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Kickstarter's Staff Is Unionizing (theverge.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Verge: The staff of Kickstarter announced plans to unionize today. If recognized, Kickstarter would be the first major tech company with union representation in the United States. Members of the union, which goes by Kickstarter United, say they want to improve inclusivity and transparency at the company. To unionize, they're working with the Office and Professional Employees International Union (OPEIU) Local 153. In a statement, the union said: "Kickstarter United is proud to start the process of unionizing to safeguard and enrich Kickstarter's charter commitments to creativity, equity, and a positive impact on society. We trust in the democratic process and are confident that the leadership of Kickstarter stands with us in that effort. Kickstarter has always been a trailblazer, and this is a pivotal moment for tech. We want to set the standard for the entire industry. Now is the time. Come together. Unionize."
In a world of Facebook and Twitter, Kickstarter feels almost quaint in its mission -- "to help bring creative projects to life" -- and in its charter as a public benefit corporation, which means that the company is "obligated to consider the impact of their decisions on society, not only shareholders." Its staff unionizing means the company will also have to consider more seriously its responsibilities to its employees. It also means that its fellows in Silicon Valley and beyond could be next. Kickstarter is fundamentally a tech company, and its staff unionizing with the OPEIU shows a way forward for other employees in the space. Kickstarter's staff is unionizing because they want to "promote our collective values: inclusion and solidarity, transparency and accountability; a seat at the table," the organizers write, noting that in the decade that Kickstarter has been around, it's democratized crowdfunding and brought more than 150,000 projects to life. "Kickstarter's efforts are incomplete, and these values have failed to manifest in our workplace. We can do better together -- for ourselves and our industry."
In a world of Facebook and Twitter, Kickstarter feels almost quaint in its mission -- "to help bring creative projects to life" -- and in its charter as a public benefit corporation, which means that the company is "obligated to consider the impact of their decisions on society, not only shareholders." Its staff unionizing means the company will also have to consider more seriously its responsibilities to its employees. It also means that its fellows in Silicon Valley and beyond could be next. Kickstarter is fundamentally a tech company, and its staff unionizing with the OPEIU shows a way forward for other employees in the space. Kickstarter's staff is unionizing because they want to "promote our collective values: inclusion and solidarity, transparency and accountability; a seat at the table," the organizers write, noting that in the decade that Kickstarter has been around, it's democratized crowdfunding and brought more than 150,000 projects to life. "Kickstarter's efforts are incomplete, and these values have failed to manifest in our workplace. We can do better together -- for ourselves and our industry."
...how long will this one last? Until the first round of contract negotiations? Until the first quarter of declining growth and/or revenue?
Pessimistic, I know, but I bet the likes of GM, Ford, Chrysler, etc felt the same way in 1955 that Kickstarter does now. However, when the pressure came down in the 1970's-1980s, the automakers' tune(s) began to change radically. I suspect Kickstarter will do the same.
After all, there's a reason why the otherwise progressive leadership at Google, Apple, and the other longer-established tech companies reject any attempts at unionization - often ruthlessly.
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
The staff of Kickstarter announced plans to unionize today.
Anyone know their GoFundMe page so I can donate to the cause?
say they want to improve inclusivity and transparency at the company.
This reads like a train wreck in progress. I can't wait.
Mod me down with all of your hatred and your journey towards the dark side will be complete!
"Kickstarter management announced that it will be offshoring it's operations to Bangalore."
In a statement from the CEO: "We needed to focus on our core competency and will continue to make Kickstarter great by offshoring non-essential operations to a third party. This will maximize the equity of the founders, senior management and the board of directors."
Harrison's Postulate - "For every action there is an equal and opposite criticism"
I'm sure we'll hear all the arguments about shipping jobs overseas or whatever.
That's already happening. The fact that we're making LESS today than we did years ago (inflation adjusted) should tell you something. And it's NOT all offshoring or H1-bs.
And it's not just making less- it's longer hours. I remember when you could work 9-5 in this industry and NOT have to be "available" 24/7 - even on vacations.
I miss having a life. A life where I could leave work, go exercise, learn some crazy technology that has no marketable value on my free time (like Python when it first came out), have friends outside of work and who weren't techies, ... not always having to show my "value" compared to some third world worker who is so desperate that they'll do anything to keep their job! ....er, that's were I am now!
Spiral to the bottom.
We're getting there!! There's a 4 or 5 digit Slashdotter who predicted this 20+ years ago. I wonder if he's still around.
They should put this idea on Indiegogo.
> " We want to set the standard for the entire industry."
I sure as hell hope that they do not.
I worked for a large auto maker and was in a union for a few years after I started. I ended up leaving the union once I realized that it was an option. That plant is now shut down.
Bad things a union brings:
Terrible workers getting paid the same as great workers.
Unsustainable compensation for workers.
Taking dues and giving them to political causes that some of their members may not support.
Would never want to be in a union again.
From the summary, it says the goal of the unionization is to:
improve inclusivity and transparency at the company
But the summary also says:
Its staff unionizing means the company will also have to consider more seriously its responsibilities to its employees
Well which is it? Because unionizing is not helping the employees, at least not with the stated goals - in fact it is implying the current workforce needs to be "improved" through inclusivity.
More transparency is also nice, but will there really be more transparency for the average worker, or just for the non-working people compensated by the workers, whose only job is to talk with management about the workers?
Basically what you can count on being an employee of Kickstarter now:
1) You will get less effective pay due to union overhead.
2) You will be "inclusive" (tolerate substandard hires that meet a diversity quota) or GTFO.
3) Now you have two bosses to please...
Good luck with that! At least the market is hot so you can easily move to a company that values productive happy people over virtue signaling.
Certainly the move means worse service for actual users of Kickstarter. What a shame, kind of enjoyed the place. Oh well, all good things must end, will look to see who picks up the pieces.
I wouldn't want the pay cut
collectively bargain your way out of employability
Someone should start a Kickstarter fund to get a non-union competitor up and running.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
Until they demand Kickstarter get even stricter and more biased in who they fund. Chasing even more business to other platforms.
Just turned deathly pale and is trembling...
If the employees want to use their union to tell their company "you cannot do business w/ US Government or Military!" then I say don't allow this union!!!
I know their chatter when I see it.
Fucking WHY? You take people's money and solve the occasional dispute. That's about it. In what reality does the inclusion of a union aid in this task? There is literately not a single fucking task that is performed at Kickstart that is either dangerous or dirty; which is about the only legitimate reason why you would need actual union protection.
Forming a union is in no way a magic panacea for creating a better working environment, no matter how many far left retards try to tell you otherwise.
This will last until people get booted out the door and some world class contractors like Infosys, Deloitte, Accenture or others brought in who can do the same work for a fraction of the cost... or the operation would be offshored for just as good quality code... but pennies on the dollar in costs.
As someone with a disability which lets companies tick off their inclusion and diversity check marks if they hire me, I wouldn't unionize for this. Discrimination is already illegal. Sure it still happens, I've lost multiple jobs due to it, but you end up not wanting to work there anyway. As long as you aren't dirt poor, any organization discriminating against you during the hiring process is a good thing because you won't want to work with those people. Forced inclusion only works over generations, it doesn't work overnight. Working at a place with artificial inclusion is a horrible experience. Even if you are good at what you do, people will assume you only got the job to meet the metrics. So not only will the discriminators still discriminate against you, more people will join them and the discrimination becomes more insidious because they can no longer just say it to your face.
If you have an issue, disclose it right before signing the acceptance letter and ask if they think there might be problems and mention you don't want to waste their time and hopefully they aren't trying to waste your time.
Why? For ideological zealots who are offended by every attempt to better ones station in life?
Who benefits? Not the workers, that's for sure. The only person this benefits is the person who is paid to head the union for the workers.
A person who does no actual work, but just talks to management about the workers. Which each side could easily do on their own, for free.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Every argument you've come up with for why the top 1% of the U.S. is terrible and needs to be torn down and their wealth redistributed? Those arguments also apply to you relative to the rest of the world.
It's not a spiral to the bottom. It's lifting up the rest of the world. Unfortunately for the 1% (you and me), the process of lifting the rest of the world results in downward pressure on the 1%. That's what creating economic equality does. You're just used to always thinking about "equality" from the perspective of the underprivileged being raised up. You've never thought of it from the perspective of the privileged being brought down, even though that's your true station in the global scheme of things.
We won't get back to pre-equality levels of wealth and job security until after the rest of the world has become as developed as us, and the lowest-hanging economic fruit shifts back to improving our productivity. You can accept that that's our fate - how we have to "pay our fair share" to helping the rest of the world. Or you can oppose it, hypocritically demanding things from the 1% in the U.S that you yourself refuse to give up to the rest of the world.
I do not conduct business with scoundrels and leftists.
I've been a resident of Silicon Valley for 40 years. I've worked as a design engineer the entire time.
Ain't going to happen. Hasn't happened when unions where stronger - why would it happen now?
How do you tell the difference in a plumber and a chemist? Ask them to pronounce unionized.
So, they have no compelling reason to unionize beyond political dogma. They're just putting their SJW ethos front and center. And for what gain? Simply to pay parts of their paychecks to union leaders. I guess they're at least putting their money where their mouth is. I wonder how long until they realize they're not actually gaining anything of value. It will just be one more bureaucracy to deal with.
All IT workers should Unionize and do it at least nationally if not Globally.
.01% of math whizzes which, statistically, you're not. Time to stop playing at John Galt and join the real fight.
You can't win by yourself against a mega corp unless you happen to be in the
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
Best employees will leave and worst ones will stay there because they are protected by the union. I saw this millions times in my career (not just in IT). I'm a freelancer for 9 years now (25 years of experience) and companies contract me to fix the mess of unmotivated "I'm here for to pay/conditions" unionised employees.
Will $CURRENT_YEAR be the year of the Linux Desktop?
This story and the headline are misleading. A union has said it has formed a group to ATTEMPT to get Kickstarter employees to join a union. So it's very premature to say the Kickstarter "staff" is unionizing. The union might or might not attract enough members from the employee base to be recognized.
"Kickstarter's charter commitments to creativity, equity, and a positive impact on society"
Were these actually measurable, I'd say "maybe." But when they sit across the collective bargaining table, how are they gonna negotiate for better or more of any of these?
Sniffs like the AOC green new deal: nice intents, but childish and thoughtless in construction.
People like you come out and start lying about how each union "has it's own rules", like that means they are completely different and won't destroy any company or industry they are formed in. History says otherwise.
Unions are useful in the short-term, but long-term the result is always the same: Shitty employees can't be fired, and corporations outsource their "production" to lower-cost countries.
captcha: "desserts"
Don't worry, the outsourced union employees can always learn to code.
Wait a second...
As economics once again shifts, there are even more people without enough competence to work in that economy so they have to sponge off people who are competent enough to do the work but not smart enough to avoid the leeches.
Unions act as a pushback against corporate greed. You do know that corporate greed affects workers at all ends of the pay scale, not just those at the bottom, yes? There is a reason why professional athletes, actors, screenwriters and directors are union members, even when they make six or seven figure salaries. It's so they don't get fucked over by those making eight, nine or even ten figures.
This anti-union bullshit is predicated on the notion that you are just dying to do not only your own job, but Billy Bob's over there when he starts to slack off. Human beings simply aren't built that way.
Unions will accept cutbacks to save their jobs. Because, dipshit, their long term existence is utterly dependent on the long term well being of the company. As opposed to executives who DGAF if the company goes bankrupt in five years, if they can take their bonuses now and get off the ship before it sinks.
Then vote to change what political causes the union engages in, or doesn't engage in. Contrast that to when a non-union shop takes the output of your labor, uses some of that for lobbying, in which you have absolutely no say whatsoever.
Don't let the door hit your dumb libertarian snowflake ass on the way out.
Several years ago, I was living in South Florida and would repeatedly get almost run down by cars as I was crossing the street. (One time much later I actually did get hit by a car which was making a right turn from the left lane just behind another car. Fortunately, I was ok.) South Florida has the worst drivers I have ever seen, combined with cops who don't seem to care. I saw an article about a new Kickstarter project for eyeglasses which record video. Great, I thought, that would help me record bad drivers and if I ever got hit by a car, could track the car's license plate in case the driver did a "hit and run" which is also common in South Florida.
I had never used Kickstarter before and I was concerned about what would happen if the project backers fail. So instead of using Kickstarter, I placed a pre-order and paid the same amount of money (~$200) directly to the eyeglasses start-up itself.
Not using Kickstarter would end up being the best decision I could have made in trying to purchase these video-recording glasses. After months and months when there were no signs of the eyeglasses shipping, I saw messages from other angry backers and that company's response. The eyeglasses start-up said they were still finalizing the design. But that was already after manufacturing was supposed to have begun!
So I politely requested a refund from them. I got some push-back, like "what, you don't want to miss out on our great upcoming product, right?" I replied, "just send me a full refund." And they did! I got my ~$200 back from them before they went completely bankrupt or before they had just gone silent and pocketed everyone else's $200.
As far as I know, none of the backers for the video-recording eyeglasses ever got their $200 back.
Moral of the story: do not ever use Kickstart. And do not ever live in South Florida.
Right wing politicians and the bosses whipped the US workforce generations ago. They won by convincing the average grunt that unions were "bad" and its been believed by the bulk of the unwashed forever. Even when people from other countries tell you that unions have a place in the workforce you can't bring yourself to believe it. Likewise the average US citizen still can't get it into their heads that universal health care is good thing. Sad really.
Unionizing has never worked in tech. They'll just spin up a new company, license the code & intellectual property, let the shell fold, and your contract isn't worth the paper it's written on.
What you young people should be gunning for is stock options. Sometime in the early 00's they changed the rules with regards to how stock options were accounted for and taxed, and unless you get in at start up time, they've pretty much disappeared. Back in the day, big companies were handing them out to MTS2's... Imagine ending the usual marital "you work too much" spat with "I know... Here's a check for an extra year's pay, why don't you finish your Master's degree, and buy yourself something nice."
It's fun! :)
Outsource to India.
Kickstarter's moved from "interesting tech stuff" to "another graphic novel about a gender fluid couple living as elves on mars".
How could they NOT unionize?
In USA a chemist's salary goes up to $55 an hour or $114K a year, my friend who graduated high school with me makes almost twice that with his own business and a couple apprentices.
To be clear, he's a contracting plumber who works on a lot of schools and municipal buildings, though also custom renovation for homes