This is the same press release from the union as at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48663861, and the same discussion points apply as there, including the fact that the press release is conflating 'Wikipedia Workers' and 'British-based employees at the Wikimedia Foundation'. The two are not the same.
This conflation appears to be the fault of the union. Certainly the people who write Wikipedia well know the difference between themselves and the Wikimedia Foundation staff.
I used to work at a call center for a large (fortune 500) company. But that company did not sign my paychecks. It was a shell company with a different name, so that the company could not be held accountable when someone inevitably jumped from the roof.
Since then accountability sinks have stood out to me. I'm going to side with the Union on this one. And plus, unions are good.
Seems like a loophole not to employ people. "Editor" sounds like a job title! There is code of conduct, all sort of paperwork, you have to deal with comitees, editorial process... There is non disclosure agreement, you are not allowed to discus internal stuff with people outside from company... wery far from "i seen something was wrong, so i just made quick edit"!
Smells like proper job to me!
We closed the same loophole with uber and doordash employees. Wikimedia should employ its editors!!!
I don't think it comes from the union, Wikimedia has always gone out of it's way to conflate the people who are creating, editing, and maintaining website Wikipedia and the leeches who captured that effort.
There's a union of wikipedia editors being formed and they are in alliance with the US and UK Wikimedia union. More public statements will follow in the next weeks about this.
> There is no reason for any employee to not search for unionization.
That's a very theoretical view. (As most absolutes are.)
Unions and rules around unions can be very different depending on locality, industry and other specifics. The power and benefits a union gives a specific employee may not outweigh the cost they impose on that specific employee.
Furthermore, unions are organizations. They have their own internal power structures that can be corrupted by self-serving individuals or special interests. A blanket "union = good" view can make that invisible to you.
In one of my previous work, I was "forced" to enter a public union. They were simply leeches sucking government money (surprise, government was paying union premiums) through workers with almost no actual benefits. Whenever somebody glorifies Unions I just chukle.
What’s in the collective best interest may not match with what’s in the individual best interest. Perhaps unions are more likely to be in the self interest of the below average employees, the ones with no negotiating power. The best school teachers are almost certainly being held back by their unions and the worst ones are getting a free pass. When I worked at a unionized place I was blocked from an opportunity my employer offered me because it was better than what the standard negotiated terms were.
Denying people agency and power in their negotiation by claiming they are "not as good as someone else" is antithetical to the struggle of labor - work deserves to be compensated fairly.
>When I worked at a unionized place I was blocked from an opportunity my employer offered me because it was better than what the standard negotiated terms were
Your union blocked this because your employer was trying to break your unions negotiating power by separating your interests from the collective workforce. If people who are sympathetic to management and accept that they will be compensated greater by acting against the interests of the labor union, the union should block these promotions. If you don't want to protect your coworkers by negotiating with them, then you must be interested in exploiting them by negotiating against them. Labor is a zero sum game.
For me, the only one who has ever used the standard terms as a floor has been the employer. The union has always backed me up when I wanted higher pay.
I'll give an example. I've had managers switched on me, and they've then said my salary has to be reduced because it's higher than the median. The organisation I work for also has a salary policy where every level you advance, your "personal additional percentage" is cut. This eventually reduces everyone to the same, lower level. This is the employer, not the union.
The union, otoh, backed me up when I wanted to keep my existing extra percentage.
The only real reason for me in the UK to join a union would be for legal representation, otherwise I can represent my own interests.
At least here in the UK our unions are heavily involved in politics - which is a massive issue. Currently, the leadership of the unions and the people in them are literally opposite sides of the political spectrum.
At any moment some change outside my control could occur and my place in society would change. Right now I'm pretty self sufficient and don't really need the support of others in day to day life, but that can change, and there's nothing I can do about it. Seems like a good idea to use this opportunity to try and improve things for everyone, even if you don't care about others, just in case your place in society changes. (I actually think it's neat if we try to improve things for everyone for everyone's sake tbh but I get there are people that do not have such empathy)
Strong disagree that there is no other side of the question from the employee's perspective. Personally, I don't want to be collectively represented in my work by any group other than myself.
What do you mean by that? A union represents you as a worker and not your work.
Baseball players, for example, are represented by the MLBPA. Collectively they get a say in things like setting the rules of the game and negotiating healthcare, but the union isn't taking credit when a player hits a home run.
I don't believe a union would be to my best interest. Unions generally operate by encoding rules that purport to be fair and transparent. This includes things like determining how much someone gets paid based on things like tenure and education.
That sounds good in theory but as soon as you enter the workforce you'll realize that there is a huge range of capabilities thats difficult to capture but obvious to people in the weeds.
You'll also realize that strong workers want to work with other strong workers. Unions don't care where their unions fees come from so they protect all equally. This means they make it difficult to fire. Just look at police unions where they went to great lengths to "protect their own"
There are some benefits but I believe that accrue to the most mediocre or incompetent. Sure it sounds great that it's difficult to fire me and I know my salary for the next twenty years. But this is not what I'm trying to optimize for
In a jobs market place of wide choice, unionization is unnecessary. The tech job pool spans multiple industries, so if your employer is treating you poorly, leave.
In a jobs market where there are few employers, maybe unionize, because those employers are essentially a monopsony. Hence, in the UK, the NHS, teaching, and public transport, where the employer is the Government, they're heavily unionized.
Until fairly recently, the general public used to be very suspicious of government employees unionising. Because it was unionising against them, the general public.
It may or may not be in any individual's best interest.
For example, look at "bumping rights". If a company needs to eliminate a union position, and this is occupied by someone with say 20 years seniority, that person can "bump" some other union member out of their position who has a lower seniority. So, that person whose role was eliminated can push a person with only 5 years seniority out of their position. And then that person with 5 years seniority can bump a person with only one year seniority out of their position. And the person with 1 year seniority has no one newer than them so they get laid off.
Was it in the best interest of that newish employee to be part of a union? So they can act as a meat shield for someone much further in their career who would theoretically be much more employable in the general market?
Not everyone here will feel that way. Hacker news has a lot of owners, managers and what John Steinbeck called "temporarily embarrassed millionaires" (e.g. future failed startup founders).
They won't frame what they consider to be their self interest as naked self interest though, they'll dress it up as concern for the average worker or an opinion that organizing is ultimately futile because sometimes you lose.
I'm sure many of them are reaching for the downvote as they read this.
Anti union propaganda has been thoroughly effective in America, and union membership coincides with the decline of middle class real wages and political power quite nicely. Ofcourse the causes are multivariate (As they always are), but seeing all this anti-union discourse in this thread gave me a chuckle.
Worker here, with no aspiration of being a millionaire, a manager or an owner:
I hate unions. They always end up being led by parasites that have no idea how to do the actual job, looking to rent-seek on the backs of people who do.
It‘s the exact opposite of selfish. It’s solidarity and efforts to denigrate solidarity and lift up stories about selfishness as the only important thing are the thing that keeps unions down.
Workers working together in solidarity is the right approach to get more power in the lopsided power dynamic between owners and workers. Owners have too much power, workers too little. Solidarity is a path towards fixing that.
How is global prosperity achieved? Business owners get all the profits of our labor and maybe some of it trickles down? Workers get “prosperous” on crumbs?
I’ll be expectantly awaiting for my prosperity in the mail.
Yes, a union is a way to gather forces, not only in your company, but also in broader spaces. It's easier for a union (even of two) to ask to meet your local elected officials, to seek legal support, advices from other union.
I'm a director of my small company, and a member of UTAW. The union doesn't just help with employment disputes but also campaigns generally on improving working conditions for all, through things like health and safety and setting reasonable expectations for how work will be done.
Are you just an employee or also an owner in that company? If you are an employee only, having a union to back you up could be extremely useful if things ever go bad.
If this was my blog I would have written something like the below which is entirely out of character not aimed at you and quite silly:
Republican jesus said: It would have been easier if the good Samaritan would have just taken the guys money without helping him.
I have this wild theory that civilization isn't actually about me. It means one can join a union without any direct personal benefits of any kind.
When for example my health insurance helps pay someone for their care I point first at them then at my chest and announce smugly, see? I paid for that!
No one thinks it's funny but that is not important, as long as I think it's funny it's a good joke.
The trial is over, it is now abundantly obvious that if everyone acts in their own self interest everything gets increasingly fucked up for everyone.
If you are hungry the free market gives you an advert for a sandwich you cant afford but would probably kill you slowly if you could.
Imagine retired people still being union members. Crazy right? They could have better spend their time looking at pictures of their children who never visit.
Do you think trolls should have a right to unionize? We are working really hard, but conditions are not best. For start we demand salary from local goverment (I am in EU)! Nobody should be forced to work for free!
In EU I would form union even at 3 person company. There are all sorts of tax benefits. Union fees are usually exempt from tax and social and health insurance. In my country we make dinner (yearly union meeting), produce meeting notes and get about 50 euro per employee. Union also organizes trips for families, tax free...
Yes, you pay income taxes (and insurances) on all membership fees like gym (about 50%). If you put money into union, and union pays your gym fees, you save tons of money.
But there is tons of legal bs around unions. You need to structure it, like you are promoting socialism, and only reason to go into gym, is to smash capitalism!
Unions at least in the European setting not really effective in protecting workers in the way people seem to imagine. The labor laws are somewhat but not really. It just increases the cost of getting rid of people and reduces mobility. So i don’t know what utopian view people have of unions but reality does not reflect that. It also leads to a salaried class of union representatives inside big companies that causes their own problems as they are the ones granting favors and benefits to their friends.
I don't dispute that unions were important and offer some sort of benefit. What I don't like is that most of the big unions in Europe receive a lot of governmental money and become lobbying groups for political parties. I would not consider them independent in any sense of the word.
This is the same press release from the union as at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48663861, and the same discussion points apply as there, including the fact that the press release is conflating 'Wikipedia Workers' and 'British-based employees at the Wikimedia Foundation'. The two are not the same.
This conflation appears to be the fault of the union. Certainly the people who write Wikipedia well know the difference between themselves and the Wikimedia Foundation staff.
I used to work at a call center for a large (fortune 500) company. But that company did not sign my paychecks. It was a shell company with a different name, so that the company could not be held accountable when someone inevitably jumped from the roof.
Since then accountability sinks have stood out to me. I'm going to side with the Union on this one. And plus, unions are good.
Seems like a loophole not to employ people. "Editor" sounds like a job title! There is code of conduct, all sort of paperwork, you have to deal with comitees, editorial process... There is non disclosure agreement, you are not allowed to discus internal stuff with people outside from company... wery far from "i seen something was wrong, so i just made quick edit"!
Smells like proper job to me!
We closed the same loophole with uber and doordash employees. Wikimedia should employ its editors!!!
>There is non disclosure agreement
No there is not. You don't have to sign anything to make edits to Wikipedia. On the other hand, these people are full employees with work contracts.
8 replies →
I don't think it comes from the union, Wikimedia has always gone out of it's way to conflate the people who are creating, editing, and maintaining website Wikipedia and the leeches who captured that effort.
There's a union of wikipedia editors being formed and they are in alliance with the US and UK Wikimedia union. More public statements will follow in the next weeks about this.
What are the legal protections for collectively bargaining as non-employees with a corporation, if any?
It seems like there wouldn't be (and shouldn't be) any.
1 reply →
Oh boy here we go
Very exciting good luck to them all
There is no reason for any employee to not search for unionization. It is your right and it is in your best interest. Good for them.
> There is no reason for any employee to not search for unionization.
That's a very theoretical view. (As most absolutes are.)
Unions and rules around unions can be very different depending on locality, industry and other specifics. The power and benefits a union gives a specific employee may not outweigh the cost they impose on that specific employee.
Furthermore, unions are organizations. They have their own internal power structures that can be corrupted by self-serving individuals or special interests. A blanket "union = good" view can make that invisible to you.
In one of my previous work, I was "forced" to enter a public union. They were simply leeches sucking government money (surprise, government was paying union premiums) through workers with almost no actual benefits. Whenever somebody glorifies Unions I just chukle.
2 replies →
So your point is, you have to look for a good union? Fully agreed!
2 replies →
What’s in the collective best interest may not match with what’s in the individual best interest. Perhaps unions are more likely to be in the self interest of the below average employees, the ones with no negotiating power. The best school teachers are almost certainly being held back by their unions and the worst ones are getting a free pass. When I worked at a unionized place I was blocked from an opportunity my employer offered me because it was better than what the standard negotiated terms were.
The rising tide lifts all boats.
Denying people agency and power in their negotiation by claiming they are "not as good as someone else" is antithetical to the struggle of labor - work deserves to be compensated fairly.
>When I worked at a unionized place I was blocked from an opportunity my employer offered me because it was better than what the standard negotiated terms were
Your union blocked this because your employer was trying to break your unions negotiating power by separating your interests from the collective workforce. If people who are sympathetic to management and accept that they will be compensated greater by acting against the interests of the labor union, the union should block these promotions. If you don't want to protect your coworkers by negotiating with them, then you must be interested in exploiting them by negotiating against them. Labor is a zero sum game.
9 replies →
> What’s in the collective best interest may not match with what’s in the individual best interest.
The alternative isn't what is in your best interest, but what is in your boss's best interest
You can fall ill or need working accommodations regardless of whether you are above or below average.
1 reply →
For me, the only one who has ever used the standard terms as a floor has been the employer. The union has always backed me up when I wanted higher pay.
I'll give an example. I've had managers switched on me, and they've then said my salary has to be reduced because it's higher than the median. The organisation I work for also has a salary policy where every level you advance, your "personal additional percentage" is cut. This eventually reduces everyone to the same, lower level. This is the employer, not the union.
The union, otoh, backed me up when I wanted to keep my existing extra percentage.
The only real reason for me in the UK to join a union would be for legal representation, otherwise I can represent my own interests.
At least here in the UK our unions are heavily involved in politics - which is a massive issue. Currently, the leadership of the unions and the people in them are literally opposite sides of the political spectrum.
At any moment some change outside my control could occur and my place in society would change. Right now I'm pretty self sufficient and don't really need the support of others in day to day life, but that can change, and there's nothing I can do about it. Seems like a good idea to use this opportunity to try and improve things for everyone, even if you don't care about others, just in case your place in society changes. (I actually think it's neat if we try to improve things for everyone for everyone's sake tbh but I get there are people that do not have such empathy)
11 replies →
The Labour party was founded by unions, so it's no surprise they're still completely beholden to them.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Labour_Party_(U...
Strong disagree that there is no other side of the question from the employee's perspective. Personally, I don't want to be collectively represented in my work by any group other than myself.
What do you mean by that? A union represents you as a worker and not your work.
Baseball players, for example, are represented by the MLBPA. Collectively they get a say in things like setting the rules of the game and negotiating healthcare, but the union isn't taking credit when a player hits a home run.
I don't believe a union would be to my best interest. Unions generally operate by encoding rules that purport to be fair and transparent. This includes things like determining how much someone gets paid based on things like tenure and education.
That sounds good in theory but as soon as you enter the workforce you'll realize that there is a huge range of capabilities thats difficult to capture but obvious to people in the weeds.
You'll also realize that strong workers want to work with other strong workers. Unions don't care where their unions fees come from so they protect all equally. This means they make it difficult to fire. Just look at police unions where they went to great lengths to "protect their own"
There are some benefits but I believe that accrue to the most mediocre or incompetent. Sure it sounds great that it's difficult to fire me and I know my salary for the next twenty years. But this is not what I'm trying to optimize for
In a jobs market place of wide choice, unionization is unnecessary. The tech job pool spans multiple industries, so if your employer is treating you poorly, leave.
In a jobs market where there are few employers, maybe unionize, because those employers are essentially a monopsony. Hence, in the UK, the NHS, teaching, and public transport, where the employer is the Government, they're heavily unionized.
Until fairly recently, the general public used to be very suspicious of government employees unionising. Because it was unionising against them, the general public.
1 reply →
You didn't provide any argument, so you could have said the exact opposite and it would have been the same comment.
Here, I'll do it for you:
No, you are wrong it's the other way around
It may or may not be in any individual's best interest.
For example, look at "bumping rights". If a company needs to eliminate a union position, and this is occupied by someone with say 20 years seniority, that person can "bump" some other union member out of their position who has a lower seniority. So, that person whose role was eliminated can push a person with only 5 years seniority out of their position. And then that person with 5 years seniority can bump a person with only one year seniority out of their position. And the person with 1 year seniority has no one newer than them so they get laid off.
Was it in the best interest of that newish employee to be part of a union? So they can act as a meat shield for someone much further in their career who would theoretically be much more employable in the general market?
The wikipedia atricle only cites american sources so that may be something unique to how US unions operate.
2 replies →
Not everyone here will feel that way. Hacker news has a lot of owners, managers and what John Steinbeck called "temporarily embarrassed millionaires" (e.g. future failed startup founders).
They won't frame what they consider to be their self interest as naked self interest though, they'll dress it up as concern for the average worker or an opinion that organizing is ultimately futile because sometimes you lose.
I'm sure many of them are reaching for the downvote as they read this.
Anti union propaganda has been thoroughly effective in America, and union membership coincides with the decline of middle class real wages and political power quite nicely. Ofcourse the causes are multivariate (As they always are), but seeing all this anti-union discourse in this thread gave me a chuckle.
Worker here, with no aspiration of being a millionaire, a manager or an owner:
I hate unions. They always end up being led by parasites that have no idea how to do the actual job, looking to rent-seek on the backs of people who do.
3 replies →
[flagged]
It‘s the exact opposite of selfish. It’s solidarity and efforts to denigrate solidarity and lift up stories about selfishness as the only important thing are the thing that keeps unions down.
Workers working together in solidarity is the right approach to get more power in the lopsided power dynamic between owners and workers. Owners have too much power, workers too little. Solidarity is a path towards fixing that.
1 reply →
That's like saying not wanting to work 14 hours a day in a coal mine is selfish because it's at the expense of global prosperity.
“Global prosperity” is a good one.
How is global prosperity achieved? Business owners get all the profits of our labor and maybe some of it trickles down? Workers get “prosperous” on crumbs?
I’ll be expectantly awaiting for my prosperity in the mail.
1 reply →
I think this may be a US thing, in the UK at least unions work to promote solidarity.
this comment is satire right?
I work in a 2 man company, for sure a Union will have many advantages for me x)
Yes, a union is a way to gather forces, not only in your company, but also in broader spaces. It's easier for a union (even of two) to ask to meet your local elected officials, to seek legal support, advices from other union.
2 replies →
I'm a director of my small company, and a member of UTAW. The union doesn't just help with employment disputes but also campaigns generally on improving working conditions for all, through things like health and safety and setting reasonable expectations for how work will be done.
1 reply →
Are you just an employee or also an owner in that company? If you are an employee only, having a union to back you up could be extremely useful if things ever go bad.
6 replies →
If this was my blog I would have written something like the below which is entirely out of character not aimed at you and quite silly:
Republican jesus said: It would have been easier if the good Samaritan would have just taken the guys money without helping him.
I have this wild theory that civilization isn't actually about me. It means one can join a union without any direct personal benefits of any kind.
When for example my health insurance helps pay someone for their care I point first at them then at my chest and announce smugly, see? I paid for that!
No one thinks it's funny but that is not important, as long as I think it's funny it's a good joke.
The trial is over, it is now abundantly obvious that if everyone acts in their own self interest everything gets increasingly fucked up for everyone.
If you are hungry the free market gives you an advert for a sandwich you cant afford but would probably kill you slowly if you could.
Imagine retired people still being union members. Crazy right? They could have better spend their time looking at pictures of their children who never visit.
Ill let myself out
Aside from legal support, advice, and contributing to industry influence?
3 replies →
Do you think trolls should have a right to unionize? We are working really hard, but conditions are not best. For start we demand salary from local goverment (I am in EU)! Nobody should be forced to work for free!
> The workers are longtime contributors and organisers, and are deeply committed to the Wikimedia movement.
It always starts this way, and ends with over half the people not bothered but still under union protection, and cannot be removed.
Ahhh the American mindset.
Your zero-content bias is on display, but I'm not in the least American. If I were American I probably wouldn't have seen so much union nonsense.
Imagine how high must those salaries be in union-prolific Euro nations, compared to the measly ones of those uncivilized Americans!
15 replies →
In EU I would form union even at 3 person company. There are all sorts of tax benefits. Union fees are usually exempt from tax and social and health insurance. In my country we make dinner (yearly union meeting), produce meeting notes and get about 50 euro per employee. Union also organizes trips for families, tax free...
Worth asking AI about local lawx...
> In EU
Where, exactly?
> Union fees are usually exempt from tax
What do you mean? You pay taxes on other membership fees?
As in you can subtract it from your taxable income, I assume. I think it's fairly normal (in this part of the world*).
In germany and poland.
Yes, you pay income taxes (and insurances) on all membership fees like gym (about 50%). If you put money into union, and union pays your gym fees, you save tons of money.
But there is tons of legal bs around unions. You need to structure it, like you are promoting socialism, and only reason to go into gym, is to smash capitalism!
Discussion from yesterday
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48663861
Seems entirely reasonable and I would hope will be accepted as such by the management.
[dupe] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48663861
Whatever happened to the deepmind union effort ?
they are still in talks for recognition
hope will accepted by the management
Unions at least in the European setting not really effective in protecting workers in the way people seem to imagine. The labor laws are somewhat but not really. It just increases the cost of getting rid of people and reduces mobility. So i don’t know what utopian view people have of unions but reality does not reflect that. It also leads to a salaried class of union representatives inside big companies that causes their own problems as they are the ones granting favors and benefits to their friends.
Guess how those labor laws were achieved. Spoiler: unions. Same as weekends, 40-hour work week and so on. Strong unions win laws.
I don't dispute that unions were important and offer some sort of benefit. What I don't like is that most of the big unions in Europe receive a lot of governmental money and become lobbying groups for political parties. I would not consider them independent in any sense of the word.
3 replies →
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[flagged]
what the hell are you saying?
[flagged]
Union of deletionists and corruptioneers?
They should join forces with the Stack Overflow moderators for a true deletionists union.
You can go read Grokipedia instead.
Unions don’t protect workers, many studies show they only take dues and give them to communists. They have receipts.
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