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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."
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.
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.
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.
>Say "hello" to bad employees you can never fire....
Kickstarter already had a CEO, dude.
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.
Until, for some reason, they need ionized water.
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
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.
Bad start, when the headline writer and the article author feel the need to lie to their readers from the very beginning.
All of the "kickstarters staff" isn't unionizing, the article writer tries his hardest to claim this is on behalf of all of their staff, but it's obvious from the end that there are some people who work at Kickstarter (how many exactly isn't stated... hmmm.... wonder why?) who want them to unionize, but they haven't actually unionized yet. That requires and actual vote of the staff who would be effected, which apparently hasn't happened yet.
As far as I can tell from the various articles, there are some members of staff who are working on "forming" a labor union called Kickstarter United.
The party of stupid and the party of evil get together and do something both stupid and evil, then call it bipartisan.
You've never heard of shareholders forcing a CEO out?
I would love to be 'forced out' with the type of golden parachute that CEOs get.
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.
Neat. I love anecdotal data. I work in a union shop as well. We all bust our asses and receive a 10% contribution to our 401k's and a 10% cash bonus each Christmas. Your workers are lazy because you work for a shit company with shit hiring managers and pay bottom-of-the-barrel salaries. Have fun being treated like bitch your whole life.
The problem is the problems of today are not the problems a hundred years ago, however, the Unions are structure roughly the same way.
100 years ago most communities were centered around one or two factories. People had limited transportation available to them, the idea of transporting from one town to the next one 10 miles away was a big deal. So you worked for the company, lived in company housing (which your rent came out of your pay), having to buy food at the company store. If you got injured and couldn't work, you have lost your job and your access to housing and the company store, which is a big part of the community you lived in. In short, the company owned you, and you were really one step above being a slave.
Today (and thanks to the effort of these unions of the past) The conditions are now much different, we have the ability to find work in different towns and cities, even go across states for commuting isn't unheard of. There is a social safety net where there are unemployment payments where you can pay you enough to keep your home for a while, where you can find another job.
However, Unions play on the idea that you are stuck to your job. Where today being stuck, just means, we don't want to risk getting another job. But It is a different environment. While today's economy and the workers need support in negotiating with the company, today's Unions are seeming more fixed on gaining a power base, then actually helping the employees with useful things like wage parity, health care, benefits.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
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
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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?
Say "hello" to bad employees you can never fire....
This is a very misinformed myth. It's the same myth as the welfare queen. Someone finds a handful of examples and then misrepresents those individuals as representative of the entire group.
Cops in any state and NY teachers come to mind. The former have plenty of examples of outright massive fuck-ups or corruption that don't get addressed because of the strength of the police unions. NYC teachers are so infamous for this that there are numerous stories about it, and it even has a Wikipedia article.
I'm not one of those people who believe all unions are evil or that they shouldn't exist. I personally wouldn't be likely to want to join one, but if other people want to start one, that's their business and not mine. However, it's not a misinformed myth that unions will keep people around who really should be fired. Nor are the infallible in their decision making and they're as capable of any vice as the company board.
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.
I would ruthlessly reject any attempt at my staff unionizing as well
Of course you would, it is antithetical to your religion, even if you cannot articulate why.
they are paid very well for where they are and what they do
Anyone who has read your comments where you brag about not paying your employees at all knows that this line is bullshit. You have bragged many times about what you have done to avoid paying your employees.
I have 0 interest to talk to groups of people
People will negotiate with me on their own, not as groups, it sounds like coercion and oppression by groups and I won't stand for it
You really don't understand how union negotiations work, do you? If you had 10 employees and they were all unionized, you would negotiate with one union rep and you'd be done. You wouldn't negotiate with all of them in one giant meeting, it would be you and the union rep - and then what you decided with that rep would be passed down to the unionized employees.
In fact, it would actually save you time compared to negotiating with all of the employees individually. Granted, you wouldn't get the opportunity to completely screw over some as the rep would set a wage floor, but you would spend less time negotiating and more time doing whatever the hell you think you do with the rest of your time.
if I wanted to talk to groups I would talk to governments and I hate governments that are not led by the leader of the cult that I spend so much time recruiting for
There, fixed that for ya. You're welcome.