Ask HN: How's the Kickstarter Union Going?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24964870

by zachrose • 6 years ago

58 21 6 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

I haven't been able to find anything about it except for news of the vote back in February.

jdkee• 6 years ago

We need to unionize the tech companies.

cheriot• 6 years ago

What would the union be negotiating for? We're some of the best treated non-executive employees in the world.

crocodiletears• 6 years ago

Additional ball pits, and lifeguards for the jacuzzis.

BuckRogers2• 6 years ago

Speak for yourself. But I’ll start with demanding offshore folks are paid and treated the same. An international union is necessary for any industry that can be sent across a wire.

notRobot2• 6 years ago

Unions don't just negotiate salaries. They assure rights aren't being violated, promote ethical, safe and healthy workplaces, prevent and fight against discrimination and unfair treatment, fight wrongful dismissal, etc.

yaacov2• 6 years ago

I’d expect to see more work done in existing areas of tech worker activism:

- Racial and gender equality in recruitment, compensation, and promotion.

- Better working conditions for contractors and other workers who aren’t classified as employees.

- Non-participation in human rights abuses in the US and abroad.

Some other ideas:

- Right to work remote? Without a major compensation cut?

- Limits on oncall shifts, or rules regarding extra compensation for oncall time.

- (At some companies) an approach to PIPs/firings that’s less up to the whims of asshole managers.

jimnotgym• 6 years ago

I'm not sure that is true everywhere in the world

zachrose• 6 years ago

Kickstarter did unionize, that's why I want to know how it's going.

JacKTrocinskI2• 6 years ago

I’m a contractor working in Poland right now. I work through a vendor that finds contracts for me at different companies. I recently found out that all the major vendors in Poland have non-compete agreements with each other, meaning they're not allowed to poach each other’s engineers. It actually goes beyond that, I recommended a friend of mine who was looking to switch from his current vendor and got refused an interview with my vendor because of the no compete thing. I think this practice artificially drives down the price of an engineer’s salary and generally is not good for the market. I think HR divisions do something similar as well.

wyxuan• 6 years ago

I don't exactly see how a union would fix that. Instead, a better solution might be stronger enforcement of anti collusion laws

yaacov2• 6 years ago

Unions could endorse politicians who promise to enforce anti-collusion laws, incentivizing them to do so.

In the US unions do stuff like that all the time.

throwaway4good• 6 years ago

The idea in using contractors is to avoid the legal framework associated with regular employment.

Non compete clauses, colusion amongst employers, blacklists etc. is regulated in most countries when it comes to employment but much weaker regulated when it comes to contractors.

It pays more but long term contractors often get the short end of the stick.

Ask HN: How's the Kickstarter Union Going?

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