Google’s fires four organizers after hiring union-busting firm
medium.com
medium.com
If I understand the HN ranking algorithm, this means this submission is heavily reported. This is not the first time I observe this behavior for anti-Google submissions. Is there a different explanation for this phenomenon other than heavy reporting?
There are loads of things that affect weighting and ranking here. Not that I mind, I largely support the way this community is run, pretty hard thing to keep the site down te as valuable and as interesting as it is.
The time to assert your rights is when you have leverage, if you wait until you need those rights because you have no leverage it’s too late.
Germany seems to have strong unions and a strong auto industry, but the German economy as a whole has suffered decades of wage stagnation. One outperforming industry alone doesn't negate the broader correlation between restrictive labor laws, and degraded economic performance.
Also, Germany has many advantages in manufacturing that are independent of its labor laws, like a strong work ethic and tradition of engineering, good trade schools, etc. So an argument can be made that it has a strong tendency to be a manufacturing power that is capable of counter-acting the harmful effects of bad policies.
One possible indication that unionization has had a harmful impact on German economic development is if you look at Germany's past compared to its present you see that it developed more rapidly relative to its contemporaries before embracing the social-democratic/unionized-workforce model.
Is the optimal social order defined near ancient Euphrates or in the industrial revolution era UK?
Whatever happened with that anti-poaching agreement the big SV companies had? Because it seems to me the pay and conditions would be a lot better in a truly free market.
Imagine trusting the "Market" to make wise decisions.
And the majority of libertarians arguments are both based on first principles and appeal to people who like this type of argument.
The market just means other people, free to act without compulsion.
It works because information is transmitted through local decisions, as the changes local decisions make to supply/demand impact the prices that are communicated to the economy at large.
The resulting price system is a result of more economic calculations than any central economic planner could perform, which is why more market-based economies outperform more centrally-planned ones, as the empirical evidence shows.
Anyway, libertarians as a group are the most educated:
https://www.people-press.org/typology/quiz/?pass&src=typolog...
The above shows they do also have the highest incomes, which would support your "they're trying to protect their privilege" theory.
And libertarians are the most rational:
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal...
Libertarian views are more consistent with those of economists:
There was a recent post showing the version control history of HN article tiles. That's one step in the right direction.
I just heard the news about the firing and allegation google hired a firm with expertise to bust unions.
If you’ve ever worked an entry-level job at any firm with high turnover (retail, food service) you will know first hand managers excel who can manufacture write-ups, which become the basis for just-cause firing.
It’s a thing!
I mean... I hope this is not a new revelation to anyone.
If something appears to be just a minor amendment to an event that's already been represented on HN, it gets penalised. Dang has a comment about it somewhere.
I've already seen posts on here about both Google firing organizers and hiring the union busting firm. It doesn't appear novel and deserves the penalty.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21636583 is the main discussion now. That's a better article than this one from the point of view of the HN guidelines (https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html), because pure advocacy posts aren't as supportive of intellectually curious conversation. They're much more likely to start off on a polarized footing and degenerate from there. Also, they don't contain much information. In that way they fall in a category of related things like online petitions, event announcements, etc., that we tend to moderate as off topic for HN.
Certainly there have been plenty of stories on HN that are critical of Google, and they're not off topic, as long as they meet the site guidelines by being intellectually interesting. Note that word 'intellectually' though, because there are plenty of other kinds of interesting, which are fine, but not what this site is for.
You can find the other links here: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=pastWeek&page=0&prefix=fal...
I wouldn't normally bother, but the medium article is about the least balanced of the lot. As far as I can tell, the protesters weren't fired for unionizing, in fact they never attempted to push for better pay or conditions; they were fired for harassing other employees in order to further private political agendas. This changes the story somewhat.
Took me 30 seconds to find this on a mobile phone while commuting to work:
Four Google Employees fired for violating co-worker's data privacy
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21635286
Top-level comment has a link with a list of articles.
And the linked article clearly states why they were fired:
"The latest development occurred Monday when Google (GOOG) sent an email to all staff members describing its decision to fire four employees for allegedly violating its data-security policies. Google confirmed the contents of the email titled "Securing our data," which was first obtained and reported on by Bloomberg. The email described some of the actions allegedly taken by the fired employees, including accessing other employees' calendars and sharing information about their whereabouts with outside sources. It was sent out on behalf of Google's Security and Investigations Team."
You can find others here:
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=pastWeek&page=0&prefix=tru...
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=pastWeek&page=0&prefix=tru...
They all did something abhorrent or yet to be caught doing it. And yet we have people who would seemingly jump into fire for a brand (even in face of damning facts).
Is this a form of ancient tribalism still at play?
Anyone that believed it was only deluding themselves.
Most people start with good intention. Then they get power and power corrupts.
They are composed by a group of people, each with their own set of goals and morals, which isn't the same thing.
The key similarities between the two fan bases are that they all want to be a part of something with other people, whether it's being a female fan that follows an artist with a history of abuse against women, or being a fan of a company that offers cheap perks in favour of treating employees like humans with basic needs outside of a ping pong table.
The other similarity, and it's a very cynical one that you may or may not agree with, is that many people simply don't care if it doesn't affect them - which is funny in the age of the "cancel culture".
if you want to objectively analyse a company all you need to do is check their 10-Q each quarter. but that means studying and analysing their actual performance and their peers' stats.
> how in this day and age do we still have people believing/having faith in a company.
the same can be said for people that still believe in politicians/governments. even thou we have all the evidence in the world that these forms of control are pretty much obsolete especially compared to our current modern way of life, you will still get millions of fanboys/girls that dismiss all the evidence.
"in this day and age"
Where things different at some point? Or where you simply less familiar with other times?
Google set up this attitude they fostered that worked in attracting talent and productivity. It worked for a time to improve internal issues. But as it creeps and threatens the corporation itself, it cannot continue for management.
But as history has borne out, you have to know when to regain control. It’s the struggle of the Bolsheviks and Mensheviks, PLA and red guards.
Or is this just a corporate process that no-one took a big picture view on? Because from where I am standing, this just seems like a dumb move.
The game, as I understand it,^ is a "yes or no" game. Either Google unionisers get a union or they don't. If they do, what that means will be be worked out later.
So yes, Google plausibly don't want a union (or a big union discussion) enough to take chances with bad PR, or labour court. Totally different scales of threat.
^not well.
Overall I'm curious about unions. I haven't had much/any direct experience for >20 years. Most of the Union examples we have today are either public-ish sector or some old status quo union inherited from an old generation.
It's just hard for me to picture an old-school unionised version of Google or (more to the point) Amazon.
What is the end game or success case, for a Google union?
...it arguably make sense to go for job security. Security is valuable... to their members. If it's also popular with members, why not put it on the table? Even if it does hurt long term profits/success, profits are the primary interest of the other party to the negotiation... the firm/employer/shareholder interest. If the firm value (to take the other extreme) employment with n demand then they can negotiate for that, and compromise elsewhere.
The real reason (imo) that infirable employees, unsustainable pensions and other "union problems" happen is specifically because short term takes precedent in a negotiation. Looking 15 years ahead is the privelage of someone who isn't making hard compromises today.
Pension and job security promises are cheap now, expensive later.
Iirc, unions typically insist on a strict payscale/structure combining legible factors like seniority, position, etc. Would they want this.
People keep saying this but it doesn’t have to be true e.g. Hollywood unions cover everyone from extras to stars.
I'm trying to see past the nonspecific of "unions" to a specific union movement and what it could want (other than the union itself).
Access to highly-skilled negotiators for your next review/salary negotiation.
No "crunch time", or at least limit it and require reasonable levels of overtime for it.
Protection for various kinds of paid leave.
Protection from being fired for political reasons—and, more generally, access to highly-competent employment lawyers in the case of legal conflicts between you and the company.
That's just off the top of my head.
There is no reason a tech union would have a strict seniority-based pay scale.
A tech union could do things like insist on better work/life balance, a seat at the board representing worker interests, you name it. A google-specific union could insist on bringing the 20% "work on your own thing" scheme back, for example.
This is shady/creepy. There is no need to know when and where a colleague is every hour, every day. You shouldn’t be allowed to do this.
I’m glad an employee who does this is getting fired because I wouldn’t feel safe around them.
My calendar is public, but that doesn’t mean you should be alerted every time I go somewhere.
You make it sound more nefarious that it is. If you don't want your data to be crawled, there's an easy solution. Even Rupert Murdoch, who complains about google all the time, won't take the simple step necessary to stop google from crawling the WSJ website.
I jumped ship for these kinds of reasons, but looking ahead a couple years. You simply cannot scale culture, especially when culture that prevents it from going full balls-to-the-wall profit. Google is growing at such a rate that it surpassed organic trajectory; it's discarding and digesting its own culture as it swallows up the tech industry and doubles down on surveillance. The technical capabilities of the panopticon it has already built should be the subject of (world) government oversight. Sadly, tech giants have outpaced democracy's ability to recognize and rein in threats to human freedom.
Google's play to be everyone's digital assistant should be recognized for what it nakedly is: a play to absolutely dominate every single person's life and sell those lives to the highest bidder.
Is such a policy legally enforceable or is it relying on the fact that Google can outspend them in a litigation?
Nope.