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JAY ZERO SUM GAME posted:this is, of course, good yeah it’s tough. they seem to be forced into doing something like this by lovely anti-worker laws that stop contractors from collective bargaining. if someone is an engineer making $150k, you don’t have to be an anti-union ideologue to reasonably ask “what are you gonna do for me that’s worth $1500 a year?” it’ll really be up to the organizers CWA has on the ground, and their whole team, to show that they can do something even without a CBA. Google had a good culture of organizing walkouts and other actions, though, so I hope that can be enhanced by CWA’s open involvement.
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Jan 4, 2021 23:30
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digging around on their website, it’s basically strike power or nothing sure, slowdowns, etc. are an option but hard to manage without contract protection should be interesting!
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Jan 4, 2021 23:54
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I know that Twitter isn’t political action but be sure to amplify them on social media, especially if you work in tech or have Googler friends https://mobile.twitter.com/AlphabetWorkers/status/1346229430906048518 edit: oh this is a really good explainer https://collectiveaction.tech/2021/the-abcs-of-googles-new-union/ kingcobweb has issued a correction as of 00:17 on Jan 5, 2021 |
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Jan 5, 2021 00:09
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Attempting to organise poo poo remotely sucks. I don't know what to do about new hires. Previously it was a piece of piss to talk to newbies. Now I don't even know who the new hires are. I think I'm going to have to resort to snooping through the email address book and seeing if new names have popped up, becaues our worker directory is a piece of poo poo.
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Jan 5, 2021 03:54
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JAY ZERO SUM GAME posted:this is, of course, good Some of the coverage I saw today said they were going to focus on "supporting employee activism". If they aren't trying to win collective bargaining etc then it sounds like you're giving 1% of your pay for a social club that writes medium posts about how execs are shitheads in the hopes it hurts their feelings or something and the Verge gives them a high five. Also their website said that some unspecified portion of dues are being kicked back up to CWA for "required costs". Also to "pay for swag and travel".
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Jan 5, 2021 05:20
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mrmcd posted:Some of the coverage I saw today said they were going to focus on "supporting employee activism". If they aren't trying to win collective bargaining etc then it sounds like you're giving 1% of your pay for a social club that writes medium posts about how execs are shitheads in the hopes it hurts their feelings or something and the Verge gives them a high five. it makes it substantially harder to fire a worker for activism if that worker is doing their activism while in a union, especially when that union would LOVE to make a massive court case out of getting a wrongfully-terminated worker reinstated they’re paying dues so that cwa can send professional organizers there
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Jan 5, 2021 05:24
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we discussed the google union in our branch tonight. its weak and anemic but the reality is its the first real workplace organization at a big tech company like that ever so its a huge step forward and will hopefully help open the door and get more tech workers discussing the idea of unionization and workplace organizing
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Jan 5, 2021 05:37
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I feel like we’re more or less conditioned to see these sorts of things (by which I mean it’s not a “full”, for lack of a better term, union) as like a do-nothing fireblock stifling real worker organization because that’s what it would be in a liberal dominated environment like the Democratic Party or similar. However I have a lot of hope that this will be a powerful first step towards better things by virtue of it being labor-first and labor-lead. I mean we’ll see obviously, but I really do think it’s something to be happy about
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Jan 5, 2021 05:48
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JAY ZERO SUM GAME posted:digging around on their website, it’s basically strike power or nothing From what I understand work slowdowns are only really effective in the public sector (bus drivers might not collect fare for example) or garbage pickup, city workers, road workers etc... If you show up to work for a private employer and slow down you can be legally fired for breaching your employee contract. Strike is your next option, and your last resort, first resort being unionizing amd asking your boss politely in the first place. Ultimate answer is seizing the means of production and send the bosses packing putting the facility under worker democratic control but one step at a time.
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Jan 5, 2021 08:13
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The Archaic posted:From what I understand work slowdowns are only really effective in the public sector (bus drivers might not collect fare for example) or garbage pickup, city workers, road workers etc... If you show up to work for a private employer and slow down you can be legally fired for breaching your employee contract. Strike is your next option, and your last resort, first resort being unionizing amd asking your boss politely in the first place. i'd think slowdowns could work just fine in any industry with heavy safety regulation. usually those rules are structured to place blame on the individual so you're given basically carte blanche with your judgement on that
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Jan 5, 2021 14:35
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it’s nearly impossible to prove a ‘slowdown’ or sickout as long as everyone keeps off a paper trail. it’s not as hard as it sounds. but it really only works with a contract to protect you
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Jan 5, 2021 14:59
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and yeah, putting poo poo like ‘dues pay for swag!!’ on that website is uh... an interesting tactic if I were on the fence about voluntarily paying dues, and I read that website, I wouldn’t join
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Jan 5, 2021 15:00
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JAY ZERO SUM GAME posted:and yeah, putting poo poo like ‘dues pay for swag!!’ on that website is uh... an interesting tactic https://alphabetworkersunion.org/power/faq/ quote:What do unions do besides negotiate pay and strike? Not that those things are bad per se, but if you're trying to convince 10s of thousands of people to fork over 1-3k a year you're gonna need something a bit more concrete in terms of what you're fighting for "hope to create a democratic process for workers to wield decision-making power" sounds an awful lot like it might just devolve into a DSA chapter style of everyone bickering endlessly about the wording of a very stern statement about the lack of worker rights which capital quickly proceeds to wipe it's rear end with.
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Jan 5, 2021 18:43
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mrmcd posted:https://alphabetworkersunion.org/power/faq/ yeah this sounds weak. unions also (hopefully) defend you and provide a grievance process to help enforce your contract and prevent you from being singled out and punished for arbitrary reasons. my experience with unions was when i worked for the railroad and the main function of your local rep was to defend you in disciplinary hearings when you inevitably got written up for some sort of horseshit. that and trying to get people to fill out grievances when the contract got violated were the most direct experience we had with the union (outside of when the contract was being renegotiated). hard to convince people to fork over dues when you can't even promise to be involved on the ground with them to represent them during worker/company conflicts. like i'd want to see explicit examples of what worker power etc look like to them. obviously still a step forward and i assume computer job culture is pretty different than the long antagonistic history of railroad boss v worker culture
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Jan 5, 2021 20:21
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mrmcd posted:https://alphabetworkersunion.org/power/faq/ Yeah I've become extremely skeptical of the whole "not having demands puts you in a stronger position" angle. Just say that you are advocating for better wages, hours, sexual harassments policy, job security etc. Stuff that everybody wants.
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Jan 10, 2021 07:10
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ToxicAcne posted:Yeah I've become extremely skeptical of the whole "not having demands puts you in a stronger position" angle. Just say that you are advocating for better wages, hours, sexual harassments policy, job security etc. Stuff that everybody wants. yeah this is ultimately correct, demands are what lead to organization not the other way around. to get people to organize you have to have demands to organize for, doesn’t really work to say let’s spend a bunch of time meeting and planning for years and then we’ll figure out why we’re doing it later. seems obvious but a lot of people don’t realize this and it’s often time people who are more left in their politics because they just value unionization and so they want to convince people of unionizing for its own sake, but that’s not really what motivates people the majority of times to give up their evenings or weekends
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Jan 10, 2021 16:44
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updating my situation, our workplace is starting to sign cards and we have enough people indicating they'd vote yes that our unionization is likely to pass when a vote gets scheduled. this is very exciting stuff, it feels a little unreal that just months ago this was idle chatter among friends!! i can't wait to start the bargaining process and get some real protections in place...thanks again to this thread for being a great resource, and I'll keep posting once our vote is done to share the good news. keep on fighting everybody!
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Jan 11, 2021 05:03
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In Training posted:updating my situation, our workplace is starting to sign cards and we have enough people indicating they'd vote yes that our unionization is likely to pass when a vote gets scheduled. this is very exciting stuff, it feels a little unreal that just months ago this was idle chatter among friends!! i can't wait to start the bargaining process and get some real protections in place...thanks again to this thread for being a great resource, and I'll keep posting once our vote is done to share the good news. hell yeah!!! super happy that the thread could provide some sort of resource
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Jan 11, 2021 07:04
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awesome job, and keep it up until you have a good contract!!!
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Jan 11, 2021 13:50
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In Training posted:updating my situation, our workplace is starting to sign cards and we have enough people indicating they'd vote yes that our unionization is likely to pass when a vote gets scheduled. this is very exciting stuff, it feels a little unreal that just months ago this was idle chatter among friends!! i can't wait to start the bargaining process and get some real protections in place...thanks again to this thread for being a great resource, and I'll keep posting once our vote is done to share the good news.
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Jan 13, 2021 08:15
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more fun union busting from a "progressive" organization https://inthesetimes.com/article/animal-legal-defense-fund-busting-union-labor
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Jan 14, 2021 20:15
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if the alphabet union is going to be so ineffective, then why is this rear end in a top hat in the wall street journal so angry about it? checkmate
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Jan 15, 2021 03:53
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Buck Turgidson posted:Attempting to organise poo poo remotely sucks. I don't know what to do about new hires. Previously it was a piece of piss to talk to newbies. Now I don't even know who the new hires are. I think I'm going to have to resort to snooping through the email address book and seeing if new names have popped up, becaues our worker directory is a piece of poo poo. Downside is I get stuck in repeat meetings and die of boredom
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Jan 15, 2021 07:12
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send your prayers to Amazon warehouse workers in Alabama https://www.npr.org/2021/01/15/948819324/amazon-warehouse-workers-to-decide-whether-to-form-companys-first-u-s-union
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Jan 15, 2021 23:11
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kingcobweb posted:send your prayers to Amazon warehouse workers in Alabama https://www.npr.org/2021/01/15/948819324/amazon-warehouse-workers-to-decide-whether-to-form-companys-first-u-s-union that is amazing news. I'm sure amazon is going to go nuclear on their anti union campaign between now and the end of March, but I believe in the workers.
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Jan 15, 2021 23:15
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Tom Smykowski posted:I dunno how your remote work is setup, but where I'm at I've had luck getting myself invited to zoom meetings then reaching out to new folks or non dues paying people or whoever. i can probably do something similar. what I'm thinking is i'll contact some of hte other union members and reps, float the idea of doing several smaller zoom meetings with other workers to just scope out what kind of changes people want to see, and also see whether there's support for things that were an issue in the past (pay, hours, work demands etc). Stuff like zoom just tends to be a shitshow with more than a handful or two of people, but if i can get even one more person to run a few meetings i think we could probably get at least a decent sample of the issues people have or the changes they want ot see. the other thing is that past negotations have gotten bogged down because demands weren't specific enough or too open to interpretation. like the employer might do a survey, decide that we want to see "more pay" or something like that in the next agreement, but then propose an implementation so lovely or gameable by the employer that it's effectively useless. i've been looking at past agreements, and agreements from related busineses/industries, and i think i could come up with at least one concrete proposal on a non-controversial issue (like increased pay) that would get wide support. the tough thing is that the labour laws here are very strict on strike/workplace action. you have to go to a formal ballot beforehand (and can only do this once certain bargaining/negotiation conditions are met), otherwise the strike action is illegal (lol). so you really have to make sure that if you propose seomting, that's it's got wide support from the people you work with. it's unfortunate because just the threat of closing doors for half a day, a day, two days, would make my employer poo poo their pants.
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Jan 16, 2021 04:00
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for medium or large sized meetings in any situation just use stack which is basically people raise their hand and you write down their names in the order they raised them and then they get to speak when its their turn. if someone has already spoken a lot and they raise their hand before someone who has spoken none, you bump the person who hasnt spoken above the person who has spoken a bunch already so everyone gets equal access to time. over zoom, you can do this by using the raise hand function or just asking people to type their name into the chat window. can also ask them to specificy if they have a comment or a question so can bump the questions up to the front and they can then be answered in the discussion. it can take a while for people to get used to this if theyve never done it before but it leads to the most functional meetings ever and i legit get pissed off when im in work meetings because they dont use it and i just silently fume about how much better the meeting would be run if they used it.
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Jan 16, 2021 14:13
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kingcobweb posted:send your prayers to Amazon warehouse workers in Alabama https://www.npr.org/2021/01/15/948819324/amazon-warehouse-workers-to-decide-whether-to-form-companys-first-u-s-union
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Jan 17, 2021 00:08
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Dr Pepper posted:Wanna bet they try and just shut down every single warehouse in Alabama. that would probably cost them too much. they’ve started a slick anti-union campaign: https://www.doitwithoutdues.com/ it even has a contact form on it. how helpful!
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Jan 17, 2021 18:38
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kingcobweb posted:that would probably cost them too much. they’ve started a slick anti-union campaign: https://www.doitwithoutdues.com/ havin fun spamming this
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Jan 17, 2021 22:08
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What are people's opinion on joining the IWW to just be in an union and have some type connection that can inform me about opportunities to volunteer and help other works to try and organize. I don't anticipate my coworkers trying unionizing anytime soon mainly because we are actually relatively compensated and moving forward my coworkers will likely be working from home even after the pandemic.
side_burned has issued a correction as of 21:31 on Jan 18, 2021 |
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Jan 18, 2021 21:27
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side_burned posted:What are people's opinion on joining the IWW to just be in an union and have some type connection that can inform me about opportunities to volunteer and help other works to try and organize. I don't anticipate my coworkers trying unionizing anytime soon mainly because we are actually relatively compensated and moving forward my coworkers will likely be working from home even after the pandemic. I don't have experience directly with the IWW, but it sounds like you're just looking for DSA.
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Jan 18, 2021 21:50
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kingcobweb posted:I don't have experience directly with the IWW, but it sounds like you're just looking for DSA. I already joined DSA.
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Jan 18, 2021 22:42
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I always wondered about IWW, and what it’s like organizing with them
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Jan 18, 2021 23:26
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side_burned posted:I already joined DSA. i'm just not seeing what you want IWW to do that DSA can't do, with more membership to do it.
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Jan 19, 2021 00:49
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the IWW doesnt really operate in the same way as a traditional union and while theyve organized some workplaces I dont think anyone would say they function like a union in most places theyre active. if theres an active chapter near you that is engaged with struggle and you agree with their approach then yeah I would say join. If there's not, you might still want to join but just like any organization where theres not already an active presence near you it will mean that it will be up to you to build it up and so then it becomes of a question of just do you agree with the IWW and its approach and want to build a chapter where youre at?
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Jan 19, 2021 01:10
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apropos to nothing posted:the IWW doesnt really operate in the same way as a traditional union and while theyve organized some workplaces I dont think anyone would say they function like a union in most places theyre active. if theres an active chapter near you that is engaged with struggle and you agree with their approach then yeah I would say join. If there's not, you might still want to join but just like any organization where theres not already an active presence near you it will mean that it will be up to you to build it up and so then it becomes of a question of just do you agree with the IWW and its approach and want to build a chapter where youre at? Reading up on the modern IWW they seemed less like a union more like labor focused network of activist. Which isn't a bad thing but being "One Big Union" seemed more like statement of their intent and not a statement of fact. I saw joining more as away of acting on my personal belief that all workers should unionized, even if my workplace was not. I don't know if that was worth while thing to do or not. side_burned has issued a correction as of 02:34 on Jan 19, 2021 |
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Jan 19, 2021 02:27
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yeah I mean so then it’s the second part of my post, if they’re active around you and you like the organizations politics and focus then join. if they’re not active near you then know that you’ll be the one to have to build a presence in your area for the organization. basically it’s just a question of if you agree with their politics and approach. if you do reach out to them and you can at least talk to a recruiter and get a better feel for if you want to join or not.
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Jan 19, 2021 03:15
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genuinely good union news: biden firing anti-worker rear end in a top hat lawyer peter robb is a victory for peter's sworn mortal enemy, champion of the people scabby the rat
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Jan 22, 2021 19:55
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anyone heard of anything like a sign painters union or something along those lines?
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Jan 22, 2021 20:23
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