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Comment by asdfasgasdgasdg | Hacker News Reader

It's also possible that some organizations have a high concentration of folks who have a particular viewpoint on unions, regardless of whether they're being treated poorly or not. For example, Vox's newsroom unionized, even though I would suppose that they are likely treated better than most journalists -- at least to the extent the business' economics allow. I'm not saying this is necessarily the case with Kickstarter, just that this strikes me as possible. I'm also not trying to imply any judgment for or against the move.

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I get the impression a lot of tech companies aren't doing it out of particular absolute need for such a strong a hammer, but because they can and it suits their ideology for legitimately bad stuff they see happening in other industries.

It always made 100x more sense to me on some factory floor in the early 20th century than it does in a tech startup like environment in 2020, plus some labour jobs in between.

I can just imagine the thousands of additional mandatory meetings across the entire company, the needless costs, and hoop jumping that will be added for very little ROI. But because they see gig delivery workers facing shitty conditions under weak contractor and unemployment law designed for a past century, so they think it's justified and want to start it somewhere.

The laws that get passed that make non-union members pay dues even though they volunteer not to be part of the union is the kind of stuff that drives me crazy. Or how they make it impossible to fire egregiously bad workers. Or how in the small town I grew up in these union jobs were coveted and hiring was super nepotism driven, you had to know the right people to get the job - which to me is the opposite of "diversity and inclusion", which is (unsurprisingly) the 2nd bullet point on their political union website, right after "equal pay for equal work" which is a statement riddled with mythology over data.

>It always made 100x more sense to me on some factory floor in the early 20th century than it does in a tech startup like environment in 2020.

Why does that make more sense? The point of unionization is collective bargaining. Collective bargaining is effective whether you have 30 rockstar ninja developers or blue collar workers on a factory floor.

In either case the collective action helps amplifying the workforce's ability to negotitiate. It's the developers who create the company's value. It's time they see that they actually have the power to determine how their companies are run.

Google's employees frequently protest when their management decides to engage in unethical practise like say, developing censoring software for the Chinese market. Instead of throwing a tantrum and leaving the building and holding a protest they could imply unionize and leverage their position.

Are you exactly equal to the worker next to you? If so collective bargaining makes sense because a good deal for everybody is the best deal you can get. If not, then collective bargaining is keeping some great people down.

The fact that you said rockstar developer says you believe that there are some non-rockstar developers who are presumably worth less.

Note that athletic unions do not bargain for wages in general (they will put in minimum and sometimes maximum, but not individual wages)

Collective bargaining doesn’t need to bargain for equal wages. There’s all sorts of things that would be easier to collectively bargain, such as: - Allowing monetary gain from side projects - Eliminating non-competes - Establishing routes to stop unethical projects

Among other things. Pay can certainly be part of the conversation, but collective bargaining in general, as you pointed out in the case of athletic unions, doesn’t mean each individual is getting the same wage.

I used the term rockstar developer sarcastically. No I don't believe that the differences between individual developers outweigh the benefits of bargaining collectively. What I do believe is that there's a great reality distortion among developers that makes them think they're more unique than they actually are, which is a culture the tech sector has deliberately cultivated. Just like say, the image of the "nice CEO" who comes to work in a hoodie and pretends to save the world rather than doing what shareholders ask him or her to do. It's all just a stunt to obfuscate hierarchies.

And I'd stress again that I think the biggest thing to bargain for isn't necessarily wages, it's control over how these firms conduct themselves. Tech workers, almost more than anyone else, seem to have forgotten that they can be stakeholders in their firms.

Why do you equate collective bargaining with collective negotiation of wages?

It is the second comment [0] on this thread that I reply conflating those aspects into one as if that is how every union and collective bargaining work, why?

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22360416

“Are you exactly equal to the worker next to you?”

From the point of view of management one or two levels up from you, you are viewed as exactly the same. Most companies have narrow salary ranges for each level and you get more money mainly by being promoted. In a union shop this is no different.

Management gives different people different raises. They do regular reviews to decide how much those raises will be, and not every person gets the same raise. Therefore management two levels above me does in fact believe there are differences. They show up over the years both in how fast you move to the top of your level, and in how fast you move up to the next level.

In a factory union shop you get a raise based on years of service, and promotions are tied to new skills. (If you currently put tires on and become a certified welder you will get a raise even though you don't weld anything). Again, not all unions force pay scales like this, but unions that don't lose one of their reasons for existing.

”In a factory union shop you get a raise based on years of service, and promotions are tied to new skills. ”

That’s not how it works for example in Germany. I worked in a union company We had several pay levels and I negotiated with management to skip a few. No difference to the non union company in the US I am working now. The only difference is that the employees aren’t involved in setting pay levels and working conditions.

Did you work in a factory job? That is putting bolts in, or making the same cut on an assembly line, or other such repetitive manual labor job? A position where the limit how fast you can go is the speed the line is set at/the slowest person on your line? A position where you are setup for success for the quality standards?

Unions do exist in Germany for non-factory workers and they can measure performance and pay accordingly. This weakens the union a bit because employees do not stand for each other as much as you can get a head even if the next guy is bad.

This suggests that you are unfamiliar with modern compensation structures at tech companies. Stock awards are the major differentiator. In a union shop, this is very different.

In a union shop, you can vote on how payscales will vote and campaign for a system that you believe is fair. Without a union, you have to take whatever the bosses offer.

No, you have to take whatever the market offers, and the market forces are more powerful than an individual boss, for better or for worse. In a tech hub, it’s overwhelmingly “for better” as far as workers are concerned. Otherwise, their company doesn’t survive.

You are still within a structure with different levels set by management. Not much different from a union.

Early 20th century predates OSHA and most federal labor regulations in general. Its not that collective bargaining in the abstract is worth less, but there are far more federal guarantees.

Reminds me of arguments against social benefits like welfare, Medicare for all, etc in the US. Sure it's effective in a lot of places but it's different in this particular case, people, so we don't need to do it.

> Vox's newsroom unionized, even though I would suppose that they are likely treated better than most journalists -- at least to the extent the business' economics allow.

Better treatment also involves better pay. Being nice to your employee is not enough. Vox may treat employees nicely, but you'd be surprised how low they pay to their occasional writers who are scattered in a bunch of niche vehicles.

Do you have personal familiarity with their payment practices? Are the occasional (presumably non-employee) writers also part of the union? Do they get votes like full employees?

I mean the other thing is does vox really have much money to be folding into higher comp? I have always assumed that it's a break-even venture like most news media these days but I'd be interested to learn otherwise.

If it helps, I'll say it for you.

From the article:

But in 2018, a heated disagreement broke out between employees and management about whether to leave a project called “Always Punch Nazis” on the platform, according to reporting in Slate. When Breitbart said the project violated Kickstarter’s terms of service by inciting violence, management initially planned to remove the project, but then reversed its decision after protest from employees.

Following the controversy, employees announced their intentions to unionize with OPEIU Local 153 in March 2019.

If this story is accurate Kickstarter employees aren't unionising because of bad treatment by management but because management wanted to stop them badly treating other people. If this story isn't accurate then Kickstarter and this new union need to loudly sue Vox right now because this story makes them look like hateful extremists.

This is especially true because Kickstarter management gave in to their employees demands. Now they're unionising anyway. For what? To protect the right for the hard left to encourage violent extremism against their political opponents? What kind of union is this?

In case anyone is in any doubt what "punching Nazis" means the project is here:

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/282505033/always-punch-...

It says very explicitly their definition of "Nazi" includes anyone with "anti-immigrant ideologies" or really anyone who isn't woke.

Kickstarter's management look like utter fools. How did they not crush this right at the start? They have every right to fire every single one of their employees who objected to the original decision.

Took a while to find it all the way down in that image of the inside cover, but I can't see how that isn't promoting violence against anyone considered to be alt-right or far-right. Do they have to accept "Always Punch Antifa" projects now?

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