Well given that a union at least initially isn't part of the formal company structures almost by definition then there needs to be some process of recognition that yes this organisation that claims to represent my employees does in fact represent my employees.
That is what those union ballots are about - the union needs evidence that they are representatives of the employees of the company.
A union has to start somewhere. Of course depending upon the legal jurisdiction a company might not have much of a choice if a union meets a legal threshold, and in the case of union action they might not have a choice otherwise than deal with a union.
In this case I doubt MS had a choice, I guess what is notable is that they have not needed to make such a choice before now.
How else do you think the company should determine if it wants to interact with the union or not?
Obviously the company isn’t going to work with literally any union that emails them and says it has a demand, without knowing if the union has anything to back up its demands or not.
If someone came to demand your money and said ‘or else’ you’d ask what the ‘or else’ is, wouldn’t you?
> How else do you think the company should determine if it wants to interact with the union or not?
Pretty simple.
Check how many employees are part of the union. Does the union represent a majority of the workforce or at least a minority but made of important employees? Then you better listen to what they say, or they could go on a strike.
The only way to make companies agree to your demands is to promise them a larger loss if they don't agree.
Union elections are how that check is performed. Microsoft appears to be skipping this process though and voluntarily recognizing the union, presumably because they know it would win such an election. This is probably only coming up because as a part of the acquisition process they are terminating and rehiring all the employees, which removes the existing union representation since the old employment relationship no longer exists. This is of course mostly just a paperwork exercise but is common in acquisitions since the acquired is not necessarily legally taking control of the acquired corporation itself, but rather its assets.
Well given that a union at least initially isn't part of the formal company structures almost by definition then there needs to be some process of recognition that yes this organisation that claims to represent my employees does in fact represent my employees.
But in this case, the union is already established and recognized by the acquired employer. MS (or any other acquiring entity) shouldn’t be allowed to ignore an existing employer-labor relationship. If that were true, any time a company unionized, the stockholders could just continually buy itself with another shell company and terminate the union relationship.
To follow on this line of questioning: What are the legal requirements for businesses to accommodate unions comprised of their employees?
There are clear obligations in Germany for how to integrate unions in a business and where/how they're able to influence business processes. How is it in the US?
In the US, employers are only required to recognize majority unions, which are formed by a majority of employees in what we call a “bargaining unit” and legally granted both the right and obligation to represent everyone in that unit. They can be formed through an election or through what’s happening here, where the company voluntarily recognizes that the union has majority support. Employees are free to form smaller “minority unions” but employers don’t have to talk to that kind of union if they don’t want to.
> There are clear obligations in Germany for how to integrate unions in a business and where/how they're able to influence business processes. How is it in the US?
I guess even in Germany a union can't just show up, with no demonstrable employee support, and start dictating that the company listen to them?
You say 'comprised of their employees' - who determines this? You need a secret vote at least, or some kind of voluntary indication of support. You need to know people aren't being coerced.
In Austria, the situation is as follows: the employees of a company can decide to form a works council, which may or may not consist of Union members. To establish a works council, you need support statements of at least 5 employees. The works council itself is then elected by all employees of the company. They can choose between different candidates, who might be more or less union-friendly. The works council checks for violation of labor laws and is also consulted if employees are set off.
Union elections are held in the US under regulations established by the National Labor Relations Board. These include, among other things, a secret ballot and measures against coercion. Employers are generally required to recognize a union which wins such an election.
That said, it is also common for acquisitions to be structured as a transaction in which all employees are terminated by the acquired organization and hired by the new organization. This effectively "resets" the process and may require employees to hold a new election. However, employers can always recognize a voluntarily and skip the NLRB process which would make recognition mandatory. It seems that Microsoft has indicated their willingness to do so.
The card check process is more of a special case of voluntary recognition, in which the employer can agree to skip the election if the petition for election already has a majority of the employees. Typically the employer can still require that an election by secret ballot be performed, the exception requires special dispensation of the NLRB which is obtained by demonstrating that the employer has or intends to tamper with the election.
The concept of a normalized card-check-only process is generally favored by unions because the NLRB election process is widely viewed as excessively favoring employers. However, it has never passed congress. That is, the "card check" as it is often discussed doesn't actually exist as the legislation proposing it has never passed. The existing mechanism is a fairly narrow exception that mostly exists for employer convenience.
I'm not sure what it would even mean for a union to "just show up".
A union is by definition a group of employees. I guess you're talking about, maybe, representatives of a national union coming to an employer without there first being a union vote within...?
That's not remotely like what's being discussed here. What this situation is, and what's being talked about, are a union formed within the company (whether or not it's affiliated with a national union) and whether the employer has to recognize it and bargain collectively.
I can't even fathom the idea of a union with no members at a given company or organization "just showing up" and trying to get the management to bargain with them on their workers' behalf. It's just utterly nonsensical.
> I can't even fathom the idea of a union with no members at a given company or organization "just showing up" and trying to get the management to bargain with them on their workers' behalf. It's just utterly nonsensical.
That's how many unions work.
For example look at what is happening with Amazon warehouses - existing external unions turn up and try to recruit workers.
You also see it for example in the UK where unions have a political party and try to use that to change labour laws through normal government elections.
Whether or not that's nonsensical is a matter of opinion!
I don't think that's a reasonable interpretation of what you said earlier, though. You were talking about a union "showing up and dictating to the company", not "showing up and recruiting employees to join the union through the normal legal process, then bargain collectively with the company the way unions do".
Bottom line is - the union needs to convince the company to listen to them. If they don't convince the company, then the company can ignore them. That was the original question.
And that's why Germany is riding on its legacy manufacturing industry's coattails and its political position in Europe instead of cranking out real innovations like the US.
Not really. The reason Germany rests on legacy industries and failed to innovate in the software/internet age, has nothing to do with unions, but is mostly liked to conservative mentality.
Usually that refers to voluntary recognition - acknowledging that the unit wants to organizing without forcing an NLRB election. I believe there already WAS an NLRB election for the Raven QA workers though, so that shouldn't apply here. I think the gist of the article is that Activision was set on continuing to fight until their last legal recourse was exhausted, while Microsoft accepts the current state of things.
Unrelated to the content, but is this proper English:
> when the tech giant acquired Activision Blizzard later next year
As a non-native speaker, I am confused about the use of past tense for an (alleged) future event ("next year"). Is it just a typo and it should say "last year"? Or is it business English meaning "will have acquired"?
"after acquisition" is just a shorter, headline-friendly way of saying "after the acquisition has occurred". But I agree that the tense is unclear without reading the article.
Is this article auto-generated, auto-translated to English from some other source language, or web-scraped and assembled automatically? It doesn’t read like an article written by a human, whether native or non-native English speaker.
You're both right, but the bell curve clearly demonstrates that the majority of workers who would benefit from union membership can outvote the minority who elect not to. Individual exceptionalism helped get us here (labor union declines leading to a decline in wages, benefits, and job security), and it will take some time to walk it back.
Folks who say "I like things the way they are" when things are terrible the way they are aren't going to change their mind, and it is an inefficient use of time to try to convince them otherwise. Organize and vote, and ignore the hardliners. Business as usual will led to only more business as usual [1].
Careful not to strawman: you exaggerated the idea of having to join a union in order to work a particular job, into being coerced by your government, and now you're attacking the idea of being coerced by your government. You're no longer commenting on unions.
Let's get back on track: Americans overwhelmingly clearly need unions because employment and contract laws do not protect individuals (including those self-employed) anywhere near to the degree that it protects groups covered by collective agreement contracts.
When we drill down, what I suspect we'll find is that what you oppose is having to sacrifice part of your salary for something you won't reap the benefits of. And that'd be a fair concern: America has a huge wage problem that's only been getting worse over the last half-century, where some jobs are now decadently overpaid, while most jobs are criminally underpaid as to not even be a living wage despite full time employment.
So here's the irony: the only two ways to solve that problem are to enact laws that force companies into paying true living wages, which we can comfortably say cannot happen given the farce that is US politics, or through collective agreements that force companies into paying fair wages because they won't have a workforce if they don't. Which requires unions.
With the ultimate irony of course being that the only way to make sure those union don't forget about your needs (e.g. ensuring enough salary bands so you won't go down in pay, ensuring the due scheme is fair, ensuring there are clear restrictions on how the dues get spent so that being the head of the union isn't a retirement plan of its own) is to join one and help steer it through active participation.
> what I suspect we'll find is that what you oppose is having to sacrifice part of your salary for something you won't reap the benefits
Exclusive representation IS government coercion! Unless you're in a right-to-work state, the government forbids an employee from working for an employer outside a union, if the workforce is unionized. And the only way the government enforces any rule is, when push comes to shove, the threat of violence if you break the rules. That's the point of government!
re financials: I think you should "ask", rather than "suspect". And no, this is not primarily financial. Yes, I want to get more money for working harder and better (I am human), but we have a mechanism for redistributing money — taxes. They work! We should use them to achieve societal goals, instead of forcing financial balance by strictly regimenting job roles and pay grades.
What I primarily want is to be effective at doing a high-skill job I enjoy and feel is valuable. That means taking on responsibilities outside my JD and fundamentally answering only to my employer, not to a committee coworkers, many of whom couldn't care less about actually getting work done.
>Individual exceptionalism helped get us here (labor union declines leading to a decline in wages, benefits, and job security)
Rather than individual exceptionalism, the combination of billions of people around the world willing to work for less, technological advances in transportation and automation, and foreign governments being more open to look the other way on environmental concerns led to the decline in the power of unions in the US.
There was a labor and environmental price arbitrage opportunity, and it was going to equalize sooner or later.
It's OK, let them have their unions. I went self-employed a decade ago and it's been far better anyways. The crappy union jobs can exist and we can still enjoy our pay advantage.
If anything it might be advantageous because companies might prefer working with freelancers anyways. More opportunity.
Everyone, including freelancers, benefit from the workplace structure and culture that unions fought for. Go back to the early days of the industrialization: Things could very well have stayed as bleak as then.
Even if you get a little more as a freelancer, workers in general have not benefitted appropriately from the productivity increase since the 70s.
I'd rather see us shift back to smaller companies with more diversity than unionized behemoths that control every industry. When it comes to companies I definitely feel there is something such as too big.
Financially: I am good at my job, work hard, and take on a lot of responsibility outside my formal JD, and it has advanced my career (and pay) dramatically faster than I could have advanced by working within a rigidly defined role with strict pay bands.
Ethically: I do not want a committee of mediocre coworkers telling me what responsibilities I am allowed to do 8 hours a day.
I would feel differently if I was a janitor, of course. So janitors should unionize! But I am a well-compensated software engineer and I have no interest in that employment structure.
See, maybe this is just a cultural difference but I definitely know unionized people who have taken on responsibility outside their formal JD
And I've definitely heard of non unionised companies with rigid roles like that where the middle managers liked having defined roles with little room for taking on additional responsibilities.
The difference between the two IMO is if the union has shit representatives you _can_ work with colleagues to get a different union rep as it's democratic when implemented correctly, whereas with a crap management you only have the option of moving job, so at least with a more unionised workforce you can do both.
What bugs me is that U.S. citizens are practically brainwashed from birth that unions and socialism are bad.
I know, because I lived through it but came to see the light after I found out that UAW workers are practically the only decent-earning blue collar workers in the U.S.
I live in a very unionized country (Uruguay) which has heavily contributed to the issue of having an oversized state, leading to one of the highest costs of living in South America and the abuse of unions as a tool to push political agendas completely unrelated to the industry work they're supposed to fight for.
As an example, reading US Twitter these last few weeks for me has been a tragicomical affair, seeing people constantly complain about gas prices that are still cheaper than what we've been paying for forever because unions have made it impossible to eliminate their legal monopoly and reduce the size of our nigh-unproductive national refinery, despite it being cheaper to just import the final product. And it gets even better/worse after you account for our actual incomes.
There are good unions out there doing good work, or in more pragmatic/realistic terms: having a net positive effect. But mindlessly setting targets such as "Every worker in XYZ should be unionized" lacks a historical and/or global perspective and can only be considered wildly ignorant of the trade-offs, or willfully misleading.
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[ 4.6 ms ] story [ 99.3 ms ] threadI feel this is one of those questions with a simple answer, but the more you learn the more your sadness increases..
That is what those union ballots are about - the union needs evidence that they are representatives of the employees of the company.
A union has to start somewhere. Of course depending upon the legal jurisdiction a company might not have much of a choice if a union meets a legal threshold, and in the case of union action they might not have a choice otherwise than deal with a union.
In this case I doubt MS had a choice, I guess what is notable is that they have not needed to make such a choice before now.
Uhm, and why should the company have a say in this, when it's the employees that are already telling the company that they are unionized?
Obviously the company isn’t going to work with literally any union that emails them and says it has a demand, without knowing if the union has anything to back up its demands or not.
If someone came to demand your money and said ‘or else’ you’d ask what the ‘or else’ is, wouldn’t you?
Pretty simple.
Check how many employees are part of the union. Does the union represent a majority of the workforce or at least a minority but made of important employees? Then you better listen to what they say, or they could go on a strike.
The only way to make companies agree to your demands is to promise them a larger loss if they don't agree.
> Since when a company has the option to “recognize” or not a union?
The company has the option to ignore the union if not enough employees are members, or the employees aren't important enough.
How does it know how many are members? They have to tell it or they ballot them.
If the union doesn't have this support, the company ignores them.
I don't get why that's so hard to understand?
But in this case, the union is already established and recognized by the acquired employer. MS (or any other acquiring entity) shouldn’t be allowed to ignore an existing employer-labor relationship. If that were true, any time a company unionized, the stockholders could just continually buy itself with another shell company and terminate the union relationship.
There are clear obligations in Germany for how to integrate unions in a business and where/how they're able to influence business processes. How is it in the US?
I don’t get why that’s surprising?
From another [0] comment 2 minutes later:
> There are clear obligations in Germany for how to integrate unions in a business and where/how they're able to influence business processes. How is it in the US?
[0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31528241
You say 'comprised of their employees' - who determines this? You need a secret vote at least, or some kind of voluntary indication of support. You need to know people aren't being coerced.
That said, it is also common for acquisitions to be structured as a transaction in which all employees are terminated by the acquired organization and hired by the new organization. This effectively "resets" the process and may require employees to hold a new election. However, employers can always recognize a voluntarily and skip the NLRB process which would make recognition mandatory. It seems that Microsoft has indicated their willingness to do so.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Card_check
The concept of a normalized card-check-only process is generally favored by unions because the NLRB election process is widely viewed as excessively favoring employers. However, it has never passed congress. That is, the "card check" as it is often discussed doesn't actually exist as the legislation proposing it has never passed. The existing mechanism is a fairly narrow exception that mostly exists for employer convenience.
A union is by definition a group of employees. I guess you're talking about, maybe, representatives of a national union coming to an employer without there first being a union vote within...?
That's not remotely like what's being discussed here. What this situation is, and what's being talked about, are a union formed within the company (whether or not it's affiliated with a national union) and whether the employer has to recognize it and bargain collectively.
I can't even fathom the idea of a union with no members at a given company or organization "just showing up" and trying to get the management to bargain with them on their workers' behalf. It's just utterly nonsensical.
That's how many unions work.
For example look at what is happening with Amazon warehouses - existing external unions turn up and try to recruit workers.
You also see it for example in the UK where unions have a political party and try to use that to change labour laws through normal government elections.
Whether or not that's nonsensical is a matter of opinion!
In this case, the answers are: not at all; and lightly at worst.
> when the tech giant acquired Activision Blizzard later next year
As a non-native speaker, I am confused about the use of past tense for an (alleged) future event ("next year"). Is it just a typo and it should say "last year"? Or is it business English meaning "will have acquired"?
I don't.
Don't tell me what to do.
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:US_productivity_and_...
https://www.epi.org/publication/how-todays-unions-help-worki...
Folks who say "I like things the way they are" when things are terrible the way they are aren't going to change their mind, and it is an inefficient use of time to try to convince them otherwise. Organize and vote, and ignore the hardliners. Business as usual will led to only more business as usual [1].
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7tOkpntQtBM
The question is whether that's where we want to ethically go as society, not whether the Collective has the might.
Let's get back on track: Americans overwhelmingly clearly need unions because employment and contract laws do not protect individuals (including those self-employed) anywhere near to the degree that it protects groups covered by collective agreement contracts.
When we drill down, what I suspect we'll find is that what you oppose is having to sacrifice part of your salary for something you won't reap the benefits of. And that'd be a fair concern: America has a huge wage problem that's only been getting worse over the last half-century, where some jobs are now decadently overpaid, while most jobs are criminally underpaid as to not even be a living wage despite full time employment.
So here's the irony: the only two ways to solve that problem are to enact laws that force companies into paying true living wages, which we can comfortably say cannot happen given the farce that is US politics, or through collective agreements that force companies into paying fair wages because they won't have a workforce if they don't. Which requires unions.
With the ultimate irony of course being that the only way to make sure those union don't forget about your needs (e.g. ensuring enough salary bands so you won't go down in pay, ensuring the due scheme is fair, ensuring there are clear restrictions on how the dues get spent so that being the head of the union isn't a retirement plan of its own) is to join one and help steer it through active participation.
Exclusive representation IS government coercion! Unless you're in a right-to-work state, the government forbids an employee from working for an employer outside a union, if the workforce is unionized. And the only way the government enforces any rule is, when push comes to shove, the threat of violence if you break the rules. That's the point of government!
re financials: I think you should "ask", rather than "suspect". And no, this is not primarily financial. Yes, I want to get more money for working harder and better (I am human), but we have a mechanism for redistributing money — taxes. They work! We should use them to achieve societal goals, instead of forcing financial balance by strictly regimenting job roles and pay grades.
What I primarily want is to be effective at doing a high-skill job I enjoy and feel is valuable. That means taking on responsibilities outside my JD and fundamentally answering only to my employer, not to a committee coworkers, many of whom couldn't care less about actually getting work done.
Rather than individual exceptionalism, the combination of billions of people around the world willing to work for less, technological advances in transportation and automation, and foreign governments being more open to look the other way on environmental concerns led to the decline in the power of unions in the US.
There was a labor and environmental price arbitrage opportunity, and it was going to equalize sooner or later.
If anything it might be advantageous because companies might prefer working with freelancers anyways. More opportunity.
Even if you get a little more as a freelancer, workers in general have not benefitted appropriately from the productivity increase since the 70s.
If you have a rare skill it may work out okay, but woo you if you ever become sick or disabled.
Ethically: I do not want a committee of mediocre coworkers telling me what responsibilities I am allowed to do 8 hours a day.
I would feel differently if I was a janitor, of course. So janitors should unionize! But I am a well-compensated software engineer and I have no interest in that employment structure.
And I've definitely heard of non unionised companies with rigid roles like that where the middle managers liked having defined roles with little room for taking on additional responsibilities.
The difference between the two IMO is if the union has shit representatives you _can_ work with colleagues to get a different union rep as it's democratic when implemented correctly, whereas with a crap management you only have the option of moving job, so at least with a more unionised workforce you can do both.
I seriously doubt they are members of a significant American labor union.
I know, because I lived through it but came to see the light after I found out that UAW workers are practically the only decent-earning blue collar workers in the U.S.
As an example, reading US Twitter these last few weeks for me has been a tragicomical affair, seeing people constantly complain about gas prices that are still cheaper than what we've been paying for forever because unions have made it impossible to eliminate their legal monopoly and reduce the size of our nigh-unproductive national refinery, despite it being cheaper to just import the final product. And it gets even better/worse after you account for our actual incomes.
There are good unions out there doing good work, or in more pragmatic/realistic terms: having a net positive effect. But mindlessly setting targets such as "Every worker in XYZ should be unionized" lacks a historical and/or global perspective and can only be considered wildly ignorant of the trade-offs, or willfully misleading.
Gallant (Raven) gets one of the largest tech companies to recognize their union.