Unions can affect productivity of a cooperation which might cause you to lose your job.
Or give psychological safety that it is demonstrated to increase productivity 🤷♂️
What makes you think union decrease productivity instead?
They can also prevent you from losing your job unfairly, and fight for wage increases and benefits that you otherwise wouldn’t get.
Productivity isn’t affected much by individuals beyond some marginal differences. An accountant from 1920 can never be as productive as an accountant today no matter how hard they try. When productivity is discussed by economists, it means investment in equipment and training that makes people produce more for the same hours. When productivity is discussed by business leaders in relation to unions, you’re being lied to or they’re incompetent.
If more would join a union it would likely cause the other companies employees to find more interest or courage to join. Please join a union if you are not already. Support yourself and fellow workers, solidarity is key.
How afraid are you of retribution if you tried to unionize?
I guess not much if I were an Intuit employee and significantly if I were at Apple. 😄
That’s why you get as many people to sign up first, organize BEFORE the vote, not after.
How afraid of retribution is my manager/ hr because they’re all too fat to walk home when they get 4 flat tires.
Wow that’s crazy that such a thing could happen. What are the chances.
Absolutely. I’ve been laid off twice in my IT career. It would be nice to have someone on my side for a change.
My company is on there. I wish we had a union
Make an alt-alt over VPN and tells us more. 😁
Apple, tesla, and Google suspiciously at the bottom three there
Now how do we do it? Especially with remote work, not sure how to organize.
Form out of band relationships with coworkers you trust to get a base going then send an email to everyone from your department from an anonymous email address to solicit feedback and organize a vote.
Especially with remote work, not sure how to organize.
Remote work didn’t stop you working, did it? Why would it stop unions from working? There’s on the ground work for sure, but it’s mostly desk stuff, especially in IT.
The same way you organize anything. Start by talking to a couple trusted coworkers to form an organizing committee. All the members of the OC need to talk to coworkers, handle workplace drama, agitate for better conditions, educate people about unions, maintain systematic campaign tracking, and fight against the boss during their union busting campaign. When I worked remotely, it was as simple as sending a dm like this:
Hey, would you be able to talk over break? Some coworkers and I were discussing some issues and I wanted to hear your thoughts.
Get ready for corporate announcing the layoff of 67% of the workforce
They’re doing that in any case when they can get away with it. Not forming a union isn’t going stop them.
Would a union be able to repeal this lame IT overtime pay expectation? This dumb rule was the $27.63 over ten years ago too. I once worked at a place and a co-worker was told by his staffing agency that they didn’t have to pay overtime.
https://www.dol.gov/agencies/whd/fact-sheets/17e-overtime-computer#:~:text=However%2C Section 13(a)(,duties%20and%20who%20are%20paid
A collective agreement can’t include less than the law but can provide more than the law, so they could add paid overtime in the collective agreement and the employer would have to follow that even though the law doesn’t make it mandatory.
A collective agreement is a work contract, the only difference is that the employees negotiate it as a group instead of one by one.
Unions generally don’t write or repeal laws, but a union contract can negotiate overtime pay where there isn’t any.
Apple workers is anti union? WTF, i thought apple was one of the most liberal leaning corporations
Apple employees lack class consciousness. They don’t understand that they too are working class, because they too have to sell their labor to survive. You can be pro-choice, pro-LGBTQ+, pro-DEI, etc. while still being oblivious to the class war.
Because companies like Apple, Google, etc. treat their engineers extremely well in order to attract the best talent. Why unionize if you’re payed a ton of money, have unlimited PTO and work in a very casual office environment (or from home)?
That’s… Exactly why they would be anti union?
Liberals don’t have the interests of the working class at heart
There are two reasons to avoid a union:
- Fear of retaliation - Amazon et al.
- Perceived lack of need.
If you are well looked after by your company and are treated fairly, there is no need to create a union.
Apple may be in this category?
Defeat the fuckingcapitalists
These numbers seem grossly inflated. How was the study conducted?
Edit:
However, on average 67% of those polled in the Blind survey said they were likely to join a union and 73% said that unions “mostly helped.”
Eh that’s reasonable. Blind (the app) is pretty good, alibet toxic
What is the legality of unions across the US?
Legal but some States have weird laws in place like being able to not be part of the Union if you don’t want to
Unions are legal in the US. The labor movement is currently seeing a huge swell in new bargaining units across most unions
Unions are legal in all occupations. There may be restrictions on some form of collective action (i.e. the government can force strikers back to work) but organizing is never illegal.
Unions are legal in all occupations.
One caveat: the legal protections of the right to unionize apply to non-supervisors. If you have people who report to you, your power to unionize is pretty limited.
There are also some specialized jobs that aren’t allowed to unionize by either federal or state law: actual soldiers in the Army, certain political jobs, etc.
But for the most part, if you are employed, you’re probably allowed to unionize (and protected against retaliation even in an unsuccessful union drive).
If that happens, they are going to see a lot of things seemingly from the past connected to union activity though.
Not just strike breakers being hired (some of tech work is not that demanding in expertise, think typical Hindu web devs), but also actual spies, saboteurs, hitmen being involved, propaganda attacks, possibly legal attempts to bust unions and use of force. And, of course, crucial positions in union bureaucracy becoming attractive for organized crime (which likely has very few of people associated with it ever convicted, as in mostly invisible until it’s too late).
Doesn’t mean you shouldn’t do it. Just the more adult level of the game. Considering that the tech industry is at the core of our civilization now, and considering its profits, this can get as historic as battle of the Blair mountain.
One new difference in our favor: we can reasonably have meetings online, no longer needing a large shared space.
WFH + satellite internet + solar panels = If you want to threaten violence, you’ll have to find me
Be sure to use a VPN or Tor!
this can’t happen because the kill switch activates after 72 hours and “order 66” initiates, plunging the whole stack into lockdown and the org into absolute chaos.
hope there were backups you strike busting pieces of shit.
don’t fuck with IT professionals. you take away the only fulfillment we get out of life and you will come to personally understand the meaning behind, “there are worse fates than death”
apes strong together.
I agree, this particular trait of today’s tech industry in this particular case works in our favor.
For other political and social factors - not so much.
As much as I love the sounds of that it seems like a good way to get arrested under some anti-hacking laws.
lol. you think any judge or jury is going to understand the nuances of how a kill switch works?
“did you implement a kill switch that harmed my clients interests?” – “I have no idea what you’re talking about, and furthermore had your client not broken anti-union laws and came to negotiations, staff could have been available to identify and resolve the issues your client allowed to happen through their own willful negligence.”
The Judge and Jury don’t have to know how a kill switch works. The Judge and Jury have to believe the expert testimony that one was placed and caused damage.
Sam Bankman Freed didn’t get jail time because the judge and jury understood the nuances of cryptocurrency and financial scams.
I think the key here is intent. kill switch or not, proving you had the intent to harm is what you’re found guilty of.
can’t prove intent on code that’s had all history wiped from it and sat in prod for several years.
“why does this code exist?” – “IDK” “in your expert opinion why does this exist?” – “I cannot express my expert opinion because of a lack of evidence”
That feels like a very… hopeful interpretation. Instead of “In my expert opinion there is no non-malicious use of this component, and SysadminX was the only one with possible access.”
Intent is not always necessary, it depends on the charges.
Computer Forensics isn’t a new discipline at this point. People have literally gone to jail for putting in kill switches. It’s possible SysadminX is actually smarter than teams of people that are dissecting what happened after they were fired and is a real life Keyser Soze, but it’s extremely unlikely.
Honestly, you don’t have to create a kill switch. Most stuff will fall apart due to dependency on manual intervention. Usually because there isn’t enough staff to automate it. Tech debt comes for everyone.
Not bad, I thought our heads were still further up our asses.
