There are a lot of countries in EU which have, IMO, better work culture and fairness of negotiation as the guiding philosophies behind the work.
If Google did this in the USA, it wouldn't be seen as much. However, they have strong laws against this in EU, and this incident would not portray Google in favorable light, IMO.
I also feel that it is high time engineers realized that fairness in work is something we'd all love to have, and historically, skilled people have kept unions to ensure that they don't get screwed over.
I believe that at the end of the day, if you need fairness in negotiation, you need to have a way to express it, especially if it isn't supply driven.
I'd vote for everyone who has a reasonable plan of more scrutiny towards 40 hour work weeks.
This may reduce salaries but oh God most of us make too much money anyhow. Let's have a life now! When are you going to enjoy life, after retirement? Would you wait with sex till after retirement, too, if that offered a salary increase?
The lower salaries are probably due to the lack of VC funding, which in turn is rooted in a lack of really successful European tech companies.
If you work for a European company, chances are it won't grow and be successful to the same extent as an American one, and therefore your work has less value.
Is that a startup thing, because i've only worked for the big 5 (GAFAM) and I've always worked 40 hours a week. Add in the way higher comp, and I don't know why anyone outside of founders work at startups.
This sounds crazy to me. If you're a funder / owner, sure, you don't count hours and it can get crazy. But if you're an employee... Most of my hires now are 30 hours a week, a few at 35h. I don't have anyone at 39h anymore, although that was still the norm a few years ago. Paid stayed the same, just reduced the hours. People are just way more productive that way, and they have two half day free on top of the normal Saturday Sunday.
Probably doesn't work for all position, and in fact the worse the job the more likely it doesn't work for it, but uh yeah you can totally reduce to 40h...
(France, 35h is the legal work time for a full time contract here, but you can absolutely have a contract with more or less hours, you just pay extra social charges for hours above the 35th)
You can not reduce your 40 hour week? I know of at least two companies in Berlin, one of it is the one i work in, that are pretty flexible regarding the 40 hour week.
Yea I feel like it’s cliche to hate on America these days. For those comparing Switzerland to USA, you’re comparing a highly homogeneous culture and highly optimized country to a land full of immigrants gathering in excess of 300 million.
Americans criticize their own country more than anyone else.
OP’s post not only misses the fact that Switzerland is not in the EU, but more importantly the spirit of argument is baseless with the general perception that things are better in EU.
> For those comparing Switzerland to USA, you’re comparing a highly homogeneous culture and highly optimized country to a land full of immigrants gathering in excess of 300 million.
Percentage wise, the Swiss have more immigrants, more foreigners and more people with immigrant backgrounds. Not to mention the whole "four official languages" thing.
If you think Western Europe has some glowing history of harmonious relations, I’ve got news for you. Heck, ask German-speaking Swiss people how they feel about French-speaking Swiss (and vice versa) and you’ll get a quick picture of how things aren’t so rosy.
That is precisely what is wrong with the assumption. Diversity is not just skin color as Americans think. I have people of color as neighbors who I share more cultural traits with that neighbors who are white (I am white) My wife is of Asian decent but I have more in common with her than with many other white Western Europeans.
Diversity is also language, culture, language, identity etc.
It doesn't seem clear at all that having many different kinds of Western Europeans makes for a "highly homogeneous" culture compared to neighboring countries that generally have only one kind of Western European.
The culture between Italy and France is much closer than Italy and Algeria. For as much difference there is between the countries in Western Europe, there are far more similarities amongst them compared to other continents and larger regions. Counting Italians as "immigrants" is at the very least slightly misleading.
It is more misleading to count somebody as different who is second or third generation American and who has fully adapted American culture values and norms but count that person as more different to the host country due to different skin color or remote country of origin than a Spanish person whom just settled in Switzerland.
The slightly racist assumption in America is that if I as a white Norwegian settle in America I contribute less to diversity than a black American who has lived his whole life in America.
In America diversity is all about what you see on the outside.
To be fair, this kind of diversity is important because in the US it still matters (very much!) what you look like on the outside, regardless of how long your ancestors have lived here. It'd be great to be in a post-racial society but we're very far from that.
It is not misleading at all, you have to learn a new language, learn to deal with a different government and laws, we are talking several years of effort until you get accustomed.
The differences between accepted social behaviour in Britain, Spain and Poland are significant too.
Sure, if you came from Saudi, you'll feel more out of place. But it's not trivial.
I think only Americans can really swallow the canard that “Western European culture” is some uniform thing. If you’ve spent any time around people from the various parts of Europe, you’ll know that they have all kinds of opinion about their neighboring countries, some gentle, some cruel. But all see themselves as quite distinct. Certainly the Swiss do!
As someone now living in Switzerland, I've found it largely futile trying to explain anything about Switzerland to most non-Europeans. For starters, no one seems to bother with what countries are in the EU, let alone the EEA, let alone where Switzerland is in all of this. Apparently "everyone in Europe" has free government-paid healthcare and never has to pay for any medical expenses. I could go on...
Tbf the borders of "Europe" are fairly complicated, there is the EU itself, the EEA, the Schengen Area, the Eurozone, EFTA and CEFTA, the EUCU, the EEU, the CISFTA, the OBSEC, the Eastern partnership (or EPA), the OECD Countries, the CEI, and finally the Council of Europe.
There is more that I probably forgot about but this should about cover it. None of these political areas and borders have 100% coverage amongst eachother, they're all different groups.
Definitely. One could even add NATO to that alongside OECD. I don't really expect most people to understand all of these groups, but just to avoid making sweeping statements about the continent (which already has an ambiguous definition) without understanding the groups. I guess this problem of generalizing is a concern with nearly every issue, though.
Are you talking about a different Switzerland than everyone else? A country literally made out of three different cultures (French Swiss, German Swiss and Italian Swiss)?
Outside the US there tends to be free choice of union. E.g. in Nordic countries Germany etc you normally have multiple unions to choose from and you don’t have to be member if you don’t have to.
It is the US and Anglo-Saxon countries were unions tend to be a binary thing. Germanic countries tend to follow a different union system: sector wise unions rather than company specific unions. Different types of employees will typically join a different union depending on the type of work and interests they have.
Better workplace protection for whistleblowers and protection from sexism and company retaliation seems like a good thing for google. There have been a stream of these court cases. I think this is actually something that would also benefit google - they seem to constantly struggle with this. I think google is no worse than other tech companies and based on my time there I think the company is well intentioned. They are just so large, a little more structure could help them.
Of course, union members with workplace protections don't usually get stock grants, free food, and a free gym. Google needs to address these problems themselves, but of course it's so hard for big companies not to just try to stop unions.
Instead of stopping unions, work on those workplace protections. Stop hiding problems and paying off executives with tons of sexual harassment claims to go away.
Was the unionization for Google employees or for their contractors? In the case of contractors Google doesn't have direct control over their compensation or perks (except that they must be excluded from some perks to still be legally considered contractors).
The whole contractors vs employee distinction is rather sketchy and I think this is yet another symptom of that problem. Google wants contractors instead of employees (because reasons). They hire a contracting company to get workers. The contracting company treats the workers badly, but Google is legally and contractually bound in how it can interfere with workings of the contracting company. If Google just fires the contracting company, I'm not sure anyone would be better off.
Reminds me of a government job I had. We were required to have contractors for some portion of the workforce. The contracting company some co-workers worked for went bust and they had to shop around to find a new agency to work through. They ended up in a good bargaining position since they effectively already had placement. They ended up better off than the direct employees (stupid government pay grade scale).
They probably could have done better if they were allowed to create their own contacting agency, but they couldn't because it wouldn't have been on the government's whitelist.
>Of course, union members with workplace protections don't usually get stock grants, free food, and a free gym.
The reason Google provides those things is because someone crunched the numbers and determined that it was a cheaper way to get employees to work free overtime compared to higher salaries.
Almost every single company in the country pays less than Google. So you could say the same about any non-unionized company too.
If unions arose out of poor working conditions then it probably follows that salaries for that work were poor.
Just because you make a lot of money, doesn't mean you're not being underpaid or exploited. These software companies aren't some of the most profitable companies in the world for no reason.
You are attributing the profitability of software companies to what you think is the "underpaying" of its workers? And you think that unionization will lead to higher wages? I'm just trying to understand the argument.
If the software industry were to unionize, the union would want to collectively bargain for seniority-based job security rules and other schemes to prevent lower-paid new-hires (people not YET in the union) from taking work from existing union members. Other versions of this effect come in the form of union-imposed certification schemes in the trades, "tenure" rules in education, seniority precedence in picking hours in healthcare, etc. The net effect is that the experienced and powerful members make it hard for the young to get into the profession.
I have a problem with that, ideologically. But, in more practical terms: collective bargaining only works to increase wages when the counterparty has no other option. This works when you're talking about workers at the docks: the docks are not going anywhere, the ships need to be unloaded, and you can't exactly bus in some scabs and expect it to work out. With software, what do you think will happen if a union somehow manages, via Swiss law, to unionize one Google office? It's software. Google will leave and hire elsewhere.
This is exactly why Subaru and Toyota builds cars in the southern U.S. while Ford builds in Mexico, and why industries are flocking to non-union states, and why the people are going with them.
> If the software industry were to unionize, the union would want to collectively bargain for seniority-based job security rules and other schemes to prevent lower-paid new-hires (people not YET in the union) from taking work from existing union members. Other versions of this effect come in the form of union-imposed certification schemes in the trades, "tenure" rules in education, seniority precedence in picking hours in healthcare, etc. The net effect is that the experienced and powerful members make it hard for the young to get into the profession.
Wow, I didn't know the Writer's Guild and Actor's Guild in Hollywood had seniority-based positions.
> Wow, I didn't know the Writer's Guild and Actor's Guild in Hollywood had seniority-based positions.
The Writer’s Guild doesn’t have seniority based positions but it does have seniority based pay. That’s why after you get enough years experience in a writer’s room for tv shows work starts to dry up unless you become a show runner. So after ten or fifteen years of working in tv you have to do something else for many years until your awesome pension kicks in.
The Actor’s Guild does work very hard to dualise acting, black listing anyone who works with non-members. The median member of the SAG doesn’t make much off it but the minimum rates the SAG negotiates mean if you have steady work you’re making a solid living. Without them many more people would be actors and fewer would make decent money at it.
The first part of your post (seniority-based rules, certifications, etc) shows a lack of imagination in terms of what a union can be.
> With software, what do you think will happen if a union somehow manages, via Swiss law, to unionize one Google office? It's software. Google will leave and hire elsewhere.
Does Google hire the best people, or is it a "body shop"? If they just shut down their Swiss office and fire everyone, I'd imagine there would be some impact on whatever projects those people were working on. There's a gradient here... if they demand 10x higher salaries, then yeah it's probably not going to work out. But maybe 10% higher salaries would actually be cheaper for Google than shutting everything down and starting over.
> The first part of your post (seniority-based rules, certifications, etc) shows a lack of imagination in terms of what a union can be.
Precisely because unions are set up to treat members equally they negotiate for the benefit of the median member. Individual unions can fight against the incentives for a while, sure, but first in last out, seniority based pat and restricting entry to keep benefits concentrated among current members crop up everywhere. Yugoslav employee owned companies, the kibbutzim and universities all show the same behaviors because they all face the same incentives. If you think some particular union will be different from the norm provide some argument as to why.
Professional sports don’t restrict entry for the same reason Idaho doesn’t have a military, someone else does that for them. SAG-AFTRA absolutely does restrict entry, you need $3,000 to pay the joining fee on top of having a year of qualifying membership in another union. The WGA does not appear to restrict entry but if they don’t have seniority based pay the structure of television writer’s rooms makes no sense. In normal industries you don’t see a bunch of twenty and thirty year olds, many fewer forty and fifty year olds and very, very few people in their sixties. That’s what writer’s rooms look like, a bunch of baby writers, slightly fewer journeymen, a great winnowing off people who are too expensive for what they’re worth to hire and show runners at the very top.
> SAG-AFTRA absolutely does restrict entry, you need $3,000 to pay the joining fee on top of having a year of qualifying membership in another union.
A year of qualifying membership in another union, or 1-3 days of work in a movie. The $3,000 initiation fee is mostly to make sure that people are serious about joining and is not inherently required - the union makes almost all of its money from dues. That would also not be a high bar for most Google employees to clear.
> In normal industries you don’t see a bunch of twenty and thirty year olds, many fewer forty and fifty year olds and very, very few people in their sixties.
My point was that SAG-AFTRA deliberately restricts entry. If the fee is
> to make sure people are serious about joining and not inherently required
that rather supports them restricting entry doesn’t it?
The tech industry does have a reasonably similar age structure but it’s because of decades of sustained rapid growth more than pushing people out. If your industry grows 100% a decade in employment in year 30 with perfect retention you have 25% of staff with 20 years experience. That’s quite different from static or falling numbers of jobs and getting priced out of working because you’re too expensive.
Much like the Writer’s Guild off America that’s not seniority based pay, that’s up or out. You wouldn’t describe the pay structure at McKinsey as seniority based pay, it’s get better or be fired, forever.
Kyler Murray's rookie contract is for $35,158,645. You're talking about the league minimum rookie contract. The veteran minimum is higher than the rookie minimum but there is no prohibition on paying rookies more.
> Just because you make a lot of money, doesn't mean you're not being underpaid or exploited.
If you are a Google engineer, you can go work for literally anyone else if you feel you are underpaid and exploited. It isn’t like Google is the only buyer of labor in that market. Some chicken processing plant in Iowa — that might be a different conversation, but this is Google. If you feel you are underpaid, then leave. Go work for Netflix, I hear they pay a lot. Don’t like Netflix? Try Apple, LinkedIn, or start your own company. Plenty of money out there for an “ex-Google engineer” with an idea.
So here's something I always wonder about when I see arguments that unions aren't necessary at tech companies like Google because the workers are highly compensated and presumably well-treated: if we're all sure that's objectively the case, then why should management fight unionization efforts? Aren't they confident that the union isn't going to come in and say, "Yeah, actually you guys are pretty good, carry on?" If not, why not?
And, yes, one answer is "if there are no reasonable demands to be made, the union will make unreasonable ones," and sure, that's possible. Maybe newly-unionized employees will suddenly demand double bonuses, three months' paid vacation a year, and free ice cream for life. But I'm not convinced that's the real worry.
>Aren't they confident that the union isn't going to come in and say, "Yeah, actually you guys are pretty good, carry on?" If not, why not?
Because the point of a union isn't to do what's fair but to extract maximum benefits for the union. What do they have to lose by NOT pushing for every single possible benefit?
>But I'm not convinced that's the real worry.
Why? What incentive does a union member have to not vote in union leadership that promises to give them more?
That's all fine except unions push for these benefits for existing members equally and only existing members. That leads to pushes for things like seniority based pay, indifference to those who are better at their jobs, certifications, pointless bureaucracy to prevent moving jobs away from the union, etc. Personally, I don't like those things.
What does management have to lose by not pushing for every single way to reduce labor costs? If they didn't provide any benefits and got as close to the legal minimum wage as they could, think of all the savings! After all, the point of management isn't to do what's fair, but to extract maximum benefits for the company.
Well, even though some labor cost-cutting is helpful to them, at some point that stops being the rational choice, right? At some point they're not going to be able to attract talented workers. Likewise, it's not in a union's best interest to demand so much they drive a company into bankruptcy, whether directly or indirectly. They might do it anyway -- just like there are, in fact, examples of companies driving good employees away through bad management practices -- but that's not a rational choice.
> >Aren't they confident that the union isn't going to come in and say, "Yeah, actually you guys are pretty good, carry on?" If not, why not?
> Because the point of a union isn't to do what's fair but to extract maximum benefits for the union. What do they have to lose by NOT pushing for every single possible benefit?
By this logic every union pushes for every possible benefit. That doesn't seem to be the reality though (at least in the cases I've read, there are often concessions from both sides of th bargaining table).
Concessions are part of negotiating, you never ask for what you want, you ask for twice as much and bargain down. Union looks good for pushing hard and company looks good for getting a better deal. It's also more successful to increase the demands gradually over time since no single round of negotiations goes over the "replace them all with non-union" threshold even if together they do.
> That leads to pushes for things like seniority based pay, indifference to those who are better at their jobs, certifications, pointless bureaucracy to prevent moving jobs away from the union, etc. Personally, I don't like those things.
Why assume that unions in tech, an industry that has had little to no experience with unions, is composed primarily (at least in Silicon Valley) of those who are often interested in recreating things from first principles, and claims to embody a spirit of invention, will be doomed to repeat the mistakes of the past? I thought our whole shtick was about innovating things for the better?
Silicon Valley is composed of humans with the same drives, limitations, etc. as everyone else. The fact that they think they're better than the rest of humanity doesn't mean they are. It just means they're more self delusional. Self delusion tends to make you repeat history more rather than less.
You're still making the assumption that labor unions are inherently limited by human nature, and not worth attempting a v2. That goes against the SV ethos of tinkering with existing systems and reinventing them.
Labor unions are inherently limited by human nature because they’re made up of humans, not cats. They’re also limited by economic facts which would be the same if they were made of lizard people. That doesn’t mean it’s not worth attempting version 2 but there are very real constraints on what’s possible.
> If you are a Google engineer, you can go work for literally anyone else if you feel you are underpaid and exploited.
Must be a recent development if this[1] story is true. It only took a few lawsuits too and far from the first problematic agreement they had to end, so very employee friendly and free market oriented.
> Better workplace protection for whistleblowers and protection from sexism and company retaliation seems like a good thing for google.
You're delusional if you think these are a "good thing" for the people who are in control of the organization. There's a reason they are anti-unions. Unions are effective and will reduce their profits by enfranchising their workers.
Free food, gym memberships, and stock options have nothing to do with Google workers being unionized. If you believe that you're just eating the propaganda the ownership class is pushing.
Unions work and are desperately needed. Google will never let it happen, and the US government is happy to stand by and let these sorts of blatantly illegal anti-union tactics keep taking place... because surprise, the same ones collecting Google's profits are the same people who control the government. (and yes, I realize this is in Zurich, which is not in the US, but pretty much all western governments bow to the US so it's irrelevant really)
Yes, free meals are taxed. The worker's employer receives the 1099. For FTE's Google pays the tax, for TVC's their employer receives a 1099-MISC each year.
This is why you'll notice all US based offices require you to badge in every meal every time while an office in Canada does not.
To those reading the article from America: whatever is mentioned here about Europe or unions, please note that Switzerland is a planet on its own in Europe,with completely different mentality,laws and is hardly comparable with any other country. Also, the entire tech sector in there is more of a high end because of the costs.
I'm by no means familiar with labor law, but are companies (in Switzerland or the US) required to actively support unionization? It seems like it would be one thing to actively oppose unionization, and another thing to require the organizers to provide their own meeting rooms, space, etc. Looking at the article, it seems like this is the latter.
Can only answer for Germany, but yes, here the employer is required to provide for the initial meeting where the first employee committee (Betriebsrat) is elected. This includes rooms, paper etc but in particular informing all employees about the initiative as well as freeing people up during their paid work time so they can attend.
US- No, they're not required (or expected) to support unionization. There are specifics about how they're allowed to oppose it (saying "unions will hurt the company" is fine, saying "if you organize we will fire you" is not).
That said, it's still newsworthy. Forming a union is usually a battle of public opinion. As an organizer, it's likely in your best interest to say "hey, look your company only wants to explain unionization if they can help sculpt the message" as exactly the sort of behavior that would drive you towards having a union.
TL;dr- Unionization is frequently about optics, and these aren't great optics for Google.
This is a company that dedicates office space and employee time to massage, coffee bars, LAN party rooms, rock climbing walls, bowling alley, all manner of perks, but not one hour per ever of discuss of employee rights.
I've been thinking lately that we, as people working in the tech industry, especially in places like London, NY, SF, are in a unique position to self organize in a way no other group of workers is.
We are fortunate enough to live in a period that our skills are extremely sought for, we tend to work and specialize in code bases or technologies specific to a company, but we at any time we can take these skills and move away.~
The atmosphere and the general consensus in most companies tends to be that "no one is irreplaceable" which is true but it doesn't seem to take into account the cost to replace someone: You will need to find the right person, which means that some engineers' time will be spent on interviews, either phone ones or face to face, and not delivering "value" for the company; once you find the right person, you will then need to spend at least an extra month where that person is getting up to speed with "how things work" (paired with another person probably, even more time spent not delivering "value"), plus some more time for that person to actually become productive, and eventually after a few months, get in the position of the person that left.
Now, think in your immediate team, what is your bus factor? How many people would need to leave before it's going to be unsustainable for the feature/project/company to continue?
The usual counter-argument is that "it's easy to leave if you're young, but when you have family, you have to think more than just yourself" and I can totally sympathize with this. But as I said in the beginning, especially if you work for in one of the big hubs, and/or in one of the FAANGs, you could probably be in a new place within a week's time.
We don't need to "unionize" in the traditional term. The companies don't even have to
"acknowledge" a union. As long as we keep in mind how fortunate we are to working in tech
now, and we are determined to just walk away from places that we are not happy at, they
will come to us.
Until you compare your salary and expenses to that of someone who was working blue collar 40 years ago.
My dad made enough to support a family of four as an appliance repair man. He got a new car every so often, built a shop and had a home mostly paid for and we went on vacations. Going to the doctor wasnt a big deal and no one worried about being bankrupt from a hospital stay/
I am supporting a family of four and we get by. My car is 18 years old with 260k miles on it and I am hoping to get another 3-4 years out of it so the kids finish college. (community college, I am not rich and cannot afford anything else). The family is one major medical incident away from bankruptcy and I have good insurance
You tell me how good you have it and I will reply that is because you dont know how good it could be.
How can you be one medical emergency away? My max out of pocket is 7k, that covers pretty much any emergency. I already met this year and all procedures are free.
My wife had a brain surgery few years ago and our insurance company paid around 150k and we paid max OOP and not a cent more.
Example : My brother recently fell off a roof and broke his back. Paralyzed now from the waist down. Can't work. Insurance is now gone because he cant work to pay premiums. That first year was great... insurance covered everything. Now... his long term care will end up being medicare disability which means he loses everything he owns.
> In the email, Google said it was canceling the meeting because the company prefers to only host events on the topic organized in partnership with Google’s site leadership team.
So this was a meeting organized solely by employees, using company property, on the company campus, on a workday, with the only speakers allowed being the union reps?
I’m not surprised management would try to cancel that, it sounds like a pro-union propaganda party at Google’s expense.
It’s amazing to me how much Americans have swallowed this kind of “they deserve it,” management line. People seem to immediately imagine themselves as executives in the boardroom, quashing the rebellion before it begins.
As others have pointed out, protections for organizing at workplace sites are common through out Europe. Google employees built Google into what it is, not their senior management (especially given what has come to light). And the company would be better off if workers co-determined its future.
It's amazing to me how much Europeans do not identify with management, as if management is a class separate from them and not just people who were like them before getting promoted. Do Europeans see themselves as confined in their careers to a "class," and not invested in the competitiveness and profitability of the company they've voluntarily joined?
I'm sure these sorts of things are more common in Europe, and it's amazing to me how Europeans don't independently realize that it's not a coincidence that the battle lines are about trying to exact concessions from American companies, since there aren't really any relevant European tech companies anyway.
The concerns of management are not identical to the concerns of employees, even in white-collar jobs. This isn't a moral judgement, it's just business reality.
For instance, labor is always a cost center. The argument "I cost X but bring in 10X" is great for you (assuming it's true), but from your accounting department's standpoint, replacing you with two less productive workers is better if it turns out that together they cost 1.6X but bring in 18X. This calculation doesn't change a whit even if all your company's top-level executives started in the mail room.
Well, this is exactly why I can't truly support "common sense" worker's rights like a higher minimum wage or whatever - I might be that less productive worker, or at least be assumed to be.
Management is a separate class, it’s called the petite bourgeois. It’s basically the same class as small business owners. Maybe you’re thinking of castes which implicitly preclude social mobility?
I don't know about Switzerland, but most European countries have laws that explicitly require companies to permit unions to operate on company property.
Many countries even mandate that stewards (union representatives) must be allowed to spend part of their working time on union work.
More than half of Swiss workers are covered by collective bargaining agreements. That's much higher than in the US at least; not sure about France/Germany.
For example, in Italy most people have a contract which follows the collective agreement obtained by the unions for that specific sector (i.e. commerce, textile worker, metal worker etc) even if people are not part of any union. If you are a member of the Union you may get some extra legal help or such, but not a different contract.
From what US people say it seems instead that members of a union live in a separate world.
> From what US people say it seems instead that members of a union live in a separate world.
Not really. Because of the way labor laws work in the US, the unions seek exclusive representation over members within a bargaining unit, which means that all employees within the bargaining unit are members of the union as soon as 51% of the bargaining unit votes in favor of the union. That precludes the possibility of employees having the choice between two different unions to represent them (or none at all), which is common in most European countries.
It's pretty rare to have union and non-union members working in the same role (as opposed to at the same company, or at the same jobsite but under different employers), and even less common to have two people in the same role represented by two different unions.
If we look at union membership (which is different than being covered by collective bargaining agreements), the US (10%) has a lower union density than Switzerland (17%) and about the same than France (8% or 10%).
The legal framework is very different however. The local governments (cantons) decide by law which sectors are subject to mandatory collective agreements, mostly manufacturing, construction and transport. All companies and employees in those sectors then have to follow them. Union membership in other sectors is relatively low. Public sectors has specific rules.
Presumably legislators have seen unions as providing a beneficial counterbalance to corporations, and decided to enact this requirement to ensure that stewards don't get discriminated against because their union work necessarily means they have to interact with other employees outside of actual work tasks.
You know, the kind of thing that lawmakers can do when they're not completely owned by corporate donors and lobbyists.
I’ve seen people downvoted for highlighting that “libertarian” was a term invented in the context of anarchist and socialist struggle before being co-opted by the right, so I’m going to go with the latter...
There are a lot of techies on HN with no sense of history. I blame the "STEM uber alles" educational agenda we've been pushing in the US ever since Sputnik.
I can't take that claim too seriously, because a real Libertarian would welcome a free, and non-coercive association between employees as much as they welcome the free, and completely non-coercive association between an employee, and their employer... (I am, of course, not at all coerced to work under the conditions my employer sets upon me!)
But for some reason, many Libertarians have nothing but contempt for the former. It could be that the ideology has been a bit subverted...
Well, non-coercive association between employee and employer... let's talk about job-market monopsony and its distortions thereof. (I'm starting to use this "market-distortion" framing for class struggle.)
One of the more fundamental realisations of our time. Yet most seem unaware. I'm not automatically free in a liberal democracy. Just more free than in others.
This hypothetical “real libertarian” would welcome far more than that, and most of it not for the benefit of workers.
I’m simply stating it’s foolish to expect Google to actively work against their best interests. To provide material support and a platform for unopposed speech on a viewpoint they actively oppose.
There’s nothing stopping these employees from doing this on their own free time and with their own resources.
> I’m simply stating it’s foolish to expect Google to actively work against their best interests.
I think you're indulging in reification here. Google has no best interests because Google is just a legal fiction with no real-world existence apart from its constituent individuals. The investors have their interests. Management has their interests. The workers have their interests. But Google itself has no interests, and for too long we've conflated the interests of Google's management and investors with those of the company as a whole while disregarding those of the vast majority of the people associated with Google: the workers whose work makes Google's billions in revenue possible while getting pennies on every dollar of value they provide.
> To provide material support and a platform for unopposed speech on a viewpoint they actively oppose.
Management has no business having an opinion on unionization one way or the other. If anything, most managers should be pro-union since they're as likely to get thrown under the bus to keep profits up as their direct reports.
> There’s nothing stopping these employees from doing this on their own free time and with their own resources.
From an opsec viewpoint, the smart thing to do would be to organize outside Google offices and then blindside the company with a wildcat strike, but that's easier said than done when you're expected to work twelve hours a day to prove you're passionate.
"the workers whose work makes Google's billions in revenue possible while getting pennies on every dollar of value they provide."
Well, you assume that revenue represents value. How do you even know that? Maybe they are making the world worse on net. In which case, should the workers or investors be liable? I generally feel like it's a nice and fundamental feature of society that they aren't.
That's the standard capitalist assumption. Gotta make a billion dollars no matter who dies.
> Maybe they are making the world worse on net.
Maybe? Have you been paying attention at all?
> In which case, should the workers or investors be liable?
The investors and the management should be liable, under the "command responsibility" doctrine. If you give orders whose implementation makes the world suck more than it already does, then you should indeed be held liable for your orders.
Criminally liable.
> I generally feel like it's a nice and fundamental feature of society that they aren't.
I think that one of the reasons our society is broken is that the people in charge can get away with leaving working-class schmucks like me to hold the bag and take the fall whenever shit goes wrong.
> Management has no business having an opinion on unionization one way or the other. If anything, most managers should be pro-union since they're as likely to get thrown under the bus to keep profits up as their direct reports.
Unionization restricts the management's ability to adapt to new situations and challenges in the pursuit of profit. Shareholders hire and task management to do exactly that, which is why the two are almost always opposed to what is, in effect, tying of their hands.
That sounds like right-wing union-busting propaganda to me. Even if it isn't, why should I care if union representation makes management's job harder? I'm not management.
Free and non-coercive is the key. Things such as Card Check mean that employees as individuals are able to be coerced to sign the card rather than unionization via secret ballot. Furthermore so-called “closed shops” infringe on an individual’s right to not join the union (or pay required representation fees.)
Free and without coercion is fine, but in union activities in the US, it is rarely, if ever the case.
Also look at how “scabs” are treated by union employees. They are often subjected to violence and threats if they choose to exercise their choice to ignore a strike. That is the opposite of free and without coercion.
And no, you aren’t coerced to work for any employer. You freely accept employment conditions in exchange for the agreed upon wage. However when unions get involved, you don’t have a choice — you get paid whatever the union decides. A “software engineer 3” is paid whatever the rate is for a software engineer 3. You can’t negotiate anything better. And, raises are determined by how long you exist at the job and not necessarily your productivity. Traditional unions were designed around workers that were interchangeable — assembly line type work where worker A and worker B are completely interchangeable: as long as the widget screw gets installed at your spot on the line, the work is done: there is no difference between workers doing the same job because it’s rote. When things like judgement, creativity, and other soft skills come into play, workers are quickly differentiated and don’t necessarily deserve the exact same wage because their output isn’t exactly the same as it would be for an assembly line worker.
Join a union if you want— that doesn’t give the union the right to negotiate on my behalf against my will. Unions are no different than labor monopolies and they should be treated with the same suspicion as we treat other monopolies.
>So this was a meeting organized solely by employees, using company property, on the company campus, on a workday, with the only speakers allowed being the union reps?
Having worked at many large companies, I can honestly say that Google was the best behaved company of all of them, by far.
I think the difference is that Google has a relatively large contingent of "activist" type employees, and they're given a lot of latitude to speak their mind. When something bad happens, everybody hears about it because the employees are the ones shouting it loudest from the rooftops.
Their track record isn't perfect, and Dragonfly particularly strikes a chord with me. But other companies do worse, and you're just much less likely to hear about it.
> I think the difference is that Google has a relatively large contingent of "activist" type employees
Yes, I believe also this is the case. This is also in my opinion the biggest issue with Google nowadays and what makes it extra garbage. They seem to be caught again and again to use their large size to surpress and censor people and companies.
I feel hitting Google with monopoly lawsuits without going after the others would just make it worst.
Atleast Google somehow competes with the Facebook and Amazon which in my view are "more evil".
My other concern is, big co can resist stupid stuff government agencies want, they failed on PRISM but I feel they might have a better chance next time around as employees unionise and demand the company drop supporting unethical contract such as Googles' search engine for China (Project Dragonfly) case etc.
I'm a SWE at Google, and as much as I love unions, I'm not sure it makes sense for the software industry.
Further, the larger tech companies already have a concept of "levels" to ensure some sense of pay equality, we already get better benefits than you can get anywhere else in the states.
Realistically, what more will unions accomplish at a place like Google?
I'd love 6 weeks of paid vacation as much as anyone. I don't see us getting that. I'd love to make twice as much money. I don't see that happening. I'd love for promotions and hiring to be more fair / better, but I don't see how this accomplishes that (nor do I know anyway to improve it).
> I'd love 6 weeks of paid vacation as much as anyone. I don't see us getting that. I'd love to make twice as much money. I don't see that happening. I'd love for promotions and hiring to be more fair / better, but I don't see how this accomplishes that (nor do I know anyway to improve it).
Not at Google so I can't comment about them directly.
Also very neutral on unions, so don't take this comment as my preference.
6 weeks may seem hard to get, but many companies offer only 2 weeks, and 3 weeks seems the norm. 4 weeks seems doable with a union (although it may not be necessary - more and more companies are offering 4 weeks).
Non-compete clauses are something unions can help with (I know they're not allowed in CA, but lots of other states allow them).
The amount of time or how often one is on-call can be something unions can help with.
Conditions for severance can be something unions can help with.
On the flip side, unions can also make things a lot worse. YMMV.
I'm in the UK. Currently have 25 days of paid holidays + 8 bank holidays. I believe this is a bare minimum one needs in order to maintain straight head and not go mad. I appreciate that's not something most people get across the pond, however I do see absolutely zero reasons,why this couldn't be the case over there as well. However,many heads had to roll and tons of blood was spilled in most European countries for these things to become a norm.
> we already get better benefits than you can get anywhere else in the states
I'm also a SWE at Google, and speaking only for myself, I might support efforts to ensure that those great benefits are harder to take away. Does that mean unionization ... I don't know, but there's a big spectrum of possible worker organization.
Since when did unions stifle salaries? They generally get higher salaries for their employees, no? Isn't the typical complaint about union workers that they're "overpaid"?
The common complaint is that since unions (at least in a lot of classic union jobs) force pay based on tenure, its difficult or impossible for bright people to succeed and change things.
And I'd agree that such a style of union would be antithetical to a company like Google, but its also not the only kind of union.
Yeah, I just don't see a tech union functioning like that. There's no reason a union would have to enforce strict tenure requirements on salary, especially if most workers in the union don't want that.
>It will likely stifle my salary, and the salaries of a lot of high earning swes.
Yeah, this sounds like more anti-Union FUD than being based in actual data. I'd be happy to be proven wrong though if this can be substantiated through more than just cherry picked examples.
> They generally get higher salaries for their employees, no?
Unions typically (almost always) bargain to improve the compensation of the average employee. Outlier events are flattened by definition, meaning it is harder to be fired, and harder to make outlier money.
I don't think that's correct, but even if it were, it sounds like it'd be a good thing as it'd raise salaries for most developers. Surely we don't all think we're the exceptional ones, right? That's simply not possible.
The usual counterexamples are sports player and actors' unions. Even in less glamorous areas, union doesn't always equal salary cap or salary bands or whatever. Usually their main concerns are setting a pay floor and stopping abuse / forcing humane treatment.
SAG-AFTRA was notoriously silent for years during the #MeToo "casting couch" abuses. The union was apparently cozy with powerful entertainment industry players and did little to protect their members.
This is because the higher up members in SAG-AFTRA were complicit themselves. The management of the union are management themselves, which is what a lot of people seem to miss. Who watches the watchers?
Probably one of the worst examples. The MLBPA is currently the biggest joke regarding negotiating power, and the NFLPA settled a concussion lawsuit where the NFL is lying about player health and got away without admitting guilt about it.
Pro sports unions are inept at battling management and their members are suffering for it - in the case of football, literally dying for it without adequate compensation (if such a thing exists).
Why would it though? In every other industry, union workers make much more than non-union workers. And unions don't seem to drag the salaries of other high earners (actors, screenwriters) down.
>> And unions don't seem to drag the salaries of other high earners (actors, screenwriters) down.
This absolutely happens in MLB/MLBPA. Players are not allowed to negotiate most types of incentive-based contracts that would align interests of management and players to give them higher possible pay, amongst other methods of capping pay to improve standards for average professional athletes.
There could be an employee elected board that is able to resolve things like disputes with managers. It's clear that there have been situations where HR is no help here. There could be agitation for greater transparency with perf, especially around things like promo quotas and ratings distributions.
How many vacation days have Google employees in Switzerland? The legal minimum is 4 weeks, the industry standard is 5 and many companies iffer 6 after a few years.
Yup. Happened to me. Big corporate decided most of our floor were surplus to requirements. Got an email on Sunday telling us to be in early on Monday for an off-site meeting.
Got handed my redundancy / compromise agreement and told not to return to the office. And, the kicker, told my non-compete meant I couldn't work for a competitor during the redundancy process.
It was devastating and emotionally wrecking. It was like being dumped, out of the blue, from a multi-year relationship. And being told you couldn't see anyone else. I went through all the classic stages of grief.
And then...
I contacted my Trade Union and explained the situation. They took a look at the contract I'd been given, passed it to a very expensive lawyer, who made a couple of phone calls.
The next week I was free to work for whoever I wanted and was paid ~7 months salary (tax free).
Join. A. Union.
Your employer has more lawyers than you do. Pay a couple of quid per month to have decent legal representation on hand when you need it.
That layoff was the best thing to happen to me. Shook me out of my cosy job, forced me into building my own consultancy, and taught me the power of solidarity.
> That layoff was the best thing to happen to me. Shook me out of my cosy job, forced me into building my own consultancy, and taught me the power of solidarity.
This last part sounds like an argument against unions. One wonders, had the commenter worked in an environment where layoffs/firings aren't worth it due to externalities (and therefore never really happen), whether they'd rethink.
That last part sounds like an argument for. If not for the benefits he got from the union, the very last claim wouldn't have happened, and the second to last claim might not have been possible.
Just trying to understand: you think that somehow unions make it EASIER to layoff/fire someone? That management would somehow assume it's easier/less costly to fire people when they know those people will have a lawyer review the terms of their termination? That management would be less inclined to attempt including illegal non-competes?
No, sorry, I was too succinct. I am saying externalities like unions make it HARDER. Therefore the commenter might never have been laid off in a heavily unionized employment situation. Not arguing explicitly for or against, just mentioning that in situations where it is difficult to layoff/fire employees, it is not always a good thing (peer complacency, bloat, etc). Those that have worked in those situations often wish the protections were fewer, which is why I wondered if the commenter would rethink.
He worked for a company with a union, and was still fired. I still don't understand your point here. Yes, he says the layoff had benefits, but that seemed more like a "silver lining" than a "I'm glad things happened this way".
IDK, I'm either reading his statement or yours in a way someone isn't intending.
Also, people who work in non-union jobs often feel that peer complacency and bloat are problems. That's not unique to union shops. Everyone has had a job where there was "that guy" that nobody understood how he kept his job. IDK why people thing unions magically create this problem, or make it worse. Mostly because I haven't seen any studies proving it, it's just a "feeling" people have.
Wait until you find out how far the pay of those rich assholes goes when you spread it around!
There are good arguments to be made for unionization. That some people make more - sometimes substantially more - isn't always one of them. Certainly trying to stoke anger might not always be the best of all available ways to win over people trying to be thoughtful.
Executive salaries aren't the same thing as the surplus value extracted from your labor. If that was spread equally, each employee would make considerably more.
Hell yea I am jealous, have you met rich people? Do you realize how they live and how little they work and the absolutely shitty society that we have to live in to keep them rich? Of course I am jealous. How are you not? I see you also work for Google. Do you realize how much money Eric Schmidt makes off your labor while fucking women in some mansion? Do you realize how shitty the internet is for the sole purpose of selling ads? How shitty our phones are for the purpose of selling apps? Fuck appreciating that. Rich people ruin it for everyone.
Mate - I'm happy for what I have got: friends, family, I'm not homeless, a career, health,.. The things that really matter more than raw £ signs. I don't feel the need to compare myself to anyone at the top of my company - why do you feel the need to?
I'd ask only that you not impede those who do believe in more workplace protections and benefits while they get that work done (ideally locked in with labor law, along with strong unions). I'm sure a two day weekend and 40 hour work week was once thought of as impossible as well.
Some people are leery about the possibility of their employer turning into a closed shop. I know I would not be happy if my employer suddenly turned into a union shop in a way that strongly affected me and gave me minimal choice in the matter.
I only ask that you consider why people might choose to sit on the sidelines.
Based on my experience, people sit on the sidelines because they're comfortable. People advocating for change should be polite first, and then not polite if politeness fails.
You already exist in a democratic system (assuming you're posting from the first world) where majority (mostly, some caveats) rules. This isn't any different. Everyone gets a vote, not everyone gets their way.
Not quite. I live in a republic. The majority wins elections but still don't get to totally trample on the minority, because we have a limited government.
Now, a union election isn't a government election, so that doesn't totally apply. But, for example, the majority has decided to pass legislation that makes my current state a right-to-work state, so a union can't require me to be a member, even if they win the election.
Of course, unions could campaign to change that law. But that's a different set of elections they'd have to win...
Is it at all possible, in any scenario, that people might have other reasons than purely personal comfort for sitting out a particular push for change?
It is possible, and I am receptive to enumeration of those reasons. One must be able to entertain both sides of an argument. Selfishly, it would help me strengthen my own argument.
Those "levels" end up being oddly sexist at times. For instance, one of the women who sued Google for wage discrimination (Kelli Wisuri) was hired at L2, while male hires with similar or lesser experience were hired directly into L3 or above. And she and most of the women in her team were placed in a non-commission role, while working with men who gained commission on top of their salary.
>Meanwhile, in other offices, Google employees have been posting memes in solidarity with their Zurich colleagues, criticizing management for trying to control the talk about unionization.
Wouldn't unions at Google be bad. If unions imposed rules guaranteeing seniority benefits/tenure rules that would make it harder for younger workers.
I am a fan of unions for blue collar work but unions/labor orgs for higher pay organizations seem to be bad because they prevent foreign workers from entering and they make it harder for young people.
Unions - at least under US law - are not required to impose seniority rules. Unions which have done so have those rules because at some point, the union’s membership wanted it.
If you're 36, you look around one day and realize you're the "old" dev. That's kind of the reality of the software industry, though. I moved into FAANG from a different engineering discipline, where engineers increase in value as they get older. In software, sadly, age isn't much of an asset. Most of what you spend your time learning today will be irrelevant in a few years.
> In software, sadly, age isn't much of an asset. Most of what you spend your time learning today will be irrelevant in a few years.
Kind of—but everything old is new again. I was surprised to find I actually have a pretty good understanding of Babel/typescript/webpack because they’re just reimplementing the c compiler and linker in JavaScript, albeit with very little solid documentation. Most of the interesting language ideas are pretty old—smalltalk still looks futuristic to me. Thinking about systemic failure is really hard and that takes time to develop.
In both the NBA and NFL, younger players are subject to the draft and there are caps on rookie contracts, and in the NFL young players only get restricted free agency. Similar restrictions and caps for younger, less-experienced players also exist in organized baseball.
I'm reminded of a friend that belongs to a union. He got in because he was waiting tables at a diner the union guys when to. One of the guys retired and they strong armed him into applying.
There are a lot of countries in EU which have, IMO, better work culture and fairness of negotiation as the guiding philosophies behind the work.
If Google did this in the USA, it wouldn't be seen as much. However, they have strong laws against this in EU, and this incident would not portray Google in favorable light, IMO.
I also feel that it is high time engineers realized that fairness in work is something we'd all love to have, and historically, skilled people have kept unions to ensure that they don't get screwed over.
I believe that at the end of the day, if you need fairness in negotiation, you need to have a way to express it, especially if it isn't supply driven.