
Organizers have unionized 5,000 contract workers at Apple, Facebook, Yahoo - spking
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-09-14/union-power-is-putting-pressure-on-silicon-valley-s-tech-giants
======
alexc05
> Eventually, Facebook says, it OK’d proposed terms of the contract, which
> hiked drivers’ average pay by half, to $27.50 an hour, and for the first
> time provided fully paid family health care.

For those people doing the driving that's pretty great news. I hope they also
took care of those working conditions issues too. Split shifts etc...

~~~
ic4l
Won't last long. Few more years, and it will be a autonomous fleet anyways.

~~~
noobermin
You might have missed this discussion from a few days ago:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15116861](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15116861)

~~~
Density
That discussion is extremely weird. Posters are claiming that since Speech
recognition took decades so must self driving cars. Speech recognition decades
ago has nothing to do with speech recognition today.

I understand the skepticism but I hope HN posters can make stronger arguments
in the future.

~~~
jhall1468
I agree. Transformative technology has this effect on people. The other day I
was arguing with someone that said we need true Artificial General
Intellegence before full autonomy is available.

I'm fine with skepticism, but these types of unfounded claims drive me crazy.
If you want to argue the companies aren't really moving the tech as fast as
they claim, post actual evidence, not some nonsense about speech recognition
in the 90s.

~~~
owebmaster
Technologists have a bad habit of not taking consideration the political and
social sides of innovation. The success of autonomous cars depends less on the
tech as much as it would depends more on politics. As tech don't mix well with
politics and the interests of the majority, autonomous cars will only happen
when the tech is good enough to overcome politics. Some people think that this
will take decades if not centuries.

~~~
mcovey
Infrastructure support is not there yet either, which is kind of a political
issue as well, but also a future need.

------
mc32
This is a bit misleading. Union power is putting pressure on service economy
companies which in turn service tech companies.

Tech workers are not unionizing -and I can't imagine they would, given their
pay compared to other sectors. I could see an AMA type organization perhaps.

On the other hand, unfortunately, companies no longer staff vertically. When
they can outsource their non core competencies they do. They don't want to be
the IBMs and Xeroxes of yore. They want to remain nimble.

A famous example was MS's front line IT staff managing Windows clients being
contractors. So they hired contractors to manage their own core product
internally!!

~~~
Clubber
I think a tech union would significantly raise the wages of technical people.
A past job, I automated away jobs at $0.10 on the dollar and made a healthy
salary, but it obviously was 1/10th of what I was worth. I left that company
and all those jobs are still automated away and the more the company grows,
the more they save.

Also a tech union could push for perks like developer offices, remote work,
better work equipment, etc. If nothing else, they could communicate with the
business on how to make developers happy and comfortable; something the
business might be willing to do, but don't know how to do.

Now is the time to do it too, US businesses are pulling back on offshore labor
and bringing work back to the US.

~~~
morgante
> I think a tech union would significantly raise the wages of technical
> people.

By what mechanism? Either they engage in collective bargaining, which is
filled with problems, or artificially constrict the supply of labor by
requiring additional licensing. Considering there is already a shortage of
software engineers, constricting it further is unlikely to be net positive.

From where I'm standing, the current system works very well and is about as
free as a labor market can be. I just accepted a new job and the process of
getting there involved talking to about two dozen companies, narrowing those
down to 6 or 7 offers and having each company submit a bid (initial offer). I
pruned off the bottom half and had the top 2-3 companies submit revised bids
based on competitor info and ultimately chose a company which offered a great
mix of compensation and role/culture.

At no point in the process do I think having someone else do negotiation for
me would have increased my pay. In fact, I'm convinced that any collective
bargaining arrangement would mean a significant reduction in my
compensation—for one thing, every "open salary" calculator I've seen proposes
a salary about half of what I make. Formulaic salaries help low performers and
hurt high performers.

> If nothing else, they could communicate with the business on how to make
> developers happy and comfortable; something the business might be willing to
> do, but don't know how to do.

I don't need a union to do that. I certainly don't need a union with
collective bargaining to do that.

Tech "unions" might make sense to enshrine certain ethical principles, but I
would not expect a union to increase my pay—and would vote against any one
which promised that.

~~~
ryandrake
> Considering there is already a shortage of software engineers, constricting
> it further is unlikely to be net positive.

"Shortage of software engineers": The myth that just won't die. If this were
true, salaries would be skyrocketing, companies wouldn't have the luxury of
being as picky as they are, and open reqs wouldn't attract hundreds of
applicants.

> I just accepted a new job and the process of getting there involved talking
> to about two dozen companies, narrowing those down to 6 or 7 offers and
> having each company submit a bid (initial offer). I pruned off the bottom
> half and had the top 2-3 companies submit revised bids based on competitor
> info and ultimately chose a company which offered a great mix of
> compensation and role/culture.

Congratulations. While I don't doubt your story, you must realize your
experience is an extreme outlier. Most people I know consider themselves lucky
to get one offer after talking to two dozen companies, if that. With no
alternatives, you have little power to negotiate: you take it or leave it. And
once you're hired, it's no different than any other job--you are employed at
the will of your employer. Any day can be your last.

~~~
morgante
> If this were true, salaries would be skyrocketing

In my corner of the world, they definitely are.

I think a lot of these discussions are complicated by the fact that there are
essentially two developer job markets: prime and sub-prime. The prime
developer market is for top-tier developers who work at top tech companies and
startups, primarily in SV & NYC. The sub-prime developer market is all the
developers working on companies whose primary product isn't software.

The hiring market for both markets looks very different, especially since
people don't really recognize that as such. A hiring manager in the prime
market might legitimately perceive there as being a shortage, even when
receiving dozens or hundreds of resumes because the vast majority of those
resumes are simply not qualified. When I was last hiring, we received plenty
of resumes—but many of those resumes were from people who exclusively had
Microsoft experience or simply maintained WordPress installations. They didn't
meet my standard for a senior developer, and once we found someone who _did_
meet that standard after months of searching we did whatever it took to hire
them.

I don't feel like an outlier, since I'm looking at the market from the prime
sector where it's normal and expected to have multiple competing offers.

There can be a shortage of senior developers while still having hundreds of
applications for every open position because most of those applications won't
pass the bar. If you're capable of passing that bar, you have your pick of
positions.

~~~
ryandrake
My guess is that what you describe as the "prime" developer market represents
1% of the tech labor force, surely no more than 10%. Much smaller than you
think it is. There are plenty of talented people, even in these "top" tech
companies, who do not have 6-7 offers thrown at them regularly and have to
slug it out with the rest of us in a brutal labor market. I think what is
being argued here is whether collective action would be beneficial to the
remaining 90-99%.

~~~
morgante
It's certainly more than 1%. Top tech companies alone employ more than 1% of
developers.

> There are plenty of talented people, even in these "top" tech companies, who
> do not have 6-7 offers thrown at them

That doesn't match my experience at all. Every Google/Facebook/Amazon employee
I know constantly has interview requests and people trying to recruit them.

~~~
ryandrake
> It's certainly more than 1%. Top tech companies alone employ more than 1% of
> developers.

That would be true only if you assumed around a huge number of top tech
company hires were those prime developers. I've worked at all kinds of
companies, including one you would undoubtedly consider "top." They all employ
the full distribution. The mean will be higher in the top companies, but
that's it.

> That doesn't match my experience at all. Every Google/Facebook/Amazon
> employee I know constantly has interview requests and people trying to
> recruit them.

Obviously it doesn't match your personal experience--we've already established
that you're one of those "prime" developers. Likely your co-
worker/acquaintance bubble is full of them too. Our perception of normal is
often clouded by what we encounter every day. You see this all the time here
on HN, where commenters tend to be smarter than the average bear. In that
respect, I am open to applying that same reasoning to myself: I see talented
people underemployed, struggling to get recognized, and at the mercy of their
employer; and therefore I am potentially extrapolating this as normal. I think
the numbers bear me out, but I admit I have not done more than casual
Internet-research.

~~~
morgante
> That would be true only if you assumed around a huge number of top tech
> company hires were those prime developers.

I do assume that. Yes, there is a distribution of abilities at top tech
companies—but virtually everyone I've worked with at a good company could
easily get other offers.

If you actually worked at a top tech company, your bubble should be similar to
mine—I have a hard time imaging that many of your FANG colleagues are having
trouble getting good employment offers.

------
halflings
> When the crowd reconvened, Andrew Barney, a former Intel cafeteria worker,
> drew cheers and applause when he said, “I think Google should pay the
> residents of this community for being allowed to squat in our backyard.”
> “Google’s vulnerable right now with all this building and everything they’re
> doing, and they need a lot of approvals,” says the Teamsters’ Aloise. “We
> may just pick one, one time, to get involved, and see if we can stop it and
> have them come to us and say, ‘What do you need?’ ”

This is one of those rare times where "populism" is actually the right word to
describe something. The inequalities one can see in the Bay Area are quite
flagrant, but this type of mentality is not going to help.

~~~
eli_gottlieb
Speaking from another metro area, that sounds like what companies do to our
municipalities when offering to set up shop. Oh, sure, they'll build an office
here... so long as we shovel some free public money down their throat to
"incentivize" them to _make a profit off our labor_.

------
kevmo
If there is one thing I've learned from two decades of reading about labor
history, it's: Every gain labor has ever made has been taken. Every gain the
working class (i.e. the overwhelming majority of people) has achieved has come
from organizing their majority of low-power workers and then standing strongly
against the empowered minority at the top.

Good for these people. They are essentially moving our society forward.

~~~
CryptoPunk
Any wage gains that are derived by unionisation are zero sum. They are
economic rent extracted by reducing the competitiveness of labour markets, and
advantaging unionized workers working for big employers at the expense of
those without such jobs.

In the long run, the reduced profit margins caused by wages that are
artificially high (above the rate that would be established by the free
market) results in less investment (profits == compensation for investors),
which means a slower rate of economic and wage growth.

>>If there is one thing I've learned from two decades of reading about labor
history,

I encourage you to read a diverse set of perspectives. I'd argue that unions
have more power than employers in being able to shape the historical
narrative.

~~~
jeremysalwen
Why do you assume that the current wages are the "natural" rate established by
the "free market"? Don't we have evidence that employers are already abusing
their market power to extract rents? ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-
Tech_Employee_Antitrust_L...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-
Tech_Employee_Antitrust_Litigation) for an example close to home)

In fact, corporate profits are record-high, and wages have been stagnant for
decades, suggesting very strongly that the "unnatural" market power that is
keeping wages at "artificial" levels is in fact that of employers.

~~~
CryptoPunk
>>Don't we have evidence that employers are already abusing their market power
to extract rents? ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-
Tech_Employee_Antitrust_L...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-
Tech_Employee_Antitrust_L..). for an example close to home)

Very few firms can engage in such behavior. A pact like this can only be
maintained by a small number of very large firms, and only the firms party to
the pact will abide by it, leaving the entire rest of the employer market in a
competitive state.

Even had the antitrust action not stopped this behavior, it's questionable how
much of an impact this behavior had in restraining wage growth in Silicon
Valley's tech sector, and how long the pact would have lasted given its
informal nature, and the temptation to cheat due to the intense completion
between those party to it.

If wages being below the natural, market rate, due to collusion between large
firms is your concern, then the right solution is antitrust action.
Unionisation in the current legal environment (where unions can affectively
hold their firm hostage, and thus reduce labour market freedom) creates
numerous unintended consequences that adversely affect industries.

>>In fact, corporate profits are record-high, and wages have been stagnant for
decades, suggesting very strongly that the "unnatural" market power

Corporate earning growth is at historically low rates. Wages have stagnated
because economic output growth has stagnated. See this comment:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15244901](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15244901)

~~~
jeremysalwen
> Very few firms can engage in such behavior. A pact like this can only be
> maintained by a small number of very large firms, and only the firms party
> to the pact will abide by it, leaving the entire rest of the employer market
> in a competitive state.

And the same can't be said about the market power of unions?

> Corporate earning growth is at historically low rates.

Cherry picked statistic. Corporate earnings as a percent of GDP are record
high.
[https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=1Pik](https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=1Pik)
And your linked chart shows exactly my point, wages relative to productivity
have been decreasing.

Obviously with anything like this you have a hard time showing a direct
causation, which is why I am confused that you are claiming that you can prove
a clear causation in the exact opposite direction that the economy has been
moving.

------
DINKDINK
Appears to be free and non coercive negotiation until you get to the actual
coersion:

"In San Francisco the coalition persuaded the city transit authority to make
it easier to deny permits to companies facing labor strife."

If your negotiations rely on the monopoly that the state provides, is it
really a negotiation?

~~~
balance_factor
The tech giants negotiations are relying on the monopoly that the state
provides. Just to pick one piece of legislation, the 1947 Taft-Hartley Act,
the government disallows various worker/employer agreements that benefit those
doing the work. Meaning corporate America generally outlawed certain deals
that could happen, when the workers were in a good position, that the
corporation was willing to do. That is relying on the monopoly the state
provides.

The Taft-Hartley act also bans secondary strikes, so unions are further
restricted (this restriction was increased more with the Labor Management
Reporting and Disclosure Act in 1959).

The Taft-Hartley act also allowed the president to ban strikes in the case of
a "national emergency". Of course, national emergencies were seen all over the
place since then, including in 2002 on the west coast docks with the ILWU.

There are the people doing all the work and creating all the wealth, then
there are the heirs and such who feed off their expropriation of the surplus
labor time of those doing all the work. The idle class relies on the monopoly
that the state provides.

In fact, if you look to history and the creation of the first states in
Sumeria thousands of years ago, the raison d'etre of those states were to use
violence and propaganda so that an idle class could expropriate surplus labor
time from their slaves doing all the work.

~~~
pjc50
> In fact, if you look to history and the creation of the first states in
> Sumeria thousands of years ago, the raison d'etre of those states were to
> use violence and propaganda so that an idle class could expropriate surplus
> labor time from their slaves doing all the work.

I've not encountered Sumerian revisionist libertarianism before ...

------
tptacek
If the drivers and cafeteria workers at tech companies can organize, so can
the developers.

Unlike the developers, the drivers tend to be financially insecure. In this
economy, they're eminently replaceable. What they do is outside the core
competency of their employers. You'd think they'd have almost no leverage. And
yet, in the space of just a few years, they've managed to secure higher wages
and health benefits --- in a market where non-technical employees are 1099'd
specifically to avoid benefits obligations!

Like a lot of other occupations in the US market, tech workers have been
bamboozled into believing that labor organization is something lower-status
workers do. But, no: most of the classic professions, from doctors to lawyers,
belong to professional associations. They may not call themselves "unions",
but that's a distinction without a difference.

Tech workers blow off labor organizing because they feel themselves to be
well-compensated. And they're right. So are the doctors and the lawyers. There
are things to bargain for besides higher salaries. If you're wondering what
they are, look no further than Hacker News, a ranked inventory of tech worker
grievances. Can't see organizing a walk-off over pay raises? Well then, how
about:

* The right to work from home when the team agrees that doing so has no negative impact on performance.

* The right to hire team members outside of SFBA when the development team decides it's appropriate to do so.

* The right to work on side projects alone and with your own resources without your employer claiming the fruits of your own free time.

* The right to work in an office with walls between you and salespeople on the phone all day.

* The right to hold on to your vested options for 10 years after you leave, rather than being forced to exercise at your own expense within 90 days.

* The right to visibility into the terms of your employer's financing, including the liquidations preferences and perks of investor preferred shares.

I could go on and on and on, but then, so can you, because we share this site.

Here's a thing that a lot of people on Hacker News don't know --- and I think
this is a genuine case of something that the ownership class in the American
economy doesn't want you to know:

Federal law rigorously protects your rights to organize in the workplace. We
talk about "at-will employment" and "protected classes" (race, religion,
gender) on HN quite a bit. We rarely talk about the other broad exemption in
American law to at-will termination: _labor organization_. Not only can you
not be fired for trying to organize a labor union (itself something that
surprises a lot of people), but _you can 't be fired for protesting_. You'll
want to talk to a labor lawyer before you try this move, but: federal law
prohibits the termination of an employee for engaging in "protected concerted
action" to improve workplace conditions. You can, if you do it right, walk off
your job and refuse to come back, and if you're disciplined for doing so, _sue
your employer_.

It is crazy to me that we're not taking better advantage of this situation.
The market power of software developers has never been higher. It may very
well be at its zenith. For that matter, the labor laws of the US might not
stay this way either. _Now_ is the time to put it to use to secure the best,
most productive conditions for technology work, not 20 years from now, when it
might be just as hard for us as it was for the Facebook shuttle drivers.

~~~
detcader
What conditions or events happened for people in these other "professional"
unions to start organizing? I think people only take action en masse when
clear incentives exist. I can't see what cultural incentives there are to
organize, except within the socialist DSA/Chapo crowds and I'm not sure I can
be safely optimistic that everyone is there for the right reasons. I hope to
be wrong.

I don't know much about labor organizing but I think the base of tech workers
is fractured, with the labor-minded in the minority, and centrists and radical
libertarians making up huge swaths of junior developers (For example the user
that reflexively brought up union thugs slashing tires, as if no corporation
has ever conspired to commit crimes in response to competition). Labor
organizing, or however you want to phrase it, has a bad "politics smell" to so
many.

~~~
tptacek
The tech labor force skews liberal (simply as a result of demographics), but
if you see it as being dominated by either political extreme, that's much more
likely to be an observer effect than reality. Contrary to the impression you'd
get from message boards, there aren't that many "radical libertarians" _or_
that many "democratic socialists" working in a typical company.

The only way organization will happen is if it's done for the benefit of the
median tech employee. That employee might not be totally apolitical, but they
are more worried about the practical realities of their career than they are
about tech's place among the great labor unions of US history.

My point is just, it's pretty clear that there are plenty of industry-wide
grievances that not only could be fixed, but could be fixed to the betterment
of the entire industry, making companies stronger, more efficient, and more
survivable.

Given the opportunity tech workers have now with market power and large
employers presenting clear targets to organize against, I'd argue that
conditions are pretty good for organizing today.

------
frgtpsswrdlame
Question for the HN crowd: do you think tech-workers will begin to unionize?
It seems to me that (in general) they've got such a nice position in the
economy there's probably a bit of an "if it ain't broke don't fix it"
mentality. Is that correct?

~~~
dkhenry
I would hope not. I see tech-workers as professionals not as laborers. I think
the great battle to be fought by tech workers is to stop having them treated
as common laborers that perform some kind of rote process. Some times we call
software development engineering, and if thats the case I would press anyone
to show me an engineering discipline that parallels software engineering in
terms of working conditions and relations.

~~~
crdoconnor
Actors and writers are not laborers either and they're also competing against
the "crapification" of their industry driven by execs trying to undercut them
(e.g. reality TV).

~~~
dkhenry
The Screen Actors Guild is an interesting model for professionals. They go
much farther then most professional organizations in terms of protecting
workers right, but they also don't have rules like you have to hire the actor
with 20 years experience before you can hire one right out of school, or you
have to pay everyone on the same scale. Also I don't think they have
requirements like you must have attended 10 years of school and done 4 years
of internship before your allowed legally to work in the field.

~~~
s73ver_
Which is why I, for one, feel they're a far better model for a tech union than
an AFL style one.

~~~
chimeracoder
> Which is why I, for one, feel they're a far better model for a tech union
> than an AFL style one.

First, SAG-AFTRA _is_ a part of AFL-CIO.

Second, over the years, SAG received a number of special exemptions in law
that no other union today has received (and after 2012, that's _very_ unlikely
to change). So SAG-AFTRA is not really a realistic model for any
hypothetically newly-unionized industry.

------
Chiba-City
There are no lifetime guaranteed jobs. That is a peculiar idea that might only
apply to being "born to farm your patch" in history at all. Institutions and
entire job categories go away.

Collective bargaining is OK and not usually conflictual outside down cycles or
downsizing legacy industries. The conflict narratives appeal far more to
general consumers. Working class hero is huge in American history for both
good and ill.

Where many unions go bad is running interference on liability, incompetency or
even criminality. That is not unique to unions but suffers embarrassing large
scale instances (cops? teachers? auto workers who stole tools).

These are tough things to get right. The battles for enough and fair
(predictable is a giant issue for service workers) overlap with battles that
should never be waged and mostly lose.

~~~
ericd
You bring up a major downside to industry-wide unions in that a single bad
decision by a small group of people can make it so that an entire industry can
suffer, rather than many entities battling it out with a variety of decisions,
which would give employees choice, and give some opportunity for the best
decisions to win out over time.

Perhaps the problem is not unions, but monopolization of an industry's workers
by a single union.

------
samfisher83
With the costs as they are in SF how can these people even afford to live in
that area? Is there like low income housing like NY or rent control?

~~~
santaclaus
Long ass commutes from Contra Costa County. KQED had an interesting series on
the changing demographics of the bay area's exurbs. [1]

[1] [https://ww2.kqed.org/forum/2017/02/07/kqed-looks-inside-
the-...](https://ww2.kqed.org/forum/2017/02/07/kqed-looks-inside-the-changing-
bay-area-with-american-suburb/)

------
yegle
Related: Google started hiring security guards as employee ~3 years ago
[https://thinkprogress.org/google-to-hire-security-guards-
as-...](https://thinkprogress.org/google-to-hire-security-guards-as-employees-
after-wage-protests-a919722e7e71/)

------
bnolsen
Not interested in ever joining a union. Absolutely not interested in being
forced to join one...ABSOLUTELY NOT.

------
crimsonalucard
What do you guys think of software engineers forming a union where we have a
guaranteed base pay but each of us can still negotiate higher if we wanted?

~~~
otalp
It's less about base pay, and more about limits to working time, overtime and
protection from exploitation.

~~~
mlindner
If you don't like your job then switch it, there's plenty of software
companies that don't do that. Generally I've seen that the more bleeding edge
you're working on then the more overwork you get. If you want to sacrifice
working on the bleeding edge for a steady pay and steady working hours you can
have that all across the country.

~~~
s73ver_
There is literally zero reason for that overwork. None.

------
dkhenry
No its not. This is a union fluff piece. The reality is these are contractors
who will get dropped as soon as it makes sense. Thats why you hire these
services as contractors. I think the real test here will be how long till the
union pushes facebook too far and they are just dropped. I have never seen a
union that could actually compete with non-union shops unless there was a
legal force preventing the competition.

~~~
forapurpose
> The reality is these are contractors who will get dropped as soon as it
> makes sense. Thats why you hire these services as contractors. I think the
> real test here will be how long till the union pushes facebook too far and
> they are just dropped.

That overlooks the whole point of unions, which is to give people power over
their work lives and prevent situations like the one you describe. Perhaps the
union won't succeed, but they have far more negotiating power when they are
organized than when they are not.

> I have never seen a union that could actually compete with non-union shops
> unless there was a legal force preventing the competition.

That's a powerful claim, but do you have evidence? Particular expertise?

~~~
briandear
The problem with union negotiations is that members’ ability to earn isn’t
related to the merits of the member’s ability. I don’t want to make the same
exact wage as someone with the same seniority but perhaps less ambition. I am
not an interchangeable widget.

Everyone is not equal in value despite being equal in seniority or experience.

A first year teacher might be amazing, but thanks to unions her wage is
codified based on her position in the pecking order and not her merits.

~~~
Spooky23
That's the argument of a boss in version of the prisoners dilemma.

The reality is that you _are_ a widget, you probably make less several people
whom you consider a less able and "ambitious" than you, and your salary is
only loosely associated with your value, if at all.

~~~
CryptoPunk
That's the class warfare paradigm that boils the world down to two monolithic
blocs: employers and employees.

He is not a widget. A workforce is made up people with diverse and varying
skills.

It's in the interest of society to incentivise individual skills development
and promotion of people with more skill into positions of greater authority
and responsibility, by allowing employers to base compensation and promotion
offers on skills.

~~~
Spooky23
It's a market. I don't care about society, I care about delivering cash to my
shareholders.

All business is about repeatable process. Domain experts build a process. The
operations people execute. Lather, rinse, repeat.

People are nurtured/developed/promoted because it is cheaper to do that than
to go back to the market. But, every single individual is expendable and
replacable. There may be pain or cost associated with someone leaving, but a
viable business will survive.

If you think you are essential to your employer, film a little video
explaining why, post or save it somewhere and set a calendar entry to visit it
again in 5 years. You'll have a good laugh in 5 years.

