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Comment by jjangkke | Hacker News Reader

i think the union here is overreaching and expectations are unrealistic.

the stakeholders/investors have priority here and they have sold the company to the highest bidder.

at this point anyone participating or showing support behind union is at risk of being profiled and black listed in the industry and not just EA.

its in their collective interest to setup in jurisdictions outside the US where labor laws make the latter illegal but certainly not in many parts of the world and jurisdiction arbitrage makes it a very real probability.

my advice to anyone working at EA or any unionized white collar jobs in this nidustry and relate to keep your heads down and don't post your thoughts in public.

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> i think the union here is overreaching

I think concern over company ownership is a core responsibility of a union.

> my advice to anyone working at EA or any unionized white collar jobs in this nidustry and relate to keep your heads down and don't post your thoughts in public.

That's one of the strengths of a union: established rules about what is an isn't acceptable, which include your right to speak out.

Not to be pedantic, but I think you mean "shareholders".

In the context of software, the term "stakeholder" means anyone who will use the project being worked on.

In the context of business, "stakeholder" is an intentionally nebulous term designed to obfuscate who is supposed to be enriched by the actions of the company. Usually that term is a way of deceiving people into thinking the company's goal is to serve "the community", when in reality it's serving the shareholders at the expense of the well-being of the community.

Sometimes, it's a way of deceiving the shareholder for the benefit of the executives, e.g. some "DEI" bullshit that hurts the community, the shareholders, and most of the employees just to feed the HR department and the C-suite's insatiable lust for power.

EDIT - I'd like to add a comment about "shareholder" and "stakeholder" sounding so similar, but in practice meaning two mutually-incompatible things:

This is by design. You're not supposed to be conscientious of the difference in meaning.

You're supposed to hear "shareholder capitalism's kinder, gentler successor", not "corporate-owned feudalism".

>Usually that term is a way of deceiving people into thinking the company's goal is to serve "the community"

It can also encourage workers to consider the needs of customers and suppliers, the ignoring of which will tend to eventually harm the company and its shareholders. I.e., it is not always a weasel word.

It's almost always a weasel word because if you meant customer you would just say customer. Saying "stakeholder" permits a level of ambiguity about whose interests are being represented.

If I mean "customers, suppliers, neighboring businesses, employees, their families, investors and anyone else affected by my decision", should I write that out or should I just write "stakeholders"?

Only if you earnestly give a rat's ass about all of the above.

Again, you're thinking of an "agile" stakeholder- not a "stakeholder capitalism" stakeholder.

Why is this so difficult for you to grasp?

>Why is this so difficult for you to grasp?

Because I personally haven't come across writings or speakings AFAICR in which "stakeholder" is used as a weasel word.

I will avoid the word now that I've had this conversation.

Like I said, that's the engineering context of the word.

In business managerial side of operations, "stakeholder" is definitely a weasel word.

The word "stakeholder" in "stakeholder capitalism" as used by the World Economic Forum literally means "every single person on Earth". Unless you think Klaus Schwab also considers the possibility of life in the Andromeda Galaxy, it doesn't get anymore nebulous than that. The word "nebulous" describes something cloudy and ginormous- like a nebula.

I'm not trying to give you a hard time, but the rarity of the exception justifies the rule.

If pushing back against a cash out is overreaching then what would be a valid union power?

OP is anti-union, so, likely nothing.

Their points are cause for unions to organize across companies and industries (though solidarity strike action is illegal in the US because it's effective). But they take for granted that employers should have their way and that employee interests are best served by appeasing owners.

The stakeholders/investors have nothing without the employees. The owners may have legal control of the company, but they can't force the company's employees to come to work, and their investment is worthless if that happens. That gives the employees some power here. There's nothing wrong with using it.

> the stakeholders/investors have priority here and they have sold the company to the highest bidder.

At EA a lot of the long term employees had significant stock holdings too.

How significant? 5% of the company each? 20% of the company together? If you just mean they got a few hundred thousand dollars out of the sale, that's not "significant" at the company level. Significant stock ownership means you have a real say in the company's direction.

To be completely clear, EA is not a union shop. UVW (the CWA local putting out this statement) is a direct-join industry wide union. They have no contract or direct relationship with EA, though it seems (unsurprisingly) that some EA employees are members. As a legal matter they have no more relation to the EA deal than your local library does.

So yes maybe they're overreaching, but there's also very little for them to lose. Presumably they feel their labor power (unconstrained by the usual NLRB rules as this is not an NLRB-recognized bargaining unit) gives them some sway in the matter, but if not, they're not out anything.

Seems like a smart enough thing to try. If it doesn't work, they organize some more and try again later with better odds.

> ny advice to anyone working at EA or any unionized white collar jobs in this nidustry and relate to keep your heads down and don't post your thoughts in public.

I'd note that the workers creating the wealth and doing all the work are among the vanguard of workers doing the best in the world, but the advice given sounds similar to advice that could have been given to slaves on a plantation, in case the masters be upset.

The workers do the work and create the wealth of these companies. The apparatus over them is just parasites sucking their labor off into profits.

Whatever the immediate strategy should be, organizing, educating and agitating is the order of the day, for anyone with any sort of backbone or self-worth (of course narcissistic notions to consider oneself a genius and everyone else is dead wood, as someone put it here, has been encouraged).

Most of EA’s revenue comes from franchise games that are way below typical AAA standard. EA’s value is from IP not talent

Might be a bit hasty to compare them to slaves.

It also doesnt make senes that someone who creates all the value wouldnt just leave and capture all the value themselves. It's not like they're being forced to work for the parasite. Oh wait - maybe thats where the slavery comes in.

> It also doesnt make senes that someone who creates all the value wouldnt just leave and capture all the value themselves. It's not like they're being forced to work for the parasite.

If they have a mortgage, kids in college, or just need routine health insurance coverage... they kind of are being forced to work?

Capturing the value yourself requires assuming a lot of risk, and most individuals can't access the kind of capital investment that a corporation can attract.

>Capturing the value yourself requires assuming a lot of risk

Well wait, I thought they were already doing everything though?

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