
Corporate Spies Are Watching Organized Labor - jrepinc
https://truthout.org/articles/corporate-spies-are-watching-organized-labor/
======
ggambetta
OK, unpopular opinion follows, bring the downvotes.

1) All of my experiences related to unions have been negative. Things become
more bureaucratic and inefficient ("oh no, you can't move that box, we need to
wait for the union person whose job description is to move the box"), people
are promoted because of seniority and not because of merit, bad performers up
to and including flagrant criminals can't be fired because the union would
rally to support them no matter how in the wrong they are, etc.

2) FAANG-type jobs have to be the cushiest jobs around. I mean, look at
[http://levels.fyi](http://levels.fyi). Who else gets paid that kind of money
right out of college, for doing a very comfortable office job, with a ton of
perks on top?

I get that unions might be necessary in industries where workers are actually
exploited, to protect said workers. But FAANG engineers are pretty much in the
opposite situation. I don't like people creating an us-vs-them situation that
doesn't exist, just so they can promote their own politics. As I commented
recently, if you don't like it, quit
([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21636860](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21636860)),
and let the people who go to work to, you know, do work, do it in peace.

~~~
deogeo
> All of my experiences related to unions have been negative.

Except the 8 hour work-day and weekends, I guess?
[https://www.politifact.com/truth-o-
meter/statements/2015/sep...](https://www.politifact.com/truth-o-
meter/statements/2015/sep/09/viral-image/does-8-hour-day-and-40-hour-come-
henry-ford-or-lab/)

~~~
ggambetta
That was in 1938. The status quo is different today, so that doesn't really
apply.

~~~
mind-blight
One of the biggest employee complaints at almost every tech company I've
worked at is a lack of work life balance. Most of my friends who still work in
the bay struggle with having a life outside of work. Wanting to work 40 hours
a week can be seen as not being dedicated enough, or not being a cultural fit.

I think that's one of the most relevant needs that would drive tech workers to
form a union.

------
claudeganon
Counter to what you see touted on this website, unions are not solely about
securing additional material benefits for workers. They are and have always
been about changing workplaces from top-down, authoritarian models to ones
where workers have a say in their company’s work and overall direction.
They’re about acknowledging that none of these structures function or
accomplish anything without labor and shifting their relations of power to
reflect this reality.

So while some tech jobs might be quite cushy, I’ve yet to see any rational or
coherent defense of why these (or any) companies should function like
dictatorships. It would seems that increasingly, more and more tech workers
share this perspective.

~~~
ggambetta
I’ve yet to see any rational or coherent defense of why these (or any)
companies should function like democracies.

Company X offers to pay me to do job Y. My two options, as I see it, are
taking the job and doing Y, or refusing to do Y and therefore not taking the
job. I don't understand the logic of _" I'll take the job but then refuse to
do Y",_ except if I assume ill-intent from the person taking the job.

~~~
claudeganon
The broader condition of wage-labor is (in the absence of unions) of course
though that you agree to some form of top-down power relation or starve and
die. Unions contest this broader premise as opposed to your specific one.

~~~
ggambetta
> or starve and die

I reject your strawman argument. FAANG engineers will hardly starve and die if
they choose to work somewhere else.

------
jacknews
And network analysis enables them to spot the early stages of organizations
forming, and their "trajectory", and potentially to intervene to ensure they
don't gain traction and get to a critical stage where they are highly likely
to go "mainstream".

I did have links to a couple of papers describing this, but misplaced them,
and google isn't forthcoming...

~~~
TeMPOraL
It's true, but I wonder if the way employees organize themselves will
transform in such a way to make graph analysis less useful - similarly to how
recent protests seem to work. From what I've read about Occupy protests, the
Yellow Vests, and now Hong Kong protesters, they're all spontaneous and
decentralized. Instead of an individual or a small group of leaders energizing
the movement, there's something of a shared idea (a meme, if you like) flowing
through the network, and once it crosses a threshold, you suddenly have
thousands of people protesting.

(This immediately suggests a strategy to combat such organization: instead of
trying to find out who the leaders are - which will fail, because there are
none - one should focus on misinformation to create enough doubt and noise
that the threshold for spontaneous organization isn't crossed.)

~~~
mc32
Have the yellow vests achieved anything?

Not that that protests have to achieve major results. Sometimes the main thing
is to get exposure so that powers that be realize there is foment that needs
addressing (in a positive way, not in a crackdown way).

~~~
coldtea
> _Have the yellow vests achieved anything?_

Yes. Quite a lot. The leadership went from not acknowledging their protests,
talking down on them and promising to go on with all the reforms, to want to
talk, and taking down certain parts of the laws.

------
Porthos9K
Anybody who's serious about labor organization needs better opsec. Don't talk
union on the job. Don't use company equipment to schedule meetings. Don't meet
in large groups. Don't post on publicly accessible/searchable networks. Adopt
a cell structure.

Management should not know workers are talking union until the workers are
organized and on strike. Fuck Taft-Hartley and the NLRB.

------
0x445442
> They’re part of a three-member Republican cabal

Whatever the merits of the article I have a hard time taking it seriously with
this kind of language. If this kind of language were used in the other
direction the author would immediately be labeled a tin-foil hat conspiracy
theorist.

~~~
bluejekyll
Is it the cabal label that bothers you? For context, the sentence before:

> Ring and Kaplan want to reconsider the longtime ban on labor spying. It’s a
> sleazy idea, but typical for these two.

So they are working together, and perhaps “cabal” is too colorful of a term,
as it also implies doing it in secret. It would appear they’re quite open
about it.

~~~
SpicyLemonZest
What bothers me is the entire framing, that they're agents working in service
to corporate overlords rather than honest people making the decisions they
think are right.

------
salawat
Labor organization will always fight an uphill battle without parallel
communication infrastructure.

I've been curious whether there could be a niche for cobbling together a
dedicated network infrastructure for organizing labor. It'd likely be legally
fraught, and constantly under siege; but I figure it could be done.

Tenant based encrypted-at-rest data of chat content and schedules. An
onboarding knowledgebase mechanism. These are solved problems. The biggest
issue would seem to be screening people for trust to keep the Union's affairs
from just finding their way back to management or having someone plant
proprietary info to end up blowing the entire thing up via eDiscovery and
lawsuits.

It's funny how technology seems particularly useless at solving social
problems and usually just serves to exacerbate them.

------
DoubleGlazing
I think unions have been pretty poor at using technology to circumvent
corporate spying and interference. If the employer is frustrating attempts by
employees to meet and discuss issues, then they should be able to take their
discussions online.

An online forum managed by the union is all that would be needed. But
crucially, the union would need to be smart about who they give access to and
also have good security people analysing usage/IP addresses and the like. Also
make users agree to a declaration that they are legitimate users before
granting access. If company spy does get access the union should send lawyers
after them for accessing a computer system without permission. Of course it
wouldn't be perfect, stuff will leak - but it would be a lot more secure that
discussing union issues on company premises and on company equipment.

Maybe I'm looking at the issue too simplistically, but I find it odd that in
this day and age unions still try to organise and discuss things the way they
did decades ago.

------
throw0101a
Another sign that we're in a new Gild Age?

* [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Union_busting](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Union_busting)

* [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gilded_Age](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gilded_Age)

------
bitlax
Unions recruit at work.

------
Apes
Do know evil.

