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Union Power Is Putting Pressure on Silicon Valley's Tech Giants (bloomberg.com)
An anonymous reader writes: Organized labor doesn't rack up a lot of wins these days, and Silicon Valley isn't most people's idea of a union hotbed. Nonetheless, in the past three years unions have organized 5,000 people who work on Valley campuses. Among others, they've unionized shuttle drivers at Apple, Tesla, Twitter, LinkedIn, EBay, Salesforce.com, Yahoo!, Cisco, and Facebook; security guards at Adobe, IBM, Cisco, and Facebook; and cafeteria workers at Cisco, Intel, and, earlier this summer, Facebook. The workers aren't technically employed by any of those companies. Like many businesses, Valley giants hire contractors that typically offer much less in the way of pay and benefits than the tech companies' direct employees get. Among other things, such arrangements help companies distance themselves from the way their cafeteria workers and security guards are treated, because somebody else is cutting the checks. Silicon Valley Rising, a coalition of unions and civil rights, community, and clergy groups heading the organizing campaign, says its successes have come largely from puncturing that veneer of plausible deniability. That means directing political pressure, media scrutiny, and protests toward the tech companies themselves. "Everybody knows that the contractors will do what the tech companies say, so we're focused on the big guys," says Ben Field, a co-founder of the coalition who heads the AFL-CIO's South Bay Labor Council. Labor leaders say their efforts have gotten some tech companies to cut ties with an anti-union contractor, intervene with others to ease unionization drives, and subsidize better pay for contract workers. "If you want to get people to buy your product, you don't want them to feel that buying your product is contributing to the evils of the world," says Silicon Valley Rising co-founder Derecka Mehrens, who directs Working Partnerships USA, a California nonprofit that advocates for workers. Tech companies have been image-conscious and closely watched of late, she says, and the coalition is "being opportunistic."
San Francisco loves its left wingers, but somehow the economic side of that is left in the dust. It almost seems like they're authoritarian corporatists wielding identity politics as a pathetic fig leaf.
If video games influenced behavior the Pac Man generation would be eating pills and running away from their problems.
See, the tech execs? They're not libertarians, they're greedy douchebags who expect to find cheap labor they can exploit while making shitloads of money.
Let's not pretend that Silicon valley is some bastion of moral virtue. It's full of nouveau riche assholes who write op-ed pieces about how the poor and homeless are ruining the view for nouveau riche assholes.
It's a fucking bro culture of self entitled pricks who might have some vestigial decency from a normal upbringing, but who are now cut throat business people who are more than willing to shit on the menial laborers while trying to give the illusion that the coddled tech workers are being cared for out of a sense of duty.
But let's stop pretending like they're actually concerned with anything but their own bottom line.
You're right. The Koch brothers are much better.
I thought that in these times unions and all kind of social things are considered taboo or at least the beast as being told in the book of revelations.
Oddly enough "being opportunistic" is something most companies proud themselves at times, like Uber when it surged its fees near dissasters so more drivers would be there or when some company (*****) sells defective products without enough testing, or when most companies use all legal loopholes to avoid paying taxes or when clothes companies use slave labour because is cheaper or...
... you didn't get assign projects that are due tomorrow that have ZERO requirements and then if you question where the requirements are you get labelled as being "negative". This is why we actually need representation unfortunately. Many tech company managers to do the equivalent of finding a corner in a circular room because that's "what we need" and then act surprised when you can't do it and say "What's your problem?"
We'll make great pets
I wouldn't want to hitch my horse to SEIU's tactics; I imagine eventually it is going to backfire.
That's why it's important to fire any contractors that you find out are using unionized employees. Obviously, any conscientious company will have a Just Say No attitude toward any attempts to unionize, but you gotta watch out for contractors too. If customers ever find out that your people are indirectly unionized, that's going to look really bad for your company, no matter how pristine your reputation otherwise might be.
This probably has you thinking: it just goes to show that we consumers need to be more vigilant about stamping out unions. That it's not as simple as merely boycotting companies with obviously ineffective/expensive labor; you have to actually look a little deeper.
But I disagree. I think it ought to merely come down to performance. If something is overpriced or sucks, don't buy it. Even if you can't directly attribute the defects to the presence of a union, it might still be there, lurking indirectly. And similarly, if a place has unions but the unions haven't destroyed the business and made their products uncompetitive, I think they ought to get cut some slack. Maybe they're handling the threat correctly.
Boycott suckiness and high prices. That'll get the unions, when they need getting. And they won't be able to hide behind a contractor, because you can't hide a high price; the high price is the unit of selection. And if the product is good or affordable, there's no need to boycott whatever union might be present, because they're relatively harmless.
Seize the means of production!
They're not libertarians
None of the CEOs mentioned in TFA claim to be libertarians. Of those that have taken public political positions, most of the are liberals/progressives.
they're greedy douchebags who expect to find cheap labor they can exploit
They have located their companies in the World's most expensive labor market, and they have agreed to accommodate the unions and raise pay despite no legal obligation to do so.
You're essentially trading advancement opportunity and part of your pay for security of a job. State laws, especially in CA, cover the vast majority of why Unions used to need to exist; now it's more about the bottom finding a way closer to the middle by forcing others there as well.
"... such arrangements help companies distance themselves from the way their cafeteria workers and security guards are treated."
What a load of rubbish. Companies outsource these things because it makes sense. Apple isn't in the restaurant industry. Facebook isn't in the Corporate Security industry. Cisco isn't in the cleaning industry. Smart business outsource what they aren't good at or capabilities they don't have expertise in, and insource those critical differentiators that provide them with competitive advantage. To suggest there is a conspiracy afoot for that companies can malign unskilled labor (defined as doing a job that only requires a HS diploma) is silly.
And once everyone goes to school, and you have Ph.D.s working as janitors because there's far less demand in the world for Ph.D.s than janitors, what then will be your excuse for paying janitors shit wages?
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
If you treat your every day rank and file service employees poorly and pay them less than a livable wage, then you can expect them to get angry and rise up. I am pro-union. As long as the upper echelon of companies are going to be greedy and expect slavery, then there has to be some checks and balances. And don't bother replying with some sarcastic response to pro-Union. Just go your own fucking way.
Let's be clear: Corporations are the aggregation of capital. Unions are the aggregation of labor. If you think one is a good thing, you have to accept the other as necessary.
In fact, as that famous socialist Abraham Lincoln said, "Capital is only the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if labor had not first existed. Labor is the superior of capital, and deserves much the higher consideration."
You are welcome on my lawn.
Unions are not worker's friends.
Unions are the kind of friend that comes over and drinks your beer. Borrows your stuff without returning it. Forgets his wallet when eating out. But drives a $55K Mercedes.
Some have, others, maybe. While Microsoft is not in Silly Valley, they do reside in near-equally-liberal SeaTac... yet technically, their corporate headquarters is in Delaware (for tax purposes). Come to think of it, so is Intel, Google, Apple... http://www.huffingtonpost.com/...
(note, info is a bit old, but I believe still accurate).
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
Supply and demand dictates what people are paid. At the moment, a PHD typically makes more than a janitor because it's much easier to find someone to be a janitor. You can't simply be a PHD although I know some who would have a tough time figuring out which end of a toilet brush to use. When everyone has a PHD and there are no janitors and trash is piling up and restrooms need cleaning, then the PHD holding janitors will make an appropriate wage.
It isn't compatible with unionization in any way, shape, or form. If for no other reason, the powers that be would never allow it.
If anyone is given a Ph.D then a Ph.D obviously has no value. Welcome to the world of participation trophies where giving degrees out to anyone with a pulse and the ability to get a student loan turns out to be a bad idea. This will always happen when standards are lowered so people can feel good about themselves.
Shut up, you with your stupid.... facts. Your ruining a perfectly good jealous rant!
The tech companies addressed here contract because they lack skills to do whatever it is the contractor does ....
It's about having a much more "flexible" (can them when not needed) workforce. It's about saving money on the overall cost of the worker. Contractors are cheaper than regular employees. You don't have to give health insurance to contractors, pay social security, workers comp, or provide any other benefits. And they work you to death. It's always crunch time.
Hiring contractors is all about the money and being able to abuse folks who are not employees.
And when I contracted, when I added up the extra costs that I had to pay, the extra time with the bookkeeping, and the other added expenses of being "in business for myself", I was getting screwed.
And when I was a w-2 "contractor/consultant", I was treated like shit, forced into shit jobs because they couldn't bench me for too long and it totally ruined my career because to keep me busy, they threw me into a dead-end shit support job and since you are your last job, I have never ever been able to leave.
NEVER work for a contracting company.
Not Ireland?
If a college degree is now worth less today than it was in the past, why does it now cost more to obtain than it used to?
"For the moment, you're still cheaper than a robot." the remaining excuse for paying janitors anything at all.
Don't get me wrong, I'm sympathetic. It's just you can't expect much if you leave these sorts of things to market forces. When the market decides you're cheap, you may have agency (unlike other commodities) to increase your value. Desire is insufficient however, you must also have the resolve the follow through... and often the money to get the ball rolling.
It may also require you to have some foresight into where your industry is headed. You may have made decent money as a janitor in 1997. But had you kept your eyes open, you'd might have seen the hiring standards collapse and the department flood with drug addicts. Then you may notice year after year of no raise despite inflation and despite how good a janitor you are.
When your body is nearly broken and you're still making the same money you did in 1997, it's almost too late. Joining a union is probably the best option at that point - but it's still a free market, and companies are also free to end their contracts. It's a losing proposition no matter what you do, so you might as well do something.
Wages are still commensurate to skill and experience, and demand will only go so high for the job. Janitorial work, while needed and necessary, is not a job that requires a lot of knowledge, expertise, and/or skill. Literally anybody with a modern 6th-grade level of education can be a janitor, and do so with less than a day's worth of training.
Mind, this is not an excuse to treat a janitor like some sort of subhuman, but it doesn't require you to pay him the same as you would pay a developer, sysadmin, etc. Now if you own the company and want to pay the janitors the same wage as you pay your CFO, then go for it. Just don't expect others to do so.
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
My grandpa had only an 8th grade education. Went to work for GM and was trained as an electrician. Worked his entire life there while supporting a family of 7 and owning a house.
He retired at 65 with a pension and banked the Social Security and lived very comfortably. Thanks the UAW Union.
Try doing that today. Even with a college degree.
Sounds like an incompetent, shitty union to me... There are still unions out there that have the workers' back.
Because the federal government spent the last 40 years skewing lower the standards of higher education by flooding the market with what is essentially free money:
A college loan from the government is an unsecured subsidized loan that you need not have any credit history to get and absolutely no burden to prove that you are going to do something, anything that will give you the opportunity to pay it back at literally any point in your life. And if you default, the government picks up the tab, so who really fucking cares if you wash out of school with no degree eight years, three degree programs, and 80 thousand dollars later? The college doesn't care if your dumb ass probably shouldn't have been there in the first place: they already got money from you that is 97% backed by the federal government.
It costs more because the government began subsidizing/guaranteeing student loans. Then you have some states giving "free" tuition to anyone with a C average. The price has grown exponentially ever since now that taxpayers are on the hook.
It isn't compatible with unionization in any way, shape, or form. If for no other reason, the powers that be would never allow it.
welcome to reality where your "powers that be" are whiny white crackers with no political power
I'm actually an advocate of companies retaining most of their employees as FTEs. Current accounting rules and tax law doesn't make this as appealing as it used to be. Too many companies pull a Pontias Pilate and wash their hands of any employee responsibility by hiring contracting firms to do things that aren't their "core competency." It's mainly these contracting firms that turn around and treat their employees like garbage to increase margin on their outsourcing deal. Living in a place like Silicon Valley and earning just over minimum wage as a cafeteria worker must require a huge sacrifice or a multi-hour commute to work a cafeteria job. If the contracting companies did a far superior job than FTEs would, I'd say they should definitely handle the work. But as we've seen in IT, contractors lowball salaries, bring in H-1Bs and offshore any work that doesn't require a physical presence. Services contractors like food service and janitorial companies will do the bare minimum required to make their employees not quit...and that bar is very low when you consider the exploitable nature of that workforce.
What I would like to see on the skilled side of the house is a guild system that replaces the patchwork of vendor certifications, for-profit schools and other training methods. A traditional union is great for commodity workers, but a guild or professional organization works best for workers that don't have uniform levels of experience and aren't doing a simple job. If a company knew the baseline quality of someone they hired, that sure beats having the hiring manager and the team the candidate would work with try to decipher what on their resume is a lie or exaggeration. Most IT interviews I've been on have had a quiz component, and I'm sure that's because the company has been burned by bullshitters too often. It's not enough to graduate with a CS degree, and the field of IT and development is gotten so huge that it's impossible to be great at everything. I'm a big-time generalist and advocate for more people being like this, but I simply have to choose what I'm good at this year and keep shifting focus to be useful in any one area.
Guilds and professional orgs would pretty much be the only thing that would work to organize technology workers. There are way too many prima donnas, "rockstars" and people who would never stoop to the level of a lower-skilled worker. This is why it works well for doctors, a group known for having egos that have an observable gravitational field. The organization is paid by its members to pay for laws that limit the ability to practice and keep the number of new entrants to a minimum. I'd actually like to see this because I really hate the fact that someone can be totally incompetent, get fired, then do the equivalent of joining the French Foreign Legion and get hired somewhere else as if nothing happened.
their corporate headquarters is in Delaware
Most big American companies incorporate in Delaware. Delaware corporate law is considered "standard" and is by far the most well known by lawyers and financiers. There is rarely a sensible reason to incorporate in another state, unless you are so small that the $100 annual fee is significant.
I once saw a presentation by Kleiner Perkins on "How to get VC funding". This was the first item on their list:
1. Incorporate in Delaware
If you are too boneheaded to get that right, they consider you too clueless to succeed.
(for tax purposes)
State of incorporation makes almost no difference in taxation. Microsoft would actually pay slightly less tax if they incorporated in Washington.
Unions only have one single function in today's world in the US. They make a few people running the union rich. They do very little to protect the workers at all. Though they have managed to inflate salaries for workers to several times higher than they should be.
It's easy for a union, high school drop out metro bus driver to earn 6 figures a year, same with dock workers/laborers and many other unionized industries. Completely uneducated people earning much more than many college graduates. Then you see the houses and stuff these people have, they have no idea how to spend or save money properly due to the lack of education and the group think that they believe the union will take care of their sorry asses. They live in shitty, unmaintained run down houses, junk cars every where, etc.
Watch out if you speak your mind about unions around these uneducated twits though, they are very likely to physically assault you. What's really odd, is you have a teacher's union, full of educated people who are still very poorly paid.
MIcrosoft is not located in SeaTac, SeaTac is a city where the airport is located. Mircosoft is located in Redmond Washington, which is a suburb of Seattle. Many microsoft offices are also in Bellevue, but little of Microsoft is in Seattle.
That being said, the whole area is liberal, but Redmond and Bellevue don't put up with the homeless nearly as much as Seattle does (at least from what I can see driving around and reading the newspapers).
Just watched 'On the Waterfront' again. Not all evils are corporate.
Have gnu, will travel.
I think anyone allowing Kleiner Perkins to get their claws into them is the bonehead.
>Wages are still commensurate to skill and experience
That's a comforting thought if you're making decent money, the only problem is it's not true. Wages also don't depend on the value your provide.
The *only* thing that determines your wages in a free market economy, is how expensive you are to replace. i.e. the number of viable job candidates, versus the number of jobs that need to be filled.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
Which is why I make a point to avoid anything marked with "Fair Trade" and similar Leftist labels...
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
And the appropriate wage will be exactly the same, because it hasn't gotten any more difficult to find someone qualified to do the job. All you've changed is the number of people who are also now qualified to do more skilled jobs. But demand for those skills doesn't increase, so now those skilled jobs *also* pay shit wages, because there's a long line of janitors wo will be happy do those jobs rather than cleaning toilets.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
"Today's union is all about promising workers the moon while skirting the reality that is unskilled labor will never make a living wage."
Actually, it's the only way an unskilled worker will make a living wage, especially now. If you're approaching this from the position of being a skilled worker, change your perspective a little. Suppose you lost the IQ lottery, or had a crappy home life that interfered with your education, and didn't have employers and recruiters beating down your door begging you to come work in Silicon Valley for $350K a year. The only way you can make your situation better is by finding an employer who will pay you a reasonable wage throughout your career. Unions bargain with employers to ensure they can't get away with paying minimum wage in the most expensive labor market in the country. They also negotiate things like sick time, pension and other benefits that no one employee would be able to negotiate for themselves.
A good real-world example that doesn't involve manufacturing or public service (since those are hot-button areas with unions) is supermarkets. Unionized supermarkets are one type of employment that allows semi-skilled workers to have something of a career. Someone with no education or technical ability can be paid enough to survive and have something of a comfortable existence. They'll never get rich, but seniority ensures that they're not going to get kicked out when they're 40 the way a lot of IT folks do, for example.
A friend of mine in college had a part time job in a warehouse for a large supermarket chain. According to him, the difference in outlook between a part time college worker looking to pay some bills and a full-time employee trying to survive is very different. It was a crappy job - hot in the summer, cold in the winter and mind-numbing...but some of the people he worked with were hoping for the day they could go full time and fully join the union. Because once that happened, they would be protected from firing, they would get to do slightly more interesting jobs like operating forklifts, and their pay would increase.
Keep this in mind as we rapidly head toward a world where a much higher percentage of the population falls into the "unskilled" category...and today's knowledge workers are going to be a good example.
Has anyone considered using a guild mechanism instead? (Like Hollywood does.)
This would allow employees the option to negotiate their own salary, but would give a minimal level of protection regarding working conditions, perhaps retirement savings / pension, and legal representation in case of employment pursuits. You'd still have to pay some dues, but at least you don't have to deal with some of things that people don't like about unions (e.g., strict seniority ranking / pay).
Folks like the AFL–CIO or Teamsters should consider setting up guild subsidiaries as a way to split the difference between laissez-faire markets (which may have 'protection' that is "too light" (read: "often none")) and traditional unions (which may be "too heavy" for some folks).
These people need to put their money where their mouth is.
So, I just ambled out of bed and was confused as to why Onion Powder was causing such problems
Ah say, this must not stand. The South Bay will rise again! /FoghornLeghorn.
I think anyone allowing Kleiner Perkins to get their claws into them is the bonehead.
Perhaps. But if you ever want to do an IPO, issue stock options, sell corporate bonds, or even take out a sizable bank loan, then the process will be faster and cheaper for a Delaware corp.
Here's a business Idea. Lets create a Mobile App to social and geo enable Unionization. Have it funded by VCs.
Revenue Model is that Big companies like Google will fund Series A or else their unionized employees on the app will strike.
Profit!!!
**Life is too short to be serious**
Janitor used to be a totally legitimate career, senior janitors used to be a jack of all trades handyman.
You went to school to assure yourself a life with dignity and this new breed of minimum wage janitor can go do that as well.
So.
You'll now be working with that janitor once he's done with school.
I personally can't stand working with warehouse managers who became IT managers, military sigint who are now network security, and of course the classic h1b who hates tech work and only does it because his mother would have disowned him if he didn't grow up and become an engineer.
Maybe you like getting mismanaged and having your co-workers dump tasks on you but I sure don't.
Not to mention how the poor react when you tell them to go to school. They get 10 loans and take them straight to the closest ITT tech. They don't know any better. You presumably were exposed to people who pushed you into a nice ivy or state university and university of phoenix never even crossed your mind. Right now I'm trying to nudge my friend to stop wasting his time with kaplin but I don't think it's going to work.
So we can resolve all of those issues... or we can go back to giving the janitor a little respect in this country again.
The point douche bag is that they are exactly the same.
LMOL while hiring people from the World's cheapest labor market. Try again Potsy...
It wasn't that long ago that you couldn't program a robot to do all the work of a janitor. All the fixing pipes, vacuum cleaners, running cable... a good career janitor was the jack of all trades.
Of course some fuckface couldn't understand why they were paying someone 30 - 60k a year to empty garbage cans and sweep so now we have the janitor contractor. Costs less than the janitor's salary and the worker gets even less.. and couldn't give a fuck less if you don't want your desk touched or if your wastebasket goes on the left and recycling is on the right... and sure as fuck won't run a cable, maintain a boiler, or fix their own vacuum cleaner when it breaks or answer questions about your break pads.
Oh yeah and they'll steal random office supplies like toiler paper or swipe change off your desk. Fuck that.
A.K.A "Supply and demand! Invisible Hand! Work Harder! Got mine, Fuck Yours!"
There is power there is power in a band of working folk, when we stand brand in hand, it's the power its the power that will rule in every land one industrial union grand
because of slave labor in China & Mexico combined with corrupt national politics. That's what hurt the Unions in Detroit. That plus high power Union busting ("Rigth to Work"). Somewhat hilariously Canada recently demanded we put a stop to "Right to Work" laws to level the playing field between our employees and theirs as though we're a third world country. And ya know way, we kinda are...
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