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Comment by SamWhited | Hacker News Reader

20% paycut here. This comes after being laid off a few months ago when Docker sold their enterprise version (sort of, the new company made us all offers but they have terrible benefits among other problems so most people didn't take the offer or only stayed long enough to find something else), so we're all a bit sad. There was then an immediate around of layoffs right after that (though thankfully my department wasn't affected).

At least we still have a job, and I'll take the pay cut if it means we don't have to make anyone else redundant, but I wish the employees had a seat at the negotiating table for any of this.

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> I wish the employees had a seat at the negotiating table for any of this

If the tech industry didn't seem to despise unionizing so much this could've been possible. Maybe that will change once the current disaster is behind us.

Unfortunately, in an economic environment like this a union won't help you. We're seeing many public services staff that are unionized laid off (in Canada) and I'm sure this is happening around the world. By the end of this it's quite likely this will look similar to the Great Depression.

It wouldn't stop all the layoffs but that isn't the goal. The goal would be to give employees a vote when decisions are made on how to deal with the economic fallout instead of being the passive victims of whatever decision is arrived upon by upper management and the board.

Instead of instantly laying off as many people as possible, the union could have brought other proposals to the table to try and help both the company and employees. Maybe you delay 401k matching until the end of the year instead of paying it every paycheck. Maybe cut employee salaries and hours instead. The union at least gives the employees the chance to voice ideas on how to help the company and themselves make it through instead of finding out that 400+ of your coworkers were let go over Zoom via a two minute prerecorded message.

Unions sort by seniority and screw everyone else. Always.

Let's assume that's true (it's not always true, but let's assume it is): isn't this still better than sorting by "only execs get taken care of and everyone else gets screwed by default"? I'd rather have someone voicing my concerns even if the person who's been there longer gets taken care of more.

> 400+ of your coworkers were let go over Zoom via a two minute prerecorded message.

That's harsh and cold. Wow.

A union could have helped negotiated the amount the lowest paid among us was cut vs the amount execs were cut, for example. I don't know the details of this specific case, so I don't know if there was another viable option, but at least if we had a group of the workers who did know I would have some confidence that there really was no other way and this wasn't just management cutting everyone elses pay to avoid having to lose a couple million themselves.

Look at BoxBoat -- consulting company near DC. I know they picked up a lot of Docker Inc's PS stuff and had their own clients. They're all remote, so that helps.

> I wish the employees had a seat at the negotiating table for any of this

Perspective from the other side of the table: I can't speak for every company, but we've worked day and night for weeks to figure out a plan that puts employees first and gives us a fighting chance to emerge from this crisis. It may not feel like it, but damn we fight for every single person's job. Paycuts w/o layoffs is a win.

That's great, and I'm sure our management did too, but I still wish they'd roped employees in and not just shoved a decision down our throats in a quick video call.

We had a call on Friday exactly for this. We were asked if we want a paycut or laid-offs.

A friend of mine mentioned that their company also took them to 80% pay but also gave them Fridays off. I wish we had a union just so they could negotiate for something like this.

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