Strongest idea I'm aware of is radical pay transparency. If everyone's full pay and benefits were public knowledge, negotiation would be essentially algorithmic. The information asymmetry currently benefits capital greatly, but if we can overcome the cultural blocks to pay transparency, I am confident almost everyone will be better off. It's late, so I won't find the sources for this, but there is ample evidence of the beneficial effects for labor negotiation. Consider the recent law where CEO bonuses would be public. After that, CEO pay actually went up because it was easier for them to negotiate.
skin in the game, people in power don't face any consequences for their actions and in many cases are completely oblivious to what life is like for the average person. America is completely divided from one another, if somehow we could get people to "walk a mile in somebodies shoes", I think there would be a lot more empathy for workers.
How many Wall Street execs have had to go to the Rust Belt and see the consequences of their actions first hand? Instead they just call it flyover country and don't have to see it.
Same applies to Silicon Valley honestly, I know a therapist who works for Google and they struggle with the job because of how entitled most Google employees are. Vast majority of them have no clue how good they have it compared to 99% of the population
Remove healthcare and retirement benefits from employers' purview, then tax employers on the difference between their wages and 1.25x the poverty line (including the typical cost of healthcare and 5% or 10% for retirement) in the positions' primary work county at a rate like 2.5x.
Basically set a floor on compensation that's liveable.
More and smaller companies. More labour mobility. If companies are in competition and people can move, then wages will be bid up close to their level of productivity.
Lasting help on this cannot be had in any short time, because cultural change is required: A citizenry engaged with and learning about government at a practical, local level -- rather than playing games to maximize the volume and audience of their own ranting.
Schools would have to teach concepts like "regulatory capture", "rule of law rather than of men", "plausible deniability" -- along with the fundamental math, economics, and cultural history needed to apply them.
And parents would have to inspire their children to some effort in outward, altruistic directions, rather than inward, to their own immediate pleasure.
I’ve never studied philosophy nor economy so I don’t know relevant it is today, but Karl Marx had some ideas on how to fix this situation and wrote about it in Das Kapital. The short answer is basically democratize the workplace. Instead of a CEO and shareholders making decisions for the workers. The workers should have to powers to pick their own benefits from the profits they are creating.
> Improved wages and working conditions for streaming
I’m trying to understand what this means. Was Netflix paying less than the rest of the industry or was there something else going on? The linked articles don’t have details.
I for one will be cancelling my netflix and apple tv subscriptions if the IATSE strike happens tomorrow. Tech is such a multiplier when it comes to consolidation of power, workers need to stand united whenever possible.
Let your conscience guide you, but in my opinion you should look to the union to see what they are asking you to do. A boycott of a struck company is not necessarily what the union wants you to do. One can imagine, for instance, that consumers continue to demand a company's product, demand that strengthens the union's bargaining power. When in doubt you can always check the union's web site or social media to see what you can do to support them.
It looks like it’s been averted, but yeah, I’ll be doing the same if I need to.
It’s gonna be rough since I have so goddamn many streaming services — youtubeTV, hulu, netflix, hbomax, amazon, mubi, etc… even worse since I have three days off next week and was entirely looking forward to a lazy ass couch planted binge fest, but here we are.
Sadly since tech ate the economy software engineers are one of the only groups with any worker power and we're paid way too much to ever use it.
EDIT:
I was listening to some of the IATSE workers and it sounds like their working conditions deteriorated when Netflix and Amazon bought up Hollywood and shifted the industry from films to churning out long series for streaming. It made me really think about the impact that tech has had on the country in the last 15 years. Growing up in the early 2000s I was very bullish on tech being a force for good (thanks Google and "making the world a better place") but looking at the world that we created is sad to see.
I went biking early in the morning a few times this week and came across a bunch of Uber drivers sleeping in their cars with jackets over their heads. All of their strikes and organizing hasn't worked out, they're not "employees" and because they're a global workforce it's hard for them to organize. A few Dev ops engineers at Uber walking off their job for a few days could lead to more change for the workers than all of the NYC drivers striking for weeks.
Same goes for Amazon warehouse and delivery drivers. From all of the reporting that I've seen their working conditions are awful but because they're distributed it's hard for them to organize.
I grew up on the poorer side of Queens and have high school friends who I can't talk out of falling for NFT and crypto scams.
As much as I enjoy using Airbnb it has played a role in reducing the supply of housing and increased housing costs.
My younger female cousins are addicted to Instagram and are clearly having body image problems, with some of them opting to get plastic surgery to achieve the typical filtered Instagram look.
TLDR: Tech is quickly taking over most industries and consolidating power to a few large players, which makes it harder for what used to be middle class workers to organize and negotiate better working conditions. As the people building and running these tools we have way more leverage than most workers.
So many of you are also convinced you are expert negotiators and 200x programmers who surely deserve, and can get, get more for your work than the average programmer, so unions would surely result in less money for you.
Or at least I sure do see that sentiment in most discussions of unions on HN.
> I went biking early in the morning a few times this week and came across a bunch of Uber drivers sleeping in their cars with jackets over their heads.
Or, it's because in the US (because I assume you talk predominately about the US), there are institutions, laws, culture etc which has been pushing the US society in that direction (and/or being less able to handle the continuous change happening everywhere). I'm not sure why tech is the only thing to blame here?
> but because they're distributed it's hard for them to organize.
How's that? In 1991, maybe. In 2021? If a movement like BLM can form today, if in the 1960s Dr. King could organize, then a seemingly simpler union organizing effort can't be excused due to distribution.
To the extent that the problem is one of distribution at all, surely that's a pretty minor problem.
The problem with tech is its highly monopolistic nature . Every tech sub-sector experiences a short period of chaotic growth and then The One gets chosen to dominate with the praises of the rest of the gang. The lack of competition in the tech sector is astounding on a global scale.
I agree - but I think you're grandizing engineers way too much. I highly doubt "a couple" or DevOps engineers at Uber not showing up to work would do anything at all. Maybe if the entire DevOps team striked.
Rising living costs due to inflation and a few other reasons (such as global supply chains being a mess), will force workers into a scenario where they have no other reasonable choice but to strike as a bargaining tactic (if they can), as the companies aren't going to often voluntarily outpace inflation (ie inflation adjustment + normal yearly raises). The John Deere offer to labor for example was very mediocre. Deere can do a lot better, they're doing quite well right now, their operating income has climbed from $2.7b in 2017 to $7b in the last four quarters (and heading toward $9b). That kind of stinginess toward your unionized workers while the company is prospering will get you a strike.
Societal turmoil (worker, consumer, business) is one of the many not fun consequences from higher rates of inflation.
What's the point of striking in the globalization era? The number of hungry would be workers that would gladly take 1/10th the meager salary of a Western worker is in the billions.
What's to keep John Deere from uplifting the whole plant and shipping it to, for example, SouthEast Asia? Note that this is a long term lose-lose proposition for both workers and capital, see ARM China debacle for a textbook example. Alas I see no medium term disincentive on the horizon.
My current job just gave me a double digit raise out of the blue recently. To be fair 2 of the 5 engineers on my time had quit recently. But still, the smart companies are giving raises before people strike or quit.
One thing missing from all the media accounts of these strikes is an understanding that organizing a workforce enough to produce a strike takes years of dedicated work. Every worker that joins the union has to be persuaded one on one, you have to get the backing of community leaders, then you slowly start to do solidarity actions like everyone wearing a pin or whatever. You don’t call a strike unless you have enough support that you’re pretty sure you’re going to win. The strike itself is the tip of the iceberg.
What this means is that a massive wave of union organizing has been happening for years now which the media has, for better or worse, been downplaying or ignoring.
I am not necessarily against tech forming a union. I am however against joining a grandpa union like CWA or OPEIU. Some CWA chapters have a very anti-immigrant take on the tech industry which does not vibe with most people in Bay Area or NYC tech.
What happens when minimum wage increases and businesses increase costs to meet the new cost of labor requirements? Wouldn’t that still lock out people from necessary products?
The premise of your question is not a certainty. Whether and how much of a price increase occurs depends on how much of a margin there is, and what price points are being targeted. If a widget costs $3 to make and sells at $10, then increasing the production costs to $5 may only change the profit, and not the final price. If a widget costs $9.50 to make and sells for $10, then the same $2 increase in per-unit production price would increase the price.
Which scenario we're in depends on the industry, but overall I don't trust the rhetoric of costs always being passed down to society as a whole, because it works to undermine any labor gains.
I think the sort answer is: “We don’t know”. We have tonnes of history to go by here. Labor costs have increased and decreased millions of times all over the world since the industrial revolution. If there was a universal pattern such as: Increased labor costs always increase product prices then surely we would know about it by now.
However we don’t have such a pattern. History has shown us that it is not so simple. Workers dissatisfaction actually costs workers productivity so a low payed worker might actually yield worse prices then a high payed worker.
Another thing to consider is that a lot of the companies which have high worker dissatisfaction and high chance of strikes, are multi-million dollar companies with highly payed CEOs and big shareholders that sometimes pay them self dividends and may have an offshore account for tax hiding purposes. Not only is this super frustrating for the workers of these companies, but consumer prices suffer as well. After all they could make the product cheaper to produce if less money was being diverted to the rich.
I think it’s kind of a misunderstanding that this is how it works. Increasing wages can save companies money by improved productivity and reduced turnover. Moreover the price of the product is dictated by market demands and owners may simply have to take less profit in order to sell at market price. That is of course if increased productivity doesn’t completely cancel out the wage increase. Finally higher wages means people can afford higher prices to some extent.
No. For example my Whole Foods is finally installing self-checkout registers. The labor shortage is so acute, that even the cashiers are complaining about how much extra work there is and how customers have bad attitudes for long lines.
Wages are a fraction of the final product price - there are material costs, facilities, rent, etc. So even if we double the minimum wage, the cost of goods sold would only increase 30%-40%, so the folks depending on minimum wage have a major increase of their quality of life.
> businesses increase costs to meet the new cost of labor requirements
These strikes, more often than not, are happening at larger firms (e.g., incumbent monopolies like John Deere, Kelloggs, Nabisco, etc.) with much larger profit margins. They would sooner wear the costs and pay lower dividends than hurt their competitive margin. But I do take your point that small-to-medium sized business take the brunt of top-down government policy changes like a minimum wage increase, and this can hurt competition.
I don’t quite understand the general anti big-tech-co/pro union sentiment on HN. Like somehow prioritizing engagement makes a group unforgivably evil, but literally hiring hit men to take out your rivals is no biggie.
Which hit men are you speaking of? The only person that I recall hiring hit men recently was a prince who has also pumped billions of dollars into Silicon Valley "unicorns".
One way to understand this would be to ask people in the form of a question. Dear HN people who form this category, why do you demonize big tech while supporting unions who have killed rivals?
[+] [-] TrispusAttucks|4 years ago|reply
It seems like we are doomed to repeat these cycles because the necessary tension between labor and capital.
I'd love to hear any ideas on how we could shorten this feedback loop so we don't have to so closely approach the precipice.
[+] [-] robcohen|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ren_engineer|4 years ago|reply
How many Wall Street execs have had to go to the Rust Belt and see the consequences of their actions first hand? Instead they just call it flyover country and don't have to see it.
Same applies to Silicon Valley honestly, I know a therapist who works for Google and they struggle with the job because of how entitled most Google employees are. Vast majority of them have no clue how good they have it compared to 99% of the population
[+] [-] Glyptodon|4 years ago|reply
Basically set a floor on compensation that's liveable.
[+] [-] mbar84|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] everybodyknows|4 years ago|reply
Lasting help on this cannot be had in any short time, because cultural change is required: A citizenry engaged with and learning about government at a practical, local level -- rather than playing games to maximize the volume and audience of their own ranting.
Schools would have to teach concepts like "regulatory capture", "rule of law rather than of men", "plausible deniability" -- along with the fundamental math, economics, and cultural history needed to apply them.
And parents would have to inspire their children to some effort in outward, altruistic directions, rather than inward, to their own immediate pleasure.
It starts with families, and with schools.
[+] [-] runarberg|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Animats|4 years ago|reply
Terms are generally favorable to the union.
• Living wage achieved
• Improved wages and working conditions for streaming
• Retroactive scale wage Increases of 3% annually
• Employer Funded Benefits for the term
• Increased meal period penalties including prevailing rate
• Daily Rest Periods of 10 hours without exclusions
• Weekend Rest Periods of 54 and 32 hours
• Martin Luther King Jr.’s Birthday Holiday
• Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Initiatives
• 13th and 14th checks for pre-August 2009 retirees
• Additional MPI Hours for On-Call Employees
• Expansion of Sick Leave Benefit to the entire country
[1] https://iatse.net/landmark-tentative-agreement-reached-for-i...
[+] [-] harles|4 years ago|reply
I’m trying to understand what this means. Was Netflix paying less than the rest of the industry or was there something else going on? The linked articles don’t have details.
[+] [-] kennywinker|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] egh|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] toofy|4 years ago|reply
It’s gonna be rough since I have so goddamn many streaming services — youtubeTV, hulu, netflix, hbomax, amazon, mubi, etc… even worse since I have three days off next week and was entirely looking forward to a lazy ass couch planted binge fest, but here we are.
Hopefully they reached a solid agreement.
[+] [-] newnamenewface|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] m_ke|4 years ago|reply
EDIT:
I was listening to some of the IATSE workers and it sounds like their working conditions deteriorated when Netflix and Amazon bought up Hollywood and shifted the industry from films to churning out long series for streaming. It made me really think about the impact that tech has had on the country in the last 15 years. Growing up in the early 2000s I was very bullish on tech being a force for good (thanks Google and "making the world a better place") but looking at the world that we created is sad to see.
I went biking early in the morning a few times this week and came across a bunch of Uber drivers sleeping in their cars with jackets over their heads. All of their strikes and organizing hasn't worked out, they're not "employees" and because they're a global workforce it's hard for them to organize. A few Dev ops engineers at Uber walking off their job for a few days could lead to more change for the workers than all of the NYC drivers striking for weeks.
Same goes for Amazon warehouse and delivery drivers. From all of the reporting that I've seen their working conditions are awful but because they're distributed it's hard for them to organize.
I grew up on the poorer side of Queens and have high school friends who I can't talk out of falling for NFT and crypto scams.
As much as I enjoy using Airbnb it has played a role in reducing the supply of housing and increased housing costs.
My younger female cousins are addicted to Instagram and are clearly having body image problems, with some of them opting to get plastic surgery to achieve the typical filtered Instagram look.
TLDR: Tech is quickly taking over most industries and consolidating power to a few large players, which makes it harder for what used to be middle class workers to organize and negotiate better working conditions. As the people building and running these tools we have way more leverage than most workers.
[+] [-] egypturnash|4 years ago|reply
Or at least I sure do see that sentiment in most discussions of unions on HN.
[+] [-] r3trohack3r|4 years ago|reply
Out of curiosity, what city is this?
[+] [-] cjblomqvist|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] analognoise|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jiveturkey|4 years ago|reply
How's that? In 1991, maybe. In 2021? If a movement like BLM can form today, if in the 1960s Dr. King could organize, then a seemingly simpler union organizing effort can't be excused due to distribution.
To the extent that the problem is one of distribution at all, surely that's a pretty minor problem.
[+] [-] cblconfederate|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] onlyrealcuzzo|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] amelius|4 years ago|reply
Except in the App Store, where developers are essentially powerless.
[+] [-] unknown|4 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] adventured|4 years ago|reply
Societal turmoil (worker, consumer, business) is one of the many not fun consequences from higher rates of inflation.
[+] [-] angelzen|4 years ago|reply
What's to keep John Deere from uplifting the whole plant and shipping it to, for example, SouthEast Asia? Note that this is a long term lose-lose proposition for both workers and capital, see ARM China debacle for a textbook example. Alas I see no medium term disincentive on the horizon.
[+] [-] jdavis703|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] refurb|4 years ago|reply
https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/DE/deere/revenue
[+] [-] fallingfrog|4 years ago|reply
What this means is that a massive wave of union organizing has been happening for years now which the media has, for better or worse, been downplaying or ignoring.
[+] [-] diebeforei485|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Animats|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] eh9|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] MereInterest|4 years ago|reply
Which scenario we're in depends on the industry, but overall I don't trust the rhetoric of costs always being passed down to society as a whole, because it works to undermine any labor gains.
[+] [-] runarberg|4 years ago|reply
However we don’t have such a pattern. History has shown us that it is not so simple. Workers dissatisfaction actually costs workers productivity so a low payed worker might actually yield worse prices then a high payed worker.
Another thing to consider is that a lot of the companies which have high worker dissatisfaction and high chance of strikes, are multi-million dollar companies with highly payed CEOs and big shareholders that sometimes pay them self dividends and may have an offshore account for tax hiding purposes. Not only is this super frustrating for the workers of these companies, but consumer prices suffer as well. After all they could make the product cheaper to produce if less money was being diverted to the rich.
[+] [-] TaylorAlexander|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jdavis703|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ClumsyPilot|4 years ago|reply
Wages are a fraction of the final product price - there are material costs, facilities, rent, etc. So even if we double the minimum wage, the cost of goods sold would only increase 30%-40%, so the folks depending on minimum wage have a major increase of their quality of life.
[+] [-] h0l0cube|4 years ago|reply
These strikes, more often than not, are happening at larger firms (e.g., incumbent monopolies like John Deere, Kelloggs, Nabisco, etc.) with much larger profit margins. They would sooner wear the costs and pay lower dividends than hurt their competitive margin. But I do take your point that small-to-medium sized business take the brunt of top-down government policy changes like a minimum wage increase, and this can hurt competition.
[+] [-] gaze|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tonfreed|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] harles|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] m_ke|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kelseyfrog|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] eh9|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] honksillet|4 years ago|reply