
New Facebook tool allows employers to suppress “unionize” in workplace chat - aaronbrethorst
https://theintercept.com/2020/06/11/facebook-workplace-unionize/
======
objclxt
I used to work at Facebook, and it was always interesting to me to see just
how many engineers were actively against - aghast, even - at the idea of
unions.

Whenever it would come up on the internal boards the arguments were usually
along the lines of:

* "People who don't deserve to be paid more will get more money under a union"

* "I'll be paid less under a union"

* "Unions will slow us down, and we'll become more bureaucratic"

* "Unions are corrupt, and only care about themselves"

It was always clear that there was a huge misconception about what unions are,
and how they work, based on the depiction of unions in popular culture or the
past. When you talked about unions, people would think about the Teamsters,
the police unions, etc.

Myself and others would end up pointing out that yes, that's true of some blur
collar unions, but that's not what we're talking about. Think about the
Writers Guild, or SAG. Dwayne Johnson earned $90 million last year - he still
pays his union dues. You'd struggle to find any writer who didn't think the
Writers Guild had actively improved their working conditions.

Are the various Hollywood unions perfect? No, they're not. But I think you
would really struggle to argue that working conditions would be better for
those in the creative arts without them.

Tech companies have spent a long time cultivating an image of benevolence
towards their employees, but ultimately they are not your friends. You need
somebody to fight your corner. Hollywood found this out years ago with the
studios - hopefully Silicon Valley will discover it too, however unlikely it
seems.

~~~
koheripbal
> Unions will slow us down, and we'll become more bureaucratic

Anyone who's actually had to deal with a union can agree with this point.

At our company, a number of job functions are union-only work, meaning it is a
violation of the union contract for any non-union employee to perform that
work.

In principle, you might think that makes sense, until you need to get
something very simple done - __that you are willing to do yourself __and
cannot.

It becomes infuriating. Need to plug that new PC into the socket? Sorry,
equipment installation is a union job. But the new employee can't start if the
new PC on his desk isn't plugged in? Tough shit - please put in a requisition
and it'll get scheduled within the 48hr SLA, and completed in 7-10 business
days.

Need that extra monitor moved between two adjacent cubes? Sorry, equipment
relocation is union work. If you do it yourself, you'll be fired. But it's
just a monitor, you say? Tough shit - please put in a requisition and it'll
get scheduled within the 48hr SLA, and completed in 7-10 business days.

Oh, you want to move that folding table and a few chairs to the conference
room so you can have a design meeting with the whole team? Sorry furniture
movement is union-only work. But it'll take me literally 10 minutes and the
alternative is to cancel the meeting. Tough shit - please put in a requisition
and it'll get scheduled within the 48hr SLA, and completed in 7-10 business
days.

These are real examples at my company - I didn't make them up.

So what's the ultimate outcome here? Employees obviously look for ways to
circumvent the union. Then the union finds out and sends a few reps in to take
pictures of things that have been touched/moved by non-union workers, and
sends it to their lawyers (paid for by union dues). The lawyers then send
formal notices that the company has violated the company contract, and notices
go out to the whole company - union workers get all riled up that the company
isn't respecting them, and non-union workers roll their eyes and vow never to
work for another unionized company again. Bad feelings all around & Giant
waste of everyone's time.

The alternative to carving out job functions for union workers, is to _force
everyone_ to unionize - and that's got its own problems.

Unions are great in unsafe industries in an unregulated market - ie. 1940's
coal mines (extreme example). Six figured desk jobs can manage with some
reasonable labor laws made at the State level. A union is a huge additional
layer of bureaucracy.

~~~
dijit
Well, sorry to be blunt but that's fucking stupid.

Contrast that with my experience with Unions in Sweden; and that is that they
basically don't exist except to ensure that workers rights are not infringed.

So they'll be involved in a termination, or help negotiate overtime pay.

There is no such thing as a "union job", it's just having what's referred to
as a "collective agreement".

~~~
jcims
For years now I've seen comments like this from Europeans every time unions
come up in conversation online. You all need need to come work for a large
union in the US. They are just not the same thing. I've had direct or indirect
experience with Teamsters, CWA, NEA, IBEW and UBC. You can dress it up however
you like but there are definitely 'union jobs' with all of the connotation
that brings.

Yes there are benefits to the worker (esp when your job puts you in harm's
way). Yes collective bargaining is awesome. Unions, if run well, are
fantastic. In my opinion we tend to mess them up.

~~~
dijit
This is the same argument I see americans make a lot.

"Unions are bad!", no, the concept is fine, you have some bad ones.

"Police are bad!", no, the concept is fine, yours are just untrained and
overburdened.

"Public transport is bad, I need a car!", no, the concept is fine, you just
have bad public transport and that forms your opinion.

~~~
KorfmannArno
Please give an example of good public transport. (I'm living in Germany)

~~~
dijit
From the perspective of a person who travels a lot and exclusively uses public
transportation; I think you don't value what you have.

American systems are not dependable, intercity and interstate travel is often
not punctual to the point of futility.

There are very few examples that prove me wrong here (probably NYC<->NJ links
being an exception)

Travelling around Los Angeles is just not possible, the buses are disgusting
when they actually work and the time tables may as well be dinner menu's for
value they bring.

Getting to LA from San Francisco required a coach, the coach was 8hrs late.
There were no trains.

Going from NYC to Philadelphia by train cost me $300, when I returned it cost
me $82 and was delayed by 4hrs.

Travelling around NYC using their underground was "ok" from a dependability
standpoint; though I saw human excrement on many occasions, in one case it was
smeared entirely on one of the benches where passengers usually sit.

I consider American public transport to be pretty poor. Where it is punctual
it is disgustingly unhygienic. Where it is hygienic it is prohibitively
expensive and non-punctual.

The rail networks prioritise freight and lines are fragmented heavily- it is
common for one line of track to have several different owners as it progresses
through a state. This causes delays as they do not seem to cooperate in using
the tracks effectively, or delays from the use of a line causes cascading
delays.

I've lived in Finland, England and Sweden- and I have travelled most of Europe
(NL, DE, DK, FR, ESP) and have found public transport to be mostly punctual,
in some cases it's actually "dependable" as in, I can rely on public transport
getting me to my destination in a precise amount of time (+/\- 10 mins).

This is definitely not the case in the USA outside of a few very major cities.

~~~
JackFr
> Travelling around NYC using their underground was "ok" from a dependability
> standpoint; though I saw human excrement on many occasions, in one case it
> was smeared entirely on one of the benches where passengers usually sit.

“Many occasions” sounds like BS to me. Until the pandemic I rode the subway at
least 12 times a week, every week for the past 22 years, and only saw human
excrement twice (and one time it was actually a pretty funny story.)

~~~
dijit
I don't really know what's "normal" on the NYC subway to be fair, I don't live
their and didn't travel during peak times.

I do slightly suspect that peak hours are more cleanly than non-peak time due
to various economic reasons.

But I saw:

* poopy seat (when I got on the train at JFK)

* little human sized nugger, near the door, nearly stood in it as I disembarked a train near penn station.

* sticky urine floor near the door, which took me a good 1m30s to realise was definitely male human urine as I inspected the piss marks up the side of the door that I was pressed against during a busy ride.

~~~
JackFr
Oh wait - I wasn’t counting urine. If we are than yeah, many.

------
capableweb
> He added that the “oversight” was likely “lack of context versus bad intent
> from anyone on the team.”

What?! You're presenting a Workplace Chat tool and you're writing the slides
for the feature of blocking certain topics and you use "unionize" as an
example. How the fuck can you lack context here? Is the people writing the
talks not aware what the talks are about or what?

Then there is not just the options of "lack of context" vs "bad intent", there
is also "simply stupid", "some people at Facebook don't like unions", "wrong
target audience" and "unexpected push back on something we care about".
Instead they argue in bad faith that there is just two reasons here.

------
BiteCode_dev
Clearly, they don't play online games with a chat lobby. They would have
quickly learned that such features is useless, as it's easily bypassed:

\- in novembre, we should cost them the electrons. Ionize!

\- It's time we u_nionize

\- un10n1z3 people !

\- let's fetch the U:\N\I\O\N\I\Z\E file

\- all go to [http://unio.ni/ze](http://unio.ni/ze)

\- so we should do the u-thingy

\- what about talking to Mr Ulysse Nionize

\- never too late to ｕｎᎥｏｎｉｚｅ

In fact, it actually creates a sense of community by fostering a culture, make
the movement stronger, and give it more visibility.

I'm assuming on this one that FB employees know this, and are just giving
idiots what they ask for.

~~~
mattbillenstein
I've fought this feature in products for years - the product ppl always wanna
ban bad words and I'm like - you can't, it literally never works, it just
becomes a stupid arms race and it's not worth our time. I always lose this
argument for some reason.

~~~
teddyh
Here’s a good article to show people:

[http://habitatchronicles.com/2007/03/the-untold-history-
of-t...](http://habitatchronicles.com/2007/03/the-untold-history-of-toontowns-
speedchat-or-blockchattm-from-disney-finally-arrives/)

~~~
ShamelessC
Rocket League's approach to this is very good.

The D-pad is bound to several predefined words and phrases that are useful
such as "Nice shot!" or "Great pass!". Because of the fast paced nature of the
game it's pretty tough to try to abuse this system (maybe by spelling words
with the first letters of allowed phrases?) but no one does that.

To appease the folks who wanted to express that they were using a curse word,
you can also send "$#@%!". It's really satisfying to be able to express a
curse when you accidentally send the ball flying towards your own team's goal,
for instance.

Of course they also have straight up text chat where they asterisk out curse
words and anything that might look like personal info such as phone numbers.
If you're on a console, it's unlikely you even have a keyboard hooked up. And
the text input system for controllers is just too slow to type anything
worthwhile in the limited time you have during goal-replays. Typing anything
more than a few words means you're not helping your team which is naturally
shamed and can lead to a server kick.

It drastically reduces the toxic bigotry that usually pops up on extremely
popular multiplayer games. The only exception is that people sometimes have
bigoted usernames which are tougher to censor for the reasons mentioned in the
article.

Anyway, while I do think it's an arms race of sorts, Rocket League has gotten
about as close to possible to solving the issue.

~~~
BiteCode_dev
> That reminds me of Rocket League's approach. The D-pad is bound to several
> predefined words and phrases that are useful such as "Nice shot!" or "Great
> pass!". Because of the fast paced nature of the game it's pretty tough to
> try to abuse this system (maybe by spelling words with the first letters of
> allowed phrases?) but no one does that.

Dota has that, and it didn't work.

People just used the nice phrases sarcastically, and repeatadly.

When you miss an actions for the 3rd time and your team mate congrats you
everytime with a "nice one", it's equally infuruating. Even more, because it
cost so little to be an ass.

~~~
ShamelessC
Is there a timeout on repetitive chat? In RL you're temporarily blocked from
chat after repeating the same phrase three times. Solves the repetition issue.

As for sarcasm, yeah that can be used to harass people but only mildly. I
consider that about the least toxic possible form of chat in a competitive
video game where people want to engage.

If someone hits the ball into their own goal at least someone from the team
that got the goal will say "Nice shot!" sarcastically. Mildly toxic but
everyone's done it at least once before and so there's usually someone else
chiming in with "No problem." Ultimately works out really well. Sometimes
people quit but it's rare and it's usually due to embarrassment than anger.

Edit: just to be clear, I agree with the premise that it's an unsolvable arms
race with the community. I just meant to say that RL's implementation was
pretty good considering that fact.

~~~
Mirioron
It's not about repetitive chat in that game. The community _always_ adopts
certain phrases that are there to signal that somebody sucks. I've yet to play
an online game where people compete and this doesn't happen. Even the most
innocent words and phrases work for this.

People focus too much on the specific words used. That's not what hurts. What
hurts is the intent behind the words.

~~~
teddyh
Eggplant emoji.

------
YetAnotherMatt
>>Section 1: The policy of the United States is to be carried out "by
encouraging the practice and procedure of collective bargaining and by
protecting the exercise by workers of full freedom of association, self-
organization, and designation of representatives of their own choosing, for
the purpose of negotiating the terms and conditions of their employment..."

Section 7: "Employees shall have the right to self-organization, to form,
join, or bargain collectively through representation of their own choosing,
and to engage in other concerted activities for the purpose of collective
bargaining..."

Section 8(a): "It shall be an unfair labor practice for an employer . . . to
interfere with, restrain, or coerce employees in the exercise of the rights
guaranteed in Section 7..."

From
[https://www.ueunion.org/org_rights.html](https://www.ueunion.org/org_rights.html)

Looks like that would be illegal to my non-lawyer interpretation.

Worse happens every day, this would be extremely evident though.

~~~
kevsim
IANAL but I would assume FB is in the clear legally though as they're not
actively blocking anything in particular, merely providing the tool with which
admins can do the blocking themselves.

~~~
Barrin92
_" it should be noted that no ethically-trained software engineer would ever
consent to write a DestroyBaghdad procedure. Basic professional ethics would
instead require him to write a DestroyCity procedure, to which Baghdad could
be given as a parameter."_

~~~
praptak
It is not that simple. There's a continuum from writing a compiler to coding
DestroyBaghdad. Usually people draw the line at "Is this tool primary purpose
evil?".

This tool is in a (darkish-)gray area IMHO. I don't think that employer
blocking "fuck" or racial slurs is necessarily evil but it's not that good
either.

Automatic filters are pretty bad at doing their job, so filtering is a lame
approach to solving anything.

~~~
handoflixue
A tool that _can_ block discussion of unionization is certainly a grey area.
When you literally advertise "blocking discussion of unionization", I feel
like you've left that grey area, though.

------
varispeed
Here in the UK government is pushing no rights employment under guise of
fairer taxation. People providing services will be taxed as employees but will
not have any workers' rights, including no right to unionise, no equal pay, no
maternity leave and so on. Currently this won't affect existing employees, but
from April nothing will stop employers from terminating their staff and
issuing new NRE contracts on a take it or leave it basis. What's most bizarre
is that even the unions are not too fussed about it, it's like they either
don't believe this is actually happening or they just don't care. The
legislation is in current Finance Bill and so far has met no resistance and
likely is going to pass.

~~~
toyg
_> even the unions are not too fussed about it_

That's because it primarily hits contractors, who are typically not unionized
and in fact tend to erode union presence.

Abuse of contractor agreements and temp-agencies has already been used for
decades to effectively bust unions, that's really nothing new. Mass-rehiring
could have been done already a long time ago, and likely was, by and large,
where they could avoid the resulting bad press.

 _> The legislation is in current Finance Bill and so far has met no
resistance and likely is going to pass._

Tories have a solid majority, and they are anti-unions as an article of faith.
Even if Labour made a stink about it, tabloids would likely ignore it. The
most pro-union Labour leader since the '80s spent 5 years being vilified
precisely so he couldn't raise this sort of issue.

~~~
varispeed
Workers re-hired on a contract could defend themselves against lack of
employment protections by working outside IR35 and providing these protections
themselves. The change takes this away as only the client will be able to
decide how worker is taxed. This favour agencies over independent workers as
agencies have more freedoms what business costs they can deduct from tax and
what salaries to pay to their workers. This is a seemingly subtle change, that
changes from benign to lethal.

------
renewiltord
In going to say it: you are probably a complete moron if you thought it was a
good idea to put "unionize" on the slide for words you can block using your
software.

~~~
C1sc0cat
Probably some 24 year old intern with zero political nous

------
Lio
> Facebook is quietly helping to set up a new pro-tech advocacy group to
> battle Washington

> The employee noted that many Facebook team members are now questioning the
> moral compass of chief executive Mark Zuckerberg.

At some point you need to look at the skull emblems on your uniform and ask
yourself, "Hans, are we the baddies?".

IMHO I've never heard one of these stories where I thought Facebook was doing
the right thing. Not once.

~~~
umeshunni
> IMHO I've never heard one of these stories where I thought Facebook was
> doing the right thing. Not once.

It's almost like the media is pushing some kind of narrative here against an
entity they compete with.

~~~
Apocryphon
Doesn't make a lot of sense. Unlike traditional blogs, Facebook isn't exactly
a place that's creating rival news content. If anything, FB helps spread the
news by being a platform for people to post articles and stories.

~~~
bryan_w
> If anything, FB helps spread the news by being a platform for people to post
> articles

You could see how that would lead to problems when that become the main driver
of traffic. If tomorrow Mark decides to remove the share button, it would be
the end of a lot of traditional media sources.

~~~
Apocryphon
That's fair, but that still doesn't mean the two are competing.

~~~
umeshunni
The real competition is for ad dollars. Facebook has singlehandedly caused the
end of the display advertising business which is what most news publications
tapped into when they went online. Display spend at most ad agencies are
shrinking and that money is being put to social (aka Facebook). That's what
the owners and shareholders of media organizations are pissed off at and why
they're telling their staff to focus on Facebook..

------
shp0ngle
Workplace is _very very very_ annoying to actually use, btw.

Workplace is basically "facebook, but in a corp"; but all the nags and
annoying notifications that kind-of work in Facebook, because you can chose
what pages and groups to follow, just flat out don't work there, because you
_have_ to follow certain group. And you keep getting these annoying
notifications that you cannot easily filter.

So you still have one stream of notification, as on Facebook, which is both
"funny pictures haha" and "important company-wide announcement". So bad!

Workplace Chat is just Messenger. And again, it _sucks_ in corporate settings.

Workplace is really, really bad UX.

~~~
chillee
As a contrary opinion, I quite like workplace. I definitely feel that, for me,
it provides a much more effective way of staying up to date on what's
happening compared to mailing lists and such.

I don't understand how one stream of notifications is different from email -
at least with workplace there's some ranking going on.

~~~
shp0ngle
With e-mail, you don't get an avalanche of "funny memes" pictures that some
people tend to post to Workplace. (At least from my experience.)

~~~
kinkrtyavimoodh
Some people enjoy the memes. Not everything has to be stiff-upper-lippy.`

------
thosewhoteach
In all fairness, it is not as if anyone is going to put up a big protest in
the current economic circumstances. Not even Facebook employees can find
another job easily in the current environment.

With 40+ million or so unemployed, and no end in sight for COVID at the
moment, Zuckerberg can get away with whatever he wants over the next few
months. "Never let a good crisis go to waste", as the saying goes.

So FB employees will follow what I call MZM - Mark Zuckerberg Method. Pretend
like you care for a while, wait for people's short attention spans to
automatically move on to the next big scandal, and then make the scandal of
the day as the "new normal".

~~~
IfOnlyYouKnew
This tool is something that Facebook is trying to _sell_. To _other
companies_. So you're missing the point with your superficial speculation as
to the balance of power between Facebook and its employees.

For that reason, I'll keep the rebuttal short: laws are still valid, as far as
I know. And this tool is blatantly illegal. Facebook employees also don't
typically face starvation if they can't find a new job right away. And
considering how rare unions are in the tech sector, and how common they are
in, for example, automotive, my hunch is unionisation is _more likely_ to
happen at companies facing economic pressure.

~~~
TakawaraJu
Whilst it may be distasteful, it is entirely legal.

An employer cannot inhibit the formation or function of a union but are under
no obligation to provide the facilities or platform to form one. What FB have
done is akin to not allowing an organizer to use the company photocopier to
print union leaflets

~~~
erikpukinskis
I think you’re wrong... It’s only legal if they prohibit all non-work
discussions. So if they also block discussions about politics, sports, music,
etc they can block talk about unions.

But they can’t target union talk specifically:

 _Companies may prohibit workers from talking about nonwork issues in work
areas during work hours. ... In other words, a company can prohibit extraneous
conversation, but may not prohibit only union discussions while allowing
employees to talk about anything else they wish._

Source: [https://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/shop-talk-rules-
unio...](https://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/shop-talk-rules-union-
related-conversations-activities-work.html)

------
throwaway4715
Multiple things can be true. 1) It was incredibly stupid for anyone to use
suppressing unions as an example. 2) Employers should have control over the
content on their internal systems (people get fired for things they say over
email/Slack/etc. all the time). 3) This headline is some serious click bait.

------
MrZongle2
Did you reach Friday without having a good reason to dislike Facebook this
week?

Well, here you are.

I'm not crazy about unions. I'm not convinced that software developers need
one, despite regular revivals of the notion. But I _do_ recognize that other
people want them, and other industries even _need_ them.

But this shit is Orwellian. As many things that have come out of Facebook --
and other big tech companies. I'm amazed that so many of these types of ideas
make it as far as they do, and are generally met with tepid disapproval at
best.

We're living in a Stasi wet dream, but many are trying to convince us that
it's ok because these are private companies, rather than a government.

------
ghj
I guess we're past the point where codewords like "winnie the pooh" work but
is NLP so advanced it can parse all the other ways human hint and indirectly
communicate with each other?

Like can't I just send something like "hey coworker, lets do the thing that's
opposite of ionized!". Or will the AI block my message (or more scarily,
subtly rewrite it) and inform my manager?

This seems like tech with huge unintended consequences if perfected (even for
their intended benign uses in workplaces) since it has the potential to be
scaled up to censor society.

~~~
throwawaygh
Or just... don't use your company's chat product to talk about unionization
efforts?

I'm mostly agnostic toward unions for software workers. I think we need
something closer to what professional engineers have than to what
police/teachers have.

And then my employer started punishing people for talking about unionizing.
That's when I became pro-union.

Often times, it's the clamp-down that turns people against you. "The tighter
you tighten your grip..."

------
purplezooey
_[used by] Walmart ... used by the Singapore government, Discovery
Communications..._

It's like a star studded cast of open-minded, benevolent enablers of the free
flow of information...

------
drtillberg
>> [M]any Facebook team members are now questioning the moral compass of [its]
chief executive ....

Nothing about FB or its chief executive indicates they're using a 'moral
compass.'

------
ARandomerDude
I'm surprised anyone is surprised by this.

Facebook's goal is to make money. All the politics on the side are just virtue
signaling for the purposes of recruiting, lobbying, and winning in the court
of public opinion. When there's real money on the table, politics, privacy,
etc. take a back seat for them.

Not saying that's the way it ought to be. But that's how it is for FB, and
many of the so-called "progressive" companies.

~~~
Apocryphon
As politicized as unions can get, to engage in union busting isn't just
picking a political side, it's unethical. But yeah, your point still holds.

------
codegladiator
"to make the world more open and connected"

------
ars
Clickbait title. The tool allows banning any word. There's nothing special
about unionize in the tool.

~~~
docdeek
You're right on the capacity to ban/control discussion around any word.
However it is probably notable that Facebook chose to highlight 'unionize' and
not 'football' or 'American Idol' in their sales pitch.

------
hbarka
Maybe there needs to be a new concept of union. A police union is different
from a writer’s guild.

------
anilakar
Using mass moderation tools for keeping the workplace chat clean is the wrong
solution in any case.

------
tempodox
FB is known as a developer of censoring tech, so it makes sense that they try
to monetize their expertise and sell tools to others who want to censor but
can't or don't know how. I still find it pretty disgusting, though.

------
kgin
This feature isn't going anywhere, but they'll be much more careful in the
examples that they use.

It will be like Q-tip ads that never show them being used to clean ears.

------
turdnagel
It's one thing to offer a censorship tool, it's another to specifically
suggest "unionize" as a word to censor.

------
xtat
Facebook is the harbinger of the techno-dystopia of the next decade

------
pojntfx
Unionize!

~~~
082349872349872
It's the only way to bring inorganics down to parts-per-billion.

(what do we want? 18,2 MΩ cm! when do we want it? on demand!)

------
perfunctory
US looks more and more like China or Soviet Union. One difference is that the
oppressor is not the communist party but corporations [0]

[0] [https://www.bloomberg.com/features/2015-walmart-union-
survei...](https://www.bloomberg.com/features/2015-walmart-union-
surveillance/)

~~~
sct202
We're going to have to start communicating in emojis to get around the censors
just like in China.

------
hliyan
Not on the topic of Facebook, but on employers who fear these trends so much
that they want this level of control:

Fundamental social shifts cannot be nipped in the bud. The best anyone can do
is understand them and ensure the changes are gradual, rather than letting
them build-up to a big bang.

This is an oversimplification, but: early 20th century rise of communism was a
violent backlash against the presiding monarchies and oligarchies who
suppressed all attempts at gradual reform. Dissatisfaction with growing wealth
disparity at the time was a fundamental trend that could not have been "nipped
in the bud".

The current trend seems to be very reminiscent of this. When those in power
suppress all avenues of gradual reform, fundamental trends tend to boil over
in abrupt and often destructive forms.

Only question is: is what we're seeing today just a passing trend or a
fundamental shift?

~~~
YetAnotherMatt
>>is what we're seeing today just a passing trend or a fundamental shift?

Facebook advertised to Walmart with union busting capabilities. Walmart has a
union busting history going back 50 years minimum.

Looking at public opinion on unions, it seems to be rising the past few years,
while membership keeps going down (in the US).

~~~
objclxt
> Facebook advertised to Walmart with union busting capabilities. Walmart has
> a union busting history going back 50 years minimum.

I am pretty certain this particular feature went the other way around:
Facebook has to work very hard to retain customers on Workplace, because
they're competing against Microsoft (who have extremely deep pockets, and
arguably a better product in many regards).

I'm willing to bet Walmart went to Facebook and told them to implement this
feature, or they'd jump ship. Certainly that's what's happened with other
Workplace features in the past, such as the ability to control access for
hourly employees.

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neximo64
Aren't people at facebook paid really well anyway, way above the norm. What is
the motive in unionising, is it the politics of it or the pay that you want to
change?

~~~
lexs
Unions are not only about compensation but also terms of employment. I see
enough discussions on HN about non-competes, forced arbitration etc. where
unionising would help.

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atlgator
Let's yewnionize.

