> In many existing demand cooperatives, such as rotating savings groups, there is often a trusted central coordinator — frequently an older community member — who helps maintain accountability and keep the interests of the group aligned.
Aligned with what? Whenever a central position is formed with power over something, even if it’s only a steering power, it will be sought out by power-hungry people and manipulated.
This thin proposal would be more interesting if it could give any discussion about the difficult points and how they’d address them rather than waving it all away under the guidance of a benevolent individual at the center.
To say I’m skeptical of an organization that wants to choose how to spend my money for me is an understatement.
> how they’d address them rather than waving it all away under the guidance of a benevolent individual at the center.
Believe it or not, there’s no power structure that is immune to not having a benevolent individual at the center. That’s because most things are norms and practices developed culturally, not codified in power structures or laws.
The most valuable resource is trust. Follow closely by the trust-structures to deal with the ramifications of the primary trust-relationship being broken.
That is to say, the most fundamental rule is contract law.
Essentially, we need more unions - I'm not sure we have to invent new names for these things. These won't be your parents' unions, or the union boogeyman you may have seen on TV—the union can do exactly what you wish it to do.
I've been (unintentionally) part of two union drives in my own life and have seen friends in an unrelated field participate in a third. They make perfect sense in moments like our current one, where owners can hire dozens of attorneys to jeopardize your job while you of course are limited to whatever legal representation you've been saving up for.
My only experience with unions was as a low level employee while I was in high school. It consisted of certain employees trying to drum up willingness to unionize through a combination of unrealistic promises and threats of violence. The company I worked for at the time was in trouble and went out of business before the unionization effort came to a vote. I don't know how representative my experience was, but it definitely soured me on unions for a long time.
These days I definitely believe that something needs to take up the role of fighting for the rights of labor, but I remain skeptical that unions, at least as they exist in the US, are the right tool for the job.
So, the company was in trouble and the adults understood that. They probably wanted to fight to make sure they didn't lose their 401ks or pension, or be able to hold onto some insurance so the c suite didn't gut the company and leave everyone high and dry. Sounds like you just generally didn't understand the situation, being a kid.
> the union can do exactly what you wish it to do.
ICE can also do "exactly what you wish it to do", so why do people complain about it so much and want it gone when it does what people want?
The answer is that even democratic institutions easily get corrupted and hard to deal with. US unions seem to be very prone to this for some reason, both union leaders and corporate lobbyists wants the unions to be corrupt so I don't see that changing either. Many people would gladly take a salary penalty if it lets them avoid yet another corrupt bureaucracy above them.
> the union can do exactly what you wish it to do.
There is no such thing. A problem with a union is that everyone's going the same place, and you're not driving. Maybe that place is better than where you could get to on your own, or maybe not. But one thing that is definitely not true is that your union is going to do exactly what you want.
Agreed. The best time to form a union was 20 years ago (Especially because Tech Workers had leverage because they were in demand). The second best time to form a union is today.
I'll never understand why so many tech workers are so strongly against the idea of unions. I've yet to encounter a criticism that doesn't essentially stem from criticism of blue-collar unions, and regardless of whether I agree with those criticisms or not, almost none of them seem to be universally true of unions. People seem to be worried about either a small minority of vocal outliers driving the policy or collectivism of the masses somehow drowning out the desires of the elite few, but they never seem to address the obvious counterexamples in higher-paid work; the $780,000 minimum salary for MLB players doesn't seem to have stopped Shohei Ohtani from getting a contract making almost 90 times more than that per year, and Adam Sandler doesn't seem like he's struggling with his $48 million payout last year despite the union-negotiated guarantees for anyone getting a speaking role on screen existing for decades.
I wouldn’t mind unions except they get involved in all sorts of political battles that I would get opted into. I would rather they focus on the barebones of negotiation for compensation instead of taking it over like it’s their personal nonprofit.
It really depends on the union, mine concentrate on less hours for a salary that follow inflation, parental leaves and a gold plated drug insurance. I work 32.5 hours per week in the summer, have 24 days off, 2 personal days and 12 statutory holidays; that's 36 paid days off !
Every time I've ever seen a tech worker's union, it's always some sort of political experiment rather than legitimately advocating for the interests of the workers it nominally aims to represent. E.g. the Google AWU-CWA union just did a bunch of political stunt stuff, no salary negotiation or anything useful to the modal Google worker.
Partly because they couldn't because they didn't organize in a way that let them because... well... one could speculate.
> Alphabet Workers Union (AWU), also informally referred to as the Google Union, is an American trade union of workers employed at Alphabet Inc., Google's parent company, with a membership of over 800, in a company with 130,000 employees, not including temps, contractors, and vendors in the United States. It was announced on January 4, 2021, with an initial membership of over 400, after over a year of secret organizing, and the union includes all types of workers at Alphabet, including full-time, temporary, vendors and contractors of all job types.
It's trying to cover too many different groups with competing interests (FTE, temp, vendor, and contractor).
Hypothetical negotiations that would favor FTEs may disfavor vendor or contractor contracts. That inherent conflict of interest in the negotiations would mean they can't negotiate for any of them on those matters. Also, the less than 1% of the people belonging to the union would mean the union can't represent them in collective salary negotiations either.
Of the represented group (say if they only organized for FTE tech workers), they would then have needed 50% + 1 of the employees in that classification to vote to have a union. It is possible - https://kickstarterunited.org for example (and yes, they are having trouble - but they are negotiating on working conditions and pay).
---
Various "we should have a union" strings typically have been people wishing for one that is cross industry that they don't have to do anything. While industry wide union organization can exist (Kickstarter United is OPEIU - https://www.opeiu.org ) it is the local part that people forget... Kickstarter United is OPEIU local 153.
If people want a union, they need to organize at their company and get that 50% + 1 vote there.
When it is easier to switch jobs than it is to spend the several years to organize and negotiate a contract, the power of a union is diminished.
Everything is political. Politics have been heavily intertwined with work forever. The history of unions is intertwined with literal government violence.
Negotiations for compensation is like the least life-impacting thing a union can do. Tech workers are well paid and capable of negotiating.
Things like work hours, quality of life, paid leaves, etc are important and can’t really be negotiated by the individual.
The political battles will involve you, whether you want it or not. When work law changes to make it legal to work you to the bone, to collude on salaries, to cut your insurance and every company in the country does so, your precious "negotiation" is useless.
Unions exist because the other option was to beat the everliving shit out of your boss because your work conditions were unacceptable. Both sides would do well to remember that.
I don’t want to waste time to fight battles within the union. This is exactly what I’m talking about. If it’s just a political nonprofit with forced donations, I’d rather see them banned than join one.
There seem to be a lot of enthusiasts of this kind of idea, and certainly there must be 100 people like this here on this forum in the US. Can they point me to one such one here that is high performance?
Plus or minus tiny details, the description from the article:
A demand co-op is a cooperative that pools and directs the spending power of its members. Demand determines what gets built, who survives, and where wealth flows. Most communities already have enormous spending power, but because that demand is unorganized, the value created from it is captured by outside businesses and investors. A demand co-op coordinates that spending so economic activity can build communal businesses, assets, and long-term ownership instead of constant leakage.
covers a multitude. Eg: CBH from the 1930s onwards has pooled the spending power of grain farmers into building out farmer owned transportation networks (rail, ports, shipping, large scale silo storage) as communal assets and source of jobs for relatives and communities.
There are actually really interesting tech intersections here, possibly. 8 years ago I published an article[1] that ended with some speculation about the possibility of automating organized consumer action to permit, for example, people to coordinate to force companies to drop abusive terms in contracts. The co-op model is in the same family.
Back in the day, my basic idea was basically this: the reason that consumer companies can impose unfair terms on people is because it's basically only a small amount of money to an individual, and it's costly for people to coordinate. For example, the expected cost to me of some company's arbitration clause is small, because the probability of any individual into a dispute with them is low. But in the aggregate it's bad: over a million customers (say) it's almost certain that one of those customers gets royally screwed by it. So: what if all those million customers of company X could all agree to automatically cancel their service contracts with X, if and only if enough other people also agree to do so that a simultaneous cancellation would cause real pain to the company's bottom line. And then enforce that agreement with automation. Some basic game theory suggests the objectionable clause immediately goes boom.
Dumbest idea i've ever seen. Complete misunderstanding of how the tech world works.
The idea is: if sufficient consumers banded together and coordinated their spending power, they can drive decisions in the executive suite of the companies.
Nothing could be further from the truth. It's neither the spending of consumer nor even the spending of business that drive decisions. The only thing that drives decisions at that level is capital allocation - not spending allocation. Wealth drives these decision - not spending.
So if all these tech workers want to band together and do something about it, they would create their own ETF or mutual fund, and put all their wealth into that fund and then have the manager of that fund direct that capital based on their mission.
Of course you will see that this won't work because there just isn't enough capital here to move the market compared to the other capital allocators who are just trying to maximize returns.
I'm not sure it's so black and white. Directing capital is powerful, and directing spending is powerful (but probably harder; this is marketing or government). I think it's more that directing spending requires influencing a lot more people than directing capital.
Also, if you are doing something other than maximising returns then you'll be outcompeted and irrelevant in the long run unless you attract many billions in inflows, or the government tips the scales in your favour e.g. ESG.
Interesting, but - it says it's a co-op, but this is a word with a legal definition. Every co-op I know publishes what it's legal entity is, how voting is done, etc. This just has "click to join". If your pitch is that you have more integrity than typical companies then you have to, you know, "walk the walk".
Also in some jurisdictions, calling yourself a co-op without actually being one will get you into legal difficulties. Companies that don't quite fulfil all the requirements are careful not to call themselves once. Igalia, for example, are very serious about being worker owned and run, but they made the choice to have a slightly different structure so they don't call themselves a co-op.
This is just asking for the job to be hurriedly outsourced to where this is not a thing, if not eliminated altogether. It makes sense only for jobs that are tightly geographically constrained and are not subject to work visa imports.
Aligned with what? Whenever a central position is formed with power over something, even if it’s only a steering power, it will be sought out by power-hungry people and manipulated.
This thin proposal would be more interesting if it could give any discussion about the difficult points and how they’d address them rather than waving it all away under the guidance of a benevolent individual at the center.
To say I’m skeptical of an organization that wants to choose how to spend my money for me is an understatement.
Believe it or not, there’s no power structure that is immune to not having a benevolent individual at the center. That’s because most things are norms and practices developed culturally, not codified in power structures or laws.
The most valuable resource is trust. Follow closely by the trust-structures to deal with the ramifications of the primary trust-relationship being broken.
That is to say, the most fundamental rule is contract law.
Agreed.
> and manipulated.
That does not necessarily follow.
I've been (unintentionally) part of two union drives in my own life and have seen friends in an unrelated field participate in a third. They make perfect sense in moments like our current one, where owners can hire dozens of attorneys to jeopardize your job while you of course are limited to whatever legal representation you've been saving up for.
These days I definitely believe that something needs to take up the role of fighting for the rights of labor, but I remain skeptical that unions, at least as they exist in the US, are the right tool for the job.
ICE can also do "exactly what you wish it to do", so why do people complain about it so much and want it gone when it does what people want?
The answer is that even democratic institutions easily get corrupted and hard to deal with. US unions seem to be very prone to this for some reason, both union leaders and corporate lobbyists wants the unions to be corrupt so I don't see that changing either. Many people would gladly take a salary penalty if it lets them avoid yet another corrupt bureaucracy above them.
What?
Unless you are Congress, you can't create ICE at your workplace. You can, however, create a union.
There is no such thing. A problem with a union is that everyone's going the same place, and you're not driving. Maybe that place is better than where you could get to on your own, or maybe not. But one thing that is definitely not true is that your union is going to do exactly what you want.
There really is! I've been in three unions, every place I worked. The first and third one existed beforehand, while I helped start the second.
A union is a group of people—and like any group, your influence is what you make it to be.
Doctors definitely have unions!
You're thinking of the AMA which is a lobbying organization, totally different thing.
They're not even doing that! In the US, these qualifications are matters of state law.
> Alphabet Workers Union (AWU), also informally referred to as the Google Union, is an American trade union of workers employed at Alphabet Inc., Google's parent company, with a membership of over 800, in a company with 130,000 employees, not including temps, contractors, and vendors in the United States. It was announced on January 4, 2021, with an initial membership of over 400, after over a year of secret organizing, and the union includes all types of workers at Alphabet, including full-time, temporary, vendors and contractors of all job types.
It's trying to cover too many different groups with competing interests (FTE, temp, vendor, and contractor).
Hypothetical negotiations that would favor FTEs may disfavor vendor or contractor contracts. That inherent conflict of interest in the negotiations would mean they can't negotiate for any of them on those matters. Also, the less than 1% of the people belonging to the union would mean the union can't represent them in collective salary negotiations either.
Of the represented group (say if they only organized for FTE tech workers), they would then have needed 50% + 1 of the employees in that classification to vote to have a union. It is possible - https://kickstarterunited.org for example (and yes, they are having trouble - but they are negotiating on working conditions and pay).
---
Various "we should have a union" strings typically have been people wishing for one that is cross industry that they don't have to do anything. While industry wide union organization can exist (Kickstarter United is OPEIU - https://www.opeiu.org ) it is the local part that people forget... Kickstarter United is OPEIU local 153.
If people want a union, they need to organize at their company and get that 50% + 1 vote there.
When it is easier to switch jobs than it is to spend the several years to organize and negotiate a contract, the power of a union is diminished.
Negotiations for compensation is like the least life-impacting thing a union can do. Tech workers are well paid and capable of negotiating.
Things like work hours, quality of life, paid leaves, etc are important and can’t really be negotiated by the individual.
Unions exist because the other option was to beat the everliving shit out of your boss because your work conditions were unacceptable. Both sides would do well to remember that.
You just can't do that if you only want to be a passive member
The only group that will benefit from this position is that of the owners.
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CBH_Group
Back in the day, my basic idea was basically this: the reason that consumer companies can impose unfair terms on people is because it's basically only a small amount of money to an individual, and it's costly for people to coordinate. For example, the expected cost to me of some company's arbitration clause is small, because the probability of any individual into a dispute with them is low. But in the aggregate it's bad: over a million customers (say) it's almost certain that one of those customers gets royally screwed by it. So: what if all those million customers of company X could all agree to automatically cancel their service contracts with X, if and only if enough other people also agree to do so that a simultaneous cancellation would cause real pain to the company's bottom line. And then enforce that agreement with automation. Some basic game theory suggests the objectionable clause immediately goes boom.
[1] https://utppublishing.com/doi/abs/10.3138/utlj.2017-0047 ... sorry for the academic journal paywall
The idea is: if sufficient consumers banded together and coordinated their spending power, they can drive decisions in the executive suite of the companies.
Nothing could be further from the truth. It's neither the spending of consumer nor even the spending of business that drive decisions. The only thing that drives decisions at that level is capital allocation - not spending allocation. Wealth drives these decision - not spending.
So if all these tech workers want to band together and do something about it, they would create their own ETF or mutual fund, and put all their wealth into that fund and then have the manager of that fund direct that capital based on their mission.
Of course you will see that this won't work because there just isn't enough capital here to move the market compared to the other capital allocators who are just trying to maximize returns.
Also in some jurisdictions, calling yourself a co-op without actually being one will get you into legal difficulties. Companies that don't quite fulfil all the requirements are careful not to call themselves once. Igalia, for example, are very serious about being worker owned and run, but they made the choice to have a slightly different structure so they don't call themselves a co-op.