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Comment by bestcoder69 | Hacker News Reader

This is fantastic. Kudos to them. Copying some things they won, for the non-clickers:

- Minimum 3% annual CoL raises

- Profit-sharing bonuses

- Putting their current benefits in the contract, so management will have to re-negotiate if they want to make them worse.

- Replacing at-will with "just cause", progressive disciplining, with criteria for performance improvement plans.

Looking forward to more details & seeing how this plays out, especially as the market collapses (probably will end up looking like amazing timing on their part, btw).

Interestingly, for the people that like to paint unions as wokies, the progressive discipline item (if implemented well) actually _curbs_ 'cancel culture'. Because at-will employment is basically the enforcement mechanism for cancel culture.

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>Minimum 3% annual CoL raises

Weird that they call it a CoL raise. If it isn't tied to cost, it is just an minimum annual raise.

Weird that you're arguing that 3% isn't a CoL raise, when inflation has been pegged to 2.25% for decades, and is currently 8%+

I think what the person you responded to is saying is that the raise should be tied to inflation. You may not actually disagree with them.

My point is simply that CoL changes aren't fixed and fluctuate. I think it is weird to call it a CoL raise if you are guaranteed it even if CoL doesn't change or goes down.

I'm not sure where you are getting that inflation has been pegged to anything. 2% might be an average, but it has gone everywhere from -2% to 6% in the last two decades.

Besides, inflation is not CoL.

Inflation is different from cost of living else high cost of living regions wouldn't exist.

> to 2.25% for decades, and is currently 8%+

That plus sign is pretty subtle there.

We don't know what it's tied to, because that's just the minimum.

> Replacing at-will with "just cause", progressive disciplining, with criteria for performance improvement plans.

What does "progressive disciplining" mean? I like the idea of criteria for being pipped, though I wonder if Kickstarter had a pip culture like Amazon.

Speaking in very generic terms, "progressive discipline" is the idea that you start with smaller punishments, give employees time to correct, and then move on to more severe ones if they do not fix whatever the issue is. With documentation each step of the way.

These sorts of policies don't generally mean that, for extreme circumstances, larger punishments can't be used, just that you can't start with a harsh punishment for a mild issue.

Why would you be happy with a 3% raise any year in tech?

> Minimum means the least you can do of something. For example, if the minimum amount of dollars you must pay for something is seven, then you cannot pay six dollars or less (you must pay at least seven). You can do more than the minimum, but no less. [0]

[0]: https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maximum_and_minimum

Unfortunately, the minimum in employment agreements is frequently also the maximum.

Source this. Every Union I've seen continues to support performance based raises, just weighed appropriately against other compensation increases.

Source: the whole economy. If someone offers X, and you want Z, and you sign a contract for Y, they are giving you Y. Do you evet give Comcast an extra $50 for fun?

It's what the company supports, not what the union supports. And "performance based raises" are obviously not CoL raisesm

By this logic a minimum wage means existing no one earns more than minimum wage…?

The fact that there is a minimum wage, and that efforts to increase it are met with resistance is proof that there are many jobs for which the minimum wage is also the maximum.

Their current minimum is 0%. I suspect "you get a 3% raise this year" will be treated the same way "you get a 0% raise this year" is.

"Guaranteed minimum 3% CoL raise per year" does not mean "you only get a 3% raise per year." It is a minimum of one kind of raise, and this doesn't mean that there are no other forms of raises, or that the CoL raise wouldn't be more at times.

(reading solely from this wording, I don't work at Kickstarter and so don't know the details of the contract other than what's published above.)

Historically, mine have been about 3% during the 2% inflation years. I got 1.5% last year (whee!).

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