Microsoft workers to form company’s first union in the U.S.

Informal organization (i.e. without the legal protections that formal unions have) only works in industries where the staff isn't fungible. A warehouse, fastfood chain or a lot of IT industry has the advantage for the employer that the staff is fungible. Fire everyone, pay a bit in fines for anti-union activities, and hire fresh staff that won't unionize because they know what happened to the last ones.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Railway_Labor_Act

Here in Belgium we have some industry specific unions like for rail (idk how the government in the US forces em to do anything).

But most unions are cross industry. They aren't really noticed when working in the context of a specific company too often unless mediation is needed when big lay-offs and shutdowns are happening at big companies or there's safety stuff involved or other such work condition things. They don't really dabble seniority, performance metrics and wages tied to that as far as i'm aware. Whilst they're generally not involved in keeping individuals employed at particular companies they do offer legal services if your company illegally fucks you over or for checking employment contracts or the like, push for huge once in a blue moon strikes if the government considers touching our wage indexation too much. etc.

They are also mostly politically aligned so we have left, liberal, Christian democrat, Flemish nationalist, independent, etc unions essentially competing against each other. Their membership is really cheap probably as a consequence of that.

Sweden enacted in 1938 (Saltsjöbadsavtalet) a treaty where unions, employers and the government came to an agreement that agreements between unions and employers should be done without government interference. Instead of conflict try instead to find common ground where both parties benefits.

It is of course far from perfect, but I think it is still better than the alternative.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saltsj%C3%B6baden_Agreement

Just look at how successful football players were in getting a slice of the pie. I’d still consider that a dream job.

it also goes beyond that, working conditions for game devs are truly abysmal. low wages are just the tip of the iceberg; add it abusive managers, long working hours, etc

It's the company's job to maximize shareholder value.

It's the worker's job to maximize worker value.

It's the market's job to push profit to zero.

So the union is like a new force in the equation: they put pressure on the company to give the workers more value.

Which could actually be good for business: if treating workers results in better work product, the shareholders might not push for that (typically markets optimize for quarterly earnings). But the union can secure better conditions for the workers, which might lead to moving to a better local maxima.

Otherwise, I'd already be working on the exact things I want to work on, and earn almost nothing (for maybe a long time).

For example the musicians have the AFM which helped force labels and radio stations to pay royalties to artists.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Federation_of_Music...

What are giving me to make it fair?

My feeling of internal satisfaction is genersted in my body, they are not supplying me drugs and cocaine.

Some musicians make a killing and get royalties - who in gane industry gets millions in royalties?

Samples: 0 - https://www.salon.com/2000/06/14/love_7/

1 - http://www.nytimes.com/1996/11/25/business/tlc-settles-suit-...

> The group later revealed that the owner of Pebbitone made them pay $3 million to own the rights to their name.

2 - https://www.cheatsheet.com/entertainment/tlcs-crazysexycool-...

Well, it's not ideal, but it's fine if only a few companies can afford to operate in a given field.

> 2. Games market follow a very strong winner takes all model, a few games have all profits, literally thousands games are released yearly that nobody ever heard of or bought.

These are both true of movies, but that is a heavily unionized industry.

Book publishing was pretty winner-take-all, until Kindle Unlimited (and its close relative, the many serial-fiction "unlock new chapters with coins" websites and apps) came along, and basically changed everything for many indie authors.

Before, you needed to woo a publisher, because you needed to be in bookstores, because you needed a certain threshold of word-of-mouth to be stirred up around your releases, in order to get sales that would let you make enough to cover your own advances.

But with the Kindle Unlimited model (users pay a flat subscription fee; authors get paid per page read) it's now practical to earn a living just by writing and maybe talking your book up on your own personal social media — no need to find a publisher, no need to make it into bookstores, no need to advertise heavily, no need to make big-hit releases, etc. Just pump out a constant stream of stuff that some people like enough, and you get money.

Could there be a Kindle Unlimited for games? All games are free under subscription; devs get paid proportional to play time?

A quick Google suggests that Apple Arcade might actually be doing this, but Apple Arcade devs are apparently under NDA not to talk about the revenue model. (Maybe because Apple doesn't want the other bigcorps realizing this is working well and being a fast-follower?)

Every time, if someone in gaming has the opportunity to take a gig in entertainment, they will choose the entertainment gig.

The industries are very similar, but due to how they evolved they are each a mirror image of the other had each taken a different path to labor organizing. Hollywood was (and in many ways still is) THE most exploitative industry when it came to profit sharing, dangerous+stressful+long working conditions, etc. But at least the unions guarantee certain things like breaks and time off, healthy pay floors (e.g. an entry level writer on a tv show will make $120k that year if they work 8 months, $70k if they work 6 months, etc), health insurance between gigs, a pension, etc, even to their minimum wage workers. Gaming workers can have this too if they realize the profitable game studios literally cannot make a profit without their labor, and organize en masse accordingly.

    > “Mi­crosoft has lived up to its com­mit­ment to its work­ers and let them de­cide for them­selves whether they want a union,” CWA Pres­i­dent Chris Shel­ton said. “Other videogame and tech gi­ants have made a con­scious choice to at­tack, un­der­mine, and de­mor­al­ize their own em­ploy­ees when they join to­gether to form a union.”

Microsoft recognizing the union instead of fighting tooth & nail to destroy it is genuinely novel behavior. They could refuse to recognize the union, or sue to invalidate the ballot, as many, many companies do:

"Activision Blizzard did not respond to workers’ request for recognition of a union formed by quality assurance testers at Raven Software" https://www.washingtonpost.com/video-games/2022/01/25/activi...

"The NLRB found Curaleaf violated federal labor law by refusing to recognize and bargain with workers there, but the company is appealing the decision. Curaleaf had initially challenged the result of the election, which the union won by one vote, but the labor board later ruled in UFCW’s favor." https://www.gmtoday.com/news/illinois/2022-saw-a-wave-of-new...

"The decision ordered Starbucks subsidiary Siren Retail Corp. to negotiate with the new union at its Seattle Roastery restaurant... The company contested the union's victory because the government held an election by mail ballot rather than an in-person election. Starbucks plans to appeal the ruling." https://www.shrm.org/resourcesandtools/legal-and-compliance/...

"Since the workers went public with their union and began to bargain, Trader Joe’s has cut hours of union employees under the guise of the "slow season," while at the same time hiring new workers and giving them full-time schedules." http://www.fightbacknews.org/2023/1/3/minneapolis-newly-orga...

If they were actually one-sided then no employees would sign them. It's not like there are no alternatives to finance tech.

Which may not be surprising as high inflation discourages saving, meaning that people are more likely to buy the things they want now to not have to pay much more later, which results in businesses increasing production to fill the increased demand, requiring more labour, and thus labour finds itself in a stronger position.

As the only power unions wield is the threat of stoppage of service, the workers have to be in a strong enough financial position to be able to execute on that – to be able to live without an income for months, if not years – in order to make it a credible threat. This is why unions are typically only found in high paying professions, but during periods where the general labour pool grows stronger then that expands.

If a factory shuts down due to strike, it doesn't produce anything. If so, the price of whatever it would have produced goes up. Kind of like anything with chips in them when factories and supply chains were closed down during Covid.

And the problem with inflation caused by contracting supply, is that it MUST lead to reduction in aggregate consumption. But workers will typically react poorly to having to cut down consumption. Demagogues will argue that the "Fat Cat" capitalists has enough money to pay higher wages, as if more money leads to more consumer goods being produced. Still, union members tend to listen to the demagogues in time like this.

This leads to strikes, lock out, and reduction in production. Which intensifies supply side constraints and drives inflation further, leading to even more demand for raises, and so on, in a vicious circle.

This happens in a time where the West wants to repatriate strategic production from Asia, where there is a need to re-arm to meet growing security threats from China and Russia, where we're facing a huge wave of elderly that will want a massive increase in spending on healthcare and where the supply of younger working age adults is dwindling.

All these are factors that increase the demand for consumer goods and services (especially healthcare) and goods that compete with consumer good (like weapons) and where more of the goods will be built domestically (like chips).

So unless we can radically improve productivity, each person (on average) will be able to buy less than they're used to or expect.

Let's say there will be 10% less of "everything" available to consumers. Without unions, the market (and possibly government intervention) will allocate this reduction in real income relatively evenly over the population.

But it is kind of in the DNA of most unions to never accept reductions in real wages for the members. If we imagine that every worker was in a union, and everyone got a raise matching inflation from the previous year (including retired people), the new wage would still only allow the pupulation to consume the consumer goods that is actually produced. That would quickly cause prices to go up another 10%, again reducing purchasing power below what people are used to.

Now, add a few strikes into this. Let's say there is a general strike reducing economic output by 5%. This comes on top of the 10%, meaning that now 15% fewer consumer goods are available than people expect, causing prices to go up by 15% that year.

Now, if everyone tries to get back to their own level of consumption by loaning money, that's another 15% money chasing the same goods, which could lead to 30% inflation that year. To prevent that, central banks raise rates to, let's say, 15%.

As these rates enter morgage costs for middle aged people, the pain is magnified further, typically leading to more strikes, businesses going under (permanently removing them as a source of consumer goods), and so on. Unchecked, this can lead to hyperinflation.

Not that I expect it to turn out this bad. Demand is partly elastic. Some people WILL be willing to cut SOME consumption, especially if good investment opportunities open up.

Still, in a market where supply side output of consumer goods goes down by 10%, there exists a huge communication problem when trying to distribute this new reality to the population.

It can be done, though, especially during wartime, consumers may be able to understand that they simply cannot go on consuming as much as before. And if the consumers themselves understand it, the unions probably will too.

In peacetime it's harder, which we see if we look at what happened after the oil crisis in 1973, especially in the UK (where unions were very strong at the time). Labor conflict aggravated the already difficult situation, and played a part in the stagflation that would last for the rest of the decade and much of the next.

Eventually, it was brought under control, partly by new economic growth and partly by Thatcher crushing the strongest unions.

In the 1970's though, the west was in the middle of a demography-driven boom at the time, and with the boomer generation entering the labor market, growth was relatively easy to achieve.

Today, the situation is different. There are few young people to fill the jobs that retiring boomers are leaving. In Europe, the demographic development is more likely to cause economic contraction than growth. So unless something like AGI can cause a huge lift in productivity, we may actually face a long-lasting period where consumption has to stay at levels below what we're used to.

I expect it to take at least 10 years for that to sink in for most people.

While many folks would consider factory workers are working class, they were unionized and I'd consider them middle class.

Max income tax bracket in the 70s was 70%. This prevented the income disparity that we've seen since the 1980s.

https://taxfoundation.org/historical-income-tax-rates-bracke...