I worry that tech workers may be under-informed about what a union may mean. A union can be in many ways similar to a corporation with its own power structure and demands.
Just 4 examples from my time in a union shop:
1) Pay raise and promotion via seniority only
2) Being warned by the shop steward that I was "working too fast"
3) Heavy coercion to contribute to specific political candidates
4) Going on strike for reasons I didn't agree with
Maybe a tech union would turn out better somehow. I for one would not want to go back to that situation.
A union is a beast unto itself, and much like companies, unions vary a great deal between themselves and your specific experiences don't generalize across all unions, anymore than my experience working for a CPG company generalizes across the industry.
To counter your anecdote, my mother spent years working under a telecom union when I was younger and never had any such issues. Employees sure were grateful however to have someone on their side when it came time to negotiating severance around lay-offs.
As a thought experiment though: Why do we allow corporations to exist then, if we actively oppose unions for behaving in the same way as corporations?
You draw a straight parallel between union behavior and corporate behavior. By that same argument then, I will argue that if unions are bad, corporations are bad for the same reason and corporations should be abolished.
Unions have their own goals that are more than just "the interests of Kickstarter employees". So in fact, there will be times when issues are important to Kickstarter employees but are not important to their union. Or important to the union but not very many employees. And then what?
I thought the whole point of unions was to represent interests of employees? If the Kickstarter employees' issues are not important to their union, why would they unionize?
>Pournelle's Iron Law of Bureaucracy states that in any bureaucratic organization there will be two kinds of people":
>First, there will be those who are devoted to the goals of the organization. Examples are dedicated classroom teachers in an educational bureaucracy, many of the engineers and launch technicians and scientists at NASA, even some agricultural scientists and advisors in the former Soviet Union collective farming administration.
>Secondly, there will be those dedicated to the organization itself. Examples are many of the administrators in the education system, many professors of education, many teachers union officials, much of the NASA headquarters staff, etc.
>The Iron Law states that in every case the second group will gain and keep control of the organization. It will write the rules, and control promotions within the organization.
The Kickstarter employees can create a “Union of Kickstarter Employees” and then try to build the negotiating and benefits infrastructure themselves, or they can join a much larger union and get the benefits of shared infrastructure. The benefit of the former is that it will be hyper-focussed on the needs of that group but it will cost more and probably be a lot less effective. A larger union costs each employee less and gives them a lot more “muscle” when it becomes necessary to negotiate but the downside is that they are one small group among many when it comes to setting overall policy or goals.
Think of a union as a business whose job is to protect employees and provide them with some benefits. Some unions will be giants with horrible customer service and corporate goals that seem to be more about self-perpetuation and some unions will be smaller and more focussed on the needs of a specific industry. Each type serves different needs.
I think that people need to think about the distinctions between a white-collar union and a blue-collar union.
A blue-collar union, like the International Union, United Automobile, Aerospace and Agricultural Implement Workers of America (UAW), can essentially treat each person as known amount of performance and bargain as such. There is relatively little difference between trained employees on a production line. So the UAW can bargain for things like promotion by seniority only, which provides a reasonable balance to keep managers from playing favorites. There's not a whole lot you can do to set yourself apart when you are stamping out door panels and robots do the welding for you, so promotion on merit isn't as important. Take a look at the tone of this UAW web page and how it pitches union membership as a way to avoid bad things: https://uaw.org/organize/no-union-no-rights/
For white-collar unions, such as the Society of Professional Engineering Employees in Aerospace (SPEEA), there often is a demonstrable difference in the quality of work that trained employees do, so they don't want to get rid of merit based consideration, but they do want to ensure that their employees are treated fairly. Take a look at the tone of this SPEEA web page and how it pitches union membership as a way to achieve more good things: http://www.speea.org/Join_Our_Union!/Benefits_of_SPEEA.html
The Kickstarter union shouldn't model themselves after the UAW, but more like SPEEA. I don't know what the employees are proposing, but I fear that a lot of people assume that the Kickstarter employees are trying to start a mafia within the organization that controls what all the employees can do. That's probably not the case, they should make sure that two people with the same merit are given the same fair shakes. They shouldn't be telling people to code fewer lines per day because they don't want to give the company free labor.
Things like requiring workers to support certain political candidates is what makes some people dislike unions. It's one thing for a union to endorse a candidate because they support policies favorable to union workers, it's another thing to coerce your employees to vote a certain way.
Things like striking even if you don't agree with them however, is a good part of the union and is how it gains its bargaining power. If people were free to just pick and choose the issues that they supported, then there wouldn't be a point of a union. Assuming the union is not corrupt, you should strike in solidarity with your other union members. If you show support for them today even if you don't necessarily agree, they might show support for you tomorrow even if they don't necessarily agree.
What about unions that are more like a trade guild, which sets standards for its members which make dealing with a union member more of a known quantity than hiring a random person off the street? I'm thinking of things like a union electrician or plumber.
This could serve to minimize the need for interview gimmicks, since the union itself would enforce standards through its own certification process.
Yep. And that's exactly where it should be. It's insane that we have to prove the same things at every interview when certification already proves these things.
If all you want is a plumber with a certain skill set, then hire a union plumber with certification.
Pro or con of the union idea, I hope get they nailed for firing those two organizers. Firing someone and claiming poor performance makes me not want to support them anymore. I won't give them a cent.
I’ve not met either the Kickstarter management nor the people that were fired, but isn’t it possible that these folks knew they were poor performers and were on borrowed time with the company? They may have wanted to start a union that could bargain on their behalf with a lot more power.
I’m not saying that unions created in good faith are bad, but there are union leaders that give off a vibe of self-enrichment. Kind of like political lobbies- some are good, some are bad.
I don’t know if we should take the fired employees’ word for why they were fired. I’ve seen too many “bottom 5%ers” make up excuses why they were fired when the reality is that they plain couldn’t hack it. I’ll reserve judgement until there is a court case or a settlement. If it really is a slam-dunk case like the Twitter-verse makes it out to be, there are lawyers that are begging to help these poor souls.
I hadn't thought of it until I read your comment, but when I worked for the government, the people who were MOST familiar with the contract, the rules, the exact things that I could ask them to do and the things they were allowed to refuse... were the worst teammates.
There was a lot of really good people at the government. And they never talked about their contract. But then the two worst employees on the team were very, very familiar with their rights down to the letter.
There's some type of correlation there. The more you know the exact wording of the union contract, the more you talk about it, the less interested you are in serving the end customers to the best of your abilities.
If someone asks you to do something, and your default answer is that it's not in your contract, you're not approaching things in the right way.
> the people who were MOST familiar with the contract, the rules, the exact things that I could ask them to do and the things they were allowed to refuse... were the worst teammates.
Apply this comment to workers and employers and it sound reasonable. Rephrase this comment to apply to civilians and police officers and it sounds horrible, even though in both cases we can argue that the goal is to not have adversarial, competitive relationships, and instead to trust each other.
I am somewhat skeptical about unions, and I don't think they're the silver bullet that people claim they are. I sympathize with people who worry about adding additional layers to management. There is no such thing as an incorruptible organization.
But, I'm opposed to any insinuation that knowing your rights and exercising them is something to be ashamed of, in any context.
> If someone asks you to do something, and your default answer is that it's not in your contract, you're not approaching things in the right way.
Again, this sounds reasonable. But it makes me feel really weird, and I think its the implication (intended or not) that being a good employee means not thinking about whether or not you're being taken advantage of. It is very difficult for me to imagine any employer I've ever worked for arguing the same thing in the opposite direction. Employers know their contracts, they hire entire legal teams who are entirely dedicated to knowing the contract. Shouldn't the employee also know the contract?
Mutual respect means not going out of your way to have power over another person; it means viewing them as an equal. If only one side of a business relationship is paying attention to and enforcing a contract, then that's not respectful; it's an unhealthy power dynamic.
There are two sides to every story perhaps. Not saying people don't need to know "their rights" and not saying it's ok to take advantage of people.
But I'm not talking about "unpaid overtime" or "working in unsafe conditions" here. I'm talking about wanting to do something to help the end user, and having people actively refuse to help because it's not in their job description.
And that stems from them knowing that they cannot ever be required to do anything that is not covered by their job description.
"So you want 10 minutes of my help to figure out why this program crashes and to make it better for the end user? Sorry, I need that request to come in writing from my boss."
People who help each other if they can is a much better environment than people who only help each other if they are absolutely required to do so.
I have reserved judgement. I'm not crucifying Kickstarter for firing some people, and I'm also not attacking the people that were fired. I'm leaving room on both sides due to the fact that these people were fired and I've only heard one side. I'm just mentioning that it would be completely reasonable for Kickstarter to have fired three people that were low performers and they also happened to be involved in the union effort. Two of the three were on performance improvement plans and one was told that they should have been on a plan. I did mention that it wouldn't be unusual if the fired people were making excuses, but I didn't say that they definitely were just making excuses.
The people that haven't reserved judgement are the ones saying that "I hope Kickstarter really gets it."
The lack of unions in the industry is making me leave. It’s going to leave out many of its current employees to dry: I want something better than the word of an entrepreneur.
If a tech company I worked for unionized, I would leave. I’m not in a single company town where everyone has worked at the same place their entire lives. Tech companies face fierce competition for talent, and it has worked out quite nicely for the employees.
I wouldn’t want some outside organization coming in and forcing me to pay dues, demanding changes to the structure of the company, devaluing my equity, and making it impossible to fire poor performers that make my job harder.
Unless the union negotiates an exclusive hire contract with the company (very difficult unless the union controls most of the labor supply), you can simply not join the union.
I always find these things arguments a bit weird. Lets look at the concerns
> forcing me to pay dues
Don't join. No dues, no help from the union.
> demanding changes to the structure of the company
As an employee you have no say in the structure of the company and it may restructure at any moment. As a union member at least have some say in what the union pushes for. It seems like this is arguing for no control instead of some.
> devaluing my equity
How?
> making it impossible to fire poor performers that make my job harder.
Again how? A union can't stop a company from firing someone (barring contracts the company may have signed with the union). A union can assist the fired employee in things like negotiating severance, or mounting a legal challenge if the employee was discriminated against.
As someone who just witnessed a mass-layoff, I wonder how much better off the employees might be if they had someone on their side, negotiating severance, notice periods etc.
Everything a union does is paid for out of member dues. They don't have infinite resources to spend in constant legal battles challenging the clearly legal firing of a shitty employee, and if the did waste member dues like that, they'd quickly find themselves no members. If the union isn't representing your interests, just leave it. It'll quickly run out of members and money and become toothless.
It seems pretty shallow to pin the qualities of an unhealthy union on all unions. Some unions are great, others are not, and healthy unions only require one simple ingredient: maintenance and attention, like most things.
Unions are just an avenue for bargaining. In my experience, which has only been in a healthy union with people who take an interest in the value it provides, it has been so liberating! It encourages us to discuss things in the open that would have always been closed-door conversations before, and I never worry about whether I am being taken advantage of. I honestly don’t even make much money for a software engineer, but I love the domain I work in and having the union has made my work relationships just feel less exploitative. It feels less like work.
The NFL is a perfect example of how unions can work out extremely poorly for the players because unions struggle to be truly representative of the people in that industry (and the people who are not yet in the industry but will be locked into a union deal they weren't a part of negotiating). Some subset of the players have the most influence in the CBA negotiations (due to longevity + connections, fame, etc), they push for the things they care about, and then the final outcome leaves a very large set of current and future players in a shitty situation.
That’s the worst example you could’ve used. Pro sports leagues are monopolies with a large percentage of potential players/workers being left out of the market.
Can you expand on that? It seems like the NFL and NBA are also monopolies. I can't think of any organization, even worldwide, that could compete in their sports. There is arena football, but that is a laughable alternative to the NFL. The top foreign pros play in the NBA, they do not stay in their home leagues. It seems a lot like there is no choice of where to play for top pros in these sports, which makes them a monopoly.
An alternative that doesn't seem quite like a monopoly is the UFC with mixed martial arts. Bellator MMA is a viable (but less prestigious) alternative for someone that doesn't want to work with the UFC.
I mean that MLB is a legally-granted monopoly in the United States. They literally have an antitrust exemption.
The NBA is the biggest game in town, but that's a question of money and I see some movement on that front. I expect to see the Chinese leagues start spending a lot more money in the near future, and Euroleague is starting to pay some players salaries that are significant even compared to the NBA (this year, Mirotic basically got what the Jazz would have offered him, after you take into account lifestyle perks and the like that come from Euroleague--and nobody in the NBA is giving Alexey Shved $4mil). The NFL is arguably closer to a monopoly but they're having a competitor to it launched next year in the re-launched XFL. Salary numbers aren't out there AFAIK, but there it's a billionaires-being-billionaires game of "what's your pain tolerance?".
> is an organization that you democratically control.
There is no such thing. You do have the right to cast a vote from time to time, but that's the full extent of your influence over the organization. Between elections you are there to take orders and experience the outcome of events decided by a random union type without your say or input. That's not control. That's just another master telling you what to do.
Dictatorships are the default model of corporate America. What you’re describing is still a massive step up from following one idiot and still having no say.
Amen to that. Engineering is unique in that both experience and talent is required, and is valued. IMHO, that plus competition is enough security for me. I don't need another layer of bureaucracy "helping" me be less productive. By raising barriers to entrance, barriers to change, and by protecting the entrenched a union would totally devalue my worth.
It is interesting that they didn't stop their active KickStarter campaign and pushed people to not pull their donations. It would be nice for them to walk the walk, they did create a petition in response... If I were the CEO I would feel pretty safe about moving forward with the same policies.
"We were unable to continue promoting our campaign, because every time we did, people criticized us for partnering with an anti-union company, which you have now admitted you are. As a result of our inability to promote the campaign in good conscience, our fundraiser has made far less money than it otherwise could have. "
Open Collective is an alternative to 501(3)(c) for some orgs.
I wonder if an Open Collective -esque model could work for employees as an alternative to unions?
I applaud the benefits that early unions brought to workers, but what have they done lately(as in decades) I. Terms of creating/capturing value?
My experience with unions was an an employee of Amazon.com in the 90’s and witnessing the horrible things WashTech and it’s supporters did to my staff in a failed attempt to gain access to Amazon distribution centers.
It would be cool if there was a very light digital network model by which employees could collectively engage with company management/leadership.
As well as far less adversarial, more akin to collaborative labour/leadership relationship as found in Germany.
It works great for the Screen Actor’s Guild and the rest of the film industry. They set minimum wages and use their market power to radically restrict entry so that there’s less competition from outsiders, by not working with firms that employ non-members and expelling members that do.
Any Software Professionals Guild could do the same, reduce the supply of competitors and punish people who employed any entry level workers who didn’t have the connections to get in.
One benefit, for current members, is that you can increase the cost of membership for new members. So you start off letting boot camp graduates work, then restrict it to Bachelor’s holders, (who must be taught by members of course), then to a Master’s.
You see the ever increasing credentialism in physiotherapy in the US, where you’re now required to have a “professional doctorate”. Pure waste given that it’s an apprenticeship in Germany and a Bachelor’s everywhere else.
Indeed. A successful US Programmers Guild would probably look more like the American Medical Association. It would restrict training places and increase entrance standards over time, doing everything in its power to prevent people who do the same job in other countries from having their qualifications recognized in the US. US physicians earn well over double the average of their UK counterparts, never mind Malaysian or Indian ones. If the AMA didn’t do its best to stop doctors from these countries practicing that kind of differential would be untenable.
You’d also probably get some kind of “not a programmer, honest” like nurses in the medical field. In the current climate you can move from being the one who knows pivot table to business intelligence to data analyst to data scientist but with licensing and “professional ethics” there’s always an attempt to maintain a bright line between professionals and “the help”, whether they be paralegals, nurses or draftsmen, compared to lawyers, doctors or engineers.
Most of the motion picture and television world, which is also responsible for producing digital content, and also has wide disparities in talent between people with similar titles, is unionized.
The film industry is the best example of why the software industry should be unionized.
A critical purpose of film industry unions is taking a responsibility for their talent. The software industry hiring practices need this very bad.
With the film industry, it is hard to get into the unions. It takes a lot of work and networking, and proving one’s self worthy, but considering the hiring hell that the software industry is experiencing, the film industry union structure would be a blessing.
Nathan: "Would not voluntarily recognize a union even if the vast majority of workers signed in support of one."
The CEO's statement he referenced: " If a majority of the staff in an appropriate bargaining unit votes in favor of a union in an NLRB election, we will fully respect that choice and negotiate in good faith toward a collective bargaining agreement."
Those statements seem to be opposite of each other?
NRLB elections are legally binding, so the CEO statement there is basically "we will follow the law".
The process Nathan is referring to is something a lot less formal where they pass around a petition to form a union and it gets a bunch of signatures. Not recognizing such a petition is consistent with Kickstarter's stance of not supporting unions.
Apparently there's also a 50% rule where if 50% sign authorization cards for the union then they can ask to be recognized directly (https://definitions.uslegal.com/a/authorization-card/), but nobody seems to be discussing that, probably because actual support for the union is low and getting even the 30% for an election will be difficult. In May there were 28 public supporters (https://www.vice.com/en_ca/article/evjb47/workers-accuse-kic...), but KS has 152 employees so they'd need 18 more employees just for an election.
What are the obligations of a US corporation when a vote for unionization is successful? Do all employees get opted in? Is it always required to be hiring exclusive to the union? What makes unions different (needing specialized legislation) from corporations - why can’t employees wanting to unionize just go form their own corporation and try to sell their services on their own terms that way.
I find it interesting that Kickstarter decided to go this route. It debunks the claims in the earlier HN thread [1] that the employees were fired due to performance reasons or somehow, conspiracy against Kickstarter.
Regardless of whether anyone is pro or anti union, it's been obvious for a while now that Kickstarter isn't arguing in good faith about this. They are going to war with their own employees. There's just no justification for that, even if you think unions are bad.
Kickstarter keeps digging themselves deeper and deeper into this hole, claiming that they're doing it because unions will alter the relationship they have with employees.
Even if that's true -- you know what really alters the relationship you have with employees? Firing them whenever they try to exercise their rights. It's pretty hard to believe an employer has your back when they are actively threatening you and telling you they won't acknowledge any of the decisions you make.
Kickstarter's owners and managers have proven that they're able to build a hostile work environment just fine on their own, without anybody else's help. I don't see any way for them to save face at this point beyond just sitting down and saying, "we were wrong, we treated you like children, and you have the right to decide how you want to negotiate with us."
I'm open to hearing additional facts, but it's difficult for me to imagine what new information could come out that would change this situation.
Regardless of whether or not the employees were actually fired for purely performance reasons, multiple workers have come forward and said that they believe the firings were related to union organization. It doesn't really matter what the intentions were, that's going to end up creating a hostile environment between workers and managers.
Let's assume for a sec that Kickstarter is completely acting in good faith -- well, there's being right and there's being smart, and the smart choice would have been to recognize that they're in a very volatile situation, and to temporarily hold off on making moves that could be misinterpreted as adversarial by their workforce.
Maybe that doesn't sound fair, but it's Kickstarter's job to maintain a functional work environment, not to be fair, and all evidence I've seen suggests that the current work environment is suffering.
In regards to other facts -- that Kickstarter won't voluntarily recognize employees decisions until required to through a legal vote, or that Kickstarter is openly campaigning against the union efforts -- again, I'm open to hearing another side to this, but this is first-hand information coming from press releases from Kickstarter itself.
Again, you don't have to be pro or anti union to think it's crappy for a company to insert itself into its employees' conversations about bargaining decisions, and then to claim that it won't recognize those decisions because doing so would somehow corrupt the neutrality of the process.
I'm not sure what facts could come up in the future that would make that turn into a good faith argument?
On one hand you have good companies. On the other hand you have terrible companies. Same thing with unions - some of them are good and some of them are bad.
Current Affairs can be a fun read (Nathan Robinson, who is an extremely weird dude, writes long-long-long-form takedowns of right-wing figures). But it's also an outlet with a very clear political perspective ("workers should own the means of production" would be a reasonable first approximation; "Elizabeth Warren is dangerously conservative" is an illustrative claim), so bear that in mind as you read.
Could you possibly elaborate on why you feel Nathan Robinson is an extremely weird dude? I only know about him from his writing in Current Affairs (and famously his take-downs).
He criticizes her for educating the future corporate lawyers of America. In her very first Youtube video as chair of the Congressional Oversight Panel (COP) she proudly discussed her long career teaching ``money courses'' for Harvard Law.
Just 4 examples from my time in a union shop:
Maybe a tech union would turn out better somehow. I for one would not want to go back to that situation.