Google workers announce plans to unionize
https://www.theverge.com/2021/1/4/22212347/google-employees-contractors-announce-union-cwa-alphabet Any thoughts?
The Verge
I still don't understand why they'd unionize. Article didn't give a reason why they were unionizing other than they want to protest and prevent certain internal/secret projects if they don't like them. The union doesn't have negotiating rights so it's not about comp. I guess they want a formal group to protest things in the company without the fear of being fired?
How does this union prevent them from getting fired?
I’d be surprised if collective bargaining isn’t part of their long term plan. Unions have been great for workers in other highly compensated industries like film and pro sports.
Now you're gonna see evil Google. They will do everything to crush this union effort.
Didn’t realize you can form an union with 0.01% of employees
We should all be unionizing right now. Contact your coworkers and the CWA.
Hell no
I'm torn. For a long time I've believed that game dev workers should be unionized. A lot of this is in the past but there were crazy achievements such as the 100 club i.e. working 100 hours in a week. But I listened to John carmack on joe rogan. He talks about how if you're passionate about something you shouldn't be restricted from putting in crazy hours. After all, we have Tesla because of people like elon musk (and the employees) with crazy work ethics and passion. I understand that carmack is a different breed (he'll stay at a hotel for a week and shut out the outside world to do a technical deep dive on a subject) but people like him need an opportunity to thrive So I don't think there is a solution that will benefit everyone
Are game devs getting over time if they work 100 hours? I doubt it.
Right which is where a union would come in and help with things like that But then you have the example someone posted where if you move your own monitor to another desk you'll get in trouble. So here in the game dev company you can imagine getting in trouble if someone catches you working more than 40 hours. If you have a team full of passionate devs, We wouldn't have games like ultima, everquest, starcraft, warcraft 3, half life, oblivion, halo, metal gear solid, god of war, etc if this game devs were part of a union. At least, those games wouldn't have turned out as well as they did without the crazy amount of hours the devs put in. In interviews those game devs they talk about how great it was to work on those games despite working 24 hour days at some points. Unions would have put a stop to that. Would they have lived better lives at that point in time with a union? Sure. But the product suffers in the process. Since a lot of devs have spoken fondly about those times I don't see how a union would have made things better
no one has time for this bull. We just wanna move protos in peace and get top $$$.
Really interesting, everyone in the tech space should be watching this.