I'm surprised they weren't already in one. I worked at a competitor (the Wall St. Journal) years ago and all software engineers there had to be part of the union.
Unions in the news industry are extremely common and powerful.
My subjective experience with it was that union membership was mostly inconsequential for developers. The market for programmers is so strong that people would just leave if they weren't treated well or compensated fairly.
This of course isn’t a problem for HN posters, who are all 10x engineers or w/e.
Overall though, not having a contract, recourse and representation in a large company is a pretty big risk factor unless you just toil away in silence.
Honest question: why? Engineers are already compensated way, way above average and have loads of mobility opportunities. I actually work in a news org where most of the non-tech people are in one union or another but my team isn't. We have actually had a few union staff who wanted to do coding work and the union essentially blocked them.
> all software engineers there had to be part of the union.
Is that legal? Can unions or companies force you to join the union as a condition of employment?
Software engineers are well compensated relative to the rest of the population but that should not be a factor at all. Its all about value delivered relative to that organization, in aggregate.
Wages have stagnated for 30 years. There is a lot of catching up to do:
Until a single earner can afford a family home outright, in 5 years of compensation, down the street from where the company office is, then we can comfortably ignore any annual compensation package no matter how fantastic the dollar amounts seem, and collectively push for more.
The general resistance in this thread is something. Every day on here we all find issues with the industry as a whole, have complaints, identify negative patterns grounded in investment goals or profit. A huge majority of people on here agree: there are problems and things as a whole need to change.
Its not "what use is a union to me", it is that there is an ethical imperative to try and fight against the destructive force of profit seeking itself, when left unchecked. It is about giving agency to the only force that can stand opposed to those destructive forces.
A union does not necessarily play the role of migitation of negative externalities from a company's profit seeking activies. It still wants to maximum profits but with workers taking a fair share of such profits and under good work conditions.
For example, unions that represent workers in dirty industries are very often resistent to regulation of their employer's activities despite the harm it can cause to others. Coal mining, steel processing, etc...
They don't even necessarily lead to good value for money for consumers - for example they could use forms of worker accreditation to reduce the supply of workers to raise wages for existing workers and the increase the prices their employers can charge.
I wouldn't frame unions as a "fight against the destructive force of profit seeking itself." Unions have every bit as much incentive to maximize profits as shareholders. It's about the distribution of profits between capital and labor.
Please, just because something is not perfect doesn't meed you need a union. I can speak from actual experience about how shitty unions are. Can you say the same? If you want to be treated like a child and micromanaged so that the company can protect itself against the worst employees, then by all means, join a union. If you want to sacrifice your individual privileges to help prop up everyone who works less hard than you, then join a union. This lofty idea about opposing destructive forces is naive hogwash.
Nope. Your statement acts like unions don’t involve trade offs - whatever your situation, unions will make it better.
The truth is there are trade offs - recognition of merit replaced by recognition of seniority, protection of bad workers (and the toxic effect on work culture that has) and “lowest common denominator” bargaining.
I’m certainly not saying unions don’t have a place, but workers should have a choice and in some cases, no union is actually the smart choice.
The unions in slovenia opose the reduction of income tax for workers (after years of saying that they want to tax the capital more and work less). So yeah... unions in some places are politics first, their own pockets above that, and workers fifth.
Exactly. If you believe corporations have too much power today, one of the best tools in your toolbox as a "check" on their power is unions and collective bargaining. It's about having a counterbalance on that see-saw.
Unionization is not a panacea for the ills of industrialization! Accountability is the concept you’re looking for, and unions can be a part of it just as easily as they can fight it.
Many don't feel like profit seeking motive generally has issues. Profit seeking is pretty much the thing that created the modern world. It just so happens that intent doesn't matter, results matter, and "ethical" intentions in economics pretty much always end badly.
Unions are a particularly good example. The incentives in the way unions, especially major ones and/or public ones, are set up are the worst one can possibly imagine - they combine the monopolistic power of a giant corporation with incentives for fiefdom building/CYA/lack of incentives to improve of a government bureaucracy, plus the vetocratic incentives of the local NIMBYs. The practice of unions - from US auto industry, to teacher unions, to police unions - bears this out.
I usually joke that I lost all respect for them when I learned that mafia were associating with the unions... all respect for mafia, I mean ;)
I need the long German word for “however this plays out, it will be used as a spurious example either for or against some extreme position”.
If it works out, great - that hardly means unions are a foolproof idea - and if it fails it’s hardly a condemnation of unions themselves. And yet, it will be interesting to see how this plays out!
This is not exactly relevant, but I wish these companies would just become co-ops. Less profit for the people at the top (probably) but you wouldn't need a union.
Since people talk about this being the start of a wave of tech unionization, how will success or failure be determined for this union? It would be cool if we could see some OKRs for the union and check in a year if this actually did anything.
I could see this being the start of a small wave. And that wave is exclusive to regions of the country and companies where tech workers lean extremely heavily left. I don't see this gaining widespread industry adoption though. The market is simply too hot.
Unions are important and solve real problems. But I tend to think that they are a necessary evil rather than attacking the root or at least a deeper branch.
In my worldview there are two principles that I think are fundamental to a well functioning community (a workplace is just that):
- Meritocracy. The kind where better ideas and actions get more consideration. I'm thinking in terms of basic virtues here: loyalty, rationality, empathy, courage, cunning. Potential rewards and incentives should align but should always be in service of outcomes and not the goal in of itself. This is material/knowledge focused.
- Consensus. To keep a peaceful, sustainable, fair, productive environment one needs a process to reconcile differing views and interests. Open communication, democracy, agency. This is people focused.
When a community doesn't follow these principles then it eventually degrades, becomes brittle and rigid until it crumbles under its own weight or a counterforce (such as a union) is formed. But what should happen is a disentanglement of power into meritocracy and consensus.
Large corporations who have been around a while are controlled by heirs who have never worked, the purpose of which (according to law) is to extract as much surplus value profit from those doing the work. It sounds like the antithesis of meritocracy.
Unions are organizations where union elections are comprised of those doing the work and creating the wealth.
I can't speak for this situation, but before I moved to tech I worked in a heavily union industry, and all the union shops had in their bargaining contract that the employer could not hire anyone who wasn't in the union.
For people in the union it was great. For people not in the union, it sucked. And before somebody says, "well just join the union" (do you really think I'm that stupid not to have thought about that?) joining the union was really, really hard. You basically had to wait for somebody to either retire or die, because nobody ever left for other reasons, and because employees were super expensive and impossible to fire, union shops were extremely conservative with hiring. Union employees got paid double what non-union did and had 1/4 of the work to do, plus they slacked off like crazy and never got in trouble for it. The union was (or at least looked to us) like it was great for the employees. I'd hate to be the employer though.
In a large and varied company like the New York Times you’re going to have multiple
Unions representing different workers. The printers won’t usually be in the same union as the tech workers.
You’ll always have a mix of union and non-union work since managers can’t be in the union and certain types of work may not be covered by one of the current unions.
Technical unions are a good way for people who are better at politics to make a living off of people who are better at programming. Personally I'd rather keep my money for myself.
That's a very simplistic generalisation and totally inline with what anti-union employers would like you to think.
To rebuff with another generalisation: employers are antiemployee. Corporations/employers are pro-themselves and anti anything that reduces profits, including employees. A company cares nothing about it's employees as individuals, only as profit making entities. A union acts to redress that imbalance.
The company as a whole is not a late adopter. I forget but I know all the journalists are in a union already and there’s a long history of unions on printing presses.
Problem is, unions are actually counter productive to any industry. They reduce available work and further incentivize off-shoring of jobs.
In the post WW2 period, the UK and German manufacturing industries lagged behind the US in both wages and productivity, largely due to the former being unionized and latter not.
For industries where you need x human labor to do x amount of defined work, unions definitely help employees. Companies have an incentive to extract as much labor while keeping wages the same or lowering, leveraging peoples need for a job. Also for a lot of positions in those industries, the pay is low enough to put significant friction for employees into doing things like switching jobs, especially when employees start getting specialized and becoming limited to a certain industry, where all the companies are incentivized to do the same thing.
However, for industries where you want to select for the best and brightest to advance tech, unions are a bad thing, because they effectively remove the capability of the companies to do this.
You could make an argument that both of those cases should be governed by a common principle, and that technology development is generally better for society, so unions are generally a bad thing, but that is a pretty complex issue.
[+] [-] CSMastermind|4 years ago|reply
Unions in the news industry are extremely common and powerful.
My subjective experience with it was that union membership was mostly inconsequential for developers. The market for programmers is so strong that people would just leave if they weren't treated well or compensated fairly.
[+] [-] the_duke|4 years ago|reply
When the employment market is weak and you are scrounging for a job it's a lot easier to threaten/scare everyone into submission.
[+] [-] Spooky23|4 years ago|reply
Overall though, not having a contract, recourse and representation in a large company is a pretty big risk factor unless you just toil away in silence.
[+] [-] tootie|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] minhazm|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] vmception|4 years ago|reply
Software engineers are well compensated relative to the rest of the population but that should not be a factor at all. Its all about value delivered relative to that organization, in aggregate.
Wages have stagnated for 30 years. There is a lot of catching up to do:
Until a single earner can afford a family home outright, in 5 years of compensation, down the street from where the company office is, then we can comfortably ignore any annual compensation package no matter how fantastic the dollar amounts seem, and collectively push for more.
[+] [-] beepbooptheory|4 years ago|reply
Its not "what use is a union to me", it is that there is an ethical imperative to try and fight against the destructive force of profit seeking itself, when left unchecked. It is about giving agency to the only force that can stand opposed to those destructive forces.
[+] [-] a_humean|4 years ago|reply
For example, unions that represent workers in dirty industries are very often resistent to regulation of their employer's activities despite the harm it can cause to others. Coal mining, steel processing, etc...
They don't even necessarily lead to good value for money for consumers - for example they could use forms of worker accreditation to reduce the supply of workers to raise wages for existing workers and the increase the prices their employers can charge.
[+] [-] thinkharderdev|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dbsmith83|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Devasta|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] refurb|4 years ago|reply
The truth is there are trade offs - recognition of merit replaced by recognition of seniority, protection of bad workers (and the toxic effect on work culture that has) and “lowest common denominator” bargaining.
I’m certainly not saying unions don’t have a place, but workers should have a choice and in some cases, no union is actually the smart choice.
[+] [-] ajsnigrutin|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] aaronsimpson|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ehvatum|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sershe|4 years ago|reply
Unions are a particularly good example. The incentives in the way unions, especially major ones and/or public ones, are set up are the worst one can possibly imagine - they combine the monopolistic power of a giant corporation with incentives for fiefdom building/CYA/lack of incentives to improve of a government bureaucracy, plus the vetocratic incentives of the local NIMBYs. The practice of unions - from US auto industry, to teacher unions, to police unions - bears this out.
I usually joke that I lost all respect for them when I learned that mafia were associating with the unions... all respect for mafia, I mean ;)
[+] [-] loudtieblahblah|4 years ago|reply
i hope i live long enough to see the company perish.
[+] [-] IanDrake|4 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] erulabs|4 years ago|reply
If it works out, great - that hardly means unions are a foolproof idea - and if it fails it’s hardly a condemnation of unions themselves. And yet, it will be interesting to see how this plays out!
[+] [-] riffic|4 years ago|reply
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Industrial_Workers_of_the_Worl...
[+] [-] kelseyfrog|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Apocryphon|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] iamjfu|4 years ago|reply
> The workers voted in favor, 404 to 88
> The group is the biggest tech union with bargaining rights in America.
https://nytimesguild.org/tech-vote-count
[+] [-] Spooky23|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] throwaway984393|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] oh_sigh|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] andrew_|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] atlantas|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] xrd|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] agucova|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] itisit|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dgb23|4 years ago|reply
In my worldview there are two principles that I think are fundamental to a well functioning community (a workplace is just that):
- Meritocracy. The kind where better ideas and actions get more consideration. I'm thinking in terms of basic virtues here: loyalty, rationality, empathy, courage, cunning. Potential rewards and incentives should align but should always be in service of outcomes and not the goal in of itself. This is material/knowledge focused. - Consensus. To keep a peaceful, sustainable, fair, productive environment one needs a process to reconcile differing views and interests. Open communication, democracy, agency. This is people focused.
When a community doesn't follow these principles then it eventually degrades, becomes brittle and rigid until it crumbles under its own weight or a counterforce (such as a union) is formed. But what should happen is a disentanglement of power into meritocracy and consensus.
[+] [-] VictorPath|4 years ago|reply
Large corporations who have been around a while are controlled by heirs who have never worked, the purpose of which (according to law) is to extract as much surplus value profit from those doing the work. It sounds like the antithesis of meritocracy.
Unions are organizations where union elections are comprised of those doing the work and creating the wealth.
[+] [-] neonate|4 years ago|reply
http://web.archive.org/web/20220304012409/https://www.nytime...
[+] [-] goodluckchuck|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] freedomben|4 years ago|reply
For people in the union it was great. For people not in the union, it sucked. And before somebody says, "well just join the union" (do you really think I'm that stupid not to have thought about that?) joining the union was really, really hard. You basically had to wait for somebody to either retire or die, because nobody ever left for other reasons, and because employees were super expensive and impossible to fire, union shops were extremely conservative with hiring. Union employees got paid double what non-union did and had 1/4 of the work to do, plus they slacked off like crazy and never got in trouble for it. The union was (or at least looked to us) like it was great for the employees. I'd hate to be the employer though.
[+] [-] mikeryan|4 years ago|reply
You’ll always have a mix of union and non-union work since managers can’t be in the union and certain types of work may not be covered by one of the current unions.
[+] [-] chernevik|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|4 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] wslh|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] charcircuit|4 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] altacc|4 years ago|reply
To rebuff with another generalisation: employers are antiemployee. Corporations/employers are pro-themselves and anti anything that reduces profits, including employees. A company cares nothing about it's employees as individuals, only as profit making entities. A union acts to redress that imbalance.
[+] [-] rdtwo|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|4 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] ekianjo|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] afavour|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] throwaway73838|4 years ago|reply
In the post WW2 period, the UK and German manufacturing industries lagged behind the US in both wages and productivity, largely due to the former being unionized and latter not.
[+] [-] ActorNightly|4 years ago|reply
For industries where you need x human labor to do x amount of defined work, unions definitely help employees. Companies have an incentive to extract as much labor while keeping wages the same or lowering, leveraging peoples need for a job. Also for a lot of positions in those industries, the pay is low enough to put significant friction for employees into doing things like switching jobs, especially when employees start getting specialized and becoming limited to a certain industry, where all the companies are incentivized to do the same thing.
However, for industries where you want to select for the best and brightest to advance tech, unions are a bad thing, because they effectively remove the capability of the companies to do this.
You could make an argument that both of those cases should be governed by a common principle, and that technology development is generally better for society, so unions are generally a bad thing, but that is a pretty complex issue.
[+] [-] foepys|4 years ago|reply
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Blair_Mountain
[+] [-] lmm|4 years ago|reply