New York Times tech workers to strike this afternoon
bloomberg.com
bloomberg.com
I have met many bargaining committee members at the NYT and they are all extremely sharp. The tech guild is well organized and I think the NYT management has much more to lose than the workforce in these negotiations.
Per the article, there are two main issues behind this strike: remote work and open bargaining.
We have a tentative contract agreement that we're voting on this week; it would guarantee remote work for devs for three years, and put caps on days in office for some workers who have on site job duties. The NYT is trying to avoid bargaining over remote work full stop by making unilateral changes before they bargaining a full contact (their legal obligation).
The other issue is open bargaining, which simply means that that union members can observe the bargaining sessions that will produce the agreement they will vote on. Without open bargaining, it's very difficult for members to be involved in improving proposals. Every single one of our bargaining sessions was open, and I can't imagine doing it any other way.
The NYT would prefer closed door meetings because it gives them opportunities them to drive a wedge between the workers who do the bargaining and their peers. Unfortunately, many unions have been cowed into accepting this employer demand, such that the NYT can present closed door bargaining as "typical".
[1]: http://code-cwa.org
It feels to me like the pandemic fundamentally changed many people's mindsets with their relationship to work: while I think some people went off the deep end with the r/antiwork crowd, others just reconsidered the amount of time and effort they wanted to put towards work so it wasn't detrimental to other aspects of their lives. They still wanted to do good work and have pride in their work, it was just no longer their primary focus.
So I feel a lot of these union battles are primarily about control. Many employees basically did get a bit "woke" (not in the woke-liberal sense, but in the "my eyes are opened to why am I killing myself at a job" sense), and employers are trying to put the genie back in the bottle.
Actualized pay is often more the issue here, however we look at or segment it (working conditions, net pay, etc). It's about the net transaction of your time for labor vs compensation. Magnitude of compensation is important because people need enough money and free time to make it worth working, but there are many ways to squeeze this, just as your example points out. Understaffing, pushing increased productivity requirements, tucking in new responsibilities, reducing benefits in some way, slacking on safety or security, etc. It's difficult to quantify all of this for most people so we often just look at pay. We'll, getting paid more than enough to live comfortably.. sure, but maybe you're working long hours to get that and stressed out of your mind. Maybe you're losing sleep. Maybe you're sacrificing your health to focus on improved business outputs.
It's an in/out situation, are you getting enough out for what you put in and that's often the issue. Any business paying market rates will be quick to point at salary and ignore everything else because it's very easy to discuss, compare, and argue about.
A lot of the OG strikes in the US were mostly about working conditions too - e.g. coal wars (which ended with literal armed conflict between thousands of strikers and the military...), railroad strikes, etc etc.
Back then the working conditions were like "we don't want to work 12 hours a day, 7 days a week", "we don't want to die from toxic fumes", etc.
Even ignoring my personal bias on biases, a pandemic is by nature transient, whereas the working conditions cited prior were (presumably) typical conditions that could be expected.
All that to say that your comparison strikes (hah) me as at best immaterial to the comment you replied to.
Just look at all-cause mortality, and assume that the observed excess mortality is because of covid.
I was quite a bit more rigorous than I usually am when trying to formulate my position on the matter, and even still the only conclusion I could come to was that (for me at least) the information I could gather was simply not trustworthy without specific expertise that I lack. To this day, I simply let the scope and impact of COVID remain an 'unsolved mystery' in my broader world views.
To add on to the start of my response, correlation does not imply causation. I can postulate numerous circumstances that, to a layman such as myself, could plausibly explain why there was an increase in all-cause mortality. Things such as an increased scrutiny on data collection pertaining to this specific circumstance could feasibly result in a change in data gathering practices favoring over-reporting, or even an improvement in report accuracy.
This depends on what you mean by "because of covid".
If you just mean "the primary cause of death was covid", this is not a valid methodology.
But if you mean "the primary cause of death was something that wouldn't have happened without the covid pandemic and the responses to it that were mandated by governments", then yes, this is probably a valid methodology--but then you can't lay all those deaths at the door of covid itself, you have to also hold governments responsible for their incompetent handling of the pandemic.
(Btw, all cause mortality in countries that did mass vaccinations with mRNA vaccines is still above the pre-pandemic baseline, even though covid deaths in those countries are minimal. So there's another item that would need to be taken into account when looking at the overall all cause mortality numbers.)
I’m really tired of this narrative. Older people died by orders of magnitude more than younger or working class people. Orders of magnitude. Don’t try and say “hindsight is 20/20” because this was known from the start. Ask any nursing home.
This comment is NOT meant to at ALL be political. Fuck Covid. Fuck making masks a political issue. Fuck all the Covid deniers. Fuck the anti-vax people.
Covid killed old people and those with co-morbidity. If we took all the money given out and gave it ONLY to those people such that they were mandated stay home and survive, however that needed to happen to ensure they avoided infection, imagine how different the would world be right now. /rant
Unpopular opinion on this site and I expect I’ll see that reflected here.
[1] https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/72/wr/mm7218a4.htm#T1_down
Edit: typo
You don't just stop being working class when you grow old.
Additionally, imagine the optics of “anyone fat can stay home while the rest of you have to go in to work.” How would that work in practice?
And finally, populations did not fully isolate. How much more quickly would things have soread (and overwhelmed the healthcare system) if folks just went about their business? How likely is it that the “not at risk” population (now with higher likelihood of having covid do to freer movement) would stay away from those at risk?
I’m not disagreeing with some of the ideas you put forth, but your comment comes across as absolutely certain. The world doesn’t work with that kind of certainty - we can’t all even agree on what did happen/work. Heck - lots of people don’t think the vaccine itself is necessary!
I can tell this subject frustrates you. One way to help yourself be less frustrated (and more correct!) would be to think more probabilistically and accept that all of the options are bad ones, and your preferred intervention might have been better but it also might have been worse. The world is dynamic and we don’t have any counterfactuals that we can use as comps.
Thank you for your rational response to my not-so-rational post.
https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid_weekly/index.htm#Se...
https://www.wolframalpha.com/input?i=log%28868831%29+-+log%2...
The risk obviously trends upward as you get closer to 65, but quite a lot of people under that aged died with what you might think of as people having taken excess precaution. This also excludes other forms of harm short of death, such as the increased risk of heart attack, stroke, and developing of diabetes that have been shown to occur post COVID. As the parent pointed out, we have no idea how this would’ve have played out with even less caution, but I think it’s difficult to argue that things would’ve necessarily been better given these statistics.
Take care.
I don’t think the would should have shut down instead of tackling that problem.
I'm similarly angry that we don't put substantial sums of money toward teaching people to use GPG encryption for confidential emails, however that needs to happen to ensure privacy. :)
Labor sellers have always evaluated pay to quality of life at work ratio, not just pay.
And increasing pay and quality of life at work always costs labor buyers more money.
There is some threshold where many people simply quit or leave a profession, and basically no amount of salary would cause them to come back - I've seen this in droves when it comes to nurses and teachers.
Point being I guess is that, for employers, the total cost of, say, adding some additional workers to provide better working conditions for everyone is going to be a much lower cost in the long run than simply providing hellish conditions for fewer workers and then needing to pay them out the wazoo to keep them from quitting.
> others just reconsidered the amount of time and effort they wanted to put towards work so it wasn't detrimental to other aspects of their lives... employers are trying to put the genie back in the bottle.
On the other hand, reading the Sony e-mails hacks: Sony did every negotiation with its team of finance people to tell their execs a number. The other side, a bunch of ICs as it were like production companies, actors, whatever, always asked for their money or needs "formatted" some weird way. This rider or that weird royalty-esque thing or some dates and terms that made no sense.
It's apparent that the people who were on the other side of the Sony execs always lost out. The thing they valued was not as valuable as it seemed. From Sony's POV, Sony was taking all the rewards from the risk, and they were thankful the ICs asked for weird stuff that was no risk no reward.
IMO compensation should model the banking industry. It has sophisticated employees and at major banks something like 40% of all costs are employee compensation. Not trying to turn this into a model but the bonus structures are aligned and the payout you get is in a sense quite simple. However maybe country-wide if everyone operated like this - like if people hated nurses guts as much as they hate bankers' - the reactionary politics would not be pretty.
In years with good recruitment or lean profits or really whenever the hell the bosses feel like, the company will stiff everyone in the back office on their bonus compensation regardless of performance and make some weak promises about how next year will be better. Everyone competent will leave for other companies, or if they're smart and competent other industries.
An underrated part of the pandemic was that baby boomers retired in huge swaths. And immigration for skilled workers plummeted.
There are simply MANY less workers in the economy now. So workers have a ton of bargaining power.
(Before we jump to the conclusion that everything is rosy, there is a huge downside to a labor-led economy: we'll probably start seeing declines in GDP eventually. Less total hours of labor productivity across the market divided by the amount of people means less labor per person).
I'm not sure how you measure metro-level inflation, but NYC got noticeably much more expensive post-pandemic, especially housing/rents but also food/entertainment/uber. A renovated studio apartment in a decent area is $4k in some neighborhoods now, and over $5k for a 1 bedroom apartment.
To be fair, it also deters posturing and promotes compromise. Open bargaining means not only every employee is involved, but inevitably, the broader public, too.
I'm interested in seeing how the open bargaining turns out - my understanding had been that closed bargaining evolved to solve problems with open bargaining, but perhaps the situation has changed now, and unions need to prioritize member engagement more these days than in the past.
For instance there's also this news today out of union-heavy Sweden where a Tesla worker walk-out failed:
> Some younger employees also reportedly stated that their salary and career paths are much better at Tesla as compared to other automakers. They also appreciated the fact that they were issued stock options from the company, some of whom have reportedly seen an increase of several hundred percent to date.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38070432
Of course there's also alternative data points: such as most employees only speaking on condition of anonymity due to fear of reprisals.
That particular union at the time at that company was nothing but a detriment to me and other software engineers. You paid dues and got nothing but lower wages in return. The union would also protect the jobs of under-performing employees which was just demoralizing. One of the things people would negotiate for was to be made nominally into managers with only 1 direct report so they could get out of the union and individually negotiate their pay packages outside of the union's agreement.
Now possibly part of the problem was that it was not a union for all software engineers but a general union for employees of many different jobs.
But the experience left me skeptical of unions in this profession. I think something like employees pooling their equity to get representation on the board or something like that might be more effective.
This wildly overstates the amount of equity that non-exec employees have at the vast majority of firms. It also ignores that fact that companies are able to issue different classes of stock with differing rights. Further, it overstates the possible influence of a single board member. The Dow Jones board has 14 members; I'm not sure that adding a 15th to represent employees would meaningfully change anything beyond the length of the board meetings.
This is a shitty reply, but only because it's true and depressing.
I get what I consider a generous RSU package from my employer, but I currently own 0.00000011 of, or (if my math doesn't fail me) 1/90,000th of a percent of the company. Truly a minuscule amount.
The fact that this question is posed almost like it's an impossibility goes to show how much we've been subtly brainwashed into thinking it's unreasonable. For example, before the private-equity-in-healthcare boom that did nothing but siphon off profits to the Wall Street class, in Texas all doctors groups were physician-owned (I believe they must still be by law, but PE has largely gotten around the bulk of that). It's really a great environment when the people who do the work are also the owners. Most groups, like other professional organizations (e.g. lawyers), hire people on a partnership track, where they become owners after a number of years. There are also employee-owned companies, like Publix supermarkets.
In a business with stable income it makes perfect sense though, like doctors or consulting firms.
Big difference between ownership of (private) medical, consulting, law firms is that the owners are usually required to purchase their stakes. The average employee at a firm may not have the desire or wherewithal to purchase a stake in their company. Notably, folks who buy in to consulting and/or law firms commonly take out loans to buy their (incredibly illiquid) stakes.
This is not a model for the typical employee.
And how can an employee expect this? By expecting it!
We call those groups "unions."
New York is highly unionized. I used to know a woman who set up trade shows there and would laugh that they required two different unions to move a desk with a computer on it that she herself could have moved if it were allowed.
Despite being mostly pro union I would find it totally baffling that a worker would be forced into a union and I doubt the OP was.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right-to-work_law
In EU this is already a thing, we see this is as a natural right to workers. In USA this is a hot topic, liberal states have unions forcing you to pay for membership even if you aren't a member.
They force non-union members to get the same benefits and pay the same union dues. What is hard to understand here? This is what unions in USA fight so hard to keep, they wouldn't fight for it if they didn't use it to force people.
For example, if you want to be an actor in California, you need to join SAG if you want to be in a union production. But if you join SAG you are no longer allowed to work in non-union productions, essentially creating two separate markets. Do you think this isn't happening? Many big actors hate this, but they are forced to join SAG anyway.
Here is how it works if you don't want to look it up yourself:
> Once this grace period expires, however, you become classified as a “must-join”. As the label implies, you now must join the union and pay the initiation fee if you wish to continue to work any SAG-AFTRA jobs going forward.
https://actingmagazine.com/2021/01/what-is-a-must-join/
Edit: And here is how right to work gives you a choice instead of the union being able to force you:
> There is usually more flexibility for must-join actors who reside in right-to-work states, since right-to-work states have laws that prohibit unions from requiring workers to join a union as a condition for employment. However, the largest acting markets in the United States, like Los Angeles and New York, are union states.
In some cases union labor can be circumvented (hiring non-union labor), but for some industries/businesses this is not possible on a short timeframe
I can see how you could see it that way, but it’s actually the reverse. A union is actually a force capable of denying labor to an employer. Viewed in this way, there is nothing precluding another union to also withhold the same employees from working. Employees could, theoretically, be members of more than one union. Employers would then have to satisfy the requirements of all extant unions.
(I have no idea why this is being downvoted. I can only guess that people think I am implying something again.)
Practically that's not how it tends to work in the US. In most cases there is one industry wide or company specific union, without competing alternatives.
It is a monopoly on labor, full stop.
Not all monopolies are intentionally bad, but they all exist with the same perverse incentives that can run counter to the goals of everyone involved.
If Ford wants to invest in these plants or hire more people, they must hire them from the union. There is no competing, alternative union, or mechanism to hire non-union labor into this plant, thus making the UAW a local monopoly on labor supply for those plants.
Ford can offshore the manufacturing to bypass the union, yes, but not in the immediate term. It requires large capital investments and years of planning. But in the end it tends to be worth it monetarily for most manufacturing businesses to do this.
Which is why any job that involves a large amount manual labor that can be outsourced, tends to get outsourced. Lower cost of production is quite good for society, by the way. It's what enables goods and technology to be so cheap in real terms versus the past, when food consumption used to be a large percentage of a family's spending.
Eventually automation will replace the need for manual labor, thus outsourcing. Manufacturing plant location would be driven more by cost to transport inputs than cost of labor
“In 2012, Michigan enacted a right-to-work statute that prevented employees from being forced to join or financially support a labor union as a condition of employment” Which means they can’t force you to join the union.
Maybe you’re use of the word “effectively” is meant to carry the weight of this oversight — although that would imply that, since the workers were not forced to join the union they did so of their own volition? Which I’m sure is not the point you are trying to make.
Where’s the evidence of the claims?
I'm not here to teach you the basics about unions, I'm here to talk about the economic impact of them as it applies to many industries in the US.
If you feel I'm wrong, please disprove me. Otherwise, why comment at all?
A monopoly is not a monopoly due to it being enshrined or mandated by law, it is because it has market power far exceeding that of any current or future competitor. Because it is uneconomical to compete with them
A deeply embedded labor union, even if nominally optional to join, is still a monopoly on labor because there is no incentive for an individual auto-worker to break off from the union. They have 0 individual bargaining power unless they are part of the union.
Ford cannot go out and hire an entire set of "scabs" overnight to run their plants, because they lose too much collective domain knowledge and its too costly to do so.
This makes labor unions such as UAW directly comparable to what a corporate monopoly looks like. It is a direct and clear analogy. Right to work is irrelevant here.
Your entire counterpoint is based on misunderstanding the definition of a Monopoly. Anyway the semantics of what a "monopoly" is are subjective (is Apple or Google one?). This discussion is about "effective monopolies" and the economic impact when one body has enough market power that alternative options are not realistic, even if nominally available.
You proffered a point: “ If Ford wants to invest in these plants or hire more people, they must hire them from the union. There is no competing, alternative union, or mechanism to hire non-union labor into this plant, thus making the UAW a local monopoly on labor supply for those plants.”
Which I proved incorrect because it’s simply not the case nor could it have been based on Michigans own laws (up until this year that is). Michigan was a right to work state up until this year so yes Ford can and does hire non union which doesn’t even speak to its massive 3pp parts maker network which is largely not unionized and acts as another way to employ non union personnel. You can say Ford can’t hire scabs but they do as do others:
https://labornotes.org/2023/09/scabs-deployed-gm-parts-distr...
https://theintercept.com/2023/10/10/uaw-auto-strike-stellant...
You can also say they can’t hire non union workers and yet even in the US only many ford employees are not unionized: “ Ford has about 173,000 employees worldwide, about 86,000 in the U.S. Of the 86,000, about 57,000 are represented by the UAW. About 33% of Ford employees are UAW” https://www.barrons.com/articles/ford-stock-uaw-gm-stellanti...
I’m not responding to your other “points” because they lack any form of citation. I was interested to see if there were actually union requirements to get a Ford job in Michigan and from my research I can’t see that and your claims fail to speak to that question in an substantive way beyond you espousing your opinion. I never made a claim about unions being good or bad — you imply value judgements in your conclusions but those are your own and without citations they are as useful as a hole in the head. You can keep on making “logical” conclusions but they lack any substance because you can’t properly execute a coherent line of argument as you fail to support your previous claims even when given multiple opportunities to present a cogent case. I guess “everybody knows” though is enough for your purposes.
Also your definition of monopoly in this case fails to actually support your point. Here is an actual definition of a monopoly: https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/definition/monopoly
You miss the important “unique” qualifier to the product or services. UAW or any other union does not offer a unique product as labor is a fungible asset. In right to work states there is no singular unique provider of labor and therefore it is not a monopoly unless you can prove that one has to join a union to work at Ford which is not the case.
This is due to American laws not protecting workers from unions. This isn't the case in for example EU.
> Quite simply unions could not exist without government backing.
They can and they did exist without government backing. Union laws in most countries are to weaken unions since they are too strong otherwise, not to give them more power. For example unions forcing exclusivity is due to lack of laws protecting workers from unions.
Unions are labor monopolies, so there are a lot of missing positive incentives, while offering incentives for corruption. In the case of the UAW, it puts auto makers at a disadvantage because there's a single labor supplier they all buy from, so the supplier can play the automakers off each other. In the moment labor is currently having, you might argue that giving labor more power than business is good, but it's not; it's toxic to those businesses in the long term. You need balance between business and labor, and competing unions is a good way to solve this.
My employer has a monopoly on providing me with a paycheck, with tons of incentives for mistreatment and corruption.
I'm told that if I dislike this, I should go find another job, or start my own company. Perhaps that could be the solution for someone who doesn't like their current job's union..?
Unless you're an astronaut or something, no, they don't. Go interview somewhere else. Go drive an uber. There are lots of other places to get a paycheck.
Those decisions are never data-driven, and are always some unholy amalgamation of industry-trend-chasing and some insane personal-politics-games that he's playing against his peers.
My choices with a union are 'change it or take it, or leave it', my choices without a union are 'take it or leave it'. Flawed democracy versus flawed autocracy.
For some professions people just negotiate their own salary, that is true of software developers for instance. Nurses on the other hand have their salary negotiated by the nurses union. It really depends on the type of work and how uniform it is or how poorly the employers behave.
The US unions seems, from the outside, pretty immature and amateurishly run. They are to small, to narrow in focus, to expensive and poorly organization.
The small hyper localized union are silly and I can't imagine that they work all that well. The membership cost is also insane, but I suspect that's because they are tiny. Ideally the members at a company the size of the New York Times could be on strike indefinitely, being supported by the members of thousands of other companies.
I honestly hate the idea of that. If you don't like Meta or Google, you don't have to work there. I know lots of people that don't like the "defense" industry because it contributes to building weapons, so they refuse to work at those companies.
What recourse does an employee/member have if the union publicly supports setting up (mock) guillotines?
https://files.illinoispolicy.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/...
What if you don't agree with their conduct or policies? You can't just go get another job if there's only one or two.
>You participate in the process to get things changed
Will a union compensate you participating? Having to fight against both your boss _and_ union sounds like a nightmare.
Ideally, your union is supposed to fight against your boss for you.
I can understand the reluctance to deal with another structure. But when you get to the day-to-day impact, aside from the legal protections and membership dues and so forth, how is dealing with a union any different from dealing with the ad hoc cliques or unofficial software guilds, employee groups, etc. that spring up in a workplace? Or just dealing with rival teams or orgs jockeying for influence and power? You want to escape politics at the workplace altogether, become a freelancer.
For sure. And that's what you can do if you don't want to work for a company but have desired skills.
>Ideally, your union is supposed to fight against your boss for you.
For sure. So my question is why are so many unions on twitter advocating for every social cause under the sun and encouraging people to build guillotines? I realize this is an extreme example but its no secret that unions are very leftist and active.
>how is dealing with a union any different from dealing with the ad hoc cliques or unofficial software guilds, employee groups, etc. that spring up in a workplace?
If you don't like those things, you can work at another place. I know office culture is part of every business but every business has a different culture. You can work in software without ever touching a defense company. In a world where there's only one or two software unions, those structures would be inescapable.
> In a world where there's only one or two software unions, those structures would be inescapable.
The concept of unions in the U.S. tech industry is completely nascent and up in the air at this moment. If anything, the proliferation of "Google union", "NYT union", a Kickstarter United etc. seem to indicate that it is unlikely there will be only one or two software unions.
The idea that if (and it seems to be, as always, a very low-probability if) software unions do catch on, they will necessarily be identical to industrial unions of the past, seems fallacious to me. You would expect an industry that's all about innovation and experimentation to approach the problem of labor relations in a ways that's different from failed models of the past.
The union's website links to the account:
https://www.ctulocal1.org/ (down at the bottom)
>with actual union activity and messaging
How am I supposed to know what is "actual activity and messaging?"
>You would expect an industry that's all about innovation and experimentation to approach the problem of labor relations in a ways that's different from failed models of the past.
That's fair. Intentions aren't consequences though. Some of the most well intentioned policies and regulations in Europe have the consequences of horrible tech salaries.
> Intentions aren't consequences though. Some of the most well intentioned policies and regulations in Europe have the consequences of horrible tech salaries.
I just want to see some experimentation and innovation in an industry that has an avowed commitment to such values. If there are consequences, then we will at least have proven so empirically.
https://files.illinoispolicy.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/...
>And this is a public sector union, they are not straight up advocating for revolutionary class war for crying out loud
They say "we're terrified but completely in support of wherever this is going" when people set up a device used exclusively for beheading humans. Whatever it is, it is ridiculous and a prime example of how you'll have to fight a war on two fronts if you don't agree with the union.
>I just want to see some experimentation and innovation in an industry that has an avowed commitment to such values
Anyone is free to start a software co-op and or experiment with different methods. I could agree in theory, but in practice, experimentation isn't free. I have family from eastern Europe that are still recovering from the "experimentation" that went on in the USSR.
> I have family from eastern Europe that are still recovering from the "experimentation" that went on in the USSR.
We're talking about an industry that has been almost wholeheartedly scoffing at the idea of unions for decades. To suggest Kickstarter United is Finland Station is laughable.
Agreed that software co-ops are something that should be attempted more. In fact, the presence of FOSS projects, hacker collectives, and the like would suggest that programmer self-governance is already popular in this industry. There is a very bottom-up, autonomy-focused culture in many aspects of software. Even the idea of quitting your pointy-headed boss to build your own startup is arguably in the same spirit.
I'd go as far as saying that to attempt a software union is in the same spirit- as unionization has declined so much in the U.S. over past decades, let alone never been attempted in tech until recent years- it is an underdog, grassroots cause. Very far from the bureaucratic Kafka entity that anti-union critics like to invoke- this industry is so very far from such a leviathan!
And remember, it was a labor union that ended the USSR's grip on Poland, leading to sweeping changes across the Eastern Bloc...
Ok, well, we've gone from;
"you're confused, that's not the actual messaging"
to
"they're only mildly approving of constructing a device to behead people they disagree with"
>you still have a voice to counteract it
I should not have to spend mental energy or time telling an (in your words) activist, edgy-millennial that encouraging people to build guillotines is not a good PR look and doesn't represent me.
>just as you would if your company was engaged in a PR marketing campaign whose tenor you disagree with
If you don't like your company you can leave. If there were only one or two unions for software devs, (like OP implies) then it would be inescapable.
I don't disagree with the idea of unions in principal. I just feel they would be detrimental to software. The only reason start ups get off the ground is because people put their blood, sweat and tears into it. What is there to motivate co-op founders to put their blood, sweat and tears into a new co-op?
Yes? The parameters of the discussion have shifted, so I am responding accordingly. This isn't a debate, let alone a sports game; there are no goalposts to shift, simply points to be addressed, not scored.
> I should not have to spend mental energy or time telling an (in your words) activist, edgy-millennial that encouraging people to build guillotines is not a good PR look and doesn't represent me.
I can understand it's an additional annoyance, and may be a dealbreaker in your book. I respect that. It is my position that it is a regrettable trifle and not all that different from when one's company PR, or even execs, make regrettable public statements. An overcomeable difficulty.
> If there were only one or two unions for software devs, (like OP implies) then it would be inescapable.
Sure, but it's such a different state of affairs from reality to seem positively absurd as a phantasm.
> What is there to motivate co-op founders to put their blood, sweat and tears into a new co-op?
I don't know, why don't you ask the founders of the Mondragon Corporation, or even the Arizmendi Bakery that bears the founder's name? Specific to software, what motivates those who start FOSS projects, or open hackerspaces or makerspaces, or create content for freeCodeCamp? Seems like there is precedence for autonomous, self-governing enterprises in tech, and I doubt that those behind them do not put in blood, sweat, and tears.
I guess that's one way to do it. I guess I optimistically believe we can do better than "Move to a dictator you like," either for town government or for employment.
In theory this is great. In practice, I realized there's just no way to compete with career politicians. I don't mean people like the Bushs or Clintons. I'm talking about spouses or people that can work 5-6 hours a day on local legislation when you are looking to just relax after your 9-5.
And I mean really, what can a old-school Republican (not me) do if they live in the Bay Area? Realistically the only way they can feel represented, for better or worse, is by moving. I don't think that's the worst thing in the world either.
What does that have to do with the unions? The unions negotiate with an industry as a whole, never individual companies, that makes no sense. So a programmers union would ensure that you have the same rights regardless of whether you work for Meta, Google or Carl's Discount Software.
> What recourse does an employee/member have if the union publicly supports setting up (mock) guillotines?
They vote in the next union election and vote out who ever approved of that idea. That's also how you change conduct and policies. The point of the union is collective bargaining, so there's bound to be something you don't like, but that's the cost of being a democracy. You're not forced to be a member to work in an industry, but at least parts of your benefits and minimum salary may be negotiated by the union regardless.
If there is just one "software engineer" union, if you work in software, you have to be part of that union.
>So a programmers union would ensure that you have the same rights regardless of whether you work for Meta, Google or Carl's Discount Software.
Exactly. That's the blessing and curse of monopoly. What if you feel the union isn't doing a good job of representing you?
>They vote in the next union election and vote out who ever approved of that idea.
So you're at the mercy of the 51%?
>The point of the union is collective bargaining
If that is all the unions did, I wouldn't be as weary. The problem is they do far more than that.
>You're not forced to be a member to work in an industry, but at least parts of your benefits and minimum salary may be negotiated by the union regardless.
>You're not forced to be a member to work in an industry
Maybe in theory but in a world where there is only one software union for FAANG, that won't be the case.
I guess I'd rather have a vote over my compensation and working conditions rather than having to negotiate it or "vote with my feet". Different strokes for different folks. For what it's worth I'm against mandatory union participation, but would almost certainly participate if I had the option.
Why would it? My wife works in a heavily unionized industry, but you're not forced to be a member, but your baseline benefits are negotiated by a union. You're free to negotiate directly better terms if you can, you just can't do worse. I do see your point, say you have some benefits that mostly favors people with children, which you'd happily give up for higher pay. That is a downside.
> So you're at the mercy of the 51%?
Welcome to democracy, unless you're in the US where you at the mercy of less that 50% of the population anyway. I was always taught that democracy is the rule of the majority, but with consideration for the minority. In a normal election it's not win takes all, say you elect 15 people to run the union, sure 51% could elect the exact same type of people, in normal elections that rarely happens. It happens with gerrymandering, but normally, you broadly get a reasonable representation of the members. That's not to say that there aren't a group of people that believe something entirely different, and yes, it sucks to be them. Saying that 2% or 5% should be able to get exactly what they want, even if that costs the remaining group what they want is really arguing against democracy and I'm not sure what you'd replace it with.
Still, you should always be free to leave a union that doesn't represent you, but that should prevent everyone else from benefiting. Maybe most agree with you and you start a new union.
Which industry?
>You're free to negotiate directly better terms if you can, you just can't do worse
Do you have sources for this? I'm not doubting you, its just I admit I'm not experienced with unions but from what I've gathered from friends/family, you have certain "steps" in salary/benefits. Are you negotiating with the union or with the company? Can you negotiate every year or only when you first start?
>Saying that 2% or 5% should be able to get exactly what they want
Well, IMO its not really about people getting exactly what they want, its about getting what is owed to each individual. I would love to be paid $1,000,000 to make CRUD apps all day but that's not possible (unless I owned the business or something). As it is now, when you take on a job you can negotiate salary and benefits. No use fighting over an orange when one person wants to eat it and the other wants the skin. I've negotiated tens of thousands of dollars in salary. Sometimes a business needs something done fast and has the money. Sometimes they have less money but can meet you on vacation/benefits. If a union establishes a higher floor, it will be at the expense of a ceiling, at least for software. I'm not saying unions are reason for the horribly low tech salaries in Europe... but the way employment there is handled is certainly a factor. Why take risks on people if you can't really get rid of them after you hire them?
>Welcome to democracy [...] I'm not sure what you'd replace it with
Right now, I can represent myself to my employer and I deal directly with my employer. A union would introduce a middleman that may or may not represent me well. Of course, a union would bring with it "leverage" of collective negotiation... but for me, that is not worth it to give up my ability to negotiate as an individual.
I do get your points though. Democracy is a pretty awful system but it is the "least-worst." I think direct representation to your employer is the "least-worst" for software engineering though.
That said, I get where you are coming from. It's terrible when a peer gets elected to union office and decides to prioritize their relationship with management over their relationship with the people who elected them. And it's true, some unions in the U.S. have really degenerated after decades of hostility from employers and their political representatives in all branches of government (most notably, the judiciary and National Labor Relations Board).
But constructive solution is to get involved in the union, rather than waiting for someone else to bargain a contract that will benefit you. Attend a training, become a steward, volunteer to bargain, consider running for union office. The alternative is to live under the petty tyranny of employers, hopping from job to job in the hope that market conditions for your labor don't deteriorate.
If you're organizing a non-union employer, which I have done, you and your peers need to investigate how capable and committed to union democracy the officers are.
I generally understand your point but the reality a union pitch has to provide a better answer for is that job hopping works out pretty well. I went from $28/hr part time to $350k TC, base $200k+ over 5 years of job hops early career and remote LCOL.
For one, there’s not a lot of tyranny there and I don’t think a union would have brought me that comp. I know many other similar experiences from individuals who work this route too.
For two, I did it via an ethical but transactional relationship with my employers. Unions still work on an old school mentality that a fair long term relationship is worth locking in.
I’m aware the music might stop in eng comp at some point, and I’ve planned/risk managed for that too.
If all unions can offer tech jobs is banding together and rise up the median conditions for everyone, while as a solo operator I can lock in early retirement, that’s a hard sell.
For what it’s worth, I’m quite pro-union for jobs where it makes sense. But there is nothing in your argument that makes sense for a SWE hunting life-changing comp, which is quite doable still. Why put my family at risk to help everyone else go along to get along a bit better than the previous contract, if I can solve our lifetime financial future in a few years?
Your situation is more like that of an established Hollywood actor or musician. And the collective bargaining model that makes sense for them - a hiring hall - would also make sense for your segment of the software sector (and startups). Many film/album productions are effectively run like startups, and it makes no sense to bargain a firm specific contract each time. Likewise with construction work, where the hiring hall model is widespread.
More union -> less ease of hiring and negotiating for solo operators, less companies that will hire journeyman vs union shops.
That tyranny of job hopping is available to everyone. I’m not special (having spent every day with my engineering skills haha) I just beefed up on negotiating and risk tolerance.
Also I cant imagine how a startup scales if unions get involved.
Or I guess another way - I do not understand your conclusion that a hiring hall (what is this…?) helps me at all.
* Edit, clarifying: the crux I don’t understand from union tech people is it’s not like we’re miners, stuck in the same valley in WV by a variety of conditions, so might as all band together and fight Duke Energy. Or actors, tied to a few cities for their industry with a significant “on-prem” requirement. In tech, a new job and a better opportunity is a Signal/Slack DM or a LinkedIn search away. Close down one laptop and ship it back, open another shipped by an employer -> new future. IMO this is how it works going forward and only more so as fully digitized companies continue. I don’t see how a union helps here, and doesn’t add friction to me surviving in that medium. I feel that if I bought into the union perspective that the relationship with an employer is one worth shaping and locking in, it’s missing the point of a hyper-transactional, individualist economy that’s only getting more so. That to me is supporting an approach based on a faulty core premise, which seems very risky, excluding any benefits from the job hopping thing.
This runs counter to the fact that we have seen a massive increase in labor organization and union activity over the last 5 years so I would consider rethinking that perspective.
https://www.employmentlawworldview.com/recent-data-confirms-...
https://news.gallup.com/poll/510281/unions-strengthening.asp...
> it’s not like we’re miners, stuck in the same valley in WV by a variety of conditions, so might as all band together and fight Duke Energy.
Yes but your are subject to an increasingly consolidated group of employers that are all generally described as “near monopolies” by the stock market analysts themselves and as we saw with the credit tightening cycle startups only are a viable counterweight as an employer when credit is cheap. You are also increasingly subject to competing with people who live on and require far less money to live in the places they work outside of western developed nations. Any handwaving about “superior quality from the US” is just whistling past the graveyard as monopolistic corporations don’t have to care about quality. Anecdata: any post on HN complaining about a major corporations support — they don’t have to care about quality when they own the market.
https://www.openmarketsinstitute.org/learn/monopoly-by-the-n...
“The US economy is at least 50% more concentrated today than in 2005, they write.” https://www.axios.com/2022/05/26/new-paper-finds-monopolies-...
> Also I cant imagine how a startup scales if unions get involved.
And yet data to that effect has been collected and found no visible impact on small business: https://www.princeton.edu/~davidlee/wp/unionbf.pdf
Will it impact it? I don’t think so.
We are an information-product economy. The outcome of it is Product A/Business A can get swapped out by a few clicks from the user to Product B/Business B. And in the process the hyper-organized, powerful Union A can’t do anything about it. Yes, there are all sorts of economist side-channels you can get into on this topic, but suffice to say the user-choice and de-frictioning around that choice has never been so powerful, and unions are from an age and of an approach from before this happened. Maybe to your point, B2B software will get impacted by organized labor, ie where there are consequential vendor lock-ins. But from that angle - do I sign a vendor agreement with a union shop, and the likely delays and quirks on product features and support? I’m not sure I would. To my earlier point, the same dynamic benefits employees, why let a union slow that?
As long as the user has as strong a choice on dictating revenue as it does currently, I’m not sure what point you’re making? Labor is a reaction but on the supply side, and no impact on the demand side which is what I’m referring to as the driver.
To your second, you’re looking at a domestic employment market when the reality is an international one. I didn’t mention once my American-ness protects my income. But my global-ness and commitment to keeping that perspective, plus learning other (human) languages, does.
In large I feel your response missed the point I’m making.
> In large I feel your response missed the point I’m making.
Which is what? Beyond casting aspersions and making claims with no data the only point I see you making is: “I think I can do better by myself” which is an assertion laughably disproved by the basic history of labor organization.
I feel you missed the point when your argument failed to make cogent case as to why unions would actually hurt your job prospects beyond “a feeling.” Come back with some data and maybe you might actually have point that can be argued.
Part of the secret sauce of silicon valley is CA doesn't allow non-competes, so there's a lot of employee churn. Too much or too little are both bad, but some churn spreads ideas across the industry, leveling up everyone's game.
I understand that some people want the stability of a lifer, but in innovative industries, this is a negative, and I'd rather see a better social safety net from the government to make people comfortable with taking risks and changing jobs.
Same page, I specifically have not taken risks bc my PPO healthcare would drop out, I can jump for comp but there is a floor of safety I need to maintain. With a startup, you’re dropping comp and healthcare, which was a bridge too far.
Every startup I've worked for had a PPO option. (One didn't originally but then added a PPO as soon as they raised a Series A.)
Job hopping tends to work out great early in one's career, but most everyone will plateau. My very first job hop netted me a +33% increase, my next was +20%, but the increase always trends downward. I'm 20 years into my career now, and my last job hop was maybe +0.2%. It's no longer worth it to move.
Also, $350K TC in 5 years is astoundingly good, like almost unbelievably good. Congratulations but you must know that makes you an enormous outlier. I don't even make close to that after over 20 years and in a HCOL area.
To start on the anomalous experience aspect, I know a lot of people on the same path, largely it comes from in-demand tech skills with a talent gap - think SRE, security engineering vs slamming very crowded JS-based SWE roles, paired with the pre-IPO venture pay. If it’s series C+, you’ll get 18mo of stability, and then jump for comp. Most people I know not hitting this TC won’t go to these types of companies. Another key part is thinking on 3-5 yrs vs job to job. You can get into killer companies by layering where you go first and what you work on, vs shooting for that company in the first job app. If you’re not a tech talent who can hit the hard interviews immediately, this is a great path.
Re: planning/risk management on that, as specifically the pre-IPO pay part might change with the economy, my paths are:
- arbitrage LCOL and remote tech for as long as I can, but then hit the tech cities for roles where the seniority/comp makes it worth living there as you can still get ahead (as in, out of the “golden treadmill” range of great comp but it’s NYC and childcare is $3k/mo hypotheticals), plus my career positioning tees me up to take a shot at those roles.
- tech executive paths. If you have a modicum of social skills, people networking, and an eye for how the business makes revenue, this is in play and also pay continues to climb to astronomical levels.
- lifestyle management: there is no recurring fixed expensive in my life that a $70k/yr tech job won’t cover, and having this managed makes the above planning remotely possible.
Put all this together - life changing comp is in tech and 10 yrs playing it buys you a future to do just about anything you want after.
Only reason I bring all this up in detail vs letting blind leak into hacker news is I can’t see how a union helps that path and more so doesn’t actively hurt it. As I said somewhere else, believe me I’m not a generational tech talent. I had a non-tech career before this, had to retrain, all that. But perhaps that background helped me see how wild the opportunity in tech is? By the time you hit those 0.2% raises… you could be not working while the rest of the world descends into AI-enabled unemployment etc etc
idk, i'm 47 and just had +30% offer drop in my lap 2 weeks ago via SMS from a former client. I'm not exceptional, just specialized with a decent professional network (friends scattered about). It can't be that rare to steadily progress up the pay scale throughout your career by changing jobs.
> Some unions in the U.S. have really degenerated after decades of hostility from employers and their political representatives in all branches of government (most notably, the judiciary and National Labor Relations Board).
Or things like a lot of peoples' only interaction with a union being "you can't do that yourself, pay our toll or else", "you can't get something you want, we're not working", or "we can't get rid of that bad employee" (not to mention public sector unions). To be fair, it's hard PR when "we got health insurance" doesn't matter to anyone outside the union, but a lot of unions have worked hard to have a poor public opinion. The big labor wins (we don't have to work in a coal mine 80 hours a week!) are taken for granted now.
Exactly my issue with Unions. Now you basically have two bosses. Unions are supposed to be on your side... and they are... until you don't agree with them. Reminds me of my time in college where it was all "we accept everyone and love diversity of thought" -- unless those thoughts were outside the window of "acceptable thoughts" and that window is not very big.
That said in this case, I hope the NYT goes down. They deserve it. Go union, do your thing that you're so good at.
That was the main problem. There is a reason that the writers and actors have separate unions -- because the have different needs. Heck, even the animation writers have a separate union from the live action writers because they have different needs.
I imagine a proper coders union would look a lot like the screenwriters union. Minimum pay and benefits, but without the job protections for underperforms that so many dislike about unions, and the ability for top performers to get incredible pay.
What exactly did you want in return? The entire purpose is to be a collective with your co-workers. Do assertive, high performers need unionization? No, but that's not the point.
>The union would also protect the jobs of under-performing employees which was just demoralizing
If the "under-performers" are the people who don't work 50 hours a week and treat their job like a job, I'm all for them being "protected".
> Minneapolis Public Schools defends policy to prioritize retaining educators of color when determining layoffs
> Effective in the spring of 2023, the contract provision states that teachers who are members of "populations underrepresented among licensed teachers in the district" may be exempt from district-wide layoffs outside of seniority order, deviating from the traditional "last-in, first-out" system.
> The stipulation is a part of a recent collective bargaining agreement between the Minneapolis Federation of Teachers (MFT) and MPS, which concluded a weekslong teachers' strike in March.
https://abcnews.go.com/US/minneapolis-public-schools-defends...
If you end up on the wrong side of the movement because you aren't one of the "intersectional" people you could be let go. It's just jarring to me as someone who's mother is a public school teacher and is poor but isn't a woman of color. This union doesn't have all its members backs.
Funny how much some shitty employers like to get in the way of developers getting things done.
Though to be fair, a lot of you guys can’t be trusted, and data breaches are a major liability, soooo… here we are.
its a reaction to micromanaging productivity, like presence at the machine as opposed to results
However, I'm not sure it's a good thing for tech workers who are already located in US as they look their competitive advantage on the labour market.
* You're comparing outcomes with two different causes (quarantine versus contract)
* You're asking about the quality of the outcome, but defining the answer as whatever the market says. As the market doesn't weigh in on quality, only value (and that imperfectly in many situations) it can't answer that question.
Glad they're getting ripped off.
Can you elaborate?
if somebody tells you, "you're among the most privileged class of workers making a lot of money, you don't need a union," then kindly tell them to go fuck themselves.
but seriously, we are all part of the working class regardless of income bracket, and that sort of thinking is intended to drive divisions in the working class so we don't have class solidarity. if you are a software engineer working for a salary, then the "value" you produce is captured by the owning class via free market transactions paying for whatever your labor produced, and thus you have an incentive to reclaim your stolen value as a laborer.
> Do you have the power to negotiate for remote work, or to work somewhere without an open office floor plan?
total bullshit. Unions protect incompetence and reward seniority only. I've never seen a union do otherwise.
"USW-local-42 has used TurboPascal since 1987, and it's worked _fine_ for every project ever since. Bob could have retired at 65, but he's 78 and he's taught thousands of underlings how to master the language. That project that took 12 years wasn't our fault, it was torpedoed when collective bargaining negotiations failed and our whole union had to learn C++. Keeping with the same language is a core tenet of our union and keeping people like bob among the most satisfied employees in $UNION_STATE."
"We at USW-42 only connect to signed APIs from other union shops, we will not support FOSS unless the whole chain has been verified that it has been grown organically from employee-first union-run companies. I know that a 25ms auth check on each call is slowing us down, we have guys working on that. But the law about to pass is going to make it illegal to circumvent these checks. You got to remember, these checks help secure jobs, and there's always going to be trade offs. You can hire us to remove the API calls and re-write the software if you absolutely need that speed up, but for now, think of the children of all these union members who depend on your support and compliance".
We are though. And I don't want some asshole union giving it up for us. I can fend for myself.
so how do my RSUs and my 401k factor in to this?
Unions have no place in technology companies. It will drive down wages and performance and ship jobs out of the U.S.
All evidence suggests that unionized workers earn more than non-unionized workers.
Unions are not perfect but they bring more of the value being created by employees to the employees.
An unionized US tech worker working from Bolivia will still make more than a non unionized US tech worker working in SF.
Also, our work is much closer to the electrician than to the teacher. But it doesn't feel right to take this into account.
This got to be sarcasm, right? Or you made a mistake? Your post doesn't really make sense.
EDIT: the sabotage may already be happening... the NYT iPad seems extremely slow and buggy.