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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.
I wouldn't want to hitch my horse to SEIU's tactics; I imagine eventually it is going to backfire.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Actually, to be blunt, what unions are about nowadays is simply existing as a business. They expand by finding new revenue streams, which are workers. So they find people that might not be happy with their work and convince them to joint he union to make things better. Then the union gets recurring revenue.
I have no problems with unions, but if these folks want to unionize they should join together and do so. No need to send a big part of your check to the AFL-CIO or whoever each month.
Do you have ESP?
Note that most of those manager types tend to not last very long
Real world calling Penguinisto. Real world calling Penguinisto. Come in Penguinisto.
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.
"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.
I don't know dude. I purposefully came out there because I like the insane pressure, impossible timelines, and general feverishness of the culture. I like that I can routinely do what others cannot or will not do. That's appealing. Build this by tomorrow? Sure. I'll microdose on some lsd then intersperse micro bumps of cocaine with a little liquor and get it done if it takes me working through the night. But that's not for everyone and in the long term is probably poor for my health. That being said, it's what gets me in to work every day and I wouldn't trade it for an easy 3 month timetable desk jocky job.
I would assume you're making a joke but either way, here's the rub. Whatever the product of your efforts is, it all disappears into ancient history over time sometimes remarkably fast. So much in fact, it's as if it never happened at all. No one remembers you or what you did regardless of the level of persistence and wizardry. Usually along this path, you sacrifice important relationships and other things that may have lasted up until your final hours. I suppose everyone gets the choice but remember who's going to be beside you on your death bed. That's who really matters and is worth investing time in.
We'll make great pets
Most creative types who have lives outside of work also DO NOT WANT constant 100-hour weeks and deathmarches. Other than people working for "all inclusive" employers like Microsoft or Google, I don't know anyone over 25 who desperately wants more time at work. Most people get that out of their system after their first employer that takes advantage of them.
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.