Comment by JdeBP
10 hours ago
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.
Good? They've been a mixed bag in my life. Unions are made up of people and they come with all of the good and bad of people. I watched a union refuse to support a colleague of mine. Why? Because the people in the union were competing against him for resources and they wanted him gone. And they succeeded. I've never really liked unions after that. I suppose I can see some good, but for the most part the union ends up being another branch of management with a few slightly different powers.
If we are going by anecdotes, then I suspect the number and scale of anecdotes of capital misusing it's power are going to vastly outnumber unions doing the same.
> I watched a union refuse to support a colleague of mine. Why? Because the people in the union were competing against him for resources and they wanted him gone. And they succeeded. I've never really liked unions after that
Wait until you see what management does to workers, like fail to pay them on time, give them inhumane working conditions, or fire them arbitrarily.
Sarcasm aside, I've never understood this genre of comment. One second-hand bad experience and you seem opposed to unions for life? Unions are the only way workers can have anything like even footing with management.
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So, coming with its own pitfalls. How does it feel however with no counter power at all in similar structures, in your own experience?
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!!!
> Smells like proper job to me!
In proper jobs you get paid, and there is someone telling you what to do. Neither of those things apply to Wikipedia.
There is no NDA. The only exception is if you volunteer to join the group that deals with private data (this is not the same as being an Admin, its the step above. Its a very small group)
Comittees exist but are largely optional. If you want to change things at a meta level or do wide coordination, there is no getting around that. But such stuff is optional. You don't need to join any comittees if you just want to write articles.
Now, if you want to say its exploitative (editors put in the labour and get almost none of the created value), then fair point. I would say its no more or less exploitative than your average open source project.
>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.
There is like 50 page agreement, you even have to give up your copyright rights! The only way to do it legally in my country, is to hire editor as an employee!!! (Contractors can not legally give up copyright to their work)
https://foundation.wikimedia.org/wiki/Policy:Terms_of_Use
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British-based employees at the Wikimedia Foundation United doesn't have quite the same ring to it.
I suspect its just because naming things concisely is hard.
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.
Different legal systems have options for groups organizing to do a join litigation e.g. England and Wales have Group Litigation Orders.
I'm not a lawyer and not in England or Wales! ;-)
Oh boy here we go
Very exciting good luck to them all