) is a convicted felon. Whereas this would basically eliminate an individual's access to credit, ability to vote, and a whole host of other rights and privileges, in the context of a multi-national corporation it means literally nothing. They got fined a little money, that's it.

Unions also have limited liability.

Yes, unions are usually corporations. But it's not the side defending unions in this thread arguing that relying on government-granted power deligitimize an organization.

> A union that only subsists because it gets special state powers is not a union, its government.

You do realize that all business organizations other the sole proprietorships and simple partnerships (including, but not necessarily limited to, all of, in the US, corporations of any kind, LPs, LLPs, LLLPs, and LLCs) only subsist because they get special state powers, right?

The state could do away with all of those and corporations would still exist.

Corporations are a "special power" granted by the government by definition.

Only in the legal sense, not in the economical sense.

> Unions (or similar labor organizations) are not only a universal good

Can you explain why this is universally true? It seems that the behavior of companies reacting negatively to unions is a counterpoint to this.

> companies reacting negatively to unions

Yes, that's the intended result. Each side has to fight for their own goals. The resulting competition is what limits each side from gaining too much power.

You did not address why unions are a universal good.

What happens when the "Union side" "wins"?

Leaving anything run unchecked has downsides. If "has any downsides" is good enough to exclude it, then you can't do anything ever.

I completely agree. If we look at the compensation growth in the last 50 years, I think we can see that “tyranny of the few” has been the predominant force in the U.S. and things have been far, far out of balance.

Worker pay has been extremely stagnant while c-suite pay has skyrocketed to over 300x the worker pay.

This wouldn’t be so problematic if worker pay was not being pushed below livable wages. The presence of unions could balance things a bit.

> Organizing a labor union however is vilified in American society as it directly challenges the inherent class structure of capitalism. Workers in the past have been beaten, murdered, and imprisoned not because they sought better pay and more amicable working hours, but because they dared to challenge the success and profit of the classes above them.

This is unabashedly revisionist. Look at what labor unions did throughout the first half of the 20th century. They went to great lengths to ensure that their members could access the privileges of the upper capitalist classes by explicitly oppressing other groups of people - black workers, east Asians, south Asians, Mexicans, and Puerto Ricans. They fought to deport legal immigrants and migrant works. They fought to inter (poor) Japanese-Americans in camps in order to free up jobs for their relatively well-off, white members. After the war, they fought to prevent Japanese-Americans from returning to their homes. The immigration quotas that people oftentimes complain about on Hacker News? Those quotas were originally written to appease labor unions in the first place. The disaster in Puerto Rico? Labor unions opposed allowing foreign relief ships to temporarily service Puerto Rico, which has been standard practice for every single hurricane since Katrina, because they wanted to protect US members' paychecks.

If you want to cherry-pick some good things labor unions have fought for, fine, but don't portray them as the antagonist of capitalist class structure. Labor unions have always thrived on class inequality; their goal is simply to make sure that their members are on the "right" side of it.

That depends entirely on which unions you're looking at, the wobblies were organizing across racial lines and across industries. The pullman porters were black. And, yeah, unions very much are a class antagonist, they were conceived as precisely that. I'd even go so far as to say that actually your comment is the revisionist one. Note how you start the history at "the first half of the 20th century" leaving out arguably the most violent and repressive period of union struggle. Google The Battle of Blair mountain.

> That depends entirely on which unions you're looking at, the wobblies were organizing across racial lines and across industries. The pullman porters were black.

I'm looking at the unions that were the strongest, the most powerful, and the most influential. The IWW was never particularly strong after WWI, and that was at the peak of their membership. AFL- and CIO-affiliated unions were the strongest - and, more importantly, remain so to this day.

It's funny you mention the porters' union - they were the first to receive recognition by the AFL. Why is that unusual? Well, they were special not because they were a union that represented black members, but because they were the first union of black members that the AFL didn't deny membership to based on race, after decades of explicitly prohibiting black unions from joining their federation. (Even after that, they refused to recognize most unions that accepted black or Japanese workers as members).

> I'd even go so far as to say that actually your comment is the revisionist one.

No, it's not "revisionist" to point out counterexamples to OP's claim, especially when those counterexamples include the largest group of unions for the last 100 years.

Yes, sometimes it's convenient for labor unions to leverage rhetoric that flirts with socialism or communism, but in reality, their source of power is dependent on both capitalism and class hierarchy, which is why the largest and most influential ones have fought so hard to preserve it.

You also neatly sidestepped my point about the origin of these unions, by starting in the "early 20th". You also ignored the Blair Mountain reference, and other deeply capital-hostile examples of union struggle. Unions started as an instrument of class struggle and remain precisely that, the fact that that is even slightly controversial is more representative of the ideological climate of today and specifically this website. Also, if unions are not a direct, full frontal attack on capital and hierarchy, why are they facing constant attack from organs of ruling class consciousness, like, say, the WSJ, the Financial Times, or even other less explicit papers like the New York Times? Why are teachers unions treated like the scum of the earth everywhere? Its downright weird that this is even questionable.

EDIT Also worth pointing out, there is an anti-union case being argued before the supreme court today. Its been widely acknowledged as an attempt to "kneecap" public-sector unions. If unions are not hostile to capital, are not an element of class struggle, where do these battles come from? Why are unions perpetually on the defensive, not merely from specific owners of specific companies facing individual actions, but across the board from class conscious (from above) institutions and people who have no individual stake in any given organizing struggle.

>Also, if unions are not a direct, full frontal attack on capital and hierarchy, why are they facing constant attack from organs of ruling class consciousness, like, say, the WSJ, the Financial Times, or even other less explicit papers like the New York Times?

The fact that the capitalist class doesn't appreciate tactics that complicate or reduce the effectiveness of their preferred business practices doesn't mean that those tactics represent an attack on capitalism itself. Corporations violently oppose taxes and regulations, too, but neither threatens capitalism or its fundamental class structure.

>Unions started as an instrument of class struggle and remain precisely that, the fact that that is even slightly controversial is more representative of the ideological climate of today and specifically this website.

It's hardly peculiar to the 'climate of today'. Karl Marx, 1865:

At the same time, and quite apart from the general servitude involved in the wages system, the working class ought not to exaggerate to themselves the ultimate working of these everyday struggles. They ought not to forget that they are fighting with effects, but not with the causes of those effects; that they are retarding the downward movement, but not changing its direction; that they are applying palliatives, not curing the malady. They ought, therefore, not to be exclusively absorbed in these unavoidable guerilla fights incessantly springing up from the never ceasing encroachments of capital or changes of the market. They ought to understand that, with all the miseries it imposes upon them, the present system simultaneously engenders the material conditions and the social forms necessary for an economical reconstruction of society. Instead of the conservative motto: “A fair day's wage for a fair day's work!” they ought to inscribe on their banner the revolutionary watchword: “Abolition of the wages system!”

And in regards to unions specifically:

Trades Unions work well as centers of resistance against the encroachments of capital. They fail partially from an injudicious use of their power. They fail generally from limiting themselves to a guerilla war against the effects of the existing system, instead of simultaneously trying to change it, instead of using their organized forces as a lever for the final emancipation of the working class that is to say the ultimate abolition of the wages system.

Organizing a labor union however is vilified in American society as it directly challenges the inherent class structure of capitalism.

It's vilified because of the corruption and strong-armed tactics many unions have resorted to in the US. You talk about beatings and murders, but the unions pretty quickly took up those tactics as well.

Here's a tangentially-related question: if I want to start-up a consultancy or agency for web development as a co-operative, are there any resources for getting it organized as such?

I'd start at Democracy at work. But in the end it comes down to how decisions are made and what check and balances are placed on the elements of power, such as who's an employee and what they get paid and how/what gets voted on, who can start a vote, what each vote weighs. I'd also say that transparency of execution is paramount so that members can verify that the actions/policies they are voting on are being carried out as voted.

Great question, and I wish I had a definitive resource to direct you to, but alas. However, there are a lot of conversations happening, and this is a good way to get some insight into them: https://ioo.coop/library/

…allegedly, in a complaint filed by a union. The company’s announcement of the layoffs said it was for other business reasons.

Which the company now has to prove in court. What is your point?

That headlines should be fair about unresolved allegations in pending legal disputes. (The original headline here omitted “, union claims” at the end.)

Well, they wouldn't come out and say that it was due to illegal reasons.

Now, we can't prove intent, but we can look for evidence that supports their statements. Such as, if other non-engineers were laid off, if these engineers are eligible for rehire, if only people who signed the petition were let go, or if there are open positions for engineers on their website, etc.

Yes, but the HN submission headline (before ‘, union claims’ was added) didn’t allow for a subtler interpretion. (And, the SFChron didn’t dig much into these obvious followup details, for determining what really happened, before reporting the allegations rather uncritically – maybe as a sort of punishment for the company refusing to comment.)

In this and other coverage, it’s mentioned that more than just the employees discussing a union were laid-off. There’s hints of layoffs being started, or signalled, before union discussion began. That could mean the unionization discussion was a reaction to immminent layoffs, rather than the other way around.

So many people are so quick to downvote things that don't fit their narrative.

I think the word 'allegedly' should have been in the title, at least, until it's been proven.

Actually the title is a fact. What is alleged is the reason. It is a fact that the engineers seeking to organize were fired. And they are alleging that it is because they tried to organize. But it is still a fact that the ones who tried were fired.

Then “SF company Lanetix lays off engineers, union alleges illegally” would be a fair headline. (The original headline here did not include “, union claims”.)

The title has now changed since I saw it. I don't remember exactly what it said before, but I remember it saying something like "fired software engineers for seeking to unionize".

I'll admit it's possible I misread it and the "for" wasn't actually in there.

The employees were laid off 8 business days after they announced they were unionizing.

Time to build Unions as a service. A VC backed startup that charges stock of companies to unionize rivals.

Shouldnt employers have the right to refuse to negotiate with a union and instead hire non union employees if any are available?

https://www.nlrb.gov/resources/national-labor-relations-act

National Labor Relations Act

———————————————————

Sec. 7. [§ 157.] Employees shall have the right to self-organization, to form, join, or assist labor organizations, to bargain collectively through representatives of their own choosing, and to engage in other concerted activities for the purpose of collective bargaining or other mutual aid or protection, and shall also have the right to refrain from any or all of such activities except to the extent that such right may be affected by an agreement requiring membership in a labor organization as a condition of employment as authorized in section 8(a)(3) [section 158(a)(3) of this title].

UNFAIR LABOR PRACTICES

Sec. 8. [§ 158.] (a) [Unfair labor practices by employer] It shall be an unfair labor practice for an employer--

(1) to interfere with, restrain, or coerce employees in the exercise of the rights guaranteed in section 7 [section 157 of this title];

——————————————

Interesting.. thanks

I didnt realize employment was so heavily regulated in US

It's very lightly regulated compared to most other industrialized countries.

It isn’t. Not by a far stretch compared to other well-developed nations. The rules about protected-classes are almost all the regulation there is.

>Employees shall have the right to self-organization, to form, join, or assist labor organizations, to bargain collectively through representatives of their own choosing, and to engage in other concerted activities for the purpose of collective bargaining or other mutual aid or protection, and shall also have the right to refrain from any or all of such activities except to the extent that such right may be affected by an agreement requiring membership in a labor organization as a condition of employment as authorized in section 8(a)(3) [section 158(a)(3) of this title].

Unless I'm reading this wrong, it means that employers have no ability to stop their employees from forming a union, to fire them for forming a union and to hire non union employees without the unions approval. I can understand such regulations in socialist countries like India (where other than IT, most industries do have strong unions, with legal and politican support). However it seems to be against the image US projects

> and to hire non union employees without the unions approval

> socialist countries like India

Stop trolling

What is the difference between a bunch of software engineers unionizing their wages versus a bunch of small and large companies all agreeing to price-fix their products? Nothing.

Did you try to make a point here? If so, it seems that you are suggesting corporations have it harder given that they can't legally price fix while labor can.

The difference is that workers are people, and companies are not.

2 words: "At-will employment." I empathize with their situation but sadly there's nothing they can do about this. Kind of naive trying to attempt this in a state like California.

(commented out hastily-written comment, too late to delete).

I think he's saying that California is at-will employment. Not that unionization is bad, but that it makes it very difficult to unionize, if you can just be fired immediately and replaced.

I was reacting to

> but sadly there's nothing they can do about this

Even if legally one has no options, you can still try to do something. Like raise awareness, etc.

Replacing one employee who refuses to sacrifice themselves for the employer’s profit is easy and relatively cheap.

Replacing 5 is much more difficult and expensive.

Replacing most could be quite expensive and dangerous.

So, organizing could give leverage to employees to demand humane treatment even if it reduces profit for the employer. Even in at-will environment.

You can’t be fired for attempting to unionize even with at will employment. You can get fired for any reason as long as it’s not an illegal reason (like discrimination). Attempting to unionize or lobbying to improve worker conditions are generally protected. Of course the company is trying to get around this by claiming that they were terminated for other unrelated reasons (layoffs).

This is not true. There are ways in which "at-will" termination can be illegal. Most obviously, protected-status discrimination.

Termination related to labor organization is illegal. However, recourse (for the employee) generally fails because of the time scales involved, with the inevitable failure to form a union, but the employer will have to deal with the fallout eventually.

That does not make it naive, and you should not further participate in making this self-fulfilling.

At-will employment has nothing to do with this. At-will employment just means your employer has no contractual obligation to continue employing you for any period of time. Certain actions are still illegal under state / federal law such as firing you for:

* your sexual orientation

* race

* veteran status

* political views

* not sleeping with your boss

* etc

Organizing a union is one of these "protected" reasons why you cannot be fired. Of course your employer can pick another reason and say that's why they are firing you, which is what it looks like this company did. Whether that defense will hold up in court is another matter entirely.

This is more or less what I was trying to say with my original comment.

Although unionizing is protected, "at-will employment" also leaves a lot of gray areas that can be leveraged for an employer to justify a termination. For example insubordination. The employer can claim that an employee was being hostile and creating a stressful work environment.

The article is about a federal complaint they filed. There's like laws and stuff.

https://www.nlrb.gov/rights-we-protect/whats-law/employees/i...

At-will employment means you can be fired for any reason other than specific prohibited reasons in law (the alternative is systems where you can only be fired for reasons named in law; the difference is between “default allow” and “default deny”.)

But firing for labor organizing is an explicit prohibition in both California and Federal law (the federal prohibition was the basis of Damore’s NLRB complaint against Google, for a recent example that has gotten much HN attention.)

It was naive of them to be fired in a state like California?

IANAL, but I believe the Federal NLRA trumps any state-level at-will provision in much the same way as the EEOC operates. I don't even think formalizing a union is required, but simply banding together to improve working conditions automatically gives you protected status.

A company firing people who are trying to unionize seems to be saying that the value that the company gets for the cost of paying the employees will go down. It seems unions or unionizing might have better luck if it was able to position itself as a value increasing tool for both the company and the worker.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com