I really don't understand the lack of unionisation in the USA. In Europe it is endemic, even in tech, and seems to have nothing but positive impact for workers. (I'm represented by Syndicom.)
I agree, but also with the caveat that the union has to be good. And I think that was a significant issue here which is that there isn't union know how about how to organize and operate in a pre-IPO, pre-profit, pre-critical-mass startup.
Anyone who has worked at startups knows that there are ways workers get screwed that are specific to startups. The whole idea of liquidation preference for example is nutty given that a 1x return doesn't change a fund's dynamics but does rob employees of a meaningful chunk of cash.
But then the other dynamic is that there is both a very real chance of the company failing and everyone losing their jobs and of the need for some people to lose their jobs in order for everyone else to keep them.
I think unions could work in pre-IPO startups if they were aligned with the IPO. There would still be a lot to bargain for and they could help soften the downside of failure while chiseling off more equity for the staff.
But this unionization effort didn't seem particularly savvy about the dynamics of being pre-IPO. For example getting busted by "investors might not want to invest if this succeeds" is not a particularly savvy way to go down. I wouldn't want people bargaining on my behalf who hadn't proactively predicted that concern and countered it.
But that's not particularly a knock on Medium's organizers. I just think this is an area of unionization that hasn't been invented yet and it would have benefited from people who saw it that way.
This is probably not a super popular opinion (and it's just that) but monopolies are difficult to sustain without legal support. They tend to either collapse or get worked around.
I imagine even with legal support, many industries could work around them anyway. Except for jobs that rely on local workers, I can't help but think that the long term reaction to unionization in, say, the tech world, would involve (more) jobs being outsourced to other countries.
Sure, you could try to outlaw that, but these regulations always seem to have loopholes. You'd need unions with basically no borders stretching across continents, which I frankly find terrifying.
> seems to have nothing but positive impact for workers.
Having been IT in an international company, I can tell you that we were not fond of some of the European unions because they would push back against anything that anyone over there didn't like. This included things like "you guys need to stop using Windows 7 on 5-year-old laptops and start using Windows 10 like the rest of the company". I guess maybe from their view that was still a "positive impact for workers", but they were a huge pain point.
My experience in the same kind of setup is that such an upgrade comes bound with all kind of modern workplace surveillance tools (hello Zscaler and SSL termination), so the pushback is actually very much warranted under European customs/laws, even though misjudged from the US/management side.
From what I can see, in tech, it's because they fear a union will bring them down as the cost of lifting sub-par developers up. They mistakenly think that because relative to other workers they are paid and treated well that the qualifier "relative to other workers" is irrelevant. The reality is different, of course, but they're too busy looking down from their rock at everyone else to notice the mountain the owners are towering over them on.
In at least the communities I’ve been a part of, there’s a huge distrust of unions. They’re politically aligned and historically had ties to organized crime. These days, they’re often seen as at best self serving.
Unions are also blamed (rightly or wrongly) for the downfall of Detroit and auto manufacturing in the US. For tech, the view I’ve seen is “things are good, why risk it?”
> Unions are also blamed (rightly or wrongly) for the downfall of Detroit and auto manufacturing in the US.
What killed off the textile mill manufacturing in North Carolina, a state with the lowest (tied with South Carolina) unionization in the country?
The difference is unionized factory workers in the 1930s in Michigan sent their children to college, like Larry Page's auto worker grandfather. Non-unionized North Carolina textile workers could not afford college, and their children worked at textile mills until they closed down, and their grandchildren are in worse shape than they were.
It's about politics and our never ending culture war. My university's grad students had an organizing campaign. Organizers used the standard SJW rhetoric - dismissing people who had questions with condescending answers like "clearly, if you read about the history of labor movements, you'd agree with us" and "look another person regurgitating anti-union propoganda." Unions also donate dues to political parties (really only one of them).
If american union organizers signalled they really cared about positive impact for workers rather than pushing one side of the culture war, they'd be more successful.
To be blunt, European tech companies don't seem to be doing amazing vs. their American competitors. You can see why American companies wouldn't necessarily look to their practices as a model to emulate.
It’s true that American companies are hard to beat on their fields such as workers exploitation (Amazon), privacy violations (Google, Facebook), anti-concurrencial practices (Microsoft, Google), censorship (Twitter, Reddit), tax evasion (Apple, all GAFAM actually), etc. Real amazing job indeed.
I agree, but also with the caveat that the union has to be good. And I think that was a significant issue here which is that there isn't union know how about how to organize and operate in a pre-IPO, pre-profit, pre-critical-mass startup.
Anyone who has worked at startups knows that there are ways workers get screwed that are specific to startups. The whole idea of liquidation preference for example is nutty given that a 1x return doesn't change a fund's dynamics but does rob employees of a meaningful chunk of cash.
But then the other dynamic is that there is both a very real chance of the company failing and everyone losing their jobs and of the need for some people to lose their jobs in order for everyone else to keep them.
I think unions could work in pre-IPO startups if they were aligned with the IPO. There would still be a lot to bargain for and they could help soften the downside of failure while chiseling off more equity for the staff.
But this unionization effort didn't seem particularly savvy about the dynamics of being pre-IPO. For example getting busted by "investors might not want to invest if this succeeds" is not a particularly savvy way to go down. I wouldn't want people bargaining on my behalf who hadn't proactively predicted that concern and countered it.
But that's not particularly a knock on Medium's organizers. I just think this is an area of unionization that hasn't been invented yet and it would have benefited from people who saw it that way.