7 ms·

Did you read what the extension is for?

by CodeMage 7y ago

Maxion 7y ago
It feels like a lot of astro-turfing going on here. Why would any sane person be against unions?
- JumpCrisscross 7y ago
  > Why would any sane person be against unions? I have no horse in this race. But as a counterpoint, pretty much everything in New York is more expensive due to heavy unionisation, particularly around construction and public services.
  - take_a_breath 7y ago
    Could also be because of its density and GDP. Are there “cheap” alpha cities? https://financesonline.com/10-wealthiest-cities-in-the-world-its-not-new-york-or-london-at-the-top https://financesonline.com/10-wealthiest-cities-in-the-world...
    - aaronm67 7y ago
      https://nypost.com/2018/08/25/why-nyc-is-priciest-city-in-the-world-for-infrastructure-projects/ https://nypost.com/2018/08/25/why-nyc-is-priciest-city-in-th... Construction in NYC is far more expensive than anywhere else in the world, largely because of union contracts.
  - shantly 7y ago
    My understanding is that the if-anything-heavier-unionized EU isn't experiencing the same rapid growth in (especially public) construction costs as the US has been for some time—still faster than inflation, but lower than would be explained by just PPP adjustments or COL vs. the US. Unions may not be helping but there's something else causing runaway cost growth in US public sector construction, in particular.
  - xxpor 7y ago
    There's a lot of other reasons stuff is expensive in NY. Europe is heavily unionized and somehow they still manage to build subways at a lot less than $1 billion per mile.
    - magduf 7y ago
      Unions are a big, big reason stuff is SO expensive in NY. They have to have 4 times as many employees doing construction as in Europe, for instance. Europe doesn't have this problem because they have good unions. We can't have those in America. I really don't know why, but that's just how it is.
      - tachion 7y ago
        This a perfect example of grass being greener on the other side of the fence ;) In some European countries I know of, unions are solely responsible for forcing the government hands into things like keeping around and subsidising beyond any sense and belief a dirty energy sources (coal mines and power plants for example) resulting in air quality killing more people than car accidents every year. Those unions won't stop at anything and are ready to and have in past organising violent riots on streets, until everyone around surrenders to their demands.
  - itsgrimetime 7y ago
    This is an incredibly bold claim, can you cite this?
    - uxp100 7y ago
      Here is one article talking about subway construction costs in NY. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/28/nyregion/new-york-subway-construction-costs.html https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/28/nyregion/new-york-subway-... It's not just unions, but here is a taste: There are “nippers” to watch material being moved around and “hog house tenders” to supervise the break room. Each crane must have an “oiler,” a relic of a time when they needed frequent lubrication. Standby electricians and plumbers are to be on hand at all times, as is at least one “master mechanic.” Generators and elevators must have their own operators, even though they are automatic. An extra person is required to be present for all concrete pumping, steam fitting, sheet metal work and other tasks. In New York, “underground construction employs approximately four times the number of personnel as in similar jobs in Asia, Australia, or Europe,” according to an internal report by Arup, a consulting firm that worked on the Second Avenue subway and many similar projects around the world.
      - wool_gather 7y ago
        The "oiler" thing sounds stupid, sure, and overstaffing in general is a fair concern. But, devil's advocate, how much time and money would be wasted if an essential machine broke and there wasn't a mechanic standing around ready to spring into action? How many people would be seriously or fatally injured in a year without a helper on those "An extra person is required..." tasks? I don't know the answers. Some of them legitimately may be useless sinecures, but it's worth keeping in mind that what looks like redundant waste is sometimes an important guard against some kind of failure. Just because it isn't always used doesn't mean that it's not worthwhile.
        take_a_breath 7y ago
        ==it's worth keeping in mind that what looks like redundant waste is sometimes an important guard against some kind of failure. Just because it isn't always used doesn't mean that it's not worthwhile.== Even more likely is that the redundancy exists because of something bad that happened in the past. That is how most regulation comes into existence.
- downdown4eva 7y ago
  No, it feels like wilful cognitive dissonance where you all seem to think having two coworkers of no real managerial importance signing off on your company-wide political statement is somehow 'by the book' and everyone else is just a shill, ignorant and somehow didn't read this press release for this poor, poor person who knew exactly what would happen. EDIT: Let's read the second paragraph of the article again: "each time Google employees visited the website of IRI Consultants — the Troy, Michigan, firm that Google hired this year amid a groundswell of labor activism at the company" You see that phrase 'labor activism'? This is the exact cognitive dissonance I am describing here. You want to pretend activism isn't political, that an employee planting a message on the website of a company affiliated with their employer related to this political subject is totally innocent and not a politically charged message. Just 'totally telling you your rights' and nothing more than that. That's intellectually dishonest.
  - PhasmaFelis 7y ago
    It's an odd world we live in where factual information about legal rights is dismissed as a "political statement". As others have said, if she'd abused her access to insert, say, a pithy pop-up about recycling on Earth Day, she would have received a slap on the wrist at the very worst. This isn't about changing the code without authorization. This is about a message Google doesn't want employees to hear.
  - zozbot234 7y ago
    It's not a "political" statement, it's a notice of Googlers' existing obligations under labor law and pursuant to a NLRB settlement. She was indeed correct to warn any Googlers who might interact with the external consulting firm about those obligations.
- umanwizard 7y ago
  I'm sane, and don't want to join a union (I'm not against them in general; there are certainly fields where they make sense). I don't know if your question was serious, but in case it was: I don't feel like my employer is a rival or an enemy; I feel like they are a partner in our mutual goal to make a lot of money. I've never worked at Google, but I've worked at similarly famous large companies, making several times more than any reasonable person would think the average programmer was worth. To the extent that unions would make the company able to make profit less efficiently, for example by making it harder to fire poor employees, it would have been against my own interests. I also totally never felt that there was a power imbalance between me and my employer. I got to work whenever I wanted, worked on whatever I wanted, left whenever I wanted, and when I got burned out and started disliking the job, I quite easily found a job somewhere else. Again, probably different for non-software-engineers, but it's not hard to understand why many of us feel no draw to unions.
  - objclxt 7y ago
    > I don't feel like my employer is a rival or an enemy; I feel like they are a partner in our mutual goal to make a lot of money [...] it's not hard to understand why many of us feel no draw to unions. It's hard for me to understand when you look at other similar industries. We're not talking about blue collar unions here: we're talking about white collar unions. They're very different. Take Hollywood as an example. You have incredibly wealthy individuals who are all members of unions. Kevin Feige makes Disney billions of dollars, but he still pays his PGA dues. The purpose of unions like the WGA, PGA, DGA, SAG, and Equity aren't to "make it harder to fire poor employees" - they're to provide equal protection to all members regardless of whether they're making millions upon millions of dollars or just getting started in the industry. Sometimes I feel people in tech forget there is a highly skilled, highly unionized industry just a few hundred miles south of Silicon Valley that seems to be doing OK. Is it perfect? No, definitely not. Is the film industry better to work in with the unions than without? Almost certainly yes.
    - umanwizard 7y ago
      Well, let me turn the question around. Imagine I was a generally happy mid-level software engineer, making $400k/yr at Google. How would a union help me?
- BoorishBears 7y ago
  You can be against her actions and for unions. To me this sounds like someone snuck a PR that does questionable things into the code base. Sure you can say that's a failing of the PR process, but it doesn't mean putting up the PR in the first place shouldn't be punishable. "Following the process" doesn't absolve you from the fact you initiated the process with questionable intents. Honestly, I would not want to work with someone who'd do that, and would be surprised if that wasn't a fireable offense. I value the fact I don't have to scour PRs for covert (or honestly, even overt) attempts to stick political messages into our codebase.
- fiysp 7y ago
  You are right. In fact, why don't we stop having elections? After all, why would any sane person be against your views of the world? ;P
- claudeganon 7y ago
  Literal decades of highly-funded propaganda by business interests to manufacture this consensus, for starters, Taft-Hartley banning sector-wide bargaining to render unionizing as company-level adversarialism vs. a broader fight for worker security and rights, the purging of leftists from the labor movement with Red Scare postwar...
  - 3fe9a03ccd14ca5 7y ago
    Unions are are one of the largest political forces in a lot of areas.
    - claudeganon 7y ago
      Not compared to business interests and certainly nowhere near comparable to their political force in European democracies where sector wide bargaining isn’t banned.
- JohnJamesRambo 7y ago
  I love unions but what she did was kinda crazy don’t you think?
- mindcrime 7y ago
  Why would any sane person be against unions? Because they, like any other organization, tend to become corrupt and exercise their power to the benefit of the "party insiders", at the expense of the everyday member. And I, for one, don't feel any need to have my pay rate negotiated based on some group average or least common denominator. And union dues. I personally fully support the right of people to bargain collectively, but being a member of a union is not something I'm particularly interested in.
  - CharlesColeman 7y ago
    >> Why would any sane person be against unions? > Because they, like any other organization, tend to become corrupt and exercise their power to the benefit of the "party insiders", at the expense of the everyday member. And I, for one, don't feel any need to have my pay rate negotiated based on some group average or least common denominator. And union dues. Going to work without a union is like going to court without a lawyer. Are there incompetent lawyers? Does it cost money to hire a lawyer? Of course, but that doesn't mean it isn't a stupid idea to try to represent yourself pro se. I'd join a union if one were available to me, then I'd work in it to make sure it was well-run and effective.
  - throwaway2048 7y ago
    The problem with your point of view is that it applies equally to the companies that hire you, and they have very little incentive to be on your side.
    - mindcrime 7y ago
      Sure, but why add one more variable to the equation? Eschew additional complexity. As long as I live in a "right to work" state and there is plenty of demand for the kind of work I do, I'd rather deal with companies on a one-to-one basis. If company treats me unfairly, I quit and go somewhere else. And while the company may not be "on your side", companies are still bound by market forces, on both sides of the equation. You can't compete (for now!) without people, and if you constantly run your best people off by mistreating them, you aren't going to be very successful in the long run.
- tharne 7y ago
  A lot of "sane" folks are skeptical of unions. Well well-run unions can certainly have a positive impact, unions also have a long history of protecting incompetent workers at the expense of competent ones, and they are particularly harmful for younger workers. When I was in college, the unions on campus successfully pressured the school to cut back on student hiring because the students typically made less than older workers, which meant less for union dues. A lot of kids on financial aid had a harder time finding work on campus because of this, and work off campus was not plentiful.
- CharlesColeman 7y ago
  > It feels like a lot of astro-turfing going on here. Why would any sane person be against unions? Going to work without a union is like going to court without a lawyer. Are there incompetent lawyers? Does it cost money to hire a lawyer? Of course, but that doesn't mean it isn't a stupid idea to try to represent yourself pro se. Unfortunately, workers in the US have been the subject to the equivalent of a fifty year propaganda campaign bankrolled by prosecutors (business owners) to convince people they're really better off if they represent themselves in court pro se (without a union). The sad thing is the campaign has worked surprisingly well. Dropping the analogy, I think many tech workers are treated relatively well for now by employers. Sort of like a well-treated personal assistant to the boss, who is comfortable and has their small privileges compared to those in the factory floor, and therefore feels like they're more like a boss than a worker, even though that's not at all the case. The startup ecosystem has also encouraged tech workers to think of themselves as future bosses rather than present-day workers, so they favor the policies they imagine their hypothetical future selves benefiting from, even though it hurts themselves and their friends today.
  - odshoifsdhfs 7y ago
    If you want that metaphor, going to court with a union is more like having one lawyer trying to get the best deal for 5 of his clients, even if one is innocent and the other 4 guilty, he would decide instead for a plea deal where all 5 do minimal time. 4 get better off, 1 is fucked and can't really do anything about it.
    - CharlesColeman 7y ago
      > having one lawyer trying to get the best deal for 5 of his clients, even if one is innocent and the other 4 guilty That's stretching the analogy too far, and adding biasing details to force the impression that unions are bad. Here's another analogy: Going to work without a union is like going to war without any military organization. If your enemy is well-organized, how smart is it for you and your fellow soldiers to attack individually in an uncoordinated way without any overall strategy?
- tomp 7y ago
  I strongly oppose public unions. Unions are good for private companies, as there is a balance of powers - if the owners pay employees too little, employees quit, whereas if the employees protest too much, the company doesn't sell anything - both scenarios lead to collapse / bankrupcy, so both sides are motivated to cooperate and find a compromise. In public services, there is no such balance - the state isn't constrained by market forces, and it won't collapse no matter how much employees protest. In addition, state employment usually comes with other benefits (e.g. job & pension security), so really the employees shouldn't be complaining and holding the whole country hostage.
  - merpnderp 7y ago
    "...The very nature and purposes of Government make it impossible for administrative officials to represent fully or to bind the employer in mutual discussions with Government employee organizations. The employer is the whole people, who speak by means of laws enacted by their representatives in Congress. Accordingly, administrative officials and employees alike are governed and guided, and in many instances restricted, by laws which establish policies, procedures, or rules in personnel matters." -FDR Letter on the Resolution of Federation of Federal Employees Against Strikes in Federal Service I think we've seen this play out in how public unions now dominate policy discussions putting the public good as an often secondary consideration.
- pb7 7y ago
  There are examples of bad unions. Police unions protect the "bad apples" that kill people with no consequences. Teacher unions protect teachers at the expense of students and education as a whole. Unions are designed to protect the weakest link which many people with highly sought-after skills feel is not in their best interests.
- lbeltrame 7y ago
  If you live in a country where unions are very powerful, like mine, you realize that their power need to be kept in check along with every other power. Unions at least in my country are all about political power, and little about workers' rights. The major ones are composed of mostly retirees from an era and a work modus operandi that is no longer the case there. They argue for a model that is equal for everyone - yes, everyone equal at the bottom. They insist that every contract should be handled mostly at the national level (for political bargaining power) and discourage local agreements between unions and employers. Also the public transportation seems to enjoy the "special" privilege of having a strike (not necessarily for workers' rights) at least once every month, "by chance" almost always on a Monday or a Friday. Oh, and when an acquaintance of mine tried to get a union to help her file her retirement papers, they basically left her to her own devices (she was a retiree, no longer a worker, so "tough luck") and she had to fix the many problems that emerged by herself. If we need unions, they need to be nothing like the one I hear about every day in the news. EDIT: And for this reason I also refuse to take part in any union (last time someone wanted to do so, all I heard were "marches" and "strikes": people, it's not the 1970s anymore).
- dmitrygr 7y ago
  Let me explain this to you very simply. If you are making significantly more than someone of your work experience length, you probably don't want a union. most of them put in rules that align pay with seniority, seniority being very stupidly defined as length of time in career.
- stale2002 7y ago
  The biggest reason is because union laws would force other people to join the union, if it got established. I believe that you should be able to join whatever professional organization that you want. But the moment that you try and force me to join that professional organization, with legal provisions that would cause me to lose my job if I refuse, is the moment that I go to war against you. I will retaliate. I will fight back. Because I no longer have any sympathy for you, if you are going to cause me to lose my job because I refused to join your special club.
- dang 7y ago
  This comment breaks the site guidelines against insinuations of astroturfing. Would you please review them and stick to the rules when posting here? Comments having divided opinions on a divisive topic is the most common thing on the internet. There's no need to torture Occam. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
evrydayhustling 7y ago
For anyone else who didn't get that far the first time: > Spiers' pop-up message was inserted into a tool that notifies employees of privacy and security concerns about using non-Google tools and services, like warning employees not to upload proprietary information to Dropbox, Spiers said. The tool is managed by the platform security team, for which Spiers worked for almost two years as a security engineer. So, seems like the bulletin was pretty far outside the intended function and should have required more than a code review. I wonder what will happen to the people who accepted the patch?
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- dmix 7y ago
  Exactly what does union activism have to do with security and privacy of potentially dangerous websites? I’m surprised how many people are jumping through hoops to defend this sort of thing.
  - zozbot234 7y ago
    That extension is not limited to privacy and security concerns. One of the sites the extension warns about is Dropbox, and few people would seriously describe Dropbox as inherently insecure or as violating privacy. What is true is that some interactions with Dropbox may be in breach of other existing policies that Googlers must follow, such as wrt. proprietary information and the like. Googlers are also required not to violate labor law.
    - dmix 7y ago
      Dropbox has total access to your unencrypted files. That 100% fits the criteria. Especially in regards to file-access between potentially competing megacorps. Again with the jumping through hoops...
      - zozbot234 7y ago
zozbot234 7y ago
The extension was specifically designed to notify Google employees about problematic reliance on non-Google services. Seems like her warning fits that use case. How is "warning about Dropbox" any different from "warning about X management consulting firm"? Edit: Her warning literally said: "Do not violate NLRB notice. Googlers have the right to participate in protected concerted activities." (see screenshot in article, bottom right.) This is something that Google is already obligated to acknowledge under labor law. They're simply shooting the messenger.
bryanrasmussen 7y ago
I did but I still have to say it sure sounds like a code review process she went through, not a new feature addition she went through. Although generally I wouldn't approve code unless I could figure out what feature it was related to so I also think huh, maybe it was okay by Google's inner processes - the workings of which I a not informed of.

Did you read what the extension is for?

Maxion 7y ago

It feels like a lot of astro-turfing going on here. Why would any sane person be against unions?

JumpCrisscross 7y ago
> Why would any sane person be against unions? I have no horse in this race. But as a counterpoint, pretty much everything in New York is more expensive due to heavy unionisation, particularly around construction and public services.
- take_a_breath 7y ago
  Could also be because of its density and GDP. Are there “cheap” alpha cities? https://financesonline.com/10-wealthiest-cities-in-the-world-its-not-new-york-or-london-at-the-top https://financesonline.com/10-wealthiest-cities-in-the-world...
  - aaronm67 7y ago
    https://nypost.com/2018/08/25/why-nyc-is-priciest-city-in-the-world-for-infrastructure-projects/ https://nypost.com/2018/08/25/why-nyc-is-priciest-city-in-th... Construction in NYC is far more expensive than anywhere else in the world, largely because of union contracts.
- shantly 7y ago
  My understanding is that the if-anything-heavier-unionized EU isn't experiencing the same rapid growth in (especially public) construction costs as the US has been for some time—still faster than inflation, but lower than would be explained by just PPP adjustments or COL vs. the US. Unions may not be helping but there's something else causing runaway cost growth in US public sector construction, in particular.
- xxpor 7y ago
  There's a lot of other reasons stuff is expensive in NY. Europe is heavily unionized and somehow they still manage to build subways at a lot less than $1 billion per mile.
  - magduf 7y ago
    Unions are a big, big reason stuff is SO expensive in NY. They have to have 4 times as many employees doing construction as in Europe, for instance. Europe doesn't have this problem because they have good unions. We can't have those in America. I really don't know why, but that's just how it is.
    - tachion 7y ago
      This a perfect example of grass being greener on the other side of the fence ;) In some European countries I know of, unions are solely responsible for forcing the government hands into things like keeping around and subsidising beyond any sense and belief a dirty energy sources (coal mines and power plants for example) resulting in air quality killing more people than car accidents every year. Those unions won't stop at anything and are ready to and have in past organising violent riots on streets, until everyone around surrenders to their demands.
- itsgrimetime 7y ago
  This is an incredibly bold claim, can you cite this?
  - uxp100 7y ago
    Here is one article talking about subway construction costs in NY. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/28/nyregion/new-york-subway-construction-costs.html https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/28/nyregion/new-york-subway-... It's not just unions, but here is a taste: There are “nippers” to watch material being moved around and “hog house tenders” to supervise the break room. Each crane must have an “oiler,” a relic of a time when they needed frequent lubrication. Standby electricians and plumbers are to be on hand at all times, as is at least one “master mechanic.” Generators and elevators must have their own operators, even though they are automatic. An extra person is required to be present for all concrete pumping, steam fitting, sheet metal work and other tasks. In New York, “underground construction employs approximately four times the number of personnel as in similar jobs in Asia, Australia, or Europe,” according to an internal report by Arup, a consulting firm that worked on the Second Avenue subway and many similar projects around the world.
    - wool_gather 7y ago
      The "oiler" thing sounds stupid, sure, and overstaffing in general is a fair concern. But, devil's advocate, how much time and money would be wasted if an essential machine broke and there wasn't a mechanic standing around ready to spring into action? How many people would be seriously or fatally injured in a year without a helper on those "An extra person is required..." tasks? I don't know the answers. Some of them legitimately may be useless sinecures, but it's worth keeping in mind that what looks like redundant waste is sometimes an important guard against some kind of failure. Just because it isn't always used doesn't mean that it's not worthwhile.
      - take_a_breath 7y ago
        ==it's worth keeping in mind that what looks like redundant waste is sometimes an important guard against some kind of failure. Just because it isn't always used doesn't mean that it's not worthwhile.== Even more likely is that the redundancy exists because of something bad that happened in the past. That is how most regulation comes into existence.
downdown4eva 7y ago
No, it feels like wilful cognitive dissonance where you all seem to think having two coworkers of no real managerial importance signing off on your company-wide political statement is somehow 'by the book' and everyone else is just a shill, ignorant and somehow didn't read this press release for this poor, poor person who knew exactly what would happen. EDIT: Let's read the second paragraph of the article again: "each time Google employees visited the website of IRI Consultants — the Troy, Michigan, firm that Google hired this year amid a groundswell of labor activism at the company" You see that phrase 'labor activism'? This is the exact cognitive dissonance I am describing here. You want to pretend activism isn't political, that an employee planting a message on the website of a company affiliated with their employer related to this political subject is totally innocent and not a politically charged message. Just 'totally telling you your rights' and nothing more than that. That's intellectually dishonest.
- PhasmaFelis 7y ago
  It's an odd world we live in where factual information about legal rights is dismissed as a "political statement". As others have said, if she'd abused her access to insert, say, a pithy pop-up about recycling on Earth Day, she would have received a slap on the wrist at the very worst. This isn't about changing the code without authorization. This is about a message Google doesn't want employees to hear.
- zozbot234 7y ago
  It's not a "political" statement, it's a notice of Googlers' existing obligations under labor law and pursuant to a NLRB settlement. She was indeed correct to warn any Googlers who might interact with the external consulting firm about those obligations.
umanwizard 7y ago
I'm sane, and don't want to join a union (I'm not against them in general; there are certainly fields where they make sense). I don't know if your question was serious, but in case it was: I don't feel like my employer is a rival or an enemy; I feel like they are a partner in our mutual goal to make a lot of money. I've never worked at Google, but I've worked at similarly famous large companies, making several times more than any reasonable person would think the average programmer was worth. To the extent that unions would make the company able to make profit less efficiently, for example by making it harder to fire poor employees, it would have been against my own interests. I also totally never felt that there was a power imbalance between me and my employer. I got to work whenever I wanted, worked on whatever I wanted, left whenever I wanted, and when I got burned out and started disliking the job, I quite easily found a job somewhere else. Again, probably different for non-software-engineers, but it's not hard to understand why many of us feel no draw to unions.
- objclxt 7y ago
  > I don't feel like my employer is a rival or an enemy; I feel like they are a partner in our mutual goal to make a lot of money [...] it's not hard to understand why many of us feel no draw to unions. It's hard for me to understand when you look at other similar industries. We're not talking about blue collar unions here: we're talking about white collar unions. They're very different. Take Hollywood as an example. You have incredibly wealthy individuals who are all members of unions. Kevin Feige makes Disney billions of dollars, but he still pays his PGA dues. The purpose of unions like the WGA, PGA, DGA, SAG, and Equity aren't to "make it harder to fire poor employees" - they're to provide equal protection to all members regardless of whether they're making millions upon millions of dollars or just getting started in the industry. Sometimes I feel people in tech forget there is a highly skilled, highly unionized industry just a few hundred miles south of Silicon Valley that seems to be doing OK. Is it perfect? No, definitely not. Is the film industry better to work in with the unions than without? Almost certainly yes.
  - umanwizard 7y ago
    Well, let me turn the question around. Imagine I was a generally happy mid-level software engineer, making $400k/yr at Google. How would a union help me?
BoorishBears 7y ago
You can be against her actions and for unions. To me this sounds like someone snuck a PR that does questionable things into the code base. Sure you can say that's a failing of the PR process, but it doesn't mean putting up the PR in the first place shouldn't be punishable. "Following the process" doesn't absolve you from the fact you initiated the process with questionable intents. Honestly, I would not want to work with someone who'd do that, and would be surprised if that wasn't a fireable offense. I value the fact I don't have to scour PRs for covert (or honestly, even overt) attempts to stick political messages into our codebase.
fiysp 7y ago
You are right. In fact, why don't we stop having elections? After all, why would any sane person be against your views of the world? ;P
claudeganon 7y ago
Literal decades of highly-funded propaganda by business interests to manufacture this consensus, for starters, Taft-Hartley banning sector-wide bargaining to render unionizing as company-level adversarialism vs. a broader fight for worker security and rights, the purging of leftists from the labor movement with Red Scare postwar...
- 3fe9a03ccd14ca5 7y ago
  Unions are are one of the largest political forces in a lot of areas.
  - claudeganon 7y ago
    Not compared to business interests and certainly nowhere near comparable to their political force in European democracies where sector wide bargaining isn’t banned.
JohnJamesRambo 7y ago
I love unions but what she did was kinda crazy don’t you think?
mindcrime 7y ago
Why would any sane person be against unions? Because they, like any other organization, tend to become corrupt and exercise their power to the benefit of the "party insiders", at the expense of the everyday member. And I, for one, don't feel any need to have my pay rate negotiated based on some group average or least common denominator. And union dues. I personally fully support the right of people to bargain collectively, but being a member of a union is not something I'm particularly interested in.
- CharlesColeman 7y ago
  >> Why would any sane person be against unions? > Because they, like any other organization, tend to become corrupt and exercise their power to the benefit of the "party insiders", at the expense of the everyday member. And I, for one, don't feel any need to have my pay rate negotiated based on some group average or least common denominator. And union dues. Going to work without a union is like going to court without a lawyer. Are there incompetent lawyers? Does it cost money to hire a lawyer? Of course, but that doesn't mean it isn't a stupid idea to try to represent yourself pro se. I'd join a union if one were available to me, then I'd work in it to make sure it was well-run and effective.
- throwaway2048 7y ago
  The problem with your point of view is that it applies equally to the companies that hire you, and they have very little incentive to be on your side.
  - mindcrime 7y ago
    Sure, but why add one more variable to the equation? Eschew additional complexity. As long as I live in a "right to work" state and there is plenty of demand for the kind of work I do, I'd rather deal with companies on a one-to-one basis. If company treats me unfairly, I quit and go somewhere else. And while the company may not be "on your side", companies are still bound by market forces, on both sides of the equation. You can't compete (for now!) without people, and if you constantly run your best people off by mistreating them, you aren't going to be very successful in the long run.
tharne 7y ago
A lot of "sane" folks are skeptical of unions. Well well-run unions can certainly have a positive impact, unions also have a long history of protecting incompetent workers at the expense of competent ones, and they are particularly harmful for younger workers. When I was in college, the unions on campus successfully pressured the school to cut back on student hiring because the students typically made less than older workers, which meant less for union dues. A lot of kids on financial aid had a harder time finding work on campus because of this, and work off campus was not plentiful.
CharlesColeman 7y ago
> It feels like a lot of astro-turfing going on here. Why would any sane person be against unions? Going to work without a union is like going to court without a lawyer. Are there incompetent lawyers? Does it cost money to hire a lawyer? Of course, but that doesn't mean it isn't a stupid idea to try to represent yourself pro se. Unfortunately, workers in the US have been the subject to the equivalent of a fifty year propaganda campaign bankrolled by prosecutors (business owners) to convince people they're really better off if they represent themselves in court pro se (without a union). The sad thing is the campaign has worked surprisingly well. Dropping the analogy, I think many tech workers are treated relatively well for now by employers. Sort of like a well-treated personal assistant to the boss, who is comfortable and has their small privileges compared to those in the factory floor, and therefore feels like they're more like a boss than a worker, even though that's not at all the case. The startup ecosystem has also encouraged tech workers to think of themselves as future bosses rather than present-day workers, so they favor the policies they imagine their hypothetical future selves benefiting from, even though it hurts themselves and their friends today.
- odshoifsdhfs 7y ago
  If you want that metaphor, going to court with a union is more like having one lawyer trying to get the best deal for 5 of his clients, even if one is innocent and the other 4 guilty, he would decide instead for a plea deal where all 5 do minimal time. 4 get better off, 1 is fucked and can't really do anything about it.
  - CharlesColeman 7y ago
    > having one lawyer trying to get the best deal for 5 of his clients, even if one is innocent and the other 4 guilty That's stretching the analogy too far, and adding biasing details to force the impression that unions are bad. Here's another analogy: Going to work without a union is like going to war without any military organization. If your enemy is well-organized, how smart is it for you and your fellow soldiers to attack individually in an uncoordinated way without any overall strategy?
tomp 7y ago
I strongly oppose public unions. Unions are good for private companies, as there is a balance of powers - if the owners pay employees too little, employees quit, whereas if the employees protest too much, the company doesn't sell anything - both scenarios lead to collapse / bankrupcy, so both sides are motivated to cooperate and find a compromise. In public services, there is no such balance - the state isn't constrained by market forces, and it won't collapse no matter how much employees protest. In addition, state employment usually comes with other benefits (e.g. job & pension security), so really the employees shouldn't be complaining and holding the whole country hostage.
- merpnderp 7y ago
  "...The very nature and purposes of Government make it impossible for administrative officials to represent fully or to bind the employer in mutual discussions with Government employee organizations. The employer is the whole people, who speak by means of laws enacted by their representatives in Congress. Accordingly, administrative officials and employees alike are governed and guided, and in many instances restricted, by laws which establish policies, procedures, or rules in personnel matters." -FDR Letter on the Resolution of Federation of Federal Employees Against Strikes in Federal Service I think we've seen this play out in how public unions now dominate policy discussions putting the public good as an often secondary consideration.
pb7 7y ago
There are examples of bad unions. Police unions protect the "bad apples" that kill people with no consequences. Teacher unions protect teachers at the expense of students and education as a whole. Unions are designed to protect the weakest link which many people with highly sought-after skills feel is not in their best interests.
lbeltrame 7y ago
If you live in a country where unions are very powerful, like mine, you realize that their power need to be kept in check along with every other power. Unions at least in my country are all about political power, and little about workers' rights. The major ones are composed of mostly retirees from an era and a work modus operandi that is no longer the case there. They argue for a model that is equal for everyone - yes, everyone equal at the bottom. They insist that every contract should be handled mostly at the national level (for political bargaining power) and discourage local agreements between unions and employers. Also the public transportation seems to enjoy the "special" privilege of having a strike (not necessarily for workers' rights) at least once every month, "by chance" almost always on a Monday or a Friday. Oh, and when an acquaintance of mine tried to get a union to help her file her retirement papers, they basically left her to her own devices (she was a retiree, no longer a worker, so "tough luck") and she had to fix the many problems that emerged by herself. If we need unions, they need to be nothing like the one I hear about every day in the news. EDIT: And for this reason I also refuse to take part in any union (last time someone wanted to do so, all I heard were "marches" and "strikes": people, it's not the 1970s anymore).
dmitrygr 7y ago
Let me explain this to you very simply. If you are making significantly more than someone of your work experience length, you probably don't want a union. most of them put in rules that align pay with seniority, seniority being very stupidly defined as length of time in career.
stale2002 7y ago
The biggest reason is because union laws would force other people to join the union, if it got established. I believe that you should be able to join whatever professional organization that you want. But the moment that you try and force me to join that professional organization, with legal provisions that would cause me to lose my job if I refuse, is the moment that I go to war against you. I will retaliate. I will fight back. Because I no longer have any sympathy for you, if you are going to cause me to lose my job because I refused to join your special club.
dang 7y ago
This comment breaks the site guidelines against insinuations of astroturfing. Would you please review them and stick to the rules when posting here? Comments having divided opinions on a divisive topic is the most common thing on the internet. There's no need to torture Occam. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

evrydayhustling 7y ago

For anyone else who didn't get that far the first time: > Spiers' pop-up message was inserted into a tool that notifies employees of privacy and security concerns about using non-Google tools and services, like warning employees not to upload proprietary information to Dropbox, Spiers said. The tool is managed by the platform security team, for which Spiers worked for almost two years as a security engineer. So, seems like the bulletin was pretty far outside the intended function and should have required more than a code review. I wonder what will happen to the people who accepted the patch?

deleted 7y ago
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dmix 7y ago
Exactly what does union activism have to do with security and privacy of potentially dangerous websites? I’m surprised how many people are jumping through hoops to defend this sort of thing.
- zozbot234 7y ago
  That extension is not limited to privacy and security concerns. One of the sites the extension warns about is Dropbox, and few people would seriously describe Dropbox as inherently insecure or as violating privacy. What is true is that some interactions with Dropbox may be in breach of other existing policies that Googlers must follow, such as wrt. proprietary information and the like. Googlers are also required not to violate labor law.
  - dmix 7y ago
    Dropbox has total access to your unencrypted files. That 100% fits the criteria. Especially in regards to file-access between potentially competing megacorps. Again with the jumping through hoops...
    - zozbot234 7y ago

zozbot234 7y ago

The extension was specifically designed to notify Google employees about problematic reliance on non-Google services. Seems like her warning fits that use case. How is "warning about Dropbox" any different from "warning about X management consulting firm"? Edit: Her warning literally said: "Do not violate NLRB notice. Googlers have the right to participate in protected concerted activities." (see screenshot in article, bottom right.) This is something that Google is already obligated to acknowledge under labor law. They're simply shooting the messenger.

bryanrasmussen 7y ago

I did but I still have to say it sure sounds like a code review process she went through, not a new feature addition she went through. Although generally I wouldn't approve code unless I could figure out what feature it was related to so I also think huh, maybe it was okay by Google's inner processes - the workings of which I a not informed of.