Holy shit Intuit and GM better shape the fuck up or the workers should just hurry up and fucking do it.
GM also has tons of union employees which has some impact on the non-union portion (i.e. better benefits etc), so seeing first-hand what unions can do for you might make them more likely to support one even if their current working conditions are great.
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
If you want to read about this on a website that isn’t full of ads and doesn’t just present as an ad for their own news app, here is the source material by Blind.com.
Unfortunately I couldn’t find a link to the raw survey data and I generally don’t trust surveys that aren’t accompanied by raw data.
I went looking for the data because 1901 respondents across 32 of the largest companies globally doesn’t seem like it would be statistically representative of any one company. If you assume the same sample size per company, which it probably isn’t but again that’s unverifiable because I couldn’t find the raw data, you’re looking at, what, 60 employees for a company the size of Google?
Look, I’m a recovering tech worker who left the industry because of the toxic work culture, having spent a quarter of my life at one of the good ones. Even there I saw the value of unions. No matter the industry, workers deserve the right to collective bargaining and fair treatment. But I don’t think surveys with unverifiable data help move that conversation forward.
Now, if I’m mistaken and someone finds a source link to the data that we can all verify, I’ll happily take another look and reconsider my opinion on it’s validity.
I think blind itself drives some interesting bias. The public posts are pretty incel. You need a critical mass of folks at your company to have a company private board so it attracts folks from bigger companies. It doesn’t seem to represent average folks well. Unless I have no idea what average is.
I’m not sure what to do with that instinct. The overall results say a thing I wanted to hear. It all feels weird.
Look, I’m a recovering tech worker who left the industry because of the toxic work culture, having spent a quarter of my life at one of the good ones.
What are you up to these days? Which unicorn was that?
I spend most of my days working on healing myself with time in nature, and I’m developing a personal photography project connected to my natural surroundings. I also spend time working on my garden when weather permits and am learning to paint and draw when the weather is gloomy. All in all that keeps my days pretty packed and active, not even thinking about tech most days whereas before it was all consuming.
The majority of my career in tech was at Mozilla, followed by a relatively brief stint at Element. I’m lucky that I was able to spend my entire career working for companies whose missions and products I still champion. But even as good and well intentioned as they are, they cannot escape so-called “Silicon Valley” as they’re very much a part of it.
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.
What is the legality of unions across the US?
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).
Unions are legal in the US. The labor movement is currently seeing a huge swell in new bargaining units across most unions
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
Damn, wtf are intuit and GM doing to their engineers?
The union autoworkers get good benefits like overtime pay for work over 8 hours. Union working come in at 6, then take a fixed breakfast and lunch break and then leave at 2:30. Anything over that will need approval and overtime pay. I’m surprised Ford and Stellantis isn’t alongside with GM.
Maybe they just forgot to brainwash them with anti-union propaganda
Edit: cause some jackass is implying I’m a bot - I should have joined a union and a union would’ve protected me from the mass layoff in '23 but that doesn’t change that while there I never thought about needing a union because it was such a nice place otherwise.
As someone who previously worked at Google - they didn’t have any antiunion propaganda.
They just, like, paid well, had top tier benefits, great perks, and had a good work life balance.
That’s the other option, of course: If your employees are happy, they don’t need to form a union to press complaints.
I am a human being, and I enjoyed my employment at Google
which also references an effort to use the media to quietly disseminate Google’s point of view about unionized tech workplaces.
Bogas’ order references an effort by Google executives, including corporate counsel Christina Latta, to “find a ‘respected voice to publish an op-ed outlining what a unionized tech workplace would look like,” and urging employees of Facebook, Microsoft, Amazon, and Google not to unionize.
in an internal message Google human resources director Kara Silverstein told Latta that she liked the idea, “but that it should be done so that there ‘would be no fingerprints and not Google specific.’”
From the article posted by 100_kg_90_de_belin.
Google seemingly does care about their internal image, so they will only make their actions obvious when they fire you for bogus reasons after wanting to join a union.
Quite nasty in that they give you no hints about how extreme their efforts on this are. They monitor internal employee tools like they are cosplaying the NSA, but you wouldn’t know before you are fired out of the blue.
This is likely the case with GM given that their manufacturing is unionised. Engineers just got a demo what that can do for them last year. They aren’t getting the raise assembly workers got.
Silicon valley is full of H1B visa holders who can’t speak up politically or risk deportation.
This makes a lot of sense. I can definitely see those companies at the bottom having way more H1B workers than the ones st the top.
Funny, seeing them at the top gave me a favorable impression of them, but seems to have caused the opposite for you. My impression was probably due to, like someone else said, feeling like maybe they’re not being drilled with as much anti-union propaganda.
But I’m from a place where you have to go out of your way not to be part of a union.
Idk about intuit but GM is probably a result of their union coworkers getting awesome Bennie’s.
10% of people are insane so they even got significant chunks of the crazy vote for GM and Intuit
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.
Anything using Blind as a “verified industry source” is going to be skewed to the type of person who uses Blind. Beyond that, it’s low sample size, and there are suspiciously round fractions for some of the larger companies. Worse, because Blind is blind - this doesn’t represent current employees, but merely people who worked at some point in the past at those companies.
Not saying it’s not good - just saying not to get overly excited over a badly done survey
Doesn’t blind require you to validate via corporate email yearly or something?
Only on signup
Not bad, I thought our heads were still further up our asses.
Now how do we do it? Especially with remote work, not sure how to organize.
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.
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.
Unions can affect productivity of a cooperation which might cause you to lose your job.
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.
Apple workers is anti union? WTF, i thought apple was one of the most liberal leaning corporations
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?
That’s… Exactly why they would be anti union?
deleted by creator
Gotta ask some of my coworkers if they were one of the participants in the survey.
