[HN Gopher] Will Alphabet's Unionization Effort Spread to Other ...
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Will Alphabet's Unionization Effort Spread to Other Big Tech
Companies?
Author : teklaperry
Score : 62 points
Date : 2021-01-08 20:33 UTC (2 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (spectrum.ieee.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (spectrum.ieee.org)
| RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote:
| My guess is that the "unionization effort" will spread to other
| companies but it won't get anything more than a few percentage of
| the workforce to join.
|
| Most workers at the big tech companies are fairly happy and
| comfortable and not nearly as politically vocal as the organizers
| of the union. I suspect that it will be limited to a small vocal
| minority.
| greatgirl wrote:
| Not on a long term scale. Tech's revenue is eventually going to
| dry up, regulations will become tighter and the low hanging
| fruit will be picked. They'll be less willing to pay engineers
| a senator's salary and there will be more engineers to go
| around too. With this comes discomfort if you're a software
| engineer. Your job begins to become less thinking and more
| maintenance. Your salary isn't what it was, or you get
| outsourced, or you simply get fired because the company doesn't
| need more than one smart engineer. With this comes
| politicization. Why does one person get to decide my fate? Why
| isn't the workplace a democracy?
|
| Then you will see unions in the tech industry.
| SpicyLemonZest wrote:
| People have been predicting tech is soon going to dry up for
| basically the entire industry's history. I'm not gonna say
| this is an impossible future, but I don't see much reason to
| expect it.
| greatgirl wrote:
| People wrongly predicted the end of the tech industry (and
| by tech industry i mostly mean ad-tech like google, since
| that is the subject of the thread) because they don't
| understand it, and there was even more reason to
| misunderstand it when it was in its infancy.
|
| Now, we can see the amount of anti-trust cases against
| them, the amount of regulation popping up, the
| overabundance of young compsci students. There are reasons
| to expect it to burst one day, but I never said that day
| was soon.
| SpicyLemonZest wrote:
| I definitely expect something like the Alphabet union will
| inevitably happen in other companies. There already are groups
| like Amazon Employees for Climate Justice; now that the precedent
| is set, why not rebrand as the Amazon Employees Union to pick up
| free press and CWA sponsorship? What I'm skeptical of is whether
| these non-exclusive unions will have more power than the
| preexisting employee activism groups.
| greatgirl wrote:
| I will one day write a piece about how the tech industry
| accidentally invented the superior business model. Pay workers
| higher and they're less likely to unionise. They're more
| productive (lest they lose their jobs). They don't want to leave.
| This works for the tech industry because technically they're not
| paying workers higher to be generous, it's just a different way
| to invest the profits back into the business, like how a car
| company would invest into steel infrastructure. Software doesn't
| need to do that, their infrastructure is employee's brains.
|
| As it turns out, the more ethical solution tends to work better
| for businesses, I think. If CEO's took a cut out of their salary
| and the profits and reinvested it into worker salaries I am
| willing to bet this would make any business more productive.
|
| You might say software employees leave and unionise anyway, but
| they only leave to go to better companies and their unions aren't
| very popular. Time will tell on that second point though.
| olau wrote:
| I see where you're heading, but I think this is an odd comment.
|
| From a market perspective, the few big companies can afford to
| pay really high wages because of a monopoly-like situation that
| they are under investigation for, while still having profit
| margins that would be deemed absurd in more competitive
| businesses, like the car business. The lack of competition is
| hurting the rest of society.
|
| The way you keep your employees is by making sure they're
| treated well. This includes, but is in no way limited to,
| salary. Unions are a solution to not being treated well.
|
| Hiring someone is a bit like marrying them, IMHO. Maybe I'm an
| outlier.
| foolmeonce wrote:
| I don't think that is the case.
|
| Tech companies engaged in illegal collusion to keep salaries
| down, as usual the penalty for doing so was far less than their
| benefit.
| greatgirl wrote:
| What don't you think is the case? I'm reading your sentence
| and it doesn't contradict anything I've said.
| foolmeonce wrote:
| You seem to be saying paying workers more than they are
| worth is an innovation of tech. They are paying less than
| they would have without the wage fixing scandal and its
| ineffective settlement. The union is clearly a result of
| many abuses of workers by the tech industry.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| Is there an actual effort? I thought a few dozen people made
| announcement. That's a start. But it's far from traction.
| greatgirl wrote:
| They have about 300 employees on board. It probably wont get as
| high as 10 thousand, but it's not insignificant and this is, in
| my opinion, more of a preparatory organisation for the
| inevitable tech bubble burst, probably from some regulation.
| [deleted]
| cactus2093 wrote:
| This is a really interesting experiment. It kind of seems more
| like an Employee Resource Group than a union, except that the
| members have to pay dues. ERG's are usually run by volunteers,
| and often get a nominal budget from the company itself to pay
| various costs (much less than 1% of each member's salary). Why
| couldn't this use that structure instead? And why do the dues
| need to be so high?
|
| Is the idea to have more teeth, i.e. everyone in the union will
| strike or leave unless Google stops working with the military, or
| blocks rightwing Youtube videos, or whatever the current cause
| may be? Although again, I'm not sure that really requires a
| union, doesn't that already happen with the big walkouts and
| collective letters to management that go around?
|
| It's also interesting how big of a difference the framing makes
| here... "Google allows employees to unionize" paints it in a
| positive light, as opposed to "Google refuses to support a social
| causes ERG for employees".
|
| Overall I can't say I really get it, and wouldn't expect it to
| catch on so widely namely because I don't think most people want
| to pay 1% of their salary and not personally get anything
| tangible in return. But I'm interested to see how it evolves.
| d1zzy wrote:
| 1% yearly income dues... which for a highly payed Alphabet
| engineer amounts to some significant money.
| trhway wrote:
| we've got the fads like open floor offices, puzzle interviews,
| etc. "because Google". Similarly once the management takes hold
| of unionization as one of the tool in the management toolbox, the
| unionization will spread like fire.
| thomasahle wrote:
| Personally looking forward to them opening up for Facebook
| employees.
|
| It's reassuring to have a team behind you in case the big company
| turns against you.
| yosefjaved1 wrote:
| It looks like a lot of people misunderstand that this isn't a
| union with collective bargaining power over pay.
| claydavisss wrote:
| Union? Some Googlers formed a club. A "union" with no bargaining
| power, hardly any members, no recognition from management...
|
| Its a political club. You join if you agree with their politics,
| thats it
| DoofusOfDeath wrote:
| The way the headline is written immediately reminds me of
| Betteridge's law of headlines [0].
|
| I'm just guessing, but perhaps that led to the initial
| downvoting.
|
| [0]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge%27s_law_of_headline...
| csense wrote:
| I predict within 5-10 years, any tech company with an activist
| union will have moved most of their operations to countries where
| workers don't have rights.
|
| They managed to do this in the manufacturing sector. And a car
| factory or a steel plant is a lot harder to move than a mere
| office building filled with developers and sysadmins who all work
| remotely already.
| Retric wrote:
| You mean like how the actors union killed off Hollywood?
|
| After literally decades of outsourcing software development to
| other counties it isn't much of a threat to the remaining US
| jobs at this point. There are various arguments about why this
| is or what might change over time, but unions aren't going to
| change the landscape over a few years. Change like this takes
| decades.
| saiya-jin wrote:
| Let's see in couple of years, I wouldn't be so optimistic.
| There might be a push back after covid is somehow managed and
| people start coming back to cities, but maybe not
| Retric wrote:
| People working from home due to covid are still operating
| in the same time zones and culture etc. If you want top
| talent in India or China they don't want to work the night
| shift which means communication with the rest of the
| organization becomes difficult, even ignoring culture.
|
| The real impact IMO is going to be the erosion of the SV
| salary premium to other US workers. This might actually
| raise minimum US salaries due to increased competition with
| major tech companies in places like Oklahoma without huge
| tech salaries. However, the real losers from that will be
| property owners in SV not programmers.
| d1zzy wrote:
| > However, the real losers from that will be property
| owners in SV not programmers.
|
| Those aren't necessarily exclusive categories.
| Groxx wrote:
| I'm not sure that's a valid comparison tbh. I assume it'd be
| rather hard to do Hollywood acting remotely, but remote (even
| other-country) engineering teams are fairly common.
|
| Broadly I agree / hope so too, but I don't find hollywood to
| be a convincing example at all.
| Clubber wrote:
| >it isn't much of a threat to the remaining US jobs at this
| point.
|
| There's 12 million US tech jobs currently in the US, and Eric
| The Executive gets a bonus every quarter for cutting costs
| (read jobs). I'd say as long as that dynamic holds, it's
| always a threat. I mean it would be ugly if we _only_ lost 1
| million.
|
| https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/us-tech-
| employment-...
| dafty4 wrote:
| I was leaning on your explanation at first, but there is the
| counter-example in California of the Screen Actors Guild and
| Writer's Union.
| thomasahle wrote:
| I don't know. Having more organization among workers may be
| beneficial for the company as well. It creates a shared
| interface for communication and negotiation, much more
| efficient than negotiating with employees individually.
| Besides, Alphabet workers own a large part of the company
| shares.
| rathel wrote:
| Do you realize that most locations where tech companies would
| seek talent have much better employee protection? No at-will
| employment, guaranteed annual and parental leave.
| Forbo wrote:
| Not sure why this was dead within two minutes of submission. I
| vouched for it to hopefully allow for discussion on the article
| to take place. I'm still reading it myself.
|
| Edit: The situation on the whole sounds pretty precarious. I'm
| particularly worried about the chilling effects mentioned if
| Alphabet decides to bring down the hammer on the leadership of
| AWU. These companies already have so much power, I don't think
| silencing internal dissent will the world any favors in the long
| run.
| ggm wrote:
| Dead? In what sense dead? I found it just fine.
| Forbo wrote:
| That's because I vouched for it. Before that it was labelled
| [dead], possibly due to downvoting.
|
| Edit: Thanks for the clarification, dang!
| dang wrote:
| It was killed by new software that tries to detect
| promotional submissions.
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