I can't tell if there's a trace of sarcasm in the comment, so for the avoidance of doubt, I'll link to a pretty good lay read on issues in the game industry.
As a side note on the gaming industry: That industry seems notoriously bad so I wonder why people keep joining it. It also seems competitive to get in. So, to me, it seems like people know what they're getting themselves into before joining.
People want to work on computer games for non financial reasons so they'll take lower pay and accept worse conditions. Similar examples are the film or music industries.
Game development is exceptionally fun and engaging as far as software goes, so the supply/demand ratio is much more skewed. I would agree people are likely aware of the worse working conditions and pay etc, but are just passionate about it enough to do it anyway. I was an amateur game developer that always imagined a career in game dev but after learning about the economics of it went with more general commercial software as a career, but I still envy game devs for the work they get to do and their overall satisfaction with that work.
--EDIT: It's also worth noting that if you are on the digital content side of game dev like modeling and mapping there's not a ton of alternative options for practicing those skillsets professionally, unlike programming.
Making games is a lot of people's passion. This inflates the supply of labor for game development, which reduces cost (as well as lowering expectations for stability, work life balance, etc.) It's hard to negotiate for good work life balance and wages, when people are enamored with game development and willing to tolerate crunch time and cyclical labor demand.
You're probably confusing Glitch (the company that used to be Fog Creek) with Glitch (the video game that led to the creation of Slack). Different company, different industry.
The game industry treats people horribly and there is obvious collusion to keep wages suppressed I would expect attempts to form unions there.
I'm still however not sold on the idea that tech in general needs unions, but am open to the idea that it may be a variable need company to company for certain groups of people.
Just don't make me have to join one, because I am fairly convinced it's not in my best personal interest and same for a lot of other tech workers like me.
In addition to this article, a very good video discussing unions in the game industry that includes an interview with Game Workers Unite and testimonials from people working in the industry.
I believe the commentator that you're replying to was referring to the fact that they just brought in a union with 700,000 other employees[0]. That significantly alters their team.
[0] Communications Workers of America (CWA) is the largest communications and media labor union in the United States, representing about 700,000 members in both the private and public sectors (also in Canada and Puerto Rico).
Throwaway account because duh. Note that I am not a current Glitch employee, but am well-connected to Glitch née Fog Creek.
Management was basically incredibly incompetent, for a long time, and were so unfair to employees at the company that they felt this was the only option. There is a Tweet stream a couple months ago from someone who left the company who highlighted the amazing degree to which they were unfairly reviewed and unfairly criticized, alongside how much work product they were expected to produce (which was unreasonable). I have enough corroboration to say that the tweet stream as written is fairly unbiased, and that their experience was common. My understanding is the employees felt backed into a corner.
I think unions can be very, very valuable, but I think needing one at a small company that took a series A round quite recently speaks more to management failure than anything else. I'm happy that they unionized, because it sounds like they needed to, but I am so fucking disappointed that it was necessary.
Thanks for the report, exactly what I was looking for!
This is something I wish had been in the article. Even something vague, like "Employees reported they were unhappy with management and the performance evaluation system. The union with CWA will work with management to blah blah blah".
https://glitch.com/glimmer/post/the-year-in-glitches/
> But as we rapidly grew our team, we failed to commensurately grow the processes and infrastructure necessary to support everyone properly. The result has been a lot of needless stress and tension and frustration. On its own, this is a significant problem, but when we’ve talked a lot about wanting to build a company that does these things better, a failure here is twice as painful for the people on our team who are affected. As the person who most often talks publicly about the positive ambitions we have here at Glitch, I’m also the person ultimately responsible for the times we haven’t delivered on those promises.
>Management was basically incredibly incompetent, for a long time
seems to be a correlation - back then like 10 years ago HN had various FG blogposts/articles appear on the front page relatively frequently while in recent years i don't remember any.
I mean, I don't know what Glitch's story is, but it was really easy for us to get posts on the front page of HN back in 2010; I wrote Kiln blog posts in particular practically for this audience at times. I appreciate my personal blog's not the same cachet, but it's definitely a lot harder to break that threshold these days.
That said, I have no idea if that's why Glitch has fewer articles or not. It could also be different culture; the FogBugz, Kiln, and Trello teams have all gone away. I don't think I even know anyone who works at Glitch these days. They may just emphasize blogging less.
"Management was basically incredibly incompetent, for a long time, and were so unfair to employees at the company that they felt this was the only option"
Why not just quit and get a new role? I don't really understand how being unionized under terrible management is desirable.
Perhaps because the employees actually care about the company they work for and want to continue working there, but also want to feel like they're producing value. A company is more than its management.
A myth Americans believe is that you only need to form unions when there is an existing problem. That's like wanting medical coverage only after you get sick. You will not have the resources and voice if you wait until a crisis to organize. The employers relationship with unions is only antagonistic because of this waiting until crisis.
on a secondary note, there is nothing wrong with living in a democracy and wanting representation in your community. Our work is a part of our community as much as any other space, especially since we spend so much time there and center our lives around it.
> A myth Americans believe is that you only need to form unions when there is an existing problem.
I don't think this is true. Rather, they don't buy the myth that unions have no downsides. Therefore you choose not to willingly accept such downsides until necessary. Arguably medical coverage is always necessary and is a poor comparison.
I keep an open mind about unions. I hear they work well in many places (usually in Europe, for whatever reason), but many of us from blue collar American backgrounds only have experience with them protecting laggards and creating ridiculously inefficient working restrictions[^1][^2] which (presumably?) drive jobs overseas. I guess my questions for union proponents are: "Why do unions seem to work so poorly in the United States?" and "How do we make sure these proposed software unions don't suffer similarly?". How do we get the good without the bad?
[^1]: A particularly egregious example from the factory where my dad works as a maintenance person: they have a machine that cuts cardboard; to service the blade, they need 3 people: one to remove the bolts holding the blade in place, another to remove the blade, and yet another to service it (and then the first two must replace the blade and the bolts, respectively). There must be three distinct people (IIRC because they're from different unions or something similarly silly) by contract (not because removing the bolts or the blade requires special training), which generally involves a lot of waiting for each person to be available--something that could take half an hour often spans multiple days.
[^2]: Another particularly egregious example from my father-in-law's IT office (he has since retired): employees generally laze about doing little; they aren't allowed to browse the Internet or play games, but some bring in books and one woman literally sits staring vacantly at her black-screen monitor for hours on end. No idea why electronic idleness is okay, but reading, etc are okay.
I’m not sure why you’re getting downvoted, what you’re posting is accurate. I had a former employee who worked as a software developer at a company that had union electricians. One day he got a new monitor, but it had to sit idle on his desk until an electrician could come and plug it into the wall.
He had to occasionally adjust controls that were slotted (potentiometers). He had a little screwdriver that he kept in his pocket to make that easier. The electricians filed a grievance with the union because he was carrying electrician’s tools.
I think there is some good in unions. I think there is also some bad.
I think these real-life anecdotes of the downside of unions are helpful data points, because they should be addressed if new unions are to form, whether in tech or elsewhere.
The important thing to remember though is that bad experiences in of themselves are no reason to write off a category of organization, or to assume no improvement is possible. Where would our industry be if we just assumed riding taxis would always be a bad experience, or making payments?
This was a second hand story, but I knew someone years ago who was in a union (factory job). She loved the union, but what I noticed was that there was a hard line between “workers” and “management”, and the relationship was quite adversarial - more than I’ve seen anywhere I worked. During some negotiation thing, she was going to work with a pin on her uniform with her bosses name on it and a line through it.
Unions reinforce the concept of class conflict/struggle/warfare due to strict categorization. The laws seem to be set up in a way to encourage this "us versus them" mentality.
"Managers and supervisors are also not protected by the NLRA, and cannot join unions or be part of the bargaining unit. These employees are considered to be part of a company’s management rather than its labor force."
I agree with what you're saying, but a major concern here is that new unions aren't forming. Glitch workers didn't form Glitch Workers' United. Instead they glued themselves into a large preexisting CWA local - just as Kickstarter before them attached to an OPEIU local - which means they'll be organizing in CWA-approved ways and their funds will go towards the CWA's preexisting social and political causes. Attaching yourself to existing powerhouses seems to be the model of modern American unionization, and it doesn't really allow for much experimentation.
I don't know when I'm going to get sick, and I can't get rid of the sickness, so I buy insurance to compensate.
I know what I'm getting myself into when signing a contract with a company, because there's a contract. I can leave when I want and seek employment elsewhere.
> 90% of the workers indicated their support for joining CWA and authorized CWA to be their bargaining representative
> about half of whom work in the New York City headquarters and half of whom work remotely throughout the country
> Employees at major American tech and game companies have grown increasingly active and outspoken about workplace issues, including sexual assault and harassment, ageism, unequal pay, “crunch time” (i.e. long-term overtime and overworking), poor treatment of contract workers, inadequate racial and gender diversity, and lack of transparency and inclusion in decision-making around controversial contracts with the U.S. Department of Defense and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
> “We appreciate that unlike so many employers, the Glitch management team decided to respect the rights of its workforce to choose union representation without fear or coercion."
> CWA was founded by telecom workers, and supports media workers through its Newsguild-CWA and NABET-CWA sectors.
Game studios especially need this. I'm a conservative in most other labor-related things (liberal on social issues), but holy shit the devs are abused by the game studios.
Completely disagree. They aren't miners working in horrible conditions where that's the only job in town. Game developers are highly talented, skilled individuals. There is a high demand for such people outside the game industry they choose to stay there. I'm a developer in the finance industry. Worked in a few other sectors too. If games industry is harsh, jump ship. Abused? Get real, the working populations outside the western world are abused and with little choice (and a lot of people in the west lower down the food chain). I think it's insulting to to people with limited options no money to lump games devs in with them. Personally speaking, last thing I'd want in software industry is a Union. Graded pay scales that take no account of productivity variability is a sure fire way to kill an industry. We re a privileged bunch as developers.
"Stay in a bad employment situation" and "leave a bad employment situation" aren't the only options; workers can also collectively work to make the bad situation better. There can be a lot of good reason to do that, and I think we should be glad that people are working to make things better where they are.
Unions don't require graded pay scales. You don't have to be a miner to be systemically taken advantage of. If one employer offers an unfair employment contract, you can try another company. If every employer offers an unfair employment contract, you don't have the option of another company. I can name a few clauses that favor only the company that are present at every software employment contract in almost every state.
There are more potential employees than potential employers, and most companies will survive understaffed longer than US laborers will survive unemployed. Inherently, the negotiations favor the employer. The more output the employer has stolen from its workers, the more of an advantage it will have. Unionizing and collective bargaining balances those scales.
Could these unemployed employees start their own cooperatives that do not take advantage of employees? I want to focus on making this possible. I am, personally, concerned that trying to create some two sided balance of power will not end up representing me as both sides will have their own interest.
> There are more potential employees than potential employers
This is exacerbated by employers either overtly colluding with each other (as in the lawsuit several years ago over tech companies having an agreement not to hire each other's employees) or simply setting compensation to "industry averages" and following "industry best practices".
To the extent that every big tech company behaves the same as every other big tech company, there's effectively only one big tech employer.
If the industry you work in sucks, jump ship? That's not exactly great advice when you've spent decades honing your craft in a certain industry. Even if someone did genuinely want to switch, game development skills aren't necessarily easily transferable to other kinds of development, even if it helps.
That advice makes sense if a company you works for sucks, but if an entire industry is broken, you can't just tell people to suck it up and find a new industry.
> Even if someone did genuinely want to switch, game development skills aren't necessarily easily transferable to other kinds of development, even if it helps.
This needs a lot of qualification. Even someone doing scripting probably has picked up coding fluency at least. Programming game engines and networking code is definitely tackling complex problems and could at least get a mid-level dev role. I think 3d asset creation is probably the most game-specific role, and even that is something that is used by special effects companies and design firms.
> That advice makes sense if a company you works for sucks, but if an entire industry is broken, you can't just tell people to suck it up and find a new industry.
You absolutely can tell people to suck it up and find a new industry. This mentality is why the game industry can get away with bad work life balance and low job security. Because people keep working there. If the game industry was starved for talent, then they'd have to offer better work experiences.
I think 3d asset creation is probably the most game-specific role, and even that is something that is used by special effects companies and design firms.
Game industry working conditions are generally significantly better than VFX and can be better than design firms looking for similar skillsets.
While I mostly agree with your comment, I do want to mention for anyone who finds it useful: there's quite a bit of modeling and simulation work in the scientific computing and research industry, including the US government and contractors that lends itself well to certain game development skillsets.
There's typically more focus on analytics and the science skills over artistic skills (sorry graphic artists, environmental artists, etc.) obviously, but backend developers in gaming often have a lot of useful overlapping skills and knowledge in terms of systems design, design patterns, sets of problems, etc.
Pay is good, work/life balance is great, intellectually stimulating, it's challenging yet enjoyable (though arguably not as fun as game development). In many cases, industry borrows or leverages work from the gaming industry quite a bit.
A step further and the defense industry/military industrial complex would also love to have more game developers--though tech has a pretty anti-government pro-business vibe overall (not surprisingly).
I've worked with quite a few developers who be jumped ship from the games industry. From what I've read it's a common pattern for for older game devs looking for sane working hours.
Former game developer here. Game studios don't need unions, they need better management. Basically, an 18-year-old QA tester gets promoted to lead QA then associate producer then assistant producer and then producer. The producer manages by industry lore. And industry lore is terrible.
Unionization is not going to fix the management training problem.
But if management has no incentive to fix itself, what pressure is there to force them to? Negative press and bad reputation of industry conditions doesn't seem to be helping. The investors don't care. Customers don't care. So the workers themselves need to push back.
> Game studios don't need unions, they need better management.
If workers unionize [1], they can force bad management out, or curtail its badness, or in extreme cases - replace management with collective ownership.
Or game developers can just hire non-union employees. The reality is that game development studios can get away with poor work life balance because there's people who are passionate about making games and are willing to accept poor working conditions to get a chance at their dream job. This Stage Actor's Guild exists, but aspiring actors still have to work second jobs to put a roof over their heads. When a job is a lot of people's dream job, conditions are going to be poor because the supply of potential labor is very large as compared to the demand.
Also, I have no idea where you get the idea that unions can somehow force collective ownership. The company belongs to the shareholders, unions don't magically get to take other people's property.
Employees usually receive shares as comp, don't they?
I will say that the horror stories and bad press coming out of the video gaming industry will possibly have a chilling effect for new grads who would otherwise jump straight into it. Eventually management will run out of non-union workers to hire. Or the non-union workers themselves will demand better treatment.
> Employees usually receive shares as comp, don't they?
Non-voting shares, yes. Voting shares are usually only given to very senior people, if ever, and not nearly enough to form anything close to a controlling ownership of the company.
> I will say that the horror stories and bad press coming out of the video gaming industry will possibly have a chilling effect for new grads who would otherwise jump straight into it. Eventually management will run out of non-union workers to hire. Or the non-union workers themselves will demand better treatment.
Decades of game development suggests otherwise. Like acting, it's people's dream job. And when the supply of labor exceeds the demand workers do not have leverage.
For decades there was no interest nor action towards unionizing in game development. Greater scrutiny into the industry from modern game journalism, and perhaps worsening experiences as the industry heads towards Hollywood-like AAA titles produced by monolithic studios, is surely causing something to change.
Game developers' experiencing the misery of crunch time and layoffs is something I've heard about firsthand since the early 2000s at the latest. Reading accounts from earlier games' development cycles suggests that this has been common for even longer than that. Game development has always had cyclical labor demands and tight deadlines.
I think you need to qualify the claim that these experiences are worsening. In fact, from most of the veteran developers I've talked to report the opposite: before the proliferation of the internet crunch time was way more serious since patching was not a viable option. Nowadays it's pretty much the norm that games have significant bugs for the first week or two and still need to mature after release. This creates greater room for error and less pressure to fix every bug before release.
That's fair, perhaps conditions haven't been substantially worse than in previous console generations. But it sounds like there's something driving the push towards unionizing/organizing, whatever it is. And it sounds like the general public is more aware it being a brutal industry.
Just because you're seeing more news stories about unionization or organizing, doesn't actually mean that there's more interest in unionizing and organizing. It just means that people producing news are writing more stories covering unionization and organizing.
Take this story for example. Linkedin lists Glitch's size as 11-50. The highest employee count I've found claims 120. This is small fish in a very large pond. This press release name drops Google, but these companies are three orders of magnitude apart in terms of size.
Prior to this, and at Kickstarter, there were no high-profile tech unions. Now there is at least two. Now you might not consider that substantially more, but that's still definitely more.
There still aren't any high profile tech unions. Glitch is 120 people with the highest estimates. Kickstarter is 258 as of March 2020 [1]. These are small companies - medium at best. By comparison there are over a million software developers in the US [2]. And that's just one of many "tech" jobs ("Computer Systems Analyst" has another 600k, "Computer Programmer has 250k). Even if we assume that every employee at these companies work in tech roles, these companies represent less than 0.02% of the tech workforce.
Right, but the fact that there's any movement in the industry at all, stories generating discussions such as this one, groups like the Tech Workers Coalition gaining attention, etc., can mean there's some trend shifting. Unless you think the news is selectively focusing on stories to cover and this is all media manufactured.
And when change occurs, whether a social trend, or new product type, or whatever- the pioneers tend to be smaller examples rather than high-profile, no?
> Right, but the fact that there's any movement in the industry at all, stories generating discussions such as this one, groups like the Tech Workers Coalition gaining attention, etc., can mean there's some trend shifting. Unless you think the news is selectively focusing on stories to cover and this is all media manufactured.
Again, don't conflate discussion and attention with actual change. People who produce the news always have to select their topics, so saying that the news is selectively focusing on something is a tautology. The real question is why people are selecting these topics - and you'd have to direct that question to media producers.
The reality is that approval of unions is not outside of historic trends. The last 10 years has seen a marked increase, but that increase started from historic lows. The current approval rating is not abnormally high [1].
> And when change occurs, whether a social trend, or new product type, or whatever- the pioneers tend to be smaller examples rather than high-profile, no?
In the case of unionization no, not at all. Early unionization efforts were not only industry-wide but society-wide (except for the exclusion of blacks and immigrants). Groups like the Knights of Labor and American Federation of Labor sought to organize all American workers. Big changes in society are usually made by big groups. The reality is that the fact that 350 workers unionizing in a field of millions has near zero effect.
The decline of unionization in America has been noted for a long time. What's noteworthy is interest in unionizing in tech for the first time. And actual change usually requires prior discussion. Those 350 workers at least provide a small model and symbolic inspiration for future efforts.
Cool so we've gone from "high profile" tech unions to "a small model and symbolic inspiration". I think that's a much more effective expression of their significance (or lack thereof).
You set the boundary at high profile, I did not. If I recall early, my original comment is "is surely causing something to change." I made no attempt to quantify how much, nor the rate, nor the acceleration of change.
> Prior to this, and at Kickstarter, there were no high-profile tech unions. Now there is at least two. Now you might not consider that substantially more, but that's still definitely more.
Just because Glitch joined CWA instead of forming their own union does not erase the fact that they are a tech company that became a union shop. And 2 is definitely more than 0, that's just simple arithmetic.
Finally, I never said "high-profile" had to mean FAANG. These two are high-profile cases that gets public attention- not necessarily because the media is manufacturing a narrative, but because Kickstarter, for its small size, is a household name. And Glitch is the successor of Fog Creek Software- this company, as well as Anil Dash and Joel Spolsky, are certainly high-profile names in the tech startup scene. We're not discussing some unknown boutique consultancy.
Despite the popular belief, game developers are pretty well paid. Not every indie or QA contractor, of course, but it's a rich industry with 6 figure salaries and profit sharing/royalty bonuses in successful studios. So, of course, any union would love to represent game developers for a share of their income. Likewise, you don't often hear of, say, restaurant workers needing union representation because they do not make much money and rarely interest unions. This is what's driving calls for unionization IMHO.
And I agree with manfredo, I started in the industry in 90s, and crunch was already there. If anything, the situation improved in mid 00s, with CA strengthening exempt employees classification and later 00s with ea_spouse lawsuit. E.g. mandatory crunches are gone, it used to be that people were forced to stay late and come in on weekends even if they had nothing to do but good luck pulling this now. Nowadays people mostly crunch either because their bonus comes out of the game's sales (and/or metacritic score, like in EA) or because they are paid OT.
> So, of course, any union would love to represent game developers for a share of their income
You're talking about the large, collaborationist unions we know in the US - e.g. those in the AFL-CIO - where "the union" is an external entity to "the unionizing workers"; and often with the bureaucratic motivations you describe. I specifically mentioned that's not the kind of unionization I advise.
Also, payment is just one of many issues in a workplace. The basic need for a union is that the company's owners have the mechanisms for thinking, discussing, deciding acting collectively and concertedly, but its employees do not. That's what a union should be.
On that basis, employees may want to tackle issues like:
* Treatment by managers/management
* Workplace culture
* Physical working conditions
* Workforce size vs. "squeezing" of existing employees
* Advancement opportunities within the company/organization
* Professional standards
and so on.
Finally, remember that a gaming development house has a lot of employees other than developers per se: QA, art, production, administrative etc.
> Nowadays people mostly crunch ... or because they are paid OT.
If people make a good salary, they don't work overtime because they don't need to. There must be some kind of psychological pressure in that direction. Overwork should be avoided.
- who have joint interests and may wish to discuss things, take decisions, and act collect
I am not discussing whatever reasons you envisioned for unionization of our industry from the outside. I am just noting where the unionization effort is actually coming from. Pardon my cynicism, but I don't believe the big union care about anything other than payment, which drives their fees. Otherwise, as I said, they would had been pushing in retail with, at least, same effort as they do in the games industry.
>If people make a good salary, they don't work overtime because they don't need to.
Sure, they don't need to but, nevertheless, they like their fat bonuses.
Correct, firing someone for trying to unionize is illegal. It is illegal to retaliate against workers for trying to unionize. It's not prohibited, to the best of my knowledge, to receive a contract from a union and say, "these term's aren't competitive, we'll find other workers". Otherwise that would effectively give unions unlimited power over companies.
Right, that's illegal. Management is under no obligation to accept any particular set of terms, but they're also not allowed to just say "nope"; they're required to continue negotiating with the union until an agreement is reached.
So if me and my 2 other buddies are the only two employees at an early startup we can unionize and demand immense equity packages, and the company is prohibited from hiring additional employees if they don't like our demands?
This does not sound right - this effectively gives unions the ability to extort companies with impunity. I'll believe this claim that companies are prohibited by law from hiring a non-union workforce if you back it up with a source.
Again, they don't have to accept your demands, but they do have to negotiate rather than just telling you to buzz off. It's illegal for a business to "refuse to bargain collectively with the representatives of its employees". Many people do argue that this gives unions the ability to extort companies with impunity - it's one of the main reasons companies often fight so hard against having a union form.
(If you literally only have 2 employees, the employer might not meet the threshold to be covered under the NLRB.)
> It's illegal for a business to "refuse to bargain collectively with the representatives of its employees".
Right, it's illegal for a company to say "we're not going to bargain with you collectively, at all" but it's not illegal to decline the bargain that employees offer. The company at least has to sit at the table and consider their option - it does not prohibit companies from listening to the collective bargain and declining to accept it.
We may be saying the same thing from different angles. You have the right to decline the employees' proposal, but you have to try to negotiate something better, not just boot them out immediately.
Think of it in terms of something like the second amendment. Unions are similar to weapons in that they're the only real limit on the power your management has over you. The last line of defense, if you will. Without coordinated response provided by unions you _can't_ make your employer change their labor practices. If they want to make you work 16 hours a day for the same pay, there's nothing stopping them.
In an industry known for abusing its employees (which, BTW, does not extend to software engineering in general, in my opinion - software engineers are treated well almost everywhere else), you _need_ pushback to end abuse. It's as simple as that. Even if unionizations fail, they still serve as a signaling mechanism - if things get bad enough, they'll start succeeding, and that's the outcome employers would like to avoid. The solution is simple: they should pull their heads out of their collective asses and start treating employee abuse as a real problem. If there's no downside for them to not doing this, they won't do it. It's as simple as that.
> Here is a question: Why don't we have more smaller unions in America, but instead these GIANT mega unions?
US labor law differs from European labor law, and it essentially encourages/requires a small number of conglomerate unions, each of which have exclusive representation within a company, rather than a larger number of independent unions which can coexist within a single company.
Sounds like as with our healthcare system and many other major problems in America, the problem isn't purely government vs. industry or liberal vs. conservative, but rather a mess of both.
Government Vs. Industry and Liberal vs. Conservative are distinctions that serve to obfuscate the true divide in our system: Capitalists vs. everyone else. Capital doesn't care about these distinctions. The difference between the Cabinet and the Boardroom is akin to a room with a curtain in the middle.
It is all the same with the large corporate unions. They are designed to be run by those cozy with the ruling class and stifle actual workplace democracy.
Some of the endorsement antics during the Democratic primaries exposes that, but I'm making a less partisan point: our healthcare system simultaneously includes incomplete or bad private insurance plans, yet U.S. spends a larger amount per citizen for health care than most other developed nations. It's an unholy mess of inefficient bureaucracy and failed private-public relations, rent-seeking, crony capitalism, unhelpful regulations, outdated systems, and scaling issues leading to bloated organizations that pleases nobody.
That's not how corruption works in general - a lot of people make a little more, but are deprived in other ways.
The system is fundamentally flawed - the problem is that these interventions were never thought through or even authorized. In the past, amendments had to be passed for the government to do new things; now it can do anything since everything is related to interstate commerce.
It is a government problem, the government gave unions special rights that other organizations don't have. It's easy to fix, treat them like any other organization.
They have a lot of exclusivity and pseudo-exclusivity rights. For example, nobody's typically allowed to cut side deal better than the union contract, and the union can require even employees who don't like the union to fund their collective bargaining.
There's an enormous amount of infrastructure behind the big ones. They save up enough money to pay wages during strikes, they lobby heavily on the state and federal level, etc.
You'd presumably be making a trade off for a more efficient/responsive/differently-cultured union. This may be worth it if there is otherwise a large mismatch between who the union currently serves and you. (Or a conflict of interest; are you putting out of business one of the union's large employers?)
I wonder if the unions would be friendly to a kind of affiliate relationship, and/or paying dues into a kind of program like the deposit insurance that banks pay to FDIC, but for strike insurance or something?
The affiliate thing might be interesting. Insurance is a no-go though. There would be incentive to strike to get more payout on the policy. Or worse, an insurance company would take it and would audit every strike for "legitimacy."
That's effectively what the unions are providing. Strikes are not random events, so there's no way to use actuaries to establish minimum costs for the policies though.
Other countries have much less liquid labour markets, or have bargaining powers of unions backed by governments, so they don't have to grow so much to make a difference.
While this is true in principle, in practice that is often not the case:
* The more removed bargainers are from the rank-and-file, the less understanding and emotional motivation they have about many of the issues the workers face.
* Larger unions are easier to corrupt and influence - at least if they have a centralized, hierarchical structure (which US unions mostly do). And that is true even if this structure is democratic (i.e. central governing bodies are elected).
* Larger unions are more difficult to reform and recuperate from past organizational failings than small ones.
* The capitalists and the state absolutely _detest_ more radical / tougher unions. So do the more collaborationist unions. While they might tolerate smaller ones - larger ones threaten the stability of the entire system, and will thus be met with harsh, violent suppression, and "member-stealing" / "workplace-stealing" campaigns much sooner.
As workers tend to have one goal, to have less of their labor time expropriated, there really isn't a reason to have more than one global union. Walmart has over half a trillion in revenue and over two million workers, and it makes sense a union containing those workers be of that size.
Also, if carpenters work for UPS, should they be in the carpenters union or the Teamsters? Large industrial unions do away with such jurisdictional problems.
Another thing I haven't seen mentioned here is that bosses will often try to slow down, stymie, or break up organizing drives by dragging out legal arguments at the labor board. This means arguing that the bargaining unit should be broken up, that certain employees are actually supervisors and shouldn't be included, that certain supervisors actually aren't and therefore _should_ be included in the vote, that the proposed bargaining unit is too small and should include more employees, etc. Typically you'll need a lawyer to navigate this process, lawyers are very expensive, and national/international unions have money.
Organizing a union is also fairly hard, and staff of established unions are more likely to have the skill set to teach you how to have convincing conversations with your co-workers, make sure they stick together, keep everybody from freaking out when the boss starts threatening to fire people, etc. It's also good to have them around to provide financial/legal support if the boss follows through on those threats.
I think part of the problem is that unemployment is so low, that corporations aren't mistreating employees - so the demand for unions is relatively low, compared to historical trends.
It's usually a percentage of workers' paychecks, between 1-2% is pretty standard.
Founding, organizing, and legal stuff for newly forming unions can be handled by the larger organization (e.g. CWA) using pooled dues from existing unions within that organization.
If your union is actually _your union_, i.e. yourself and your co-workers, organizing together to do something - then you're not paying to get a "return". You're participating in your own collective effort. Pecuniary union achievements are an added bonus (though a frequent one).
Unfortunately, with larger unions, or those with weaker consciousness and mis-perceptions of what a union is supposed to be - there's alienation between the member worker on one hand and the union and its operatives on the other, and then dues payment seems to be something transactional: "What will you get me in exchange for what I pay you?"
I was a union HVAC guy for a few years. And one very nice thing was that there were union shops and they went through the union to find employees. So if work dried up at one place the union would take care of getting my unemployment going and then when work came up they would call and say that I was needed elsewhere.
This probably wouldn't translate well to software. But it works great if you are installing ducts. Same goes for plumbers and electricians. My sisters first husband was a union electrician. That is why I looked into getting a union gig. I hate job hunting.
In the years I did it I worked for five different companies. I didn't have to run around dropping off resumes and doing practice tests. I just got a call from the union and was told where to go to work. And I made significantly more than my non-union counterparts. Easily more than the dues I had to pay.
Is this one of the angles that unions use to sell themselves to companies? They can help by providing a well of valuable resources to draw on in an as-needed basis. When both hiring and firing would be an easier proposition, I could see more activity occurring as a result. These people would have experience at different companies and could provide their knowledge like many say is the benefit of people rotating jobs a lot in the SF Bay Area.
Are you implying that public prosecutors have the option to not interact with criminal defense attorneys, because companies certainly have the option to hire employees that do not work for unions.
> Are you implying that public prosecutors have the option to not interact with criminal defense attorneys,
No, I'm implying that working for an actor’s counterparty compromises your ability to represent that actor in adversarial interactions with the same counterparty, which is a core function of unions with respect to employers as it is with defense attorneys with respect to prosecutors.
> companies certainly have the option to hire employees that do not work for unions.
Not in the US; even where union shops are prohibited by state right-to-work laws, adverse employment decisions on the basis of union membership or union-related activity by an employer are prohibited by the National Labor Relations Act. That is, in some cases, employers are allowed to hire employees who aren't members of a union, but they aren't legally permitted to hire employees because (even in part) they aren't members of unions.
In the US, do you think companies have not moved manufacturing from union plants to non-union plants? Do you think they have not moved manufacturing out of US plants? Do you think this does not have to do with union membership?
I believe the adversarial view of unions and employers results in inefficiency and waste. I was suggesting an alternative view of unions and employers, but I believe I now understand you: you think this is impossible.
> You're even more compromised if you are removed.
Unions (or their leadership) perceived as serving management are removed, invariably and swiftly, by their constituents, whether through decertification or leadership elections.
A friend of mine worked for the stage hand's union. It seemed as if it already worked like Uber. Of course in this case Uber was owned by the drivers, not a founder and investors.
How much of a paycut would you take for getting a guaranteed max 40 (or say, 45) hour work week with no retribution from management?
Put it this way, when I worked at startups that owed me a raise they couldn't afford, I've offered several times to take a 0% raise in exchange for a 10% reduction in hours. Not a single company has taken that offer and several thought I was trying to be funny.
It depends, some unions have it as a percentage of salary, others have a set rate per position (all juniors pay X, all mids pay Y, etc.), and yet other have a single fixed amount for all members.
1. If the union is complacent and is willing to put its financial situation in the hands of the employer, to be used as leverage against any struggle - then the union and the employer arrange for a fraction of each employee's salary to be deducted by the employer and passed to the union.
That, at least in the US, is the common case. It is also extremely tempting - and I say this as a past union activist - to go for this option.
2. If, however, the union values its independence from the employer, then union dues are collected either:
2.1 By hand from time to time (much harder, but you get independence from the banking system), or
2.2 Each member signs a standing transfer order, transferring a certain amount of money from their account to the union every month/quarter/year. It's still a challenge to collect anything from non-members, despite them enjoying everything the unionized workers have achieved.
You then give encouragement to employers to hire non-union workers or exclude union workers if they don't have to have the same rights/wages. It seems a bit of an own goal for a union to give more incentives for employers to fight them
"Hire non-union workers" is a phrase that's only meaningful in world states where the employer can be forced to only hire union members. It requires a great deal of organizational/political power to force workplaces to do that unless they are union-owned to begin with. It is therefore a rarity, which occurs mostly where there is some arrangement between large corrupt unions, the government and enough large corporations, which includes:
* Unions putting a lid on actual rank-and-file demands and initiatives.
* No or rare collective action.
* No solidarity action with non-unionized workers, workers from oppressed social groups etc.
* Political support by unions for the regime in general and for dominant factions within government in particular.
* Employers acting in concert with union by dues checkoff and requiring new hires to join (or go through the union to be employed).
* Legislation enshrining this arrangement, or preventing legal action against it.
... which explains why I didn't mention this consideration.
1. Union activities are fundamentally based on a perception of a common cause, common interests, common destiny of all workers - in your company, or in general.
2. It is a much weaker achievement to get an employer to give some people some more. The more meaningful struggle (and in fact - what is often the only real game you can play) is the struggle of "what is an employee doing some kind of work entitled to" - that is, a struggle over what's standard, what's necessary, what's appropriate vs unacceptable. But if there are two categories of rights/benefits, the better category is always that of privilege, and you've never convinced the employer nor yourselves that you are due any of those things by virtue of your being a worker. At most it is by virtue of some kind of alliance with the employer at the expense of the underprivileged.
3. The more fractured the modes of employment are, the more leeway managers and personnel dept. people have to manipulate and apply leverage to individual employees: "Will you be in status X or status Y next year? Hmm, let's see. Well, you did A, and we didn't really like that. I don't know if I can authorize you being a Y" and so on. Also, you (= the union) will be playing cat-and-mouse with the employer all the time about who gets employed in what status exactly; and the more combinations you get the harder it is to keep track of everything and also have a credible and actionable perception of what's it like for the various groups within the rank-and-file.
Interesting development. Glitch used to be Fog Creek, where Joel Spolsky talked of treating developers well (latest hardware, private offices etc) and paying them well. I wonder if the culture has changed and that's why the developers felt the need to create a union.
Joel talking about the great care they took to build their offices (in a way that I felt was a huge mistake) was sort of the beginning of me realizing that he doesn't get everything right.
There's also an uncanny valley effect, where ignoring a problem entirely means that your employees may have needs they aren't aware of, and as soon as you shine a light on it, their job satisfaction is actually lower until you get it right.
I think a couple of my bosses understood this intuitively and would invite us to participate in developing solutions. We are much more patient with ourselves than with others.
There's a lot of crappy office politics that circles around access to daylight. You invariably have a mismatch between Valuable Employees and Valuable deskspace, jockying for position becomes a distraction and having multiple grades of desk just kind of beats the newer employees about the head and shoulders with how little they matter.
It is, in a word, fractious.
The best solution I've seen for this is to keep most of the windows in public spaces. If I go for water or to the bathroom, I should get daylight. Impromptu meeting spaces and lunch spots: daylight.
The thing is, developers say they want daylight at their desk, and then they realize that they can't actually work in natural light (this has gotten better in just the last few years, but I've been watching this happen for 20), and so the people who 'own' the windows end up closing the blinds to work in peace.
The worse this ever got, we had the top floor of a building and so many blinds were closed all day that we might as well have rented space in the basement for half the price/ft²
So now if I am to get any daylight it is at the sole discretion of someone already on an ego trip? No thank you.
Move the desks so that people can see daylight but aren't in daylight. All the windows stay open, your AC bills are a little lower, and the steepness of the pecking order is not quite so brazen.
I'm still trying to locate the iteration that bugged me, but from what I can see of their new-new-new offices, they seem to be more in keeping with the style I talk about above:
... except that there is so little workspace that I had to stare at the picture for about fifteen seconds to figure out if they did, in fact, have any employees at all.
The recent flowering of union membership in the tech industry really warms my heart and makes me hope that this is the start of a pro-union resurgence nation-wide that reverses the conservative anti-union backlash that has dominated the US for decades.
Unfortunately, conservatives have been mostly successful in gaining control of the courts, so expect union-busting measures to be rubber-stamped by them.
There is likely to be much conflict between labor and owners.
My concern as a libertarian is that unionizing tech will lead to calcification, decline of agility and innovation, and diversity of business structure. There's no question that the U.S. has been more innovative in tech than other countries over the past few decades. That's thanks to an entrepreneurial culture that encourages risk taking. Unions attempt to limit risk to employees. In doing so, they limit the agility of organizations. That is a significant trade-off worth pondering and debating.
That's a pretty universal viewpoint. Even the most business-friendly people would be skeptical of someone saying that private equity "warms their heart", or talking about how we need to stop MBA-busting and reverse the "liberal anti-MBA backlash".
We're back to upside and downside risk. If you want "flexibility", you have to offer more. The US west coast startup culture has done OK at giving staff a share of the potential upside. The games industry, on the other hand, is notorious for even successful games resulting in studio closures, and employees exposing themselves to the risks of crunch time being rewarded with layoffs.
I know the ideal libertarian corporate structure has a single CEO making a huge salary controlling a vast collection of precariat workers who are paid the bare minimum to avoid them becoming homeless, or slightly less, but this is .. unpopular with everyone else.
Your last statement is unfair. The gaming industry might be different, but the general software industry has among the best benefits, working hours, perks, offices, work-from-home flexibility, stock compensation, etc of any industry. And we achieved that without a union.
That’s why you have wildcat and general strikes. Courts rubber stamp union busting? Good luck getting your trash picked up or your grocery store stocked. Europeans figured this out a long time ago.
I would argue you still need popular support as people might find that behavior abusive. I know I'd be willing to organize dump runs in the event my trash was not being picked up for a reason I didn't agree with.
For a union, it's concerning when some things are more tailored to the whims, edge cases, personal niches of the most vocal, rather than shielding the common denominator of the cooperative from management's business decisions.
I'd like to explain what I like, and what I'm concerned about:
> Employees at major American tech and game companies have grown increasingly active and outspoken about workplace issues,
Very union related, that's what unions are for.
> including sexual assault and harassment,
Already unlawful. They are addressable to the NLRB and civil legal system.
> ageism,
That's vague, but there are protections against this
> unequal pay,
Not sure what this means, pay between workers of the same level of seniority performing the same responsibilities? Overtime? A lot of things factor into equal pay. A junior employee isn't going to make as much as a 20 year employee.
> “crunch time” (i.e. long-term overtime and overworking),
Looks right. These are covered in union contracts
> poor treatment of contract workers,
If they have union membership? Wouldn't it be about defining a standard of what a salaried employee is?
> inadequate racial and gender diversity,
What does that mean? Inadequate to whom? What makes those characteristics worthy but other characteristics not?
I find it very hurtful and insensitive to people who struggle, suffer, overcome odds, from difficult upbringings, but not member of some class or facet. Why reduce the struggle, character, and worth of someone down to those things? Where does this come from?
What does this say to your colleagues who don't have these traits? Do they have life easy? Have you walked a mile in their shoes?
> and lack of transparency and inclusion in decision-making around controversial contracts with the U.S. Department of Defense and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
That is not the kind of decision I think employees should be deciding. Though if a larger organization wanted to allow someone to move somewhere else in the org, that seems fair
> Already unlawful. They are addressable to the NLRB and civil legal system.
> That's vague, but there are protections against this
> Wouldn't it be about defining a standard of what a salaried employee is?
Unions can be an additional safety net/layer of protection/tool against these discriminations and abuses. In a time when HR departments are often derided as existing to protect the company instead of workers, and it often takes either media exposure or self-publishing (as with Susan Fowler) for discrimination against protected classes to be acknowledged, a union could be a place for the discriminated to turn to where HR reps fail. At least then you don't have to hire your own lawyer.
> unequal pay,
This might be a gender gap criticism meaning unequal pay between workers with the same title but of different genders.
> That is not the kind of decision I think employees should be deciding.
Why? The stigma of culture war and political battles aside, why shouldn't employees take part in making business decisions in general?
> Why? The stigma of culture war and political battles aside, why shouldn't employees take part in making business decisions in general?
Basically, no.
That's what's management is for.
They can become manager's if they want to impact that, though.
Are they qualified to understand what they're talking about? If they have a disagreement, is there a reason why they wouldn't raise it via proper channels rather than effect other things that are vital to the organization?
Are they big picture thinkers that have taken the time to digest the system, uninfluenced by social pressures? Some people don't care about their organization's goals, their coworkers, and decide to act out for their own vanity, at everyone else's expense.
And that is one reason why management exists. To answer your question, while they may be wrong, there's a purpose in shielding decision making away from those who lose sight of the org's goals.
The point of the union is when management makes decisions, which can be unfair and uncaring to the worker, that their rights, safety, and livelihood also are represented with fairness. The alternative I offered to you was, in an organization large enough, they could request to move to a different project.
Saying that they can become managers is like saying they can become the president of the U.S. The point is that you cannot become a manager at all if you disagree with management in the first place (and that doesn't mean you don't have the chops). Also the number of management seats are limited. The number of union seats has no upper limit.
> Saying that they can become managers is like saying they can become the president of the U.S.
I don't think that analogy is proportional, since that'd make a manager at a furniture store on par with a head of state. But I get it, there isn't unlimited management roles. Because if there were, everyone would be on their own.
If you want to influence and shape business decisions - you want to be a manager.
How do you become one? By showing competence as an employee and joining a lower management position. Successes are how they climb the ladder. Yes, they definitely can innovate, and they can also play it safe.
People in upper management also hop between companies and have similar positions.
I think you don't understand what I said. You can't climb the ladder if you disagree with management. And that's not because you have no talent and management has the talent. There is no such correlation.
Is this clear now or do you need more help to understand?
I've written about this previously [0]. There is no shortage of companies with sound products, good teams, and bad management that prioritizes short-sighted thinking in their business strategy. I've definitely seen organizations with senior and staff engineers much more respected than me call out leadership for ignoring critical technical limitations, or failing to prioritize important things, only to lead to bad business decisions that ultimately doomed their companies. Sometimes those at the top don't see big enough of pictures.
I do believe that there's multiple problems that unions can address, and one of which is giving workers more say in how their companies are run and in what they're building.
Obviously, not all management is made up of pointy-headed bosses, and Dilbert shouldn't necessarily lead the company. There are definitely places where engineering-first cultures fail. But the status quo is made up of organizations where employee disagreement is reduced to a few pointed questions and awkward moments at all-hands, and if management fails then those employees are cut and execs get to leave with plushier severance packages. And while unions' primary purpose should be to protect the lower levels of Maslow's hierarchy, they can potentially be a tool to empower employee decision making. Or at least, to provide a check against management unilaterally making decisions even when the rank-and-file disagree.
Sure, you can just say people can leave, or companies with bad management cultures should deserve to fail. But that just seems like defeatism. It seems like a form of capitalism that promotes throwaway, wasteful behavior. If the employees had valid concerns, but management ignored them, doesn't it seem like a shame for an organization to decline and the product to die because of their mistakes. What about the customers?
Even if unions aren't the best tool for this, an industry that's so obsessed with innovation and disruption and experimentation- coming up with schemes like holacracy for instance- should at least try to address this problem. Bring back board-level ombudsmen, at least. [1]
I hope the CWA treats them better than they treat the SUNY grad students they represent.
All State University of New York graduate students are also represented by CWA. [1] Out of the lowly salary I earned as a grad student, I had to pay dues to them throughout the entire five years I spent in grad school. I never felt like they particularly cared about us or got to see a return on this investment.
They made a show of coming by the campus once in a while, especially when elections were happening, but other than that I can't recall a single time where I felt it was beneficial to be part of the CWA.
This is the thing with unions they don't care about one persons issues at a workplace but general issues like pay when compared to other companies in the same field. If the company previously had toxic people in high places the people will just adjust to follow union rules while still being toxic.
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[ 3.2 ms ] story [ 227 ms ] threadhttps://time.com/5603329/e3-video-game-creators-union/
Because kids romanticize it and think that their job will involve playing video games all day.
--EDIT: It's also worth noting that if you are on the digital content side of game dev like modeling and mapping there's not a ton of alternative options for practicing those skillsets professionally, unlike programming.
I'm still however not sold on the idea that tech in general needs unions, but am open to the idea that it may be a variable need company to company for certain groups of people.
Just don't make me have to join one, because I am fairly convinced it's not in my best personal interest and same for a lot of other tech workers like me.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2TSB5YQqDiY
Glitch isn't a startup. It's a 20 year old company with probably rigid rules.
"Bargain as a team" is called "collective bargaining" is called a "union". Just avoid the indirection and call the thing by its name.
[0] Communications Workers of America (CWA) is the largest communications and media labor union in the United States, representing about 700,000 members in both the private and public sectors (also in Canada and Puerto Rico).
Management was basically incredibly incompetent, for a long time, and were so unfair to employees at the company that they felt this was the only option. There is a Tweet stream a couple months ago from someone who left the company who highlighted the amazing degree to which they were unfairly reviewed and unfairly criticized, alongside how much work product they were expected to produce (which was unreasonable). I have enough corroboration to say that the tweet stream as written is fairly unbiased, and that their experience was common. My understanding is the employees felt backed into a corner.
I think unions can be very, very valuable, but I think needing one at a small company that took a series A round quite recently speaks more to management failure than anything else. I'm happy that they unionized, because it sounds like they needed to, but I am so fucking disappointed that it was necessary.
EDIT: Medium, not Twitter; sorry. https://medium.com/@scientiffic/on-the-aftermath-of-quitting...
This is something I wish had been in the article. Even something vague, like "Employees reported they were unhappy with management and the performance evaluation system. The union with CWA will work with management to blah blah blah".
Agree that it sounds like a management failure.
Thanks!
seems to be a correlation - back then like 10 years ago HN had various FG blogposts/articles appear on the front page relatively frequently while in recent years i don't remember any.
That said, I have no idea if that's why Glitch has fewer articles or not. It could also be different culture; the FogBugz, Kiln, and Trello teams have all gone away. I don't think I even know anyone who works at Glitch these days. They may just emphasize blogging less.
"Management was basically incredibly incompetent, for a long time, and were so unfair to employees at the company that they felt this was the only option"
Why not just quit and get a new role? I don't really understand how being unionized under terrible management is desirable.
on a secondary note, there is nothing wrong with living in a democracy and wanting representation in your community. Our work is a part of our community as much as any other space, especially since we spend so much time there and center our lives around it.
I don't think this is true. Rather, they don't buy the myth that unions have no downsides. Therefore you choose not to willingly accept such downsides until necessary. Arguably medical coverage is always necessary and is a poor comparison.
[^1]: A particularly egregious example from the factory where my dad works as a maintenance person: they have a machine that cuts cardboard; to service the blade, they need 3 people: one to remove the bolts holding the blade in place, another to remove the blade, and yet another to service it (and then the first two must replace the blade and the bolts, respectively). There must be three distinct people (IIRC because they're from different unions or something similarly silly) by contract (not because removing the bolts or the blade requires special training), which generally involves a lot of waiting for each person to be available--something that could take half an hour often spans multiple days.
[^2]: Another particularly egregious example from my father-in-law's IT office (he has since retired): employees generally laze about doing little; they aren't allowed to browse the Internet or play games, but some bring in books and one woman literally sits staring vacantly at her black-screen monitor for hours on end. No idea why electronic idleness is okay, but reading, etc are okay.
He had to occasionally adjust controls that were slotted (potentiometers). He had a little screwdriver that he kept in his pocket to make that easier. The electricians filed a grievance with the union because he was carrying electrician’s tools.
I think there is some good in unions. I think there is also some bad.
The important thing to remember though is that bad experiences in of themselves are no reason to write off a category of organization, or to assume no improvement is possible. Where would our industry be if we just assumed riding taxis would always be a bad experience, or making payments?
[0] https://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/free-books/employee-...
"Managers and supervisors are also not protected by the NLRA, and cannot join unions or be part of the bargaining unit. These employees are considered to be part of a company’s management rather than its labor force."
I don't know when I'm going to get sick, and I can't get rid of the sickness, so I buy insurance to compensate.
I know what I'm getting myself into when signing a contract with a company, because there's a contract. I can leave when I want and seek employment elsewhere.
> 90% of the workers indicated their support for joining CWA and authorized CWA to be their bargaining representative
> about half of whom work in the New York City headquarters and half of whom work remotely throughout the country
> Employees at major American tech and game companies have grown increasingly active and outspoken about workplace issues, including sexual assault and harassment, ageism, unequal pay, “crunch time” (i.e. long-term overtime and overworking), poor treatment of contract workers, inadequate racial and gender diversity, and lack of transparency and inclusion in decision-making around controversial contracts with the U.S. Department of Defense and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
> “We appreciate that unlike so many employers, the Glitch management team decided to respect the rights of its workforce to choose union representation without fear or coercion."
> CWA was founded by telecom workers, and supports media workers through its Newsguild-CWA and NABET-CWA sectors.
There are more potential employees than potential employers, and most companies will survive understaffed longer than US laborers will survive unemployed. Inherently, the negotiations favor the employer. The more output the employer has stolen from its workers, the more of an advantage it will have. Unionizing and collective bargaining balances those scales.
This is exacerbated by employers either overtly colluding with each other (as in the lawsuit several years ago over tech companies having an agreement not to hire each other's employees) or simply setting compensation to "industry averages" and following "industry best practices".
To the extent that every big tech company behaves the same as every other big tech company, there's effectively only one big tech employer.
If the industry you work in sucks, jump ship? That's not exactly great advice when you've spent decades honing your craft in a certain industry. Even if someone did genuinely want to switch, game development skills aren't necessarily easily transferable to other kinds of development, even if it helps.
That advice makes sense if a company you works for sucks, but if an entire industry is broken, you can't just tell people to suck it up and find a new industry.
This needs a lot of qualification. Even someone doing scripting probably has picked up coding fluency at least. Programming game engines and networking code is definitely tackling complex problems and could at least get a mid-level dev role. I think 3d asset creation is probably the most game-specific role, and even that is something that is used by special effects companies and design firms.
> That advice makes sense if a company you works for sucks, but if an entire industry is broken, you can't just tell people to suck it up and find a new industry.
You absolutely can tell people to suck it up and find a new industry. This mentality is why the game industry can get away with bad work life balance and low job security. Because people keep working there. If the game industry was starved for talent, then they'd have to offer better work experiences.
Game industry working conditions are generally significantly better than VFX and can be better than design firms looking for similar skillsets.
There's typically more focus on analytics and the science skills over artistic skills (sorry graphic artists, environmental artists, etc.) obviously, but backend developers in gaming often have a lot of useful overlapping skills and knowledge in terms of systems design, design patterns, sets of problems, etc.
Pay is good, work/life balance is great, intellectually stimulating, it's challenging yet enjoyable (though arguably not as fun as game development). In many cases, industry borrows or leverages work from the gaming industry quite a bit.
A step further and the defense industry/military industrial complex would also love to have more game developers--though tech has a pretty anti-government pro-business vibe overall (not surprisingly).
Unionization is not going to fix the management training problem.
If workers unionize [1], they can force bad management out, or curtail its badness, or in extreme cases - replace management with collective ownership.
[1] - in an independent, non-corrupt union.
Also, I have no idea where you get the idea that unions can somehow force collective ownership. The company belongs to the shareholders, unions don't magically get to take other people's property.
I will say that the horror stories and bad press coming out of the video gaming industry will possibly have a chilling effect for new grads who would otherwise jump straight into it. Eventually management will run out of non-union workers to hire. Or the non-union workers themselves will demand better treatment.
Very rarely do employees receive equity as compensation.
Non-voting shares, yes. Voting shares are usually only given to very senior people, if ever, and not nearly enough to form anything close to a controlling ownership of the company.
> I will say that the horror stories and bad press coming out of the video gaming industry will possibly have a chilling effect for new grads who would otherwise jump straight into it. Eventually management will run out of non-union workers to hire. Or the non-union workers themselves will demand better treatment.
Decades of game development suggests otherwise. Like acting, it's people's dream job. And when the supply of labor exceeds the demand workers do not have leverage.
I think you need to qualify the claim that these experiences are worsening. In fact, from most of the veteran developers I've talked to report the opposite: before the proliferation of the internet crunch time was way more serious since patching was not a viable option. Nowadays it's pretty much the norm that games have significant bugs for the first week or two and still need to mature after release. This creates greater room for error and less pressure to fix every bug before release.
Take this story for example. Linkedin lists Glitch's size as 11-50. The highest employee count I've found claims 120. This is small fish in a very large pond. This press release name drops Google, but these companies are three orders of magnitude apart in terms of size.
1. https://craft.co/kickstarter
2. https://www.bls.gov/ooh/computer-and-information-technology/...
And when change occurs, whether a social trend, or new product type, or whatever- the pioneers tend to be smaller examples rather than high-profile, no?
Again, don't conflate discussion and attention with actual change. People who produce the news always have to select their topics, so saying that the news is selectively focusing on something is a tautology. The real question is why people are selecting these topics - and you'd have to direct that question to media producers.
The reality is that approval of unions is not outside of historic trends. The last 10 years has seen a marked increase, but that increase started from historic lows. The current approval rating is not abnormally high [1].
> And when change occurs, whether a social trend, or new product type, or whatever- the pioneers tend to be smaller examples rather than high-profile, no?
In the case of unionization no, not at all. Early unionization efforts were not only industry-wide but society-wide (except for the exclusion of blacks and immigrants). Groups like the Knights of Labor and American Federation of Labor sought to organize all American workers. Big changes in society are usually made by big groups. The reality is that the fact that 350 workers unionizing in a field of millions has near zero effect.
1. https://news.gallup.com/poll/241679/labor-union-approval-ste...
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22571261
Finally, I never said "high-profile" had to mean FAANG. These two are high-profile cases that gets public attention- not necessarily because the media is manufacturing a narrative, but because Kickstarter, for its small size, is a household name. And Glitch is the successor of Fog Creek Software- this company, as well as Anil Dash and Joel Spolsky, are certainly high-profile names in the tech startup scene. We're not discussing some unknown boutique consultancy.
And I agree with manfredo, I started in the industry in 90s, and crunch was already there. If anything, the situation improved in mid 00s, with CA strengthening exempt employees classification and later 00s with ea_spouse lawsuit. E.g. mandatory crunches are gone, it used to be that people were forced to stay late and come in on weekends even if they had nothing to do but good luck pulling this now. Nowadays people mostly crunch either because their bonus comes out of the game's sales (and/or metacritic score, like in EA) or because they are paid OT.
You're talking about the large, collaborationist unions we know in the US - e.g. those in the AFL-CIO - where "the union" is an external entity to "the unionizing workers"; and often with the bureaucratic motivations you describe. I specifically mentioned that's not the kind of unionization I advise.
Also, payment is just one of many issues in a workplace. The basic need for a union is that the company's owners have the mechanisms for thinking, discussing, deciding acting collectively and concertedly, but its employees do not. That's what a union should be.
On that basis, employees may want to tackle issues like:
* Treatment by managers/management * Workplace culture * Physical working conditions * Workforce size vs. "squeezing" of existing employees * Advancement opportunities within the company/organization * Professional standards
and so on.
Finally, remember that a gaming development house has a lot of employees other than developers per se: QA, art, production, administrative etc.
> Nowadays people mostly crunch ... or because they are paid OT.
If people make a good salary, they don't work overtime because they don't need to. There must be some kind of psychological pressure in that direction. Overwork should be avoided.
- who have joint interests and may wish to discuss things, take decisions, and act collect
>If people make a good salary, they don't work overtime because they don't need to.
Sure, they don't need to but, nevertheless, they like their fat bonuses.
And then immediately be sued by the union & former employees for retaliation under the labor acts. Businesses already tried that sort of shenanigans
Management is under no obligation to accept union terms, and is free to hire non-union work if the union terms are not competitive.
This does not sound right - this effectively gives unions the ability to extort companies with impunity. I'll believe this claim that companies are prohibited by law from hiring a non-union workforce if you back it up with a source.
(If you literally only have 2 employees, the employer might not meet the threshold to be covered under the NLRB.)
cite: https://www.nlrb.gov/rights-we-protect/whats-law/employers/b...
Right, it's illegal for a company to say "we're not going to bargain with you collectively, at all" but it's not illegal to decline the bargain that employees offer. The company at least has to sit at the table and consider their option - it does not prohibit companies from listening to the collective bargain and declining to accept it.
In an industry known for abusing its employees (which, BTW, does not extend to software engineering in general, in my opinion - software engineers are treated well almost everywhere else), you _need_ pushback to end abuse. It's as simple as that. Even if unionizations fail, they still serve as a signaling mechanism - if things get bad enough, they'll start succeeding, and that's the outcome employers would like to avoid. The solution is simple: they should pull their heads out of their collective asses and start treating employee abuse as a real problem. If there's no downside for them to not doing this, they won't do it. It's as simple as that.
You aren't liberal on social issues if you're a fiscal conservative. That's not how the world works.
Why don't we have more smaller unions in America, but instead these GIANT mega unions?
I get collective bargaining is better with more numbers, but it feels like there is no way to have a "new" union exist?
US labor law differs from European labor law, and it essentially encourages/requires a small number of conglomerate unions, each of which have exclusive representation within a company, rather than a larger number of independent unions which can coexist within a single company.
It is all the same with the large corporate unions. They are designed to be run by those cozy with the ruling class and stifle actual workplace democracy.
Somebody is making a lot of money this way. They donate to both parties.
The system is fundamentally flawed - the problem is that these interventions were never thought through or even authorized. In the past, amendments had to be passed for the government to do new things; now it can do anything since everything is related to interstate commerce.
Other countries have much less liquid labour markets, or have bargaining powers of unions backed by governments, so they don't have to grow so much to make a difference.
How does this bigger union give them any more bargaining power against glitch?
* The more removed bargainers are from the rank-and-file, the less understanding and emotional motivation they have about many of the issues the workers face.
* Larger unions are easier to corrupt and influence - at least if they have a centralized, hierarchical structure (which US unions mostly do). And that is true even if this structure is democratic (i.e. central governing bodies are elected).
* Larger unions are more difficult to reform and recuperate from past organizational failings than small ones.
* The capitalists and the state absolutely _detest_ more radical / tougher unions. So do the more collaborationist unions. While they might tolerate smaller ones - larger ones threaten the stability of the entire system, and will thus be met with harsh, violent suppression, and "member-stealing" / "workplace-stealing" campaigns much sooner.
Case in point: Industrial Workers of the World in the US. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Industrial_Workers_of_the_Worl...
Also, if carpenters work for UPS, should they be in the carpenters union or the Teamsters? Large industrial unions do away with such jurisdictional problems.
Organizing a union is also fairly hard, and staff of established unions are more likely to have the skill set to teach you how to have convincing conversations with your co-workers, make sure they stick together, keep everybody from freaking out when the boss starts threatening to fire people, etc. It's also good to have them around to provide financial/legal support if the boss follows through on those threats.
Also I assume there’s a formation/founding cost. How does that work?
Founding, organizing, and legal stuff for newly forming unions can be handled by the larger organization (e.g. CWA) using pooled dues from existing unions within that organization.
Unfortunately, with larger unions, or those with weaker consciousness and mis-perceptions of what a union is supposed to be - there's alienation between the member worker on one hand and the union and its operatives on the other, and then dues payment seems to be something transactional: "What will you get me in exchange for what I pay you?"
This probably wouldn't translate well to software. But it works great if you are installing ducts. Same goes for plumbers and electricians. My sisters first husband was a union electrician. That is why I looked into getting a union gig. I hate job hunting.
In the years I did it I worked for five different companies. I didn't have to run around dropping off resumes and doing practice tests. I just got a call from the union and was told where to go to work. And I made significantly more than my non-union counterparts. Easily more than the dues I had to pay.
Unions don't sell themselves to companies in the first place.
The same reason your criminal defense attorney doesn't sell themselves to the public prosecutor's office.
No, I'm implying that working for an actor’s counterparty compromises your ability to represent that actor in adversarial interactions with the same counterparty, which is a core function of unions with respect to employers as it is with defense attorneys with respect to prosecutors.
> companies certainly have the option to hire employees that do not work for unions.
Not in the US; even where union shops are prohibited by state right-to-work laws, adverse employment decisions on the basis of union membership or union-related activity by an employer are prohibited by the National Labor Relations Act. That is, in some cases, employers are allowed to hire employees who aren't members of a union, but they aren't legally permitted to hire employees because (even in part) they aren't members of unions.
In the US, do you think companies have not moved manufacturing from union plants to non-union plants? Do you think they have not moved manufacturing out of US plants? Do you think this does not have to do with union membership?
I believe the adversarial view of unions and employers results in inefficiency and waste. I was suggesting an alternative view of unions and employers, but I believe I now understand you: you think this is impossible.
Unions (or their leadership) perceived as serving management are removed, invariably and swiftly, by their constituents, whether through decertification or leadership elections.
If you try to UBER union electricians you are probably going to be in for a rude awakening.
What's the rude awakening that I should expect?
Put it this way, when I worked at startups that owed me a raise they couldn't afford, I've offered several times to take a 0% raise in exchange for a 10% reduction in hours. Not a single company has taken that offer and several thought I was trying to be funny.
I was not.
It depends, some unions have it as a percentage of salary, others have a set rate per position (all juniors pay X, all mids pay Y, etc.), and yet other have a single fixed amount for all members.
That, at least in the US, is the common case. It is also extremely tempting - and I say this as a past union activist - to go for this option.
2. If, however, the union values its independence from the employer, then union dues are collected either:
2.1 By hand from time to time (much harder, but you get independence from the banking system), or
2.2 Each member signs a standing transfer order, transferring a certain amount of money from their account to the union every month/quarter/year. It's still a challenge to collect anything from non-members, despite them enjoying everything the unionized workers have achieved.
Regarding 2, is there any reason the union achievements must apply to non-union workers as well?
* Unions putting a lid on actual rank-and-file demands and initiatives.
* No or rare collective action.
* No solidarity action with non-unionized workers, workers from oppressed social groups etc.
* Political support by unions for the regime in general and for dominant factions within government in particular.
* Employers acting in concert with union by dues checkoff and requiring new hires to join (or go through the union to be employed).
* Legislation enshrining this arrangement, or preventing legal action against it.
... which explains why I didn't mention this consideration.
1. Union activities are fundamentally based on a perception of a common cause, common interests, common destiny of all workers - in your company, or in general.
2. It is a much weaker achievement to get an employer to give some people some more. The more meaningful struggle (and in fact - what is often the only real game you can play) is the struggle of "what is an employee doing some kind of work entitled to" - that is, a struggle over what's standard, what's necessary, what's appropriate vs unacceptable. But if there are two categories of rights/benefits, the better category is always that of privilege, and you've never convinced the employer nor yourselves that you are due any of those things by virtue of your being a worker. At most it is by virtue of some kind of alliance with the employer at the expense of the underprivileged.
3. The more fractured the modes of employment are, the more leeway managers and personnel dept. people have to manipulate and apply leverage to individual employees: "Will you be in status X or status Y next year? Hmm, let's see. Well, you did A, and we didn't really like that. I don't know if I can authorize you being a Y" and so on. Also, you (= the union) will be playing cat-and-mouse with the employer all the time about who gets employed in what status exactly; and the more combinations you get the harder it is to keep track of everything and also have a credible and actionable perception of what's it like for the various groups within the rank-and-file.
[https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2006/09/07/a-field-guide-to-d...]
There's also an uncanny valley effect, where ignoring a problem entirely means that your employees may have needs they aren't aware of, and as soon as you shine a light on it, their job satisfaction is actually lower until you get it right.
I think a couple of my bosses understood this intuitively and would invite us to participate in developing solutions. We are much more patient with ourselves than with others.
It is, in a word, fractious.
The best solution I've seen for this is to keep most of the windows in public spaces. If I go for water or to the bathroom, I should get daylight. Impromptu meeting spaces and lunch spots: daylight.
The thing is, developers say they want daylight at their desk, and then they realize that they can't actually work in natural light (this has gotten better in just the last few years, but I've been watching this happen for 20), and so the people who 'own' the windows end up closing the blinds to work in peace.
The worse this ever got, we had the top floor of a building and so many blinds were closed all day that we might as well have rented space in the basement for half the price/ft²
So now if I am to get any daylight it is at the sole discretion of someone already on an ego trip? No thank you.
Move the desks so that people can see daylight but aren't in daylight. All the windows stay open, your AC bills are a little lower, and the steepness of the pecking order is not quite so brazen.
https://medium.com/make-better-software/beyond-open-offices-...
... except that there is so little workspace that I had to stare at the picture for about fifteen seconds to figure out if they did, in fact, have any employees at all.
Unfortunately, conservatives have been mostly successful in gaining control of the courts, so expect union-busting measures to be rubber-stamped by them.
There is likely to be much conflict between labor and owners.
I know the ideal libertarian corporate structure has a single CEO making a huge salary controlling a vast collection of precariat workers who are paid the bare minimum to avoid them becoming homeless, or slightly less, but this is .. unpopular with everyone else.
Anybody privy to the info how it fared?
I kinda wish proper guilds would become a thing in tech. I feel they could solve both the craftsmanship and workers rights problems but oh well...
I'd like to explain what I like, and what I'm concerned about:
> Employees at major American tech and game companies have grown increasingly active and outspoken about workplace issues,
Very union related, that's what unions are for.
> including sexual assault and harassment,
Already unlawful. They are addressable to the NLRB and civil legal system.
> ageism,
That's vague, but there are protections against this
> unequal pay,
Not sure what this means, pay between workers of the same level of seniority performing the same responsibilities? Overtime? A lot of things factor into equal pay. A junior employee isn't going to make as much as a 20 year employee.
> “crunch time” (i.e. long-term overtime and overworking),
Looks right. These are covered in union contracts
> poor treatment of contract workers,
If they have union membership? Wouldn't it be about defining a standard of what a salaried employee is?
> inadequate racial and gender diversity,
What does that mean? Inadequate to whom? What makes those characteristics worthy but other characteristics not?
I find it very hurtful and insensitive to people who struggle, suffer, overcome odds, from difficult upbringings, but not member of some class or facet. Why reduce the struggle, character, and worth of someone down to those things? Where does this come from?
What does this say to your colleagues who don't have these traits? Do they have life easy? Have you walked a mile in their shoes?
> and lack of transparency and inclusion in decision-making around controversial contracts with the U.S. Department of Defense and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
That is not the kind of decision I think employees should be deciding. Though if a larger organization wanted to allow someone to move somewhere else in the org, that seems fair
> That's vague, but there are protections against this
> Wouldn't it be about defining a standard of what a salaried employee is?
Unions can be an additional safety net/layer of protection/tool against these discriminations and abuses. In a time when HR departments are often derided as existing to protect the company instead of workers, and it often takes either media exposure or self-publishing (as with Susan Fowler) for discrimination against protected classes to be acknowledged, a union could be a place for the discriminated to turn to where HR reps fail. At least then you don't have to hire your own lawyer.
> unequal pay,
This might be a gender gap criticism meaning unequal pay between workers with the same title but of different genders.
> That is not the kind of decision I think employees should be deciding.
Why? The stigma of culture war and political battles aside, why shouldn't employees take part in making business decisions in general?
Basically, no.
That's what's management is for.
They can become manager's if they want to impact that, though.
Are they qualified to understand what they're talking about? If they have a disagreement, is there a reason why they wouldn't raise it via proper channels rather than effect other things that are vital to the organization?
Are they big picture thinkers that have taken the time to digest the system, uninfluenced by social pressures? Some people don't care about their organization's goals, their coworkers, and decide to act out for their own vanity, at everyone else's expense.
And that is one reason why management exists. To answer your question, while they may be wrong, there's a purpose in shielding decision making away from those who lose sight of the org's goals.
The point of the union is when management makes decisions, which can be unfair and uncaring to the worker, that their rights, safety, and livelihood also are represented with fairness. The alternative I offered to you was, in an organization large enough, they could request to move to a different project.
I don't think that analogy is proportional, since that'd make a manager at a furniture store on par with a head of state. But I get it, there isn't unlimited management roles. Because if there were, everyone would be on their own.
If you want to influence and shape business decisions - you want to be a manager.
How do you become one? By showing competence as an employee and joining a lower management position. Successes are how they climb the ladder. Yes, they definitely can innovate, and they can also play it safe.
People in upper management also hop between companies and have similar positions.
Is this clear now or do you need more help to understand?
I do believe that there's multiple problems that unions can address, and one of which is giving workers more say in how their companies are run and in what they're building.
Obviously, not all management is made up of pointy-headed bosses, and Dilbert shouldn't necessarily lead the company. There are definitely places where engineering-first cultures fail. But the status quo is made up of organizations where employee disagreement is reduced to a few pointed questions and awkward moments at all-hands, and if management fails then those employees are cut and execs get to leave with plushier severance packages. And while unions' primary purpose should be to protect the lower levels of Maslow's hierarchy, they can potentially be a tool to empower employee decision making. Or at least, to provide a check against management unilaterally making decisions even when the rank-and-file disagree.
Sure, you can just say people can leave, or companies with bad management cultures should deserve to fail. But that just seems like defeatism. It seems like a form of capitalism that promotes throwaway, wasteful behavior. If the employees had valid concerns, but management ignored them, doesn't it seem like a shame for an organization to decline and the product to die because of their mistakes. What about the customers?
Even if unions aren't the best tool for this, an industry that's so obsessed with innovation and disruption and experimentation- coming up with schemes like holacracy for instance- should at least try to address this problem. Bring back board-level ombudsmen, at least. [1]
[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22381563
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22367243
All State University of New York graduate students are also represented by CWA. [1] Out of the lowly salary I earned as a grad student, I had to pay dues to them throughout the entire five years I spent in grad school. I never felt like they particularly cared about us or got to see a return on this investment.
They made a show of coming by the campus once in a while, especially when elections were happening, but other than that I can't recall a single time where I felt it was beneficial to be part of the CWA.
[1] https://cwa1104.com/apprenticeship-program