Will Tech Layoffs Trigger a Wave of Unionization? (businessinsider.com) 181
An anonymous reader shared this report from Insider:
The recent tsunami of tech layoffs could leave a wave of union organizing in its wake. That's according to Skylar Hinnant, a senior QA tester at Microsoft's ZeniMax, who supported a successful union campaign at the gaming unit of the software giant... Within tech companies, roles such as quality assurance testers and contractors are less revered, so those workers are more likely to unionize, Hinnant explained. "In these roles, people will be treated differently, it's sort of derogatory," he added.
Layoffs, cuts in perks, and other benefits, and a slowing of pay increases have marred the tech industry's reputation as a great place to work. That has kicked off a power struggle between employees and management. "When an employer lays off 16,000 employees in a day, that's a power play making employees realize how powerless they are," Rahul Dhaundiyal, a director of engineering at Indeed, told Insider... Dhaundiyal agreed with Hinnant that for lower-level tech workers the call to unionize rings louder. "In certain lower paid jobs where decision-making is top-down, where you are seen as a resource and not a human being to invest in, those kinds of roles end up maximizing disbalance and would unionize first," Dhaundiyal said.
Layoffs, cuts in perks, and other benefits, and a slowing of pay increases have marred the tech industry's reputation as a great place to work. That has kicked off a power struggle between employees and management. "When an employer lays off 16,000 employees in a day, that's a power play making employees realize how powerless they are," Rahul Dhaundiyal, a director of engineering at Indeed, told Insider... Dhaundiyal agreed with Hinnant that for lower-level tech workers the call to unionize rings louder. "In certain lower paid jobs where decision-making is top-down, where you are seen as a resource and not a human being to invest in, those kinds of roles end up maximizing disbalance and would unionize first," Dhaundiyal said.
Nope (Score:4, Insightful)
Not while cheap labor from India or the Philippines can do your job for 1/4 of the cost. And if they aren't very good, they just hire more.
Re:Nope (Score:5, Insightful)
Not while cheap labor from India or the Philippines can do your job for 1/4 of the cost.
That depends on how the laws are crafter. Cheap abroad work existed before the 1980s, and yet there was no job exporting from the US to those countries before that. Nor, for that matter, ultramegacorps with absurd levels of political power. Then a huge wave of deregulation happened, resulting in the destruction of US manufacturing, exporting of most of its jobs, extreme trickle up of wealth and power, and widespread stagnation of wages.
The moment US workers decide to go back to the good, ol', conservative days of 1950s and early 1960s labor and business laws, cheap labor in other countries will go back into a grand total of zero negative impact on the US job market.
One wonders when US conservatives will want that brand of conservatism back.
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The moment US workers decide to go back to the good, ol', conservative days of 1950s and early 1960s labor and business laws, cheap labor in other countries will go back into a grand total of zero negative impact on the US job market.
One wonders when US conservatives will want that brand of conservatism back.
Well - what passes for conservatism in the USA toady has nothing to do with conservatism in the traditional sense.
I'm a Barry Goldwater conservative, and that's considered left wing by today's crypto conservatives. Only it isn't.
It's pretty simple. People are free to do pretty much as they wish with of course the reasonable societal strictures. The golden rule outlook Goldwater was very accepting of gays (he long advocated for gays serving in the military) and a woman's reproductive choice, and for co
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Because if American workers don't get the jobs, they'll end up having to sell products at Indian prices or even lower.
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Employers would love you to think they can just replace you, that your labour is a commodity. In reality we know what usually happens when e.g. software development is farmed out to India. Nothing against the Indians or their work, but a remote team who doesn't understand the product, who only has a manager-written spec to go off, and who are on a fixed price contract just can't do a good job of it.
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And to be blunt...it also creates gaps in communication because you often can't understand what the fuck they are saying.
Won't help (Score:4, Insightful)
Unionization does not prevent layoffs. It accelerates them. Companies can and do close entire locations to dodge unions quite often.
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In this economy, though, the same applies to jobs: It's a commodity to pick up and drop at a moment's notice.
Re:Won't help (Score:4, Interesting)
The fact that companies fight tooth and nail to prevent unions tells you everything you need to know. It terrifies them if workers gain bargaining power. It’s especially bad in the USA with healthcare tied to employment.
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Companies fight tooth and nail against unions because it costs them money. They fight tooth and nail against everything that costs them money. Its just how it works. Someone doesnt want to accept a smaller bonus, screw the workers.
You are right though, healthcare tied to employment IS the only reason I remain at my current employer... (Who pays 90% of my $300 deductible PPO) The pay is marginal and I could make more, but I really like the current insurance setup. That and the PTO is generous..
I don't th
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This is why the universal healthcare we have here is akin to guns in the US: You can pry that from our dead, cold hands.
Healthcare, and the fact that you have it whether you have a job or not, alone is an incredibly strong bargaining chip. So you don't employ me. Fine. As long as my money lasts, I'll be good. No worries about accidents or a sudden sickness that sends me into a financial tailspin. It won't. My expenses are pretty easy to plan. Even on the dole.
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You are right though, healthcare tied to employment IS the only reason I remain at my current employer... (Who pays 90% of my $300 deductible PPO) The pay is marginal and I could make more, but I really like the current insurance setup. That and the PTO is generous..
This illustrates another reason why companies love having health care tied to an employer. People are usually bad at calculating the value of their benefits. That insurance you get is likely about $10k for individual and $30k for family. The average employer pays 78% of single coverage and 66% of family coverage, so your company benefit is worth between $1200 and $7200 (after taxes) more than an average employer yearly depending on whether you have family or single coverage.
You shouldn't like your employer
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The fact that companies fight tooth and nail to prevent unions tells you everything you need to know.
That isn't all you need to know. Companies would fight and nail to prevent anything which would hurt their competitiveness and potentially put them out of business. So just knowing companies fight against unions is not enough. You have to also be confident the union would not damage the business and/or workers of those businesses. I think unions are a net benefit in most cases, but it's still naïve and just plane wrong to think everything businesses hate is good for workers.
Re:Won't help (Score:4, Insightful)
I experienced a similar story to your friend. I was helping my wife’s company setup their small booth at a trade show in NYC. We had to hire 2 union goons to put the display together that we were perfectly capable of doing ourselves.
Don’t even get me started on the worthless seniority system. Mediocrity is encouraged because why do a good job if there are 10 people in front of you in line for the promotion? Being a better worker does nothing for you, so go ahead an do the bare minimum for 10 years until it’s your turn.
Unions are no longer needed and should be done away with.
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I’ve worked plenty of shit jobs. I quit and went to a better one.
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I'd say you aren't needed, and need to be closed down.
Part of the issue, of course, is that the fascist fellow travellers, the ultra-wealthy, chased the socialists out of unions in the fifties, and the mob moved in, seeing them as nothing more than a protection racket.
Did they do the things unions did before? Of course not, ROI.
Leftists are coming back into unions, and it's going to change.
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It's crazy, you can't even plug in a power strip, you have to let a Teamster do it.
To me that kind of thing is the epitome of evidence that, for all their positives, Unions can and do in fact shit things up.
I wouldn't even be super upset if the contract said they had to get paid every time a power strip is plugged in, that only makes things more expensive. But I literally know people who have not been set up at trade shows on time because they weren't allowed to do it themselves, and there weren't enough wo
Re: Won't help (Score:2)
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I disagree. Even with a "seller's market" for labor, i.e. a surplus of jobs and a lack of talent to fill them, a union can only increase your bargaining power.
I live in a country with traditionally strong unions. Hell, they're basically the negotiator for the employee side for minimum wages here. Which leads to pretty high minimum wages, and minimum wages you can't easily dodge if you don't want to go abroad.
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Fun bit is that most people here do.
For good reason, it's kinda hard to pay more and stay competitive... As I said, our minimum wage is pretty high.
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You're not only stupid, you're ignorant.
10-15 years ago, an Indian national in the US who worked for Oracle sued, and in the evidence were emails saying, in so many words, that they could pay him $10k/yr less than "Americans".
You really think this isn't the way MBA's think, everywhere?
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You're right: you're an incomplete idiot. You know *NOTHING* whatsever abot unions. Or why companies hate them.
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I see someone's never done manual labor, 30kg is a bundle of arch shingles. I'm not that crazy, but I see people doing two bundles up a ladder.
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You're thinking very laterally (Score:2, Insightful)
You can of course bring in a ton of skilled labor as scabs but a union can organize it's members politically and put a stop to that.
There are many many ways to organize workers to achieve
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Jobs are scarce?
Not really.
I don't know where you are, I'm in Europe. Everyone is hiring. Literally everyone. No skill required, we train you. Just got out of school and no place to go? Come to us! We train you and you get a full wage from day 1!
And if you want to see desperation, take a look at restaurants and the rest of the service industry. Waiters are not wanted, they're hunted.
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There is always demand for people working for a wage that doesn't pay a living. Just like there is always incredibly high demand for goods that are cheaper than the cost to make them.
But I'm talking real jobs that pay actually decent money here. We're currently pretty desperately trying to fill security positions. We've arrived at the point where we pay people for pointing out people who'd be willing (and qualified) to work for us.
I get at least 2-3 mails a week asking if I'd at least want to listen to thei
You're actually wrong (Score:2, Informative)
As the saying goes, reality has a well known liberal bias.
Re:You're actually wrong (Score:4, Informative)
I can maybe understand the idea that workers who are already unionized might have more bargaining power against layoffs than those who aren't. But in a situation where the layoffs happen first, the layoffs look like a sign that the company has more labor than it needs or wants, and is in a better situation than average to be able to afford to lose workers who want to unionize.
Union workers (Score:4, Insightful)
Unionizing workers are more likely to be laid off. Union workers are _less_ likely
Basically, while you're unionizing your vulnerable, largely due to law changes from the 80s and 90s that gutted unions.
But once you're Unionized your much, much better protected. It's especially true for age discrimination cases. This is something I've personally witnessed when a school teacher I know was fired without cause. They were over 50, and it was stupidly obvious a case of age discrimination. The Union Got their job back.
Every IT person on this forum is gonna hit 50 some day and find out what it's like to be without a Union and over 50 in IT, with the exception of a few working for Uncle Sam.
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You don't need a union to protect from stupidly obvious age discrimination. There are an abundance of contingency-based lawyers (don't get paid unless they win) who will take these cases and recover a shitload of money from any company dumb enough to openly discriminate.
As your own link confirmed, unionized workers are more likely to be laid off. As long as there are any union-free areas left, companies can locate there and leave the union-strongholds behind. Hence the existence of the American Rust Belt.
Do you have the money to sue? (Score:3)
Read the link. Workers in the active stage of unionization are at risk of layoffs because of illegal practices. Once you're actually unionized you're much less likely to
Re: Union workers (Score:2)
"Every IT person on this forum is gonna hit 50 some day and find out what it's like to be without a Union and over 50 in IT, with the exception of a few working for Uncle Sam."
That's ridiculous. Every IT company is happy to find a senior willing to join them, regardless of age.
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Every IT company here is happy to find anyone willing to join them. As long as you know that TCP ain't the Chinese secret service, you'll have a job.
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Raises hand. And I went to the US NLRB website 10-12 yeas ago, and they had rules in place that made it next to impossible for computer professionals to form/join a union.
Oh, yeah, I was "management", never mind that the only thing I ever managed were servers.
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Should we prop up businesses that make something in such low demand or so inefficiently that they can't afford to pay union wages? No, let them close the factory. Good riddance.
Lol no (Score:5, Insightful)
Amazon warehouse workers might. Coders, no.
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Amazon warehouse workers require someone to physically be there, so it makes sense. Meanwhile "tech workers" can just be replaced with a horde of low-wage Indians, and they don't have to cross the picket line.
Re:Lol no (Score:5, Insightful)
Civilized countries have good worker protection laws. Companies can't simply lay people off or fire them because they found a cheaper labor pool.
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If only there were some well funded unions to lobby for that in the US. The outcome when only employers are able to lobby tends not to be very good.
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It's not that we're libertarian (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:It's not that we're libertarian (Score:5, Funny)
Re: It's not that we're libertarian (Score:2)
Makes sense. It's not usually this hot at Christmas so Hell must've frozen over
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Good developers do a lot more than just competently write code though.
One of the major issues with Agile is that it focuses on short term results. It's very easy to end up investing a lot of time building many small parts that are inflexible, only to discover later on that the whole architecture is bad or that the stakeholders and some big change that means a substantial re-write.
One of the reasons why a lot of software is terrible is that it was written based on a management spec by a contractor. Two peopl
Re:Lol no (Score:5, Interesting)
How is, e.g., the Screen Actor's Guild a bad deal?
A Streep or Schwarzenegger can ask what they want, and everyone else gets protected against outright predation.
Decades ago, someone writing about a large tech company wrote something close to "I've begun to hear about good people getting screwed by political middle managers and HR bureaucrats". Skill and merit don't protect against that. A union can.
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Tech workers are far too libertarian in their thinking. Unions are already a bad deal for workers except public unions, so I do not think devs and ops guys are going to take such a bad deal.
Tech workers are probably more libertarian than the general populace but that ain't saying much. Near as I can tell, the California and even Texas tech companies are hotbeds of progressivism.
Thing is, most tech workers don't feel a strong worker/management divide. Lots of people move back and forth and there are lots of blurred reporting lines. I'm an architect: I set direction but don't have reports. Does that make me management?
All that being said, unionization certainly seems on an upswing after a decade
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Unfortunately, in the US, you do not get that choice if the place goes unionized.
I think the term is "closed shop" for this.
But if an industry or company is unionized, if you want a job there, you ARE forced to join the union.
In my head that doesn't seem legal...but that's the way the law reads in most of the US.
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Unions are already a bad deal for workers except public unions, so I do not think devs and ops guys are going to take such a bad deal.
Unions are good for workers (and everyone else). They're like vaccines, in that the benefits are so huge and widespread that people forget what life was like before them. Weekends, work days shorter than 12 hours, workplace safety requirements, child labour laws, etc. All thanks to unions.
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Unions only work in a world where other workers are scared to cross a picket line or replace unions.
Why do unions have to resort to scaring people? Why are they not convincing everyone of said benefit so they join/pay pay the union willingly? If someone prefers to negotiate their own compensation because they believe they can do a better job for themselves, why should the union object? Sell union collective bargaining as a benefit for whatever price of the union dues (honest advertising), get whatever customers sign up - leave others alone.
I hope not (Score:2, Informative)
I'm in tech. Tech is overpaid as is. No way a tech worker does harder work than someone flipping burgers. Why should someone sitting at a desk moving a mouse around and clattering on a keyboard get paid more than a fast food worker? Or retail .. can you imagine working in retail .. tolerating BS from customers? Hell no.
You need to think what you want to bias rewards towards. Productivity, societal benefit, individual freedom, or something else?
Re:I hope not (Score:4, Insightful)
If the permanent "help wanted" signs on every fast food restaurant are any indication then I'd say most people did indeed get better jobs. Of course now the people bitching that the restaurant didn't open are going to claim "no one wants to work anymore". If no one bothers to work for what you're paying then the problem isn't everyone, it's you. There's a Dollar General down the street from me. It's now closed more than it's open. Once it was closed for over a week. I was sure someone was going to break in and empty the place out.
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There's a Dollar General down the street from me. It's now closed more than it's open. Once it was closed for over a week. I was sure someone was going to break in and empty the place out.
Sure, they could loot the entire store with nobody around, and make as much as $50 or even $100!
Re:I hope not (Score:4, Insightful)
> No way a tech worker does harder work than someone flipping burgers.
When did this become the measurement for what someone is paid? OP has no idea why wagers are what they are, not in tech, not in any field.
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I do know its supply/demand .. you missed the point I was making with regards to unions interfering.
Re:I hope not (Score:5, Informative)
Re: I hope not (Score:2)
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Its a matter of how easy you are to replace to MANAGEMENT.. (which rarely deals in facts).. Management/HR feels ANYONE is replaceable and expendable.. The workers KNOW they are not.. So THAT disconnect is the issue.. If management truly understood how dependent they are on their labor force and the skills/abilities they posses, they would be slower to aim to replace/outsource/Automate people.. but the fact that they believe anyone/everyone is replaceable, means as far as they are conc
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Like in the old joke where someone came to fix something, hit it with a hammer and charged 5000 bucks.
Asked for a detailed invoice, he gave:
Hammer wear and tear: 1 dollar.
Knowing where to hit that thing: 4999 dollars.
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Because busting ass in high school for four years deferring "fun" things, then deferring 4+ years of income to graduate from college needs to be offset by a higher lifetime ROI in order to get people to work on software projects at all. Of course, you're free to debate how much that higher lifetime ROI should be. (I'm generally inclined to think that it's too high as well.)
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Salary has nothing to do with working “harder”. It has to do with scarcity of skillset and value to the company. Anyone can do manual labor and retail work, that’s why it pays so low. You can pick up almost any Joe/Jane off the street and they can dig a ditch or work a checkout at a convenience store. If you are looking for a particular set of skills, there are not nearly as many Liam Neeson’s, and most of them will already be employed by someone else so you will offer a competitive
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Said the tier 1 help-desk worker with no idea what skilled workers do for a living.
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Supply and demand.
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You are worth exactly as much as you can get someone to pay you, period.
It takes virtually no skills to flip a burger...it takes skills to do coding.
It's easy to find a LARGE pool of people with n
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It takes virtually no skills to flip a burger...it takes skills to do coding.
You've obviously never eaten in a Waffle House or similar diner type where the grill area is visible to the eating area.
Watching an experienced short order cook work a grill during a rush is a thing to be appreciated. It takes amazing skill to keep orders straight, get them cooked properly, and have everything ready at one time for just one order, much less one table or 10 tables nearly simultaneously. Especially places like Waffle House where the orders are called out by the wait staff and the cook may n
Nope... (Score:4, Informative)
Not a chance. The average techie has a superiority complex (often times earned) that they are way to special to need a money taking union to advocate for them.
Admittedly, many techies are this good and don't need a union. It entirely depends on what exactly your skill set is and how good at your stuff you actually are.
Of course, if everyone was THAT good, this wouldn't even be a question, now would it?
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I have a special skill set that makes me kinda irreplaceable. I'd still want to see a union happen. And yes, I'd join it. Exactly because it's fairly impossible to fire me. It would certainly give the rest of the bunch a lot more bargaining leverage.
You reach a point in your career when money doesn't matter anymore, and neither does getting "somewhere" in your career. You have seen it all, you have done it all. But leaving a legacy, that would be kinda nice.
It's not like any of the stuff I make will allow m
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Hmm...unless I were to reach "Lottery Winner" levels of compensation for my job, I don't see that ever becoming true for me.
I like money, it's the only reason I work....if I had enough to quit and live my lifestyle I want, I'd leave skid marks out the door.....
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"You see, I'm a guy of simple taste. I enjoy dynamite, and gunpowder, and gasoline! And you know the thing they have in common? They're cheap."
--Heath Ledger as The Joker
Now, my tastes are a little bit less volatile, but what they have in common with Joker's delights is the price tag. I don't need a lot of money to be happy, so why should I try to hunt after it when it's basically being thrown my way anyway?
One of two things is coming (Score:3, Interesting)
Those older generations are about to age out of politics and voting. Nursing home residents don't vote. The GOP has been trying to get them to for decades and can't do it. For whatever reason when somebody's stuck in a nursing home waiting to die they stop voting. And that's not even talking about the ones who aren't waiting anymore.
This is the demographic change that idiot pundits have been talking about for 25 years. And it's going to happen in the next two elections cycles.
The people at the top though have had a good run and don't want to give up even one red cent to the help. I expect them to try and install a dictator again like they did back on January 6th. It looks like their current candidate is Ron DeSantis, who if you do a little googling you'll find is building a small private army down in Florida while getting cozy with the military. Similar to what Putin did back in the day.
We're at a crossroads. It's time to decide if we're going to be a free Democratic state like the Scandinavian countries or if we're going to be a dystopian hell hole like Russia and China. The next two election cycles will decide that.
Speaking of China they've got a name for this sort of thing. Interesting times.
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The oldest Generation Z is 25, a bit young to have significant property. The Millennials got whacked by the GFC.
You're not the only one thinking we are at a crossroads.
https://www.mauldineconomics.c... [mauldineconomics.com]
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Pretty spot on.
I'm going on 50, but in my line of work, I'm the grandpa. Seriously, nobody around me is older than 30. And there's a curious way of thinking among these people, very "alien" to my generation: They didn't just leave the rat race, they flipped it off.
These kids realized something very quickly: I don't have to save up for a house. I will never be able to afford one. Back when my generation wanted houses, mortgages were easy to get. Banks pretty much advertised with young couples who had fuck al
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Complain? Who am I to complain? I'm the last one to own everything I have. Why would I complain?
If you're looking for someone who should complain, you gotta find a younger audience.
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For whatever reason when somebody's stuck in a nursing home waiting to die they stop voting. And that's not even talking about the ones who aren't waiting anymore.
Great, now how do we convince the people not in a nursing home but still at death's door to stop voting? They don't have to deal with the consequences of their actions, but the rest of us do.
Also, how do we keep the people who should be in a nursing home by now from running for office? For the same reason.
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Thankfully...the millennials, now growing up and having to manage jobs and households are becoming more conservative.
say goodby to those businesses (Score:3)
"Will Tech Layoffs Trigger a Wave of Unionization?"
Only if those unions are planning to not exist, along with their host business, in a few years. Unions CAN have a positive effect under limited circumstances. Such as when a strong business is exploiting its position (usually a monopoly / duopoly) to unfairly suppress the labour market. However when it is a struggling business, either due to business/industry specific issues or an overall economic downturn, the only thing unionization does is hasten the collapse of the business.
Unions are good (Score:5, Insightful)
We've forgotten their benefits because for so long we've been inundated with images of thugs on picket lines, been told stories of how unions are protecting bad workers, etc... but you know what? Management has an entire company with them, and if it's individual employees against the company, they lose every time.
Unions are a way of giving employees a similar level of power when approaching the negotiation table. Unions are ALSO a way of making sure everyone is fairly paid - you don't have to be the brassy boss's pet to get a decent raise, you get paid by your job category and your experience. Would it hurt for an annual performance bonus to be part of that for exceptional workers? No.
Unions also help stop management using HR and legal to destroy someone they don't like for whatever reason just to get rid of them. Which is something some managers will do without losing a wink of sleep.
Re:Unions are good (Score:5, Informative)
Also to note: unions weren't the ones who introduced thugs to the picket lines. Employers did that when they hired the Pinkerton Detective Agency and turned them loose to break up strikes. The fallout from that was so bad that Pinkerton became the only company forbidden by name from ever doing work for the Federal government, with the prohibition extending even to their employees (5 USC 3108 [house.gov]).
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Thanks, I never realized that. I find it remarkable, so I looked it up. Short and sweet. Originally from 1893, they felt no need to change anything but the language in 1966.
3108. Employment of detective agencies; restrictions
An individual employed by the Pinkerton Detective Agency, or similar organization, may not be employed by the Government of the United States or the government of the District of Columbia.
(Pub. L. 89– 554, Sept. 6, 1966, 80 Stat. 416.)
Historical and Revision Notes Derivation U.S. Code Revised Statutes and
The prohibition is restated in positive form.
Statutes at Large
5 U.S.C. 53. Mar. 3, 1893, ch. 208 (5th par. under "Public Buildings"), 27 Stat. 591.
OG cancel culture.
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OG cancel culture.
Not even close. Cancel culture started with rocks. Or stones, if you will.
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Must be nice to be independently wealthy such that you can quit your job at any time and still afford to pay your bills.
Naw (Score:2)
Tech has needed a union for decades. But the techies think themselves too good to employ the tactics of blue collar factory workers, so they won't do it. They will instead suffer. Couldn't happen to a nicer bunch.
Birds of a Feather (Score:2, Funny)
Employers hate unions. Do you know the other group that hates unions?
Republicans/Fascists
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This is just my personal experience; I'm a well paid embedded developer (missile launchers, not iphones) and I worked a couple year contract at a nearby ammunition plant which was unionized. I only mention "well paid" for contrast FWIW.
I used to be asked to move white boards around, sometimes even reconfigure desk partitions, and other manual labor type tasks. And I gladly did it, because the alternative was much much worse. Certain employee's in the union where the ONLY folks authorized to move any equipme
The New Turing Test Standard (Score:2)
There are QA testers at Microsoft? (Score:2)
I thought they had completely done away with them? Or is it that gamers are less tolerant of defective software than OS and office-package users?
Guaranteed success (Score:5, Informative)
The problem with the environment of the last few years was that larger companies were virtually guaranteed success, due to things like paycheck protection, a favorable interest rate environment and the like, so they didn't make many moves They are all coming at once now that conditions have changed.
No amount of unionization is going to change the economy for the better. In fact, for the worse would be more likely. The last time significant private sector unions existed in the US, the jobs were simply outsourced away in the steel industry, in particular. And this was perhaps not by choice, as the industry virtually immolated itself in the US. UAW was also hit hard by the big three automakers being gutted and foreign competition eating their lunch. Technology jobs are even easier to outsource. This doesn't sound like a winner to me.
The UBI is a nonsequitur. I think those who have thought a little about the problem over the past few years realize a guaranteed income is just guaranteed inflation and setting the $0 point up to whatever the UBI is. The transfer payments during COVID should be teaching this lesson.
I have heard people theorize about a post-scarcity economy, but the main flaw in all those thought processes is that we are not post-scarcity. Wealth is counted not in currency but in goods and services you can purchase with the currency. To get those services and goods, people still need to work. It may be that automation significantly reduces how much of that labor has to happen, but that will just make the things that can't be produced via automation more dear.
My prediction is a very grey existence for the large majority of people because there is not enough to do, and particularly not enough for those who are competing for the scut work that still can't be automated. It won't be serfdom, since indentured servitude and tying people to the land isn't necessary in this age, but it won't be very nice either for most. The rational alternative is war over resource distribution, and having seen war, it's worse than a grey existence by far. Those who get to experience it are going to have the same point of view.
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I think those who have thought a little about the problem over the past few years realize a guaranteed income is just guaranteed inflation and setting the $0 point up to whatever the UBI is. The transfer payments during COVID should be teaching this lesson.
The lesson of covid is that the bulk of inflation [npr.org] was caused by [epi.org] corporate profits [latimes.com] and everyone knows it [nytimes.com] except for you [slashdot.org]. Raising prices more than needed to cover costs during a national emergency is price gouging, but everyone did it, and nobody got punished. Stan harder for the state, it will surely pay off any day now.
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Who let the janitor into the server room again?
SBF giving Caroline millions after hot office sex (Score:2)
The article raised the ethical question whether these payments make her a prostitute or not?
That's real news not covered in Business Inside because that makes women look bad in general.
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BI is owned by the same globalist wackjobs that own Politico
Could you give me some examples of lies that are in Politico news stories today?
Not a long list, just 5 or 6 examples of things that are factually wrong on their page?
Thanks.
https://www.politico.com/ [politico.com]
Re: Business Inside is the Granuiad of online news (Score:4, Interesting)
Doesn't have to be lies, that's why they call it "disinformation" now. The theory goes that they manipulate you by omitting relevant facts, or framing the story in a particular way. Its still the truth, its just not the whole truth.
Re: Business Inside is the Granuiad of online new (Score:3)
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Idunno man, read Manufacturing Consent. Its not a coincidence, but its also not a conspiracy. There are systemic incentives for it to be this way.
Re: (Score:2, Troll)
Manipulate the media... George Soros? You mean the 92 yr old, who just handed most of the control of his $6.7B to a son?
Or are you talking Rupert Murdoch, who is personally worth over $17B... and runs, completely controls, Faux Noise ($100B), and the WSJ?