Does Silicon Valley Need More Labor Unions? (salon.com)

Salon recently talked to Jeffrey Buchanan, who two years ago co-founded a labor rights group "that highlights the plight of security officers, food-service workers, janitors and shuttle-bus drivers in the region." An anonymous reader quotes their report: The situation among Silicon Valley's low-wage contract workers has become so perilous that in January, thousands of security guards working at immensely profitable companies like Facebook and Cisco followed the shuttle-bus drivers and voted to unionize in an effort to collectively bargain for higher wages and better benefits. The upcoming labor contract negotiations between the roughly 3,000 security guards (represented by SEIU United Service Workers West) and their employers is one of the biggest developments in Silicon Valley labor organizing to happen this year. Buchanan says there's also a broader push this year to get tech companies to be proactive in ensuring these workers can make ends meet, even if these companies have to pay more for the services they procure...

A paper published last year by University of California at Santa Cruz researchers Chris Brenner and Kyle Neering estimates between 19,000 and 39,000 contracted service workers are employed in the Valley at any given time... An additional 78,000 workers are at risk of becoming contract employees, according to the study, a number which includes administrative assistants, sales representatives and medium-wage computer programmers. This is part of a larger societal shift in which salaried workers are converted to contractors -- a transition that benefits business owners, in that they don't have to pay benefits and can hire and fire contractors at will.
Buchanan's group represents contractors typically earning "as little as $20,000 a year." But Salon's headline argues that "programmers may be next" in the drive to organize contractors.

Comments

What silicon valley needs

[Anonymous Coward]

Is more housing projects so that prices sink to a bearable level.

Re:What silicon valley needs

[nbauman]

I know someone who came from the housing projects in Brooklyn.

He said that during WWII, they needed housing for the shipyard workers, so the federal government hired contractors (I think) to build the projects. It was good housing, and a good community built at a time where everybody was working at a good salary. After the war, the projects attracted a lot of middle-class working people, such as teachers and salesmen.

Then some politicians turned the projects into welfare housing. If the projects had 5% unemployment, the unemployed could plug into the network and get jobs. But if they had 50% unemployment, full of people on welfare, the projects would decline. Some projects are well-maintained and highly desirable with long waiting lists, while others are not.

Re:What silicon valley needs - House Boats!

[Anonymous Coward]

Lots and lots of house boats. When the bay is full of house boats, cloud boats! That's right, in the cloud, literally! And when the cloud is full, contract out to Amazon! They house you right in the warehouse!

Convince the sheep they are wolves

[Anonymous Coward]

Dev and IT folks are convinced that it's all a meritocracy until their jobs get outsourced to India or they find themselves being let go for being born before 1977 (or next year, 1978). But it's okay because those younger not yet outsourced or retrenched folks are convinced that they are different and that those guys that were let go or made redundant simply didn't have what it takes to succeed and that outsourcing or age related discrimination *won't happen to them*.

In the employers favor there are endless new people fresh willing to get sucked in to replace those that figure out that a lot of silicon valley these days is a venture capitalist money laundering scheme. The recent book Chaos Monkeys draws the argument out in stark detail. Convince IT and Dev folks that they are wolves and only that sheep need collectivism. Keep up the illusion and that way you can keep fleecing them.

Re:Convince the sheep they are wolves

[swb]

It's too bad the conventional union system has nearly all the rot and inefficiency of government. It gives it such a bad name that it's easy to see why so many IT workers see it as a turn for the worse.

I think what you say about IT workers deluding themselves into thinking that it's a meritocracy is true, and much of this is just a byproduct of the general growth of IT. As long as it was new and on a path of large-scale growth, it's easy to see how the large demand for bodies and skills translates into "I'm here because I'm good" when the real answer was "they're so desperate".

As IT matures as a sector, the cost pressures become more obvious and the myth of the meritocracy seems to quickly erode.

Re:Convince the sheep they are wolves

[Anonymous Coward]

The cure is worse than the disease. I might get replaced, but I can find other jobs.

What I can't deal with is having two bosses and a union that will work hard to retain the incompetent.

Re:Convince the sheep they are wolves

[110010001000]

OK, but how does a Union help with that? It doesn't. The only difference is a Union takes a fee from your paycheck every month. They can't magically stop outsourcing or ageism, no matter what they claim.

Re:Convince the sheep they are wolves

[Applehu Akbar]

It's too bad the conventional union system has nearly all the rot and inefficiency of government. It gives it such a bad name that it's easy to see why so many IT workers see it as a turn for the worse.

Union management got its culture from the nature of the businesses whose workers it organized in its days of growth and greatness: steelmakers, cab drivers, longshoremen, and mostly in large Eastern cities where graft is a way of life. Today's tech workers see this as old-fashioned and irrelevant.

A Silicon Valley union would have to arise from its own culture and be run in a way that appeals to local workers. Give it some California name like Bargaining Coop, and you're off and running.

Re:Convince the sheep they are wolves

[Doke]

It may be legally protected, but that doesn't mean you still have a job. http://fortune.com/2015/04/20/...

Re:Convince the sheep they are wolves

[ranton]

What I can't deal with is having two bosses and a union that will work hard to retain the incompetent.

This would be one of my biggest fears regarding joining a union as well. I work hard to ensure the teams I work with are competent. This not only helps increase the quality of our work, but gives me the opportunity to learn as much from them as I hope they learn from me. The dead weight which comes from incompetent coworkers is not something I'm willing to deal with. It's usually useful to have a few of them to do the grunt work no one else wants to do, but if management allows them to creep into the majority (or even significant minority) it is probably time to look for work elsewhere.

Re:Convince the sheep they are wolves

[nbauman]

It's too bad the conventional union system has nearly all the rot and inefficiency of government.

I'd like to see the data.

I don't know of any (non-anecdotal) evidence that unions generally or even government generally has rot and inefficiency. I think there are good and bad unions and government agencies.

First, government. I once did a study of nuclear power plants, in which I interviewed engineers and managers in the best-run nuclear power plants around the country. (Nuclear power plants have well-defined, clear-cut criteria for good management, starting with minimum down time and good safety.) Some power plants are run by the federal or local governments; others are run by private corporations. Some of the best-run plants were government (Tennessee Valley Authority), and others were private (Commonwealth Edison). There was no correlation between government/private ownership and good management. I found the same pattern in other industries. (Despite what the Koch brothers would like you to believe, the Veterans Health Affairs system has among the best outcomes for major diseases like heart disease, if you believe in peer-reviewed literature.)

Second, unions. There are good and bad unions throughout the U.S. I haven't studied them so I can't tell you definitively which ones are good. But the first goal of a union is to negotiate wages, and union wages are about 50% higher than non-union wages in comparable jobs. Unions also negotiate working conditions, such as job security and safety. (If somebody has published a study I'd like to see it.)

I think economists generally agree that middle-class wages have remained static or declined since about 1980, and one of the major factors was the loss of unions.

One of the interesting comparisons is between American non-union jobs and union jobs in Europe, particularly Germany and Scandanavia, where salaries are about twice U.S. rates.

In the 1950s, corporate management, government agencies, and unions cooperated in many industries, like the aircraft industry. This led to the greatest expansion in wealth and industry that the world has ever seen. It seemed to work.

Re:Convince the sheep they are wolves

[110010001000]

They do? So where did all the union steelworkers jobs go? There isn't anything a union can do about outsourcing, except complain.

Re:Convince the sheep they are wolves

[nbauman]

Suppose you looked around and saw that union wages were about 50% to 100% higher in your field for the same work. Would that justify the union dues?

One of the main functions of unions is negotiation. A large group can negotiate better terms than an individual. McDonald's can buy ketchup on better terms than Joe's restaurant on the corner.

Re:Convince the sheep they are wolves

[Jzanu]

It does mean exactly that. Walmart has to pay all of those workers back pay, and reinstate them according to administrative judgment submitted to the NLRB last year.

Re:Convince the sheep they are wolves

[nbauman]

There's also the question of just who is incompetent, and by what standard? Do you just fire people, or train them and develop competence?

There were lots of programmers in their 40s and 50s who worked on COBOL when their employers converted to %newlanguage%. They could have been retrained but their employer decided to just fire them and hire new (often cheaper) programmers.

In the 1980s, I think, there were a lot of age discrimination lawsuits with expert testimony and subpoenaed internal documents that examined the situation in great detail. The employees argued that they could have been retrained.

Older workers often have different skills. They remember organizational history and what worked before.

A lot of non-union corporations had policies of strong job security. If a worker was "incompetent," they figured out what was wrong and retrained him.

Re:Convince the sheep they are wolves

[turbidostato]

"One of the interesting comparisons is between American non-union jobs and union jobs in Europe, particularly Germany and Scandanavia, where salaries are about twice U.S. rates."

I have to ask your data because I find it hard to believe.

Anyway comparing US to EU unions is an apples-to-oranges exercise. In EU you don't have a union for a single company but more like a party across the country, either generalist or sector-focused. Then they don't negotiate wages and conditions on a given company but across the country, which gives an equal field for all companies in a given sector (up to the next problem which is, of course, outsourcing to other countries with lower labor conditions).

Re:Convince the sheep they are wolves

[turbidostato]

Oh! and I forgot about the other critical difference: not only unions are not company-bound, but they aren't monopolist either: you can belong to a union, or another one or a third one, the one you think that best cares for your interests and all unions go to negotiations with representatives weighting as per their representees.

Re:Convince the sheep they are wolves

[BlueStrat]

Wrong. They do it with a strike for better contract terms. A strike is a legally protected collective action that stops all work production, and where it is illegal for a firm to replace any of the striking workers or punish them for it.

That's worked out so well to keep autoworker jobs from going to Mexico and elsewhere, same with other unionized companies like Kelloggs and Post Cereals.

Unions were needed back before the US enacted tons of labor laws and programs to protect workers and provide a safety net. These days labor unions are simply legalized extortion gangs. Public-sector unions are an abomination. They should have never been allowed and should be eliminated ASAP. That fact that union bosses and politicians, many not even elected, actually meet and decide how much of *our* money the government will give the unions, and under the table, how much of that money the unions will launder and send back to those politicians, is obscene. The welfare of workers and the taxpayers are their very last considerations.

Strat

Re:Convince the sheep they are wolves

[nbauman]

"One of the interesting comparisons is between American non-union jobs and union jobs in Europe, particularly Germany and Scandanavia, where salaries are about twice U.S. rates."

I have to ask your data because I find it hard to believe.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/fr...
How Germany Builds Twice as Many Cars as the U.S. While Paying Its Workers Twice as Much
Frederick E. Allen
12/21/2011
In 2010, Germany produced more than 5.5 million automobiles; the U.S produced 2.7 million. At the same time, the average auto worker in Germany made $67.14 per hour in salary in benefits; the average one in the U.S. made $33.77 per hour. Yet Germany's big three car companies-BMW, Daimler (Mercedes-Benz), and Volkswagen-are very profitable.
How can that be? The question is explored in a new article from Remapping Debate, a public policy e-journal. Its author, Kevin C. Brown, writes that "the salient difference is that, in Germany, the automakers operate within an environment that precludes a race to the bottom; in the U.S., they operate within an environment that encourages such a race."
There are "two overlapping sets of institutions" in Germany that guarantee high wages and good working conditions for autoworkers. The first is IG Metall, the country's equivalent of the United Automobile Workers. Virtually all Germany's car workers are members, and though they have the right to strike, they "hardly use it, because there is an elaborate system of conflict resolution that regularly is used to come to some sort of compromise that is acceptable to all parties," according to Horst Mund, an IG Metall executive. The second institution is the German constitution, which allows for "works councils" in every factory, where management and employees work together on matters like shop floor conditions and work life. Mund says this guarantees cooperation, "where you don't always wear your management pin or your union pin."
Mund points out that this goes against all mainstream wisdom of the neo-liberals. We have strong unions, we have strong social security systems, we have high wages. So, if I believed what the neo-liberals are arguing, we would have to be bankrupt, but apparently this is not the case. Despite high wages . . . despite our possibility to influence companies, the economy is working well in Germany.
At Volkswagen's Chattanooga plant, the nonunionized new employees get $14.50 an hour, which rises to $19.50 after three years.

http://www.remappingdebate.org...
A tale of two systems
By Kevin C. Brown
Remapping Debate
Dec. 21, 2011
American autoworkers are constantly told that high-wage work is an unsustainable relic in the face of a hyper-competitive, globalized marketplace. Apostles of neo-liberal economic theory - both in the public and private sectors - have stressed the message that worker adaptation is necessary to survive....
But the case of German automakers - BMW, Daimler, and Volkswagen - tells a different story. Each company produces vehicles not only in Germany, but also in "transplant" factories in the U.S. The former are characterized by high wages and high union membership; the U.S. plants pay lower wages and are located in so-called "right-to-work" (anti-union) states. ... the UAW has made significant concessions on wages, especially through the creation of a permanent "Tier 2" level for all new employees. Whereas incumbent "Tier 1" workers earn about $28 an hour, all new UAW hires at the GM, Ford, and Chrysler earn around $15 per hour.

There have been other stories about this in the New York Times, as I recall.

Anyway comparing US to EU unions is an apples-to-oranges exercise. In EU you don't have a union for a single company but more like a party across the cou

Re:Convince the sheep they are wolves

[turbidostato]

"the average auto worker in Germany made $67.14 per hour in salary in benefits"

Sorry man, but something smells veeeery fishy there: 67.14x8=537,12; 537,12x21=11.279,52;
67,14x8x21x12=135.354,24. There's nooooooo way that a German autoworker makes north of 130K year, simply nooooo way.

Re: Convince the sheep they are wolves

[Reverend Green]

The steel industry, like almost all heavy industry in the United States, was willfully destroyed by public policy. It could just as well have been preserved, had the American ruling class decided that was in their best interest.

  The "free market" is found only in propaganda writing and in the credulous imaginations of small-minded followers. Look around and see what's really happening.

Re:Convince the sheep they are wolves

[swb]

There's just too much anecdotal evidence of government and union inefficiency and corruption. Even if both organizations are cleaner and better run on an at large basis, the perception of unions' and their historical problems of corruption, etc, is enough to make the adoption of trade unionism by IT workers unlikely, especially with the mindset that it's an actual professional meritocracy that doesn't need any kind of collective bargaining.

I agree with you that unions have been a historical good for workers with regard to wages and working conditions, but there are have also been a lot of problems, such as corruption, small scale to Jimmy Hoffa/Organized Crime scale.

I'd also argue that in some ways, unions have also created a legacy of adversarial relationships between workers and management that has led to a tit-for-tat legalistic rigidity in labor relationships, with both workers and management pushing their claims right to the edge of what they think the contracts will allow.

I also think there are cultural challenges. Unions have traditionally represented blue collar industries and IT has traditionally been a white collar enterprise (although there is a bit of pink-collarism, IMHO, in many organizations), and I don't think there's a great working model of white collar unionization in the US. IT in particular is complicated because of its close working relationship with more senior management and in most cases it's relatively small size within an organization.

Re:Convince the sheep they are wolves

[nbauman]

If you have a more reliable source than Forbes, I would be happy to see it.

(BTW, you seem to have assumed an 8-hour working day and a 12-month working year. Germans told me that they get a 1-month vacation every year, sometimes more. They also work fewer hours per year overall than the average European or American worker.)

Re:Convince the sheep they are wolves

[nbauman]

Unions cover a wide range of efficiency and inefficiency, corruption and honesty, etc. I believe that unions are corrupt in the same proportion as other American institutions.

For example the theater unions (SAG/AFTRA, etc.) are well run and provide a lot for their workers. Acting is certainly a creative profession far from the industrial assembly line. I know retirees from SAG/AFTRA who have better health insurance than I do, who are drawing a reasonable pension to supplement Social Security, and who are living in housing projects developed by the unions.

This adversarial relationship between business, government and workers (unions) is more of a modern thing. A lot of business leaders have turned into right-wing ideologues like the Koch brothers who aren't satisfied with their fair share -- they want it all. In the 1950s and 1960s, they were more likely to strike a cooperative balance. In the aircraft industry, the energy industry, and other profitable industries, they often worked together, for example in establishing safety standards. If a coal owner was ignoring safety (as many of them did), the unions and government were a backstop. That's when things are working at their best. There were also times when unions, business or government screwed things up. The free market isn't easy.

And according to that Forbes article (and other news stories), the German and Scandanavian unions are also much more cooperative.

So unions may not have fit into the IT culture when IT was a new, innovative, profitable industry, there was lots of money for everybody, employers could be generous, and IT people in the right position could make more money than doctors. (By specializing in a critical software, for example.)

But as IT matures, it's becoming more like a commodity and an assembly line. Companies can fire American workers and plug in HB-1s in their place.

Workers who join together and organize have a better negotiating position than workers who deal with their boss individually. Unions provide a useful structure (with legal protections) for workers to use when they organize. What's the alternative? Uber? Task Rabbit?

Do you want to compete on price with every third-world computer science graduate in the world? Or do you want to get a share of the American prosperity you're working for?

Re:Convince the sheep they are wolves

[stoatwblr]

"There's nooooooo way that a German autoworker makes north of 130K year"

They do. Go and check for yourself if you don't believe it.

Re:Convince the sheep they are wolves

[stoatwblr]

"I'd also argue that in some ways, unions have also created a legacy of adversarial relationships between workers and management "

You forget that militant unions arose because of management abuse and exploitation. Look up the 19th century history of the Pinkerton agency and its involvement in systematic bullying of workers, up to and including murder.

Sociopaths will manipulate their way to the top in any organisation, which is where the corruption side comes from and there's no arguing that organised crime got a foothold in various unions, but there are many more which have never had a history of industrial action and work with management for the best possible outcome for all concerned.

In general you'll find that sociopathic union heads are able to exist because of sociopathic management in the same industry. A militant union and constant striking is an indication of poor business management, because if the workers were happy these things wouldn't happen.

Re:Convince the sheep they are wolves

[stoatwblr]

It's not just outsourcing - This happens primarily because workforces refuse to accept increasing automation reducing the number of jobs.

A classic example is the destruction of the British shipbuilding industry. Thanks to advanced and semi-automated welding techniques a single japanese lightweight female operator (and at the time they were mostly lightweight female operators) could get more work done - of better quality - in a single shift than a dozen teams of Glaswegian welders could achieve in 3 shifts.

Understandably the (very well paid) single operator was cheaper than paying that many people and the british unions' stubborn refusal to modernise resulted in japanese shipbuilding getting all the contracts.

The "british" car industry self-destructed due to incompetent management, not the unions. When you have a company with 14+ layers of management and a dozen different divisions all competing internally you have a recipe for disaster and the unions were militant because the incompetence was harming people. Some of the machinery being used even into the 21st century were well over 100 years old.

Compare and contrast with unionised japanese workforces in the UK - these are generally well settled and there is constant feedback between workers and management both to make better products (rather than the attitude of "bash it into shape" expected by british management) and to make the workplace a better, safer environment.

A well-run business has nothing to fear from unions. A well run union will not back rogue employees who want to pick fights on everything. One of the more common things here is unions informing workers than they don't have a leg to stand on when it comes to a legal claim.

Re:Convince the sheep they are wolves

[stoatwblr]

"autoworker jobs from going to Mexico and elsewhere"

11,000 jobs in Detroit turned into 1500 jobs in Sonora, thanks to greater line automation.

If the companies were forced to stay in the USA they might relocate to New Mexico and only employ 400 people.

What they won't do is stay in Detroit and only employ 1500 people, because the unions won't let them do that, so relocation is the only available option other than closing down.

Re:Convince the sheep they are wolves

[tendrousbeastie]

German autoworkers don't earn any US Dollars at all, they earn Euros, which are a different currency.

If you use market exchange rates then yes the figures are probably true. If you use purchasing power parity rates then the difference reduces by about 30 - 40%. (PPP indexes currencies by what they will actually buy, rather than by what rate they are traded against eachother on the FX market, and so takes into account differences in the cost of living in each country).

It is of course fine to use market exchange rates, but then you have to add some caveats to explain that not everything in the German economy costs the same as it does in the US (e.g. petrol/gasoline)

Re:Convince the sheep they are wolves

[swb]

Don't get me wrong, I'm not fully opposed to unionization of IT workers, more skeptical that the traditional, American blue-collar union template would be attractive or effective at organizing IT labor.

It would be nice if some Scandinavian/German cooperative labor union model could be adopted, but the problem is you'd have to start a new union that operated under different principles than traditional American unions and probably exclude them from participating as well so they wouldn't co-opt the organization into being yet another branch of traditional organized labor.

SAG/AFTRA are interesting case studies because I think they have some similarity to IT in that they deal with a specialized type of labor that doesn't fit into the usual industrial-era types and they have a lot of exposure to project-type work. In some ways the analogy breaks down, though, because it's an arts field and has lots of aspects which aren't shared outside of the arts.

Re:Convince the sheep they are wolves

[turbidostato]

"They do. Go and check for yourself if you don't believe it."

No, they don't... by a stupidly big margin.

You need go to a senior engineer at Audi or BMW to reach about 60.000~65.000EUR gross/year (and I happen to have some two or three friends in such positions at the VAG Group). And then you need to go into management to go over that ceiling.

A blue collar "senior" would reach around 35.000â gross/year.

Average salary in Germany is about 45.000â gross/year, which despite of being quite a substantial number is still far away from 100K. If you really think a blue collar worker at an assembly line makes not only average but more than doubles it, I have a bridge I can offer to you.

Re:Convince the sheep they are wolves

[turbidostato]

"BTW, you seem to have assumed an 8-hour working day and a 12-month working year. Germans told me that they get a 1-month vacation every year, sometimes more. They also work fewer hours per year overall than the average European or American worker"

Yes, I saw it later: I wanted to show a monthly number, since in Europe is more easily understandable and I multiplied by 12 months instead of by 11.

Nevertheless for a more suited number, it's about 1500 hours/year, which still puts it at over 100K which is simply ridiculous for an assembly line blue collar worker which will be utmost happy if he reaches 35.000EUR gross / year. For the most part (like well above 90%), not even senior automotive engineers will reach 75.000 EUR/year without going into management, much less 100K.

Re:Convince the sheep they are wolves

[turbidostato]

"German autoworkers don't earn any US Dollars at all, they earn Euros, which are a different currency."

It's a different currency, yes, but it happens to be the currency I'm most comfortable with, as it happens to be mine one too, thanks.

"It is of course fine to use market exchange rates, but then you have to add some caveats to explain that not everything in the
German economy costs the same as it does in the US"

True, but it's still quite out of scope when the real salaries are not even half that figure as will attest anyone that has first hand references from the German market instead of some biased views from news pamphlets from 4000 miles away.

Re:Convince the sheep they are wolves

[Mike Van Pelt]

This might be sensible. However, TFA talks about SEIU doing the organizing, and that union is the nastiest gang of evil ultra-violent thugs this side of MI13. (Video that sticks in my mind, a nearly spherical "union boss" toad in a $1000 suit, gesturing to the two thugs next to him, pointing to a black guy doing nothing but carrying a Right to Work sign, and they beat him nearly to death.)

Yes

[zifn4b]

The inmates are running the asylum

Don't bother, leave.

[Anonymous Coward]

I left the area and I have never been happier. Yeah, it's my home and my family is still there, but the grass is greener outside of the Bay Area.

Between the VCs, tech "entrepreneurs"', the fruits and nuts; you are better off just about anywhere else - I would say leave California completely.

Re:Don't bother, leave.

[Ryanrule]

So your wife divorced you and took the kids; you moved to a cheap sad suburban sunbelt city.

Stupid Question

[Maclir]

Anyone who is not senior management needs to be in a union. Don't expect your bosses to be concerned about what is in your best interest - the sole function of a private business in a capitalist society is to return the maximum amount of money to the company's investors (stockholders). You, as a mere worker drone, are just fodder

Re: Stupid Question

[JaredOfEuropa]

Maybe it's the other way around: the least competent employees have most to gain from their union, so they are the most active in making sure unions enforce FIFO rules and the like.

Re:Stupid Question

[rmdingler]

The intelligence and skill level necessary to work most tech jobs places employees in a precarious position.

Unions are a difficult sell to employees who consider themselves tough to replace, and without that little bit of arrogance, it's unlikely an individual will excel in a challenging field.

It is the belief that unions only protect the below-average worker in a room full of exceptional individuals that will keep organized labor out of tech.

Re:Stupid Question

[Anonymous Coward]

Anyone who is not senior management needs to be in a union.

Bosses wish to exploit my productive labor. But union organisers wish to exploit my paycheck too, and will use it to advocate for political goals which I may or may not endorse (now or in the future), buying themselves political power and clout. If I'm going to send money to the leftmost wings of the DNC, I'd much rather it be at my discretion, and not have it anchored to my paycheck indefinitely.

And a union is only capable of reshaping the employee/management relationship so far. There's a natural balance of power in economic relations such as these which organisation can only reshape so far. When a union demands job security and particular pay schedules for its members, hiring becomes a major risk, and employers will mitigate it by being far less willing to hire, as they have in every unionised industry ever. Job mobility will become a farce, and youth unemployment will skyrocket, like in Europe.

Re:Stupid Question

[Anonymous Coward]

How do you explain that in an era when unions were strong, my grandfather could support a large family on a single blue-collar income and look forward to a decent pension when he retired? He worked at a foundry, by the way.

Now we have educated people with decent jobs struggling to support themselves and make ends meet. Unions are much weaker now overall. Do you believe this is a coincidence?

I'll throw in one fact that you can easily research yourself. American worker productivity has steadily risen since at least the 1950s, yet wages adjusted for inflation have remained stagnant. Someone is getting exploited here and it isn't the corporations. Unions are an (imperfect, for sure) existing solution to this problem. Are there others?

Re: Stupid Question

[Reverend Green]

Also, it seems that many younger programmers have been propagandized into a useful delusion. They sincerely believe that if they enthusiasticallyâ cooperate with abusive labor practices and kiss enough ass, someday they will graduate from running dog to capitalist. Never mind that winning the startup lottery has little correlation with individual work performance and very very rarely lifts one from the working class to the owning class.

Re:Stupid Question

[mvdwege]

In other words, tech workers are particularly susceptible to Dunning-Kruger.

It's hard to organise unions across many companies

[Hentes]

Unions work best in industries dominated by an oligopoly of only a handful of corporations. Generally, the workers of each company will have their own union, which will then ally themselves with each other. In a market with many small or medium sized players unions don't tend to be very powerful. Which is not really a problem, as in that case workers have many options which forces employers to compete for workforce, making unions unnecessary.

Re: I will never belong to a union

[Anonymous Coward]

What does keeping bad employees to do with unions? Union are there to ensure companies cannot fight competition by lowering wages, but have to be innovative.

We have strong unions in Germany and the productivity of our car companies is way better than those in the US. Also we have 30 days paid vacation, healthcare and a general retirement system. All things unions fought for in the past.

Re:I can't afford to live in Beverly Hills

[Anonymous Coward]

Imagine if actors couldn't live in Beverly Hills, that's what's happened. Greedy landlords think x% of someone's salary belongs to them as rent. If programmers can't live in Silicon Valley, what's the point of Silicon Valley?

Re: No

[Anonymous Coward]

The answer is yes. And it us even good for innovation when you cannot use low wages as a means to compete with others. Employees are people. Treat them with respect. Don't be a greedy Ferengi who steps on them on the ladder of success.

You ate wrong

[Anonymous Coward]

Just have a look at European countries (not the UK, real Europe). Labour rights protect people from abusive management. They even help to improve company performance.

No, ALL WORKERS need protection!

[drinkypoo]

Unions put their effort into supporting their members, not the general populace. They spend a trifling amount of time and money campaigning to increase the minimum wage, and that only because in some cases union wages are tied to it. If it weren't for that, they would not give one tenth of one shit about it.

Unions were a necessary step in workers' rights, but now it is time to protect the rights of all workers, without expecting them to unionize piecemeal.

Re:No, ALL WORKERS need protection!

[BarbaraHudson]

So who's going to pay for it? Just the union members, and not society in general?

Or do you think that strike funds, picket lines, etc. just magically appear without some sacrifice by somebody somewhere?

Re:No, ALL WORKERS need protection!

[drinkypoo]

Or do you think that strike funds, picket lines, etc. just magically appear without some sacrifice by somebody somewhere?

If you have MGI, you don't need a strike fund.

Re:No, ALL WORKERS need protection!

[BarbaraHudson]

Not one of the 22 definitions of MGI that I came across have anything to do with the topic. Sorry, but we're not mindreaders (yet) :-)

Re:No, ALL WORKERS need protection!

[drinkypoo]

Not one of the 22 definitions of MGI that I came across have anything to do with the topic. Sorry, but we're not mindreaders (yet) :-)

You don't get to talk about worker's rights or the economy if you don't recognize the initialization for minimum guaranteed income. We only talk about it here on Slashdot approximately every goddamned day.

Re:No, ALL WORKERS need protection!

[BarbaraHudson]

Come on, park your imaginary privilege - we call it Universal Basic Income here - including in the story I had posted on the front page. Universal Basic Income returns more than 7x as many pages as Minimum Basic Income on google. A search of UBI turns up 2 references to Universal Basic Income on the first page; MBI returns 0 in the first 5 pages.

So by your own standard, you shouldn't get to talk about worker's rights. However, UBI has nothing to do with unions, which is what this article is about. You're also ignoring that people drawing a UBI probably will need every cent of it during a strike, so there won't be money left to pursue strike actions, which often require lawyers to defend workers arrested, and to take the company to court to recognize the union and to fight union-busting tactics, such as illegally shutting down operations at the affected location. UBI is not a panacea that magically solves everything - a basic income is just that - you can only afford the basics.

And it has nothing to do with this story. Nothing. These workers want to form unions for workers in specific trades. Given a choice between UBI maybe coming force in 20 years, or union wages next year, unions are far more relevant to these workers.

Re:I will never belong to a union

[BarbaraHudson]

You've swallowed the purple flavor-aid. Union members don't like slackers any more than anyone else. Nobody wants to have to work harder to make up for lazy turds riding on their coat-tails. Union members are no exception.

Re:Unionize you stupid shits

[KermodeBear]

I work in a Canadian government (unionized) position. My pay is double, my hours are halved [...]

No wonder Canadian taxes are so high.

Re:It's hard to organise unions across many compan

[BarbaraHudson]

If that were true, why would almost ALL employers do what they can to quash unions?

Re:Unionize you stupid shits

[rmdingler]

You make a great case for unions for short-sighted, younger workers who have a difficult time imagining they will age like the rest of the population.

As a government employee, though, you are working outside the effect of market forces on positions in private industry. A unionized work force is a thorn in the side of a company that has to constantly report better than average quarterly earnings to renew credit obligations by powerful lenders.

If a market is beholden to use union workers because there are no satisfactory alternatives, you are golden. It seems like that would not be the case in tech, given the predisposition of companies to outsource internationally.

Re:I will never belong to a union

[Chaos Incarnate]

As someone who was a union member about a decade ago, you sure couldn't tell it by my union's actions.

What's Harming Competition?

[bill_mcgonigle]

Why can't employees leave a bad company and go to a good one?

Regulations on health insurance? Court enforcement of non-compete agreements? Regulatory barriers to starting new businesses, especially co-ops and employee-owned corps?

For skilled workers with marketable talents, the desire for a union is usually a symptom of problems, not solutions.

Looks for impediments to the free flow of labor and you'll find the mechanisms that need fixing. But don't expect unions to work against their own interests by working to fix these problems.

Re:What's Harming Competition?

[Anonymous Coward]

"Why can't employees leave a bad company and go to a good one?"

I seriously can't tell if you're trolling, senile, or stupid.

Re:I can't afford to live in Beverly Hills

[bill_mcgonigle]

Imagine if actors couldn't live in Beverly Hills

Almost all of the actors cannot afford to live in Beverly Hills.

Greedy landlords think x% of someone's salary belongs to them as rent.

Obviously - did you want x=0? Who pays for taxes and maintenance -
  communists or Santa Claus?

If programmers can't live in Silicon Valley, what's the point of Silicon Valley?

Why are programmers special? Why not custodians, oil change mechanics, security guards and the people who work at In & Out?

Of course programmers should grow a pair and demand as high a salary as they can get. But really high salaries are usually not possible in tiny startups with minimal revenue, so if you want universally high salaries, you want only megalo-corporations running things.

If you can't run a startup in Silicon Valley, what's the point of Silicon Valley?

$55k

[110010001000]

I earn $55k doing IT in Silicon Valley with bonuses. I am doing pretty well.

Re:$55k

[slappynipsy]

Jesus where do you live? A cardboard box behind the stop n go?

Re: I will never belong to a union

[gerf]

I work in the US for a German company that is partially unionized in the EU. The US unions are nothing like the German ones. People sleep on the job, sabotage production, and generally don't care about their job or the company. They have no repercussions because the union protects them.

Re:I can't afford to live in Beverly Hills

[TWX]

Maybe it's time to consider that proto-companies that generate no profitability shouldn't have to be established in some of the most expensive cities in the world.

Maybe it's time to consider that mid-sized companies that are in pretty strong competition in order to remain profitable don't need to be located in some of the most expensive cities in the world.

Maybe it's time to consider that large companies that are continually looking for ways to reduce costs don't need to retain the vast majority of their operations in some of the most expensive cities in the world.

There seems to be a point where a city has gotten so expensive that it is not possible for workers in the service jobs needed to afford to live there, or to even live within reasonable commuter distances. In theory this should lead to a natural cap on the cost of living or a natural floor to wages simply because cities need workers in these jobs, but as has been pointed out in this thread that doesn't mean that landlords won't look for ways to increase their profits, or that the numbers of people that need these unskilled jobs can readily find work closer to where they can easily afford to live.

If the service workers decide to unionize, fine. Good for them.

Re:I will never belong to a union

[Anonymous Coward]

Coming from a decidedly not communist country where labor unions are de rigueur, no it isn't.

What is more capitalist than negotiating a fair and equitable price for a service? Individuals negotiating with companies are almost always at a massive disadvantage: they generally need the job more than the company needs them; they don't usually have information on what other people at the company or in the industry make; they aren't aware of the future plans that their management might have; they have no real say in corporate direction. All of these are ameliorated by collective bargaining.

We have our share of bad employees here too, and a lot of them are in unions. The union makes sure the company follows the law and its own disciplinary procedures - that's it. If the company is doing something harmful in the long term for short term gain (like off-shoring IT to a developing nation) the union will make a fuss and maybe call a strike. The union has no interest in destroying the company; if anything they have more at stake in the long-term health of the firm than the managers, who may come and go within a few years.

It seems to be that Americans in skilled jobs almost all believe that they are irreplaceable superstars and will receive above average treatment from their employers. It doesn't phase you that your colleagues are getting screwed, but when it happens to you it's a ridiculous injustice that will surely doom the company.

Re: Unionize you stupid shits

[KermodeBear]

Don't know about California, I'm based out of Ohio. Do software work remotely. Definitely don't pay 40% in income taxes but I wouldn't be surprised if people did in California.

Do you know what I did when I was getting paid crap and was working too many hours? I told my employer that I was going to quit and find work somewhere else. One of two things happened: I got a raise / better conditions, or I found a better job.

In more populous states and in the cities especially, it's very easy to find work. Let the free market do its thing. If a company wants better workers, pay more and treat them better. If your employer is crap, leave. It actually does work.

Perhaps, but be careful

[Anonymous Coward]

The last thing Silicon Valley needs is to be more like Pittsburgh or Detroit.

In theory, unions are a balancing force between big bad corp and itty bitty labor.
This balancing force should find a happy medium between being able to have a business and being able to have a life.
They are necessary because business can't help in stepping over the balance point to make the cash that the market feels entitled to.
A little reality check for the markets might be a good thing, but

In practice, unions can't help themselves either.
Instead of forcing a happy operating partnership between labor and capital, they seem to step over the balance point in the other direction.
Often especially to the betterment of the union leadership.
The result is an operating point where you can't have a business and so can't have a life either.

California is supposed to be a place where folks are smarter and can find a better way.
The tech industry there is facing the same challenges that the US auto and steel industries have already faced.
A union solution now should have learned from history and be smart enough not to repeat this.
Are they? I think not, unions may play a useful part in this, but it seems a long shot.

California needs to find a better way to make a partnership between capital and labor.
Unless we are talking about a major union movement in China to balance the playing field?

Re: I will never belong to a union

[Anonymous Coward]

Bullshit

Re:I can't afford to live in Beverly Hills

[Anonymous Coward]

Obviously - did you want x=0? Who pays for taxes and maintenance -
   

x = a low percentage, not 30% or 40%; rent should only be somewhat related to the salary. It should be based on property costs, maintenance, reasonable profit margin etc. IOW, should a loaf of bread cost $2 for a mechanic and $10 for a programmer? That's not fair.

communists or Santa Claus?

LOL, this sort of pricing is more related to the opposite end, like slavery, or feudal lords. You work all your life making your masters (landlords) rich while having just enough to pay your bills and have a little for savings. As soon as the business guys figure out you've gotten more money, they jack up the prices.

I'm also pointing out the relative imbalance in pricing. When an authority figure (govt, business, landlord, car manufacturer etc) provides a commodity service (like rental property), he/it demands a premium (percentage based) price. When a slave (or employee) provides a valuable, difficult and unique product/service (like software), he receives a commodity, non-recurring, low salary, while his masters reap 100x from his efforts.

Why are programmers special? Why not custodians, oil change mechanics, security guards and the people who work at In & Out?

Yes, programmers are special. Programmers are creative people and their work has long lasting impact similar to that of artists, researchers, authors, musicians, mathematicians etc. The work of all creative people may have long-lasting value. Their work is hard -- getting the (eg. programming) skill is only the first step. They still have to work hard (mentally, creatively) to finish their work. By comparison, non-creative jobs (like custodians, security guards) only require getting the skill, after that it is more or less, coasting through their career and their work is non long-lasting.

Three reasons to form a union

[gurps_npc]

1) Low pay/benefits.
In some situations, Silicon Valley will offer low pay and no benefits, but only to new hires. This is particularly common in start ups. Competent, Experienced people get god pay and can demand their own benefits. But new people have the right to reasonable pay.

2) Dangerous working conditions.
Silicon Valley does not do this.

3) Ridiculous hours/work.
Silicon Valley is known to do this consistently.

That is two out of three for new/bad workers. Yes, Silicon Valley needs Labor Unions.

Re:Three reasons to form a union

[Anonymous Coward]

The 3rd is almost evil. As most SV employees are EXEMPT SALARY.
My boss told me he expected 65-70hrs a week at the keyboard. Just as a 'standard'.
Often 24+hr shifts and 24/7 on-call.

This incentivizes companies to under-hire, thus placing more demand on these people. It's a bullshit practice, the employee has no re-course and the labor practices are predatory. This is serious issue.

Re: I will never belong to a union

[Dorianny]

I work in the US for a German company that is partially unionized in the EU. The US unions are nothing like the German ones.

People sleep on the job,.

I guarantee you that there isn't a single Union labor contract in history that doesn't explicitly list "sleeping on the job" as a valid reason for termination.

sabotage production,

Forget Union contracts, you are decidedly in criminal law territory on this one

and generally don't care about their job or the company.

Trust and respect is not a given, it must be earned both by people and Corporations

They have no repercussions because the union protects them.

The contract signed between the Corporation and the Union requires that sufficient proof be provided for alleged infraction. If it comes to a managers word against a worker then figuring out who is telling the truth is impossible without resorting to a gut-feeling based judgment call

Re:I will never belong to a union

[Anonymous Coward]

That is like saying "I will never own stocks in a investment fund" because you do not like getting the same return as all the other investors, and that greedy/sociopath management does no appeal to you.

Both are equally short-sighted and both completely forget that without other people you would not have anything at all.

And lets not forget. Unions are just people pooling a resource (labor) for maximum profit.
So are companies, where the resource just happens to be money.
They are highly similar in nature.

Yes they are extremely similar in nature. That's why so many companies (Walmart is a good example, recently in the Slashdot headlines) don't like unions. It's why they go to such great lengths to stop unionization (in Walmart's case, I think it was UFCW). Companies and the sociopaths who run them understand the situation very well. They don't want their own tactics to be used against them.

Re: I will never belong to a union

[ganjadude]

you do know that your car companies in the US are not union run right??? and they are better in the US than the cars made in union shops right???

Re: I will never belong to a union

[Dorianny]

The contract between the DOE and the teachers Union requires them to prove in arbitration their allegations against the teachers. If it fails to do so then the teacher goes back to work. Under autocratic mayor Bloomberg, the DOE devised a diabolical scheme where instead of being returned to their regular duties these teachers where placed in these "rubber rooms" for the purpose of forcing them to resign by wearing down their mental state.

FYI: the NY Post is owned by Rupert Murdoch's, News Corporation and like FOX news and many of their other holdings, it is highly biased and closely aligned with Murdoch's political ideology

Re:Unionize you stupid shits

[ganjadude]

so thats why the taxes are so bad you get paid 2X for 1/2 work

Re:Question

[Jzanu]

Its all of them. Trump is a bad cult leader, begging the world to drink his arsenic-laced covfefe while the comet is close and the mothership is close behind it....

You are right, and completely wrong.

[Anonymous Coward]

As a person who works in IT and teaches, I am in a union (former president) in one world, but not in the other. The wisdom that I can share with you is this:

The first and foremost benefit to being in a union is collective bargaining. This not only determines wages and benefits, but also creates an equitable system for minorities. If you are wondering why there is a lack of women and black people in IT it is because they are systematically undervalued and discriminated against.

The second benefit of being in a union is due process. Contrary to popular belief, this does not protect bad workers. It does, however, guarantee a fair process when applying discipline up to termination.

The third benefit of being in a union is insurance and legal access. In the education world, when a principal threatened the employment of my wife for not volunteering to stay after school hours because she was lactating and needed to feed our child, the lawyer stepped in. Strangely enough, the school had been violating State mandated workplace time rules that the lawyer had actually written. His fees were paid for through insurance paid for with member dues.

Now, to dispel any FUD about unions:

Unions are prohibited, by law, from spending any dues money for political purposes. They do, however, solicit contributions for political purposes.

Unions do not prevent employers, such as GM from closing manufacturing facilities and moving production to other countries.

Unions are a victim of their own success. When asking yourself what have unions ever done for the general public, consider laws passed regarding:

maternity leave
overtime pay
40 hour work week
minimum wages
workers compensation
employer based healthcare / healthcare for all (ACA in U.S., Universal in other countries)
sick days
outlawing discrimination
child labor
workking conditions
OSHA
whistleblowers

People take these things for granted now, but businesses are either trying to weaken these laws or move labor to parts of the world that do not have these laws. Unions are therefore not a thing of the past, but something that are always needed to secure the future.

The bottom line is that H1B visas would not be an issue if IT workers had strong unions. IT workers would not always be on call or working 60 hour weeks if they had strong unions. IT workers would not suffer age discrimination if they had strong unions.

Last year, I filed 5 W-2 forms and a Schedule S (IT Consulting) on my taxes. I have the opportunity to work with lots of employers, including some that outsource work to India. I have perspective, and agree that IT workers are sheep who are convinced they are wolves.

The reality is that IT workers have no protection, and are blind to the fact that they need it until it is too late. With experience comes wisdom. Unfortunately, your colleagues are replaced before they acquire it. Don't be stupid. Unionize your workplace before you are replaced too.

They need to get rid of the contractor designation

[sethstorm]

The problem isn't so much lack of unions as it is the existence of a second-tier contractor status.

Get rid of that and you get rid of the problem.

Re:I will never belong to a union

[sethstorm]

The worst employee is much better than the offshored individuals that come in.

As an another Ohioan LF work, that doesn't.

[sethstorm]

In more populous states and in the cities especially, it's very easy to find work.

Ohio isn't exactly friendly to (re-)entry-level IT/CS work. Southwest Ohio, even moreso with the myriad of staffing agencies from whoknowswhere in the I-75 corridor.

Should one be in the Dayton metro area and also is looking for IT/CS work that doesn't involve Wright-Patt or some onerous certification requirements (IAT 8570, I'm looking at you!), good luck. You'd have to bankrupt yourself to find somewhere willing to take you on.

If you're wondering, I've interviewed as far out as Columbus.

Let the free market do its thing. If a company wants better workers, pay more and treat them better. If your employer is crap, leave. It actually does work.

If you don't have an employer, what then? Kind of hard to quit something you never had.

As noted above, southwest Ohio is a huge counter-example to your argument. The market is broken here.

Re:I will never belong to a union

[BarbaraHudson]

What did you do to change it? After all, you were a member, so you have a say.

Re: I will never belong to a union

[BarbaraHudson]

I was in the steelworker's union as a trucker, and that didn't stop me from fixing a thieving slacker's wagon. Didn't need to go through the union, but being part of it meant that when I took direct action, I was protected and he was fired. A helper stealing from customer loads makes all of us, but especially the driver, look bad.

It's the thief who was incompetent, short sighted, and greedy, not me. Try to screw me over to hide your actions, I owe you nothing. This applies in a lot of life's situations.

The fact is that disparity would not hold

[SuperKendall]

Suppose you looked around and saw that union wages were about 50% to 100% higher in your field for the same work. Would that justify the union dues?

Not when any programmer could just go somewhere else and get the 50-100% themselves with no union dues... or simply point that out before they left and get paid equally.

The fantasy that unions can help programmers who are already making tons of money is absurd, because programmers can easily obtain equivalent pay and get it - thus rendering a programmers union stillborn.

What value then would a programmers union have, obtaining several more varieties of cereal in the fully stocked kitchen?

Re: The fact is that disparity would not hold

[Reverend Green]

What fantasy land are you living in? If you can quit your job and immediately get another job at much higher pay - well, dude, go for it. Right now. Get off /. and get the ball rolling! Show us lazy sons if bitches how it's done!

Or maybe you were just pulling that shit out of your ass. Because I think most people here know that nominal wages in the tech industry have been stagnant for a decade.

Re: The fact is that disparity would not hold

[SuperKendall]

You are the one with the fantasy where union programmers get paid 100% more than non-union programmers.

The reality is that there is no such disparity at the moment, so I don't need to quit and go elsewhere - though I could easily, which is why programmers unions make no sense. Then I'd just get higher pay elsewhere if a company would not match union pay. That's the point.

Because I think most people here know that nominal wages in the tech industry have been stagnant for a decade.

Not for myself, nor anyone I know working at large or small companies.

Most especially not in California, where pay keeps going up and up (though it does so to match the rise in housing cost).

Talk about someone living in a fantasy land... if you worked in tech you'd know how wrong you really are.

I'll let you have the last word because you obviously know nothing, and are really full of your misinformed opinion on how the tech industry works.

Re: The fact is that disparity would not hold

[Reverend Green]

Alas, it appears the reality is that even you cannot immediately quit and get a 100% raise.

Note, the 100% wage increase claim was made by different user. I myself would not venture to guess how much increase to expect, though I certainly would expect it to be significant. Another benefit one might reasonably expect is ending the abusive labor practices which have become commonplace in the industry.

Your personal wages may well have gone up because your skill & seniority increased. That doesn't mean wages have been increasing across the board. In my observation, typical wages for any given role in Silicon Valley have been pretty stagnant for about a decade. During that period cost of living has increased very substantially.

I doubt we're gonna agree on this. You hate unions because you feel that you and your buddies are ever so super awesome. Well huzzah and good for you!

The rest of us see the proletarianization of software development, see the stagnant wages and bad working conditions. We call bullshit on your superiority complex. We see that an experienced developer in Silly Valley today has a lower standard of living than an assembly line worker fifty years ago. We see our friends burnt out and broke. We see nerds treated like subhuman work dogs, while silverspoon nepotists reap all the financial rewards. We see a bleak future if we continue down the current path.

Maybe you're okay with that, but it's not what I signed up for. It seems more and more people are feeling the same way.

Re: I will never belong to a union

[Anonymous Coward]

What I saw second hand through a buddy of mine in college (terrible employee) contradicts that. I don't believe he ever slept on the job, but he sure was tardy and absent to an ridiculous degree. Took them forever to fire him, and leading up to that he was frequently made aware that he should be on his best behavior to avoid cause (which he would, and thus the absurd time period it took before he was finally terminated). Nothing against unions in general, but there are definitely some indefensible ones out there.

Re:I will never belong to a union

[Chaos Incarnate]

You only have a say if the loafers - er, lifers - don't outnumber you and outrank you.

Competitive labor doesn't need a union

[Karmashock]

Its why doctors don't need unions. If you have skills that are in limited supply that is all you need.

The people that tend to profit from unions are people without unique or valuable skills. And unions won't actually do that anymore given global economics.

Thus the union as a concept is obsolete. Those with skills can't be so easily replaced and those without will be outsourced or something if they cause problems.

So... do as thou wilt.

Re: Competitive labor doesn't need a union

[Reverend Green]

You do know that the medical union (AMA) is the strongest union in America - right?

Re: Competitive labor doesn't need a union

[Karmashock]

The AMA is not a labor union which works to set, support, or negotiate wages paid to doctors or nurses so far as I know. As such, conflating them with other "unions" of that type does not appear to be logically or empirically supportable.

When you asked if I knew that, did you know that the AMA was not conflatible with other labor unions which work primarily to set, support, or negotiate wages?

Please don't attempt to high hat me unless you actually have something. It inclines me via quid pro quo to high hat you.

Re: Competitive labor doesn't need a union

[Reverend Green]

WTF does it mean to "high hat" someone? Yes, yes, I looked in Urban Dictionary. Do other people actually use that term?

The AMA is a "professional organization" - in other words, a union for wealthy workers with political connections. Obviously their tactics are different than the tactics employed by labor unions. Nevertheless, AMA provides collective representation to physicians, and it's primary concern is maintaining high pay for docs.

Re: Competitive labor doesn't need a union

[Karmashock]

Labor unions and the AMA are not the same thing. You know that. Your argument fails on that basis alone.

The AMA sets medical practice standards. The context of the labor union thing out of SV is of a different nature.

Look, you want to deny the Sun? Super. Do it. A union won't happen here. You think I'm wrong? Great... Time will tell leaving one of us right and one of us wrong.

I'm happy to leave it there.

Re:I can't afford to live in Beverly Hills

[jellomizer]

As someone who works in upstate NY where housing is cheaper. There is a trade off. The jobs available are not the exciting technology where you working on the next breakthrough. But the normal job using existing technology to solve problems that others have solved except it is cheaper for you to build it than buy it from someone else.
There is no wow status for making a website for a government agency. Or getting two hospitals talk to each other. But that is the nature of tech jobs in the location.

Re:I will never belong to a union

[Anonymous Coward]

if shareholders are allowed to form a co-op in order to retain workers; why shouldn't workers form a co-op in order to negotiate?

Re:I will never belong to a union

[BarbaraHudson]

Sure you do. The union won't back a thief. In this case, he was there a lot longer than me. They were not going to file a grievance over firing a repeat thief.

Re:I will never belong to a union

[BarbaraHudson]

It doesn't have to be that way - unless you're the type that rolls over at the first push, in which case you get what you deserve.

Re: I can't afford to live in Beverly Hills

[ArmoredDragon]

Actually in the case of silicon valley, the government goes out of its way to prevent more housing from being built.

Besides that, your original premise is invalid. Landlords don't charge based on your salary, rather they charge whatever people will pay. People will be willing to pay more in higher demand areas.

Easy fix: Move out of that area. There are plenty of jobs that pay well in other areas. Sure, they don't pay as much as silicon valley, but who cares? What good is a 100k salary when your cost of living well exceeds that? In Phoenix that much money is enough that you never need to worry about money at all. Hell, I make 20k less than that here and I don't even worry about money.

Re: I can't afford to live in Beverly Hills

[nbauman]

Easy fix: Move out of that area. There are plenty of jobs that pay well in other areas. Sure, they don't pay as much as silicon valley, but who cares? What good is a 100k salary when your cost of living well exceeds that? In Phoenix that much money is enough that you never need to worry about money at all. Hell, I make 20k less than that here and I don't even worry about money.

If you have a well-paying skill, and the only market for that skill is in a particular region, then you can't move out of the area.

In the example I used, of shipbuilding in the Brooklyn Navy Yard, if you had one of the many well-paid, needed skills used in shipbuilding, you might not find a job in Phoenix. I don't think there are many shipyards in Phoenix.

Re: I can't afford to live in Beverly Hills

[ArmoredDragon]

What part of shipbuilding? I guarantee you don't build the entire thing yourself, and any particular task you do would be transferable to other careers.

Re: I will never belong to a union

[Reverend Green]

Because only communists had the courage to stand up for the interests of working people?

Re: I will never belong to a union

[Reverend Green]

Few economists think it's a good idea to have trade policies that protect workers, because most economists work for organizations that directly profit from the impoverishment of workers.

In other news, very few waiters think everyone should dine at home.

Re: Unionize you stupid shits

[Reverend Green]

Aren't total taxes a fair bit lower in Canada than in California? So I've heard - but I know not to believe everything you hear about tax rates. Especially from the semi-official media outlets, whose reporting often hugely understates real tax rates.

Re: Silicon Valley has rediscovered the robber-bar

[Reverend Green]

If they were based in India, they'd actually need to turn a profit. Fedgov's quantitative easing free money spigot is only available to American capitalists who went to the right (American) university and who play golf at the right (American) country club.

Re: I will never belong to a union

[stoatwblr]

"the DOE devised a diabolical scheme where instead of being returned to their regular duties these teachers where placed in these "rubber rooms" for the purpose of forcing them to resign by wearing down their mental state."

Pull that in any EU country and you'll be in front of labour courts for constructive dismissal - and you would lose, badly.

Unions

[dudeNumber4]

Unions are at all times and all situations a bad thing. Of course it seems like the low skilled jobs are underpaid. If so, I'm guessing it's difficult to keep them filled. Good; the wages will go up naturally or the jobs will remain unfilled. That's the way a market should work and does work. Whenever unions take root, the industry and consumer suffers. Witness industries such as steel in US and Detroit auto. In the early days of the automobile, Detroit *was* Silicon Valley. Innovation flourished. Many prospered. The city thrived. Union and general collectivism in government took over. Now Detroit is hell on earth. As in literally; perhaps the world's worst 1st-world city in every way. Economics is simple; there is no free lunch. If you see an opportunity higher on the food chain, pursue it. Almost all of us will find some opportunities out of reach. Do the best you can; extortion is not a virtue.

I worked in an IT union once

[TheStickBoy]

I worked in an IT union once, it was horrible

This union only cared about their interests, namely collecting their union dues and raiding other unions for more members (dues)
Employees in the same job category got the same pay so it was a race to see who could do the least amount of work
Do drugs on the job? steal money from the company? no problem the union will protect you.


Unions have some benefits and can do some good but they were not for me.

Re:I will never belong to a union

[Mike Van Pelt]

You've swallowed the purple flavor-aid. Union members don't like slackers any more than anyone else. Nobody wants to have to work harder to make up for lazy turds riding on their coat-tails. Union members are no exception.

And union members also don't like over-achievers who make everyone else look bad. Everyone must march in lockstep, identical interchangable cogs in the machine.

Re:I will never belong to a union

[BarbaraHudson]

Not all unions are the same. Same as not all businesses are the same. Argument from stereotype is pretty shitty. Unions can have pay scales that reflect both experience and ability - that's up to the members to decide.

As for you saying "Everyone must march in lockstep, identical interchangable (sic) cogs in the machine", that sounds more like business's attitude. Unions fight the whole "interchangeable cogs" thing by making it harder to just toss workers out at will like interchangeable cogs in a machine. Why do you think so many businesses hate unions? It takes away one of their perks.