
Labor Board Backs Startup Engineers Fired for Unionizing - gingernaut
https://www.wired.com/story/labor-board-backs-startup-engineers-fired-unionizing
======
fogetti
> _Despite their futuristic sheen, tech companies “actually operate like
> traditional industrialists and will go through old fashioned methods of
> suppressing workers,” he says._

Spot on.

~~~
briandear
And workers can quit. There are jobs everywhere.

~~~
Centigonal
and workers can also form unions if they want to. Why do you want to limit
their freedoms?

~~~
jjeaff
Exactly. I would consider myself pretty conservative and a little bit
libertarian and I fully support the rights of workers to unionize.

I dislike when governments get involved and starts forcing employees to join
unions.

But if you want to unionize, you have that right. If the companies don't want
to play ball, they can fire you and waste time and money trying to hire an all
new workforce.

~~~
repsilat
Union activities are essentially price-fixing. We let employees in unions
"collude" and "exert anti-competitive influence" because we want to give them
more market power relative to companies.

When you talk about giving unions as free associations, it's fair to ask
whether companies should share the same rights -- if tech workers can get
together and agree not to work without a pay rise, shouldn't tech companies be
allowed to get together and agree not to increase pay?

I think if we're going to distinguish between those cases it should be on
pragmatic grounds, because I don't think talking about principles (or any
"natural right" divorced from the simple letter of the law) here is terribly
useful.

~~~
SolarNet
Tech companies have colluded on the hiring side in the past. But here is the
difference. Companies are meant to be entities that provide economic activity
through competition (for example on free markets), that's why governments
grant them charters that give them tons of rights people don't get (limited
liability and special tax rules for example). Unions are designed by workers
to protect their rights, originally this was simply through them organizing
through their right of free association before the government got involved in
it (because they recognize the grant of rights they gave to companies made for
an unfair situation in the labor market). Importantly one is something
designed to encourage economic activity, and the other is something designed
to protect rights.

So no companies should not share the same "rights", because that's called
being anti-competitive. Labor unions are only capable of "exert[ing] anti-
competitive influence" when unions have recruited every worker (probably for a
good reason) or companies engage in union busting against workers who have
done nothing wrong (except talk to a union). Don't want to deal with
organizing employees? Don't sign a contract with them (the employee-employer
relationship also granting companies a bunch of useful rights).

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geofft
A little bit of a tangent, but,

> _Earlier this month, after five years of organizing, security officers for
> companies including Facebook, Google, and Genentech, many of whom were
> making between $12 and $14 an hour, ratified their first union contract.
> They won wage increases of up to $1.20 per hour, better health care, and,
> for the first time, paid holidays._

How is this rational? Do Facebook and Google believe they are facing no
advanced persistent threats capable of bribing someone who lives in the Bay
Area on $12/hour?

~~~
mc32
Those folks do physical security. Aside from access to buildings and stuff
they have access to little else, plus they have supervisors and people at the
company who supervise them, plus doing weird things will trigger alerts and
stuff, so I don't think they can do a lot beside ignore alarms for an intruder
who would not have access to digital assets. Plus, NDAs are pretty powerful
tools.

I mean, if a guard lets you in, what are you gonna do, steal a laptop which is
encrypted and requires 2FA? The only places which might have richer targets
are research and prototyping facilities which I imagine have additional
safeguards.

~~~
eigenvector
What about getting into a data center and causing a service disruption by
physically destroying equipment?

~~~
scarejunba
The datacentre security is different. They tell you when you sign up for GCP.

~~~
jkaplowitz
Can confirm. Even most Googlers can only go there on pre-approved guided
tours, most of the time. And even that isn't common.

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zdragnar
There was a very small detail that was almost overlooked in the article- it
seemed like they were planning on keeping their more senior engineers and fire
their junior ones.

> The tipping point came in January, when management offered additional stock
> to a handful of high-level male engineers, including Westergard. Employees
> suspected Lanetix planned to fire lower-level female engineers, ...

On the one hand, this sounds to me like they're probably struggling
financially, and the unionization efforts would have put them in a worse spot.
This is pure speculation, however, because the article kept focusing on the
gender of the employees. Maybe that really is the story, but so many details
were left out to focus on the narrative that we won't know without better
journalism.

~~~
2bitmachine
>There was a very small detail that was almost overlooked in the article- it
seemed like they were planning on keeping their more senior engineers and fire
their junior ones.

This seemed pretty clear in the article? They tried to buy off senior male
employees with extra stock options last minute.

>Maybe that really is the story, but so many details were left out to focus on
the narrative that we won't know without better journalism.

It felt like there was a fair amount of detail to me. If anything, it exposed
how much sexism in tech is something management sees as a useful wedge to
divide and conquer workers.

~~~
zdragnar
My point was that, without knowing the management's perspective, it's entirely
possible that gender was merely a coincidence of having senior males
available, and hiring junior females either because they were the best
available or the company wanted to look diverse. Perhaps they were flagging
and needed to cut the junior developers so the senior developers could focus
on getting back on track.

Either way, it's impossible to know, because without more details all we are
left with is the agenda of an author who isn't interested in presenting the
truth (or providing sufficient evidence to support it).

Edit: consider the following scenario: you have a team of male developerd;
maybe they were friends when they pitched the idea for a product to you. After
a few months, there's a big backlog, and they want to hire junior developers
to train and take off some of the pressure. To embrace diversity, you hire a
bunch of women who recently graduated from a boot camp to round out your all
white male staff.

Fast forward a year. Everyone has become a tight knit team, but the pressure
to deliver mounts. Instead of getting faster, they're all bogged down with
refactors and endless pull request revisions of things that aren't working
out. You are running out of money, so you decide to cut the junior developers,
and try to bribe the senior devs with some of the cost savings to make up for
all the extra hours they'll now be working. Uh oh! You're only firing the
women! They all band together, oblivious to the fact that you literally won't
be able to keep them all on.

I'm not saying this is what happened. What happened could have been pure
sexism and anti-labor mentality. BUT pushing such an agenda without KNOWING
that is the case here doesn't do anyone any favors.

~~~
2bitmachine
I guess I’m not sure why we’re to believe that your perspective on the
situation is somehow more valid or absent a similar “agenda” you ascribe to
the journalist. The journalist spoke to the people involved who described
their motivations (which sure seems to be at least partially informed by
perceived sexism), while you’re just making speculative assertions about
“management’s perspective.” And because management seemingly handled the
situation so poorly and in violation of labor laws, it’s not like they’re
going to go on the record anyway...

~~~
zdragnar
that's the point; it isn't at all. It is, in fact, pure speculation based on
information that is missing from the article.

The fact that the article is missing such important information could be
because it's not available, or it might not fit the author's agenda.

The company is very clearly in the wrong here; I'm taking issue with the heavy
handedness of forcing gender into a story that, based on the evidence
presented, could easily be a clear cut labor issue.

~~~
2bitmachine
It’s not pure speculation- it’s the worker’s side of the story. You can’t
discredit their experience because the other side behaved in such a brazenly
stupid fashion that they’re probably being advised to not speak to the press
at all. Even if management’s perspective was included in the article,
corresponded to your framing, the same would hold true. Your skepticism isn’t
really skepticism when it leans consistently in favor of one party or the
other.

~~~
zdragnar
What is there to be skeptical about regarding the management? We know nothing
about their motives, only a few facts. Without the remaining facts, or their
perspective, there's nothing to be skeptical about.

I've tried to be clear that I'm open to the possibility that this really is
about sexism. I don't think that exclusively presenting one side of the story
will lead us to the truth, though.

------
scarejunba
You've got to be stupid to retaliate against workers unionizing. They're going
to get screwed.

I don't think unionizing was going to save their jobs though. Looks like the
business wasn't doing too well, and they were trying to jettison their
juniormost engineers. The whole thing was probably going to go under.

~~~
dan0-
Wal-Mart and ilk have been union busting for decades, this company likely
thought they could get away with union busting just fine.

------
dunpeal
> The tipping point came in January, when management offered additional stock
> to a handful of high-level male engineers, including Westergard. Employees
> suspected Lanetix planned to fire lower-level female engineers, many of whom
> graduated from Hackbright, an all women’s coding boot camp, as did the
> female engineer fired in November.

What's the full story here?

Layoffs typically happen when a company has cashflow issues preventing it from
meeting payroll. "Low level" (read: low paid) employees of any kind are _not_
the first on the chopping block, but on the contrary, the higher paid
employees who each cost x3-4 times or more.

Moreover, why would they get rid of most/all female engineers like that? Among
other problems, that would expose them to an open-and-shut discrimination
case, since sex is a protected class.

This, in conjunction with the fact they decided to pay the senior engineers
even more, tells me there's something more to this story.

~~~
gaius
_there 's something more to this story._

Maybe I’m just hopelessly jejune but I find it hard to believe in 2018
moustache-twiddling top-hat wearing Capitalist fatcats were like bwahahaha
let’s sack all the women.

Of course they absolutely deserve to be sued into oblivion, I just don’t see
the gender angle, correlation is not causation.

Edit: oh I see, they were hired from a gender-segregated bootcamp. So sexism
is baked into the company’s DNA.

------
ma2rten
_Tech companies used the same strategy in the 1970s, offering employees high
salaries and sweet perks to make collective action less appetizing._

That doesn't make sense to me... I think it's more likely that tech workers
get higher salaries because they were/are in high demand, not to prevent
unionization.

 _Employees suspected Lanetix planned to fire lower-level female engineers,
many of whom graduated from Hackbright, an all women’s coding boot camp_

I am generally skeptical about bootcamps. In my experience they typically only
teach very specific skills, but don't teach fundamental concepts. That makes
it hard to pick up new skills, which is required from software engineers. Is
it possible that this is the reason Lanetix was planning on firing them?

EDIT: I took a look at the website of Hackbright. I'm very skeptical about
this bootcamp. The bootcamps is 16k for 12 weeks. They seem to teach full-
stack programming in 8 weeks (python, flask, postgres, html, css, javascript,
jquery, git). That gives students about a half a week per technology.

The last four weeks seem to be reserved only for interview prep and computer
science fundamentals that are needed for interviews.

Their website implies that the skills they teach will empower students to work
at famous tech companies, e.g. "Companies that use Python include Google, Yelp
and Dropbox to name a few. Mastering Python here will help you start thinking
like an engineer. You can feel confident that you’ll walk out of the door
ready to tackle any engineering role.".

~~~
bitshepherd
> That doesn't make sense to me... I think it's more likely that tech workers
> get higher salaries because they were/are in high demand, not to prevent
> unionization.

The inverse is exactly that, though. Higher wages give certain skilled
individuals enough personal comfort to the point that they don't feel they
need to stick their neck out for some group of randos. Sure, that $125k job
with a small sack of RSUs looks pretty on paper, but break it down with all of
the extra-curricular obligations, the occasional long week that happens a
little too often, housing costs, commuting, and it doesn't look too appealing.

Once you have enough 'highly' paid individuals in a group -- we'll cut the
number at $100k, even though that's the poverty level in the Bay Area -- then
a backbuilding narrative begins to create itself, that because 'everyone' is
at a a certain level, it's kind of just okay.

The trope of high demand, low supply of qualified individuals is pervasive in
tech recruiting, to the point where some of the same individuals being
oppressed question if there's an actual problem. It could also be explained
away as that we're all just that unique and special, but that's stitching
together another reality entirely.

Instead of agreeing that fellow humans are being oppressed, we tech workers
muse and question the merit of sticking together, for one another. We question
the quality of one's skills or ability to comprehend with not another thought.
We even sometimes question if we're overly compensated, when overt actions or
results would prove otherwise.

~~~
msiyer
Very well said. Too much dry thought and almost no fertile community-oriented
emotions.

------
hyperpallium
When the means of production is concentrated, some kind of worker combination
is a logical response.

But we're richer now, well-fed and well-entertained, so although the
concentration is greater than ever (cf agrarian or industrial times), it's not
as motivating.

------
Apocryphon
I'm firmly convinced that tech workers will come around to unionizing once
they accidentally reinvent it under a different name

~~~
ma2rten
Genuine question: Do other high-skilled professions have unions (like
marketeers, scientists, lawyers, doctors, electrical engineers, ...)?

~~~
joe_the_user
Engineers, Lawyers and Doctors have professional associations rather than
unions. Arguably, this is what software engineer should have. The American
Medical Association (AMA) is extraordinarily influential.

Edit: one could argue the difference between a professional association and a
union is a matter of degrees. A professional association certainly seems an
easier sell. Possibly a professional association with aspects of a union could
be considered.

~~~
slavik81
All of those professional associations were enshrined with their exclusive
rights by law. We live in a democracy, and the law is at least nominally
enacted for the public good. The case for requiring professional licensure was
that it would protect the public from unqualified practitioners, and it would
allow bad apples to be held to account.

If you want a professional association like engineers, lawyers or doctors, it
needs to have a clear public benefit. Benefiting software developers is not
enough. That is one of the important differences between a professional
association and a union.

Disclosure: I am a licenced professional engineer (software).

~~~
joe_the_user
_If you want a professional association like engineers, lawyers or doctors, it
needs to have a clear public benefit. Benefiting software developers is not
enough. That is one of the important differences between a professional
association and a union._

I think in practice, the line is much fuzzier than you describe. Union rights
are also written into law with the implication that they benefit society
directly and indirectly. An electricians' union at least ostensibly benefits
society through making certain qualified people engage in electrical work and
even having qualified medical attendants has obvious benefits.

Of course, one can point to huge potential benefits to society from making
certain that various sorts of software is constructed correctly so the case
for a professional software engineers' association isn't that hard.

------
shagie
I know I saw some stuff on this in the past... so past articles (oldest to
newest) for contexts

Joint Statement of Solidarity with Unjustly Fired Lanetix Workers

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16293823](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16293823)
(3 comments)

[https://medium.com/@techworkersco/joint-statement-of-
solidar...](https://medium.com/@techworkersco/joint-statement-of-solidarity-
with-unjustly-fired-lanetix-workers-354daaa4b306)

\----

Lanetix engineers bring case to NLRB claiming firings were illegal retaliation

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16469573](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16469573)
(1 comment)

[https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-02-26/coders-
wa...](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-02-26/coders-want-to-
unionize-with-help-from-trump)

\----

Tech company Lanetix fired software engineers seeking to organize, union
claims

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16504247](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16504247)
(91 comments)

[https://www.sfchronicle.com/business/article/SF-tech-
company...](https://www.sfchronicle.com/business/article/SF-tech-company-
fired-software-engineers-seeking-12541301.php)

\----

Software Engineers Fired for Attempt to Unionize

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16815822](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16815822)
(10 comments)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16817501](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16817501)
(10 comments)

[https://jacobinmag.com/2018/04/lanetix-tech-workers-
unioniza...](https://jacobinmag.com/2018/04/lanetix-tech-workers-unionization-
campaign-firing/)

\----

Labor Board Backs Startup Engineers (at Lanetix) Who Were Fired for Unionizing

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17875865](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17875865)
(no comments)

[https://www.wired.com/story/labor-board-backs-startup-
engine...](https://www.wired.com/story/labor-board-backs-startup-engineers-
fired-unionizing/)

------
adiusmus
If you as a company have a HR department then complaining about unions is very
hypocritical.

------
phront
Not sure about it but why do they want to establish a union? History teaches
us that trade unions are mafia-like structures. The cure that is much worse
than the desease.

~~~
Semaphor
It's interesting. When I think of unions, I think of corruption. But when I
think of "Gewerkschaft" (simply the German word for union) I think of worker
protection.

