

Gawker Media Employees Vote to Form a Union, and the Bosses Approve - scottfr
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/05/business/gawker-media-employees-vote-to-form-a-union-and-the-bosses-approve.html

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mc32
Maybe they'll also vote to create well done and actual journalism and the
content which goes with such commitment and resist the urge for click-baiting
and taking sides...

I don't really care how they self organize and how they decide to do labor
bargaining.

As a reader I care if they can be actual journalists, people who can take time
to collect the major facts or aspects of a story and not intentionally by
ideology stress one aspect over another or ignore one aspect over another. If
you want to have opinions do that in the editorial section -where I'd expect a
mix of views, some I agree with some I disagree with.

I don't want their "narrative" or anyone else's.

~~~
caminante
Why should the Gawker network do "actual journalism" if that need's already
met by major outlets?

Granted, there are listicle happy properties (Lifehacker), but Gawker et al.
filled a void with it's meta-criticism of news. It's not rare for Gawker to
cover topics that are too risky for major outlets. Take for example the sports
property, deadspin. I read deadspin and the deadspin writers broach newsworthy
topics that would get an ESPN writer not only "banned from the clubhouse" but
suspended by HQ in order to appease the team/league. Deadspin provides signal
that major outlets would otherwise avoid or over-cook.

Not to over-shill for Gawker, but the commenters are pretty educated and won't
let the authors off the hook if the author leaves holes in their argument. I
submit that your poop should flow further down the news hill to sites like
Vice.com where NYT super-journos call them out for looking at poop[1].

[1]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iLmkec_4Rfo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iLmkec_4Rfo)

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iveqy
I'm always surprised about the strong feelings about unions in the US. Coming
from Sweden which have 70% of the workforce belonging to a union I have a hard
time understanding why unions is a bad thing.

Isn't it easier to handle one union that represents your workers than having
to deal with all workers one on one?

Why are US companies afraid of unions?

~~~
apsec112
I've never been to Sweden, so I don't know what Swedish unions are like, but
unions in the US are usually terrible. Typically, they're structured as one
worker, one vote, and I think what typically happens is:

\- The union asks for workers to be paid above market rate. The company, of
course, has limited resources. So the company agrees to pay union members
more, but at the expense of newly hired workers, who aren't in the union and
so don't get a vote. The end result is that, after a few decades of this, pay
is based entirely on seniority and no one has a reason to do good work.

\- The union asks for more benefits. The company, again, has limited
resources. So the company and the union agree to lavish retirement plans,
which will only have high costs decades later, after the majority of current
workers have retired. When the company goes bankrupt and restructures
retirement, the newer workers get screwed, but they weren't working there at
the time and so didn't get to vote on it. The management who agreed to the
expensive plans is sitting pretty, despite having bankrupted the company,
since they are typically older and are now retired too.

\- A lousy worker's vote counts just as much as a good one's. On the other
hand, a good worker who might replace the lousy worker isn't employed at that
company, and so doesn't get a vote. Hence, the union gradually creates
protections that make current workers almost impossible to fire, while good
workers who might replace them remain out of a job.

(Examples available ad nauseam.)

It's what you'd expect from democracy, really - if you give the vote to
everyone in a group and nobody outside, that group will enrich itself at the
expense of everyone not currently in it. (This is, I suspect, why most Western
countries have such horrible immigration policies.)

If Sweden's found a way to fix these problems while still having unions,
that's great, but I don't think Americans have yet.

EDIT: There are American unions, like the Screen Actors Guild, that seem like
exceptions to this. However, actors don't work for the same company for 45
years, which you'd expect to make all the above problems much less bad.

~~~
mauricemir
That's a bit like' saying only bad people benefit from lawyers in court. The
point is you have to defend every one equally even if they are as guilty as
sin.

And of course employers are saying they cant afford it that is the "line" they
have to run in public.

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omouse
> _It was very simple things like severance if you get fired, things like
> having clearer salary minimums for each position, a clearer way to talk
> about raises, promotions_

That's what employers should pay attention to. It seems like simple stuff that
_every_ employer should already have.

