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Startup Employees As an Organized Labor Group
An anonymous reader writes "Last Friday may turn out to have marked the beginning of Silicon Valley's organized labor movement--startup employees met in Palo Alto 'to share war stories and to start developing what organizers called a 'Startup Employee Equity Bill of Rights'.'" That probably should include the right to work late, for little pay, and to trade less certainty now for greater hoped-for benefits down the road. If you've been a startup employee, or started one of your own, what would you put on the wishlist?
Once "organized labor" successfully infects an industry, it turns in to a dead industry walking.
That explains why Germany and France - which have maintained a healthy relationship between the two sides of industry - are third world backwaters. It also shows why North Korea - where even whispering the idea of worker rights will get your whole family shipped off to Gitmo++ - is at the forefront of tech innovation.
You, sir, are a buffoon. A buffoon who allows families like mine - private school educated, holidays around the world, continuing to live off investments like my parents for the last 2-3 decades - to exploit dullards like yourself. You want something better, you do need to organise your labour. And I am quite okay if you do, because I could have way less and still enjoy a very comfortable lifestyle. As it is, though, you are too easy to fool into giving me even more.
Workers needs rights and at least try the union way before we all end of on the welfare
Interesting perspective you have there, since unions basically turn entire industries into "welfare" for those who have no place working in them, at the expense of those who do. Unions had relevance half a century ago when the workforce consisted of 90% unskilled labor, and you could pull a lever over and over just as well as I could; that model fails miserably when dealing with skilled labor, and particularly in IT where we see literally multiple orders of magnitude differences in performance between the superstars and the barely-employable.
So no, thankyouverymuch, I would much rather get promoted on my own merits, rather than get dragged down to the mean so some waste of flesh can make the same as me (or worse, more solely because he has "seniority"). Fuck that! I bring an "A" game to the table, and get paid accordingly. Can't hack it? Don't play.
Now, as far as TFA goes - These people don't need a union, they need a clue. When you agree to work yourself to death for nothing-and-a-promise, you'd better make damned sure that you can live on nothing.
That said, nothing wrong with taking the occasional chance, after making sure you've met your basic needs. If you want to donate your spare evening and weekend time (after working a paying 9-to-5), in exchange for a startup-equity-lottery-ticket, hey, more power to ya. Just don't expect a sympathetic ear when empty promises won't pay for beer, much less your own private Caribbean island.