Re:Kickstarter’s staff is unionizing
by gpm on Tuesday March 19, 2019 @03:35PM
(#19434790)
I don't claim to be an authoritative source, but from my experience as a unionized employee at a university
Pros (mostly the employees perspective):
- Greatly increased negotiating power (We all got paid way more than I expect we would have if we weren't unionized)
- Pooling of resources to acquire shared resources (e.g. labor lawyers)
- Generally the ability to appeal decisions like "you're fired"
- Selling point when hiring (since unionized tech companies are rather rare, and everyone claims it's hard to attract talent, I'd expect this to be valuable to the company)
Cons:
- That increased negotiating power is wielded by people you often don't quite agree with.
- It's more bureaucracy, which means more inefficiency
- Generally less ability to negotiate for yourself
- While job security for yourself is obviously a feature, job security for under-performing colleagues can actually really suck. Working with, and fixing the messes made by people who just don't care is not fun.
Pros (mostly the employees perspective):
- Greatly increased negotiating power (We all got paid way more than I expect we would have if we weren't unionized)
- Pooling of resources to acquire shared resources (e.g. labor lawyers)
- Generally the ability to appeal decisions like "you're fired"
- Selling point when hiring (since unionized tech companies are rather rare, and everyone claims it's hard to attract talent, I'd expect this to be valuable to the company)
Cons:
- That increased negotiating power is wielded by people you often don't quite agree with.
- It's more bureaucracy, which means more inefficiency
- Generally less ability to negotiate for yourself
- While job security for yourself is obviously a feature, job security for under-performing colleagues can actually really suck. Working with, and fixing the messes made by people who just don't care is not fun.