Re:Kickstarter’s staff is unionizing
by danShumway on Tuesday March 19, 2019 @09:30PM
(#19438027)
There are multiple democratic institutions I belong to where I don't generally feel like I have the power to change things.
Democracy is great, don't get me wrong. But it doesn't magically mean that representation for your specific subgroup will exist. If you're part of a demographic with 10-15% representation in your union, is it really a crazy idea that your demographic might want to pool its votes together to ensure that you have more collective influence in a process that might otherwise ignore you?
Collective, coordinated negotiation being more effective than individual negotiation is the entire point of unions. It's just not clear to me why those principles would stop applying within a union itself.
Re:Kickstarter’s staff is unionizing
by 49531 on Wednesday March 20, 2019 @10:53AM
(#19442796)
To be honest those principles shouldn't stop within the union. But that is really the challenge for every movement with similar goals. The maoist idea of "continuous revolution" tries to address this problem.
Democracy is great, don't get me wrong. But it doesn't magically mean that representation for your specific subgroup will exist. If you're part of a demographic with 10-15% representation in your union, is it really a crazy idea that your demographic might want to pool its votes together to ensure that you have more collective influence in a process that might otherwise ignore you?
Collective, coordinated negotiation being more effective than individual negotiation is the entire point of unions. It's just not clear to me why those principles would stop applying within a union itself.