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Comment by loudtieblahblah | Hacker News Reader

it's 2021. There's no reason employees can't meet to talk on another platform or around a hashtag or something.

it's a far cry from union busting to ask that you use the million tools available, for free, to everyone.

And it's a win-win for the employees - b/c now it's beyond the control of the company in question.

So you're suggesting Apple will allow an email to go out to everyone that alerts employees of the EMPLOYEE-hosted slack space? Because if not, we're back to having to tell them via home visits. Any other method (for example, spreading the word in the break room) would get the worker organizers in trouble if they got caught.

you can ask "hey can i have your phone #" and then text them. you can ask them "can i have your email" and then email them.

people far more innovative than I could come up with other methods

I'm all for unionization. But i don't get this forcing companies to supply you with the tools to enable you to do so.

"You want my phone number, why?"

"Oh, I'm not allowed to say while on company property."

Yeah, that makes sense.

You could say why... It's logistically and legally much more difficult for Apple to control that.

If the coworker rats you out for violating their policy, since you're now suggesting they just violate the policy because it's hard to enforce, then you are fired.

This is more difficult than you think at Apple, since the company provides many engineers with phones for company use that most people just use personally.

I've always worked for small startup or regional tech companies (software companies, TaaS companies, datacenters, ISPs)

I landed my first gig at a large bay area software company and it's been great. Maybe I'm still green - but i've never experienced a company that treat it's employees so well in compensation and benefits. Never. including a somewhat large european software company i worked for. I'm sure once you dig in somewhere, there's stuff from a labor perspective to complain about but i just don't see it.

But no matter the company, including this one, I've always rejected company phones and pushed to use my own. Wanna give me a stipend? Ok.

Want me to install Microsoft InTune to give you admin control over the MS app on my phone (office/teams/outlook)? Ok. That's fine

Wants a policy of me locking my phone upon installation of some apps? Ok.

But you don't get to control my whole phone. Period. And I don't get the people who allow this line to be crossed.

Besides, one day 5 or 10 years from now i might want to look for another job - should i be using company property to do this? Should i when i inevitably look up stuff in my private life that might violate company policy? Be it political stuff or adult entertainment?

> you can ask "hey can i have your phone #" and then text them. you can ask them "can i have your email" and then email them.

Can you do this on company property? If not, you seem to be proposing some sort of psychic divining of the payroll and addresses of workers, or some psychic communication of phone numbers and emails.

Can you stand outside of the gates and flag down cars as they leave?

How can you be all for unionization but be against any possible way to establish a union?

Have you ever tried to get your friends to join you on some new social or messaging platform? And failed miserably? Yeah. Now try getting random coworkers to do it. And then try doing it without being allowed to tell them about it at work, over email, over slack, or over any of the other ways you contact your coworkers.

Doesn’t seem like pay equity is very important to them then?

It's not like American software companies have a history of colliding to sabotage their workers

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