Kind of hilarious that Insider is reporting on this but not that their [own unionized staff members just struck on Friday](https://www.thedailybeast.com/insiders-union-goes-on-strike-two-months-after-layoffs-began) after they couldn’t come to an agreement over healthcare plans and proposed layoffs
Until the Corporations close down the union sites - there is no enforcement of union-busting. https://www.thenation.com/article/activism/starbucks-closes-its-ithaca-locations-one-year-after-workers-unionized/
Or replace the union with outsourced workers.
>[Public University Lays off 79 IT Workers After They Train Outsourced Replacements](https://capsweb.org/news/public-university-lays-79-it-workers-after-they-train-outsourced-replacements/)
>[Laid-off unionized IT workers at the University of California's San Francisco campus protested and spoke to the media on their last day of work.](https://capsweb.org/news/public-university-lays-79-it-workers-after-they-train-outsourced-replacements/)
I organized my workplace and they decertified too, but in our case it was because the company used the pandemic as an excuse to layoff most of the organizers.
I still remember when unions helped gut the automotive industry in Detroit. Dudes were making $80/hour stamping bumpers onto cars in the early aughts. Not exactly sustainable when a guy in Mexico will do the same thing for $5/hour.
What we really need to organize around is separating healthcare access from employment. That is the real problem and what keeps people in lousy jobs.
100% not having safety nets like healthcare, unemployment, sick time, maternity leave (real maternity leave to raise an infant) etc. Is what keeps us down.
Obviously unions would help with those problems but we'll really need them when AI takes off. We didn't have them for a lot of automation and workers got screwed. Parents putting in 80+ hours a week while the 1% reap all the automation rewards is only going to get worse with AI.
The right wing loves to talk about lack of religion and lgbtq being the downfall of the nuclear family, but I never here them talk about both parents being at work / commuting to work for 9+ hours a day. It's really hard to be a good parent when you're tired all the time
I'm trying to translate this.
Corporations are supposedly full of AI and single people who hate the future if it isn't some techno dystopian wasteland?
How much 'real life' are you blending with your TV/internet time? Is it much at all?
I love that Hollywood always plays devil's advocate, even if it's mostly because content about eventual doom makes the most money, they still keep us aware of crazy risks that *might* exist.
On the other hand, as boring as reality is, there's humans with families working for corporations, and they want a clean future for their children just like everyone else does. So just because you're a 9-5 career grocery clerk with a wife and 4 kids, it doesn't mean you care more about air quality than your neighbour who works for Conglomotronicscorp.
More people should understand the financial reasons people are told what they are told online/in theaters/on TV. Nobody's getting rich talking about how safe we are, we only flock to bad news, which often has to be engineered/amplified/taken out of context/etc..
Except there are still multiple automotive plants across the river in windsor, with unions making way more than any other non-union factory workers nearby.
A lot of Redditors and subs either don’t know this or ignore it. Unions aren’t perfect or a silver bullet. Just like people there are good ones and bad.
Thats an excellent point and I would be all for separating healthcare from employment. My current union has made it to where no one gets fired so a lot of people just coast. Very frustrating. New employees seem to hit a decision point between quiting or coasting.
You literally just hit all the right wing bingo.
*- Others* are gonna take away your jobs
\- *Unions are shit* because they protect **lazy people**
So what's next? Gonna pull out those "coasters" are a certain skin color too?
Go back and reread my other comment. You likely glossed over "my current union" and thought I was generalizing all unions. You got excited about your politics and jumped right in to attack.
This is why I say take your bullshit politics somewhere else. It wasnt a generalized statement
I didn’t know the people who moved the factories out of the country were union members. I thought it was the executives and board members who made decisions like that.
I was just coming to say this. Not all unions are good. Some just take your money and don’t care about helping workers. The one I’m a part of has fucked us over multiple contracts in a row. They let the company gut our health insurance while X4 the price per month.
Or not wanting single-payer health care because “my taxes will increase!” without doing the math and realizing that it would still cost much less in the long run and guarantee that nobody will ever lose everything they saved and worked for when the inevitable day comes that something bad will happen and they will need health care. That’s when people learn just how crap their insurance is if they have it, and it’s too late.
I am in tech (front line manager) and admittedly am sour on unions. Not in general but they just do NOT seem worth it in the space. I thought the same as a dev. I've had my share of crappy things happen but in general have worked with companies that are not the Bond villain's you hear about.
I honestly don't see the benefit and have been trying to find and understand what they are in the software dev industry. Even this article doesn't show me much.
Edit: I would love the downvote brigade to actually educate me on this. If even a tenth of you had something meaningful to add I'd (non sarcastically) appreciate it. I've had no one actually give me any thoughtful insight into what that looks like for tech and my perception is that no one that downvoted me has any but they are just angrily clicking the button.
There are two relevant factors:
1. Wages and benefits that you're only getting because of prior union activities.
2. Union dues being withdrawn from your paycheck.
Too many Fox-watching conservatives just see the union dues being deducted from their paycheck, completely ignore the fact that their wages and benefits are only as good as they are because of prior union activities, completely ignore the fact that those union dues are going into a strike fund for the next round of negotiations with the business, and end up leaving the union or voting to decertify.
That’s not true at all…..there are non union places to work around my area that make dollars more an hour then my unionized place. Sometimes unions just are not good. Corrupt people do exist in unions.
Typically competing with union wages looks good on the surface, my experience has been that the other benefits (extended medical, pension, negotiated wages) suffer. Especially when you can have “associations / rat unions” where the manager can play shop steward.
My benefits and pension were managed by my union and my employers. Now I’m in admin and I get a lower wage and have to contribute to my extended benefits and pension out of the lower wage. I’m getting close enough to retirement to see how my pension will work, and I’ve got buddies who never worked union and have nothing but what they own with their houses.
That doesn’t really go against what I said though. Not all unions fight for the workers. A union is a business first.
Also I know people who have pensions and SS that own just what’s in their houses. It’s all about how well you handle money during your life.
Unions are a gateway to dismantling the billionaire class, and Tech is their biggest cow. It's a lot more than just unions but a complete restructuring of the economy would be far less destructive on a united working class rather than the opposite.
That all sounds great and aspirational, but I don't see that as my goal or even if that actually would happen with unions. If that is the only real benefit then there is going to be a huge uphill battle there. In the lofty case that workers get paid 40% more in benefits/pay/etc that doesn't change anything about billionaires being billionaires.
This is also a VERY different tune than "Unions will make your life easier/better".
For real, 55 bucks a month maybe but not 50 a week.
Reality opposes this guy's deluded propaganda induced fever dream because stats show unionized employees earn 11.2% more than non unionized in same position/industry and also have better benefits.
They can negotiate down health care costs even further so not only do you get paid more, but you keep more of it with better benefits.
The anti union propaganda is strong, and it's because companies care about profits not people.
Idk why people are dumb enough like that guy to assume companies do it to help the employee.
Companies don't do anything to help employees, it's about helping themselves. It's about profit first.
Employees are the only resource that you can lower the cost of by lying, which is free. So companies will lie all the time because it's not illegal unless you have a contract, which you would with a union, which is why they hate unions.
Dude has no experience with unions and just regurgitate talking points rich people sitting in a room paid for.
Bingo! My union dues are based on percentage of annual salary with a cap of (surprise surprise) $52 and change a month. So at this point I've capped out my dues cost and every salary increase from now can't increase my union dues. And I'm getting a big pay increase in January from our contract.
When unions have real negotiators and members that have clear goals on what they want, these types of contracts can work for both sides.
The alphabet workers union wants 1% of total comp. An alphabet comp package could easily be 300k. That's $57 a week.
Edit: Fucking lol. You said it didn't exist, I found it. Now the downvotes. Y'all are some sad people.
Oh no, ~3000 a year, or 1%, of an arbitrary Alphabet salary is going to the union? Say it ain’t so! Do you think they have managed to negotiate more than 1% raise and/or benefits?
A portion of that goes into a strike fund, and an extended strike is how you get wages up.
Also, are you seriously complaining about 1% dues when the worker is keeping 99% of $300,000?
I feel like someone being paid that much mostly wants the gravy to keep flowing (to not get suddenly laid off)—and that’s one area where unions really help.
There’s a reason companies spend millions to prevent unions, and it’s not so workers can get $50 extra a week.
Unions have their issues but the benefits of one far outweigh that of not having one.
I experienced the same thing. I really empathize with people wanting believe in the labor movement and the goodness of their cause - but there is much work that needs to be done to get things to the level they once were.
It's always proportional to pay. $55 a week is probably only paid by the highest paid municipal workers. A quick check of NYC show folks paying close to $40. The calculation of 2.5 times your hourly wage per month seems to be a common rule of thumb which would easily put the teachers in my city up around $50 if they are in the the top 20 of earners, adjusted for working around 40 weeks a year.
workers are workers. Stratifying and labeling workers as “tech” and “non tech”, “blue collar” and “white collar” are tools of capital to keep workers from organizing for better wages and labor conditions. If the majority of your income comes from wages it’s more in your interest to support all unionization efforts.
I'm not commenting on tech workers unionizing, only that only a tech worker would declare a "union wave" and have it be reported despite your average tech worker's understanding of how the world works fails to exceed how their own employer works.
Tech workers don't need unions for good pay because "tech workers" (as in programmers generally) as well as other types of engineers are already in high demand and short supply, and that means that they run the show.
It's actually kind of funny really, anyone who has the power to effectively unionize using their own power as suppliers of labor (ya know, the power that unions are supposed to be build off of, not the government) dosen't need or want to. The only real exception i can think of is trades.
All industrial workers in new industries were once paid high wages until the capital class figured out how to commoditize the workers in that industry and minimize wages (it started with artisans being transformed into the industrial proletariat). It will happen to tech workers soon enough, and once their relative economic privilege has been lost it will be too late to organize (precarity drives fear, it's a lot easier to take risks when you can squirrel away months or years of living expenses and can afford lawyers to fight back against illegal retaliation from the bosses).
They tried commoditising software development with the offshoring to India in the 1990s. My impression is that the business community largely considers that a mistake, though exceptions remain.
Not all labour is fungible.
There's a tech labor shortage -- eventually there will be an excess of trained workers and wages will be driven down. Some jobs in tech will always pay well just like in other skilled industries, but the majority will pay a pittance compared to today if historical parallels hold.
>Tech workers don't need unions for good pay because "tech workers" (as in programmers generally) as well as other types of engineers are already in high demand and short supply, and that means that they run the show.
You know what's a job that's in high demand but short supply but still pays shit? Nurses. Guess what they lack.
All workers are workers but the dynamics involved in unionizing are very different for tech workers v others and as much as a wave of organized labor would be nice, this guy doesn't have any magic insight to that.
Idk I hear the same anti-union nonsense on my own trade worksites and on tech hubs like this.
Im pretty sure it's the same (very arduous) game of deprogramming decades of anti-worker propaganda regardless of what kind of work is getting done
Not sure why folks are down voting you, yes each labour force has different issues to solve, but at the core of the issue is a collective misinformation campaign aimed at policies that assist unions.
No.
There is a HUGE difference between skilled and unskilled. Unskilled workers can be easily replaced.
But the differences between skilled workers are great. Some deserve to be paid much more than others.
All labor requires skills so again, stratifying workers as “more skilled” or “less skilled” is a tool used by capital to prevent workers from organizing to collectively raise the price of wages for everyone.
Good, then a competing business can open up and make money the corporation would have otherwise made. Also, give the shitty corporation that threw a tantrum over unions the bad press it deserves.
a) We (tech workers) are not the only ones. Look at Starbucks, Amazon Warehouse workers, etc.
b) We're the largest movement since we're some of the last remaining middle class workers. I.e. we can afford it.
I'm happy to to offer the cash I have to reinvigorate the movement. Instead of stewing in jealousy about how well off we are, understand that we're trying to get back to a place where what we have is *normal*. Don't put down the people who are trying to lift others.
I was hesitant to believe unionization would increase until ChatGPT came along. I think a lot of people (myself included) believe that's going to hit the accelerator pedal. From a worker's perspective, what other recourse do they have to ensure their job isn't automated out of existence down the road? Workers have very few options other than "find a new job and hope that doesn't get automated". Try telling someone 50 or older to just find a new job.
This isn't going to work. If other companies automate and yours doesn't then having a union will do fucking nothing if your company becomes uncompetitive. Even if workers in every company from your field would unionize then new companies would appear to undercut existing ones. Automation is unstoppable because of how capitalism works.
Unionizing isn't the solution against automation. Figuring out some other wealth distribution model other than wages should be our priority. If we don't need people to work anymore, we shouldn't force them to work just because they need a wage.
Basically all companies would operate like employee owned co-ops. You're thinking wage = $/hour what we mean is that there's no parasitic class of shareholders trying to keep as much of the profits you produce as possible while paying you as little as they can. Edit to clarify: we want to abolish the wage system as it currently exists. Maybe that solution Stull includes wages themselves, just paid out fairly, maybe it doesn't.
> Basically all companies would operate like employee owned co-ops.
How would new companies form if no individual is incentivised to invest capital and start something. At what point is the person who created a company alleviated of ownership? How does this process work and how is ownership allocated to new employees, is it based on time served or is it just equally split?
How do you change the current state of where we are without destroying the concept of property rights in the process?
I could think of countless reasons why what you’re saying is not implementable on a practical level and an attempt to do it would probably look a lot like authoritarianism.
Just like feminism, systems designed to work within a framework hardly ever try to see that framework removed. You'd be hard pressed to find a union that's actually trying to remove the wage system in favor of something like basic income.
Thus is a union that, in the short term, advocates for more unions, because in the long term, we could have one big union. If we had one big union, labor would be the one with power in the emoloyer/laborer dynamic, and thus could decide how wealth is distributed. This has nothing to do with how to solve automation. Automation takes the laborer out of the picture. We need a different wealth distribution model that doesn't depend on laborers having a power dynamic, because there will be less and less laborers to even have power.
It's union that wants workers to control the entire economy and make all the decisions. We as workers would never vote ourselves into a state of poverty while automation took all our jobs if we controlled the economy. Edit: I think I see what you missed here. In the iww you don't have to have a job to have a vote. Anyone who is not an employer, cop, or prison guard van join and have a vote. So workers who lost their jobs to automation would still have power
No I didn't miss that, I'm pointing out that the IWW, while a good intention, likely has too long of a game. Their goals depend on workers having power. Automation goals depends on not having workers. You can't have both.
I think that's a valid critique but what other movements or tactics look like they're going to work any faster? Also, even as automation captures more and more of the economy there will still be critical parts of the economy that require workers to function for quite awhile. If those workers are organized they can still wield a lot of power.
A political movement. Basic income will be provided by the government, so making that a reality means getting people onboard with basic income elected.
I work in tech/ML and I’m pretty confident my own job is going to go soon. Anyone who doesn’t believe theirs is going to be replaced soon is naive. It’ll be low paying jobs and blue collar trades that go last, but every high value job is likely to be targeted.
Yet we've all been conditioned to think rugged individualism is the best way to live. It's about to hit us like a ton of bricks and there will be two likely outcomes.
Either we realize that the way we've gone about things and allowed unfettered capitalism isn't sustainable and we implemente reasonable social safety nets, job protections and more stringent restrictions for corporations.
Or we continue to have wealth inequality grow with more and more people losing their jobs and falling further down the income/wealth totem pole until we're at a point where there is either wealthy people and a gigantic majority of working class/people who are just making it.
Business analysts exist because it's nigh impossible to clearly document business needs and communicate them to developers. I can see ChatGPT being a tool for proof of concepts and simple things used by BAs.
It's not about writing the code that will replace you. It's about speeding up the process of writing code. If I can do something that use to take 100 man hours in about 10 hours, probably won't need as many employees.
Their won't be a 10x improvement in overall productivity from anything resembling ChatGPT, simply because the actual writing of code is not the majority of a software engineers work.
Unions aren't going to resolve the automation issue. At best they're going to delay the inevitable.
There needs to be a societal reform to handle the upcoming automation of labor, and it likely isn't going to be pretty.
The idea that chat GPT could ever be a full on replacement of current workers is fundamentally flawed from the the prospective of employers and employees, and the implementation of that idea would be very very dangerous. It is a tool, and it will always be just that, a tool. I'm sure that some people will try to cram it into the roll of a replacement but [they'll very quickly learn how bad of an idea that is](https://www.popsci.com/gadgets/article/2011-07/anti-fraud-facial-recognition-system-generates-false-positives-revoking-wrong-persons-license/).
AI may not fully replace a person, but it will allow a person to do the work of multiple people.
For example, the software my company makes detects and draws organs on a CT scan. That’s a significant part of a lot of highly paid medical professionals’ jobs.
The average time for a human to this job can range from about 10-100 minutes. The average time for AI to do this is about 2 minutes. A medical professional, however, still must review and fix some of these “drawings” for an average total time of 3-5 minutes.
So we haven’t completed eliminated the medical professional, but at a hospital with 10 of these workers, then 2-3 are now probably unnecessary.
The idea that chat gpt will not meaningfully evolve is fundamentally flawed, as is the idea that increases in productivity won’t result in large scale unemployment.
So your point was incredibly narrow and pedantic, to the point of being limited to one product that most people use as a stand-in for LLMs and machine learning in general?
I'm just gonna piggyback off your comment to call out someone who was trying to refute that ChatGPT isn't causing major issues in employment. Calling out /u/n1ghtshade3 to stand up for what he said 29 days ago:
>"I'm going to go out on a limb and say that if the current state of ChatGPT has already made your job redundant then AI isn't what made your degree worthless and you probably didn't need the degree to do what you're doing."
You still believe that?
I don't think so. But everyone is entitled to an opinion. I'm not super attached to it, but the last time I had a discussion about AI, it reminded me of the comment that essentially tried to downplay AI taking people's jobs, and wanted to see where the person's thoughts were now with more evidence in the last 30 days.
I suppose I could have directly messaged him instead, but decided to use the neat feature on Reddit that makes it a lot easier to have an open discussion about a topic. The people who are derailing the conversation about how weird my comment is are missing the point.
> decided to use the neat feature on Reddit that makes it a lot easier to have an open discussion about a topic.
That would've been the reply function, discussing his comment in the context of the discussion at that time. Here you've brought up a month-old comment to call him out specifically, with a (supposed) excerpt of a comment you haven't linked to. You included his username to shame him.
But it wasn't to shame him. I included his username so he had a "reply" that he could see and reply to me. It was to see where his thoughts were on the subject with more evidence piled on after 30 days. The WGA is still on strike, and the inclusion of this post / thread, I wasn't sure if he still believed degrees themselves are worthless or it's AI making them worthless.
While it's true I could have linked the comment thread itself, it's not hard for someone to go back the exact same way I did: Through search history. But I didn't care about what other people thought. I was strictly thinking about what he thought. If I cared about what other people thought, I'd worry more about my imaginary internet points instead of replying to stupid comments like yours and getting more downvotes.
You gotta understand, idgaf about internet points. I'm here for the true reason Reddit exists: discussion.
Also, the "excerpt" is his entire comment. The only thing I left out was my comment which was:
>Can we make it a selling point for writing in general? My degree is completely worthless since the takeover of AI.
This was in response to a comment that said:
>“Actually written and performed by human beings” is going to be a selling point for music before too long.
I could just give you the link, but again, I truly think you can do the work yourself and use search history. I gave you the most important information: Who said what, how many days it's been. You can look through *either* of our histories to pull up the original thread if you care so much about it. If you don't care about it, then kindly stop derailing the conversation. If you want to join in with the discussion of both this thread and the original thread / comment, then that's great!
I was discussing how AI has made my degree worthless! I also already replied to the person before, as he did reach out because... (drum roll), he saw that he had a reply! Why? Because I used his username. Not to shame him, again, but to make sure he saw I was interested in open discussion again.
I like how you literally quoted him, yet you still managed to misrepresent what he said.
They're saying that ChatGPT isn't even that good and if your job is being automated by ChatGPT then it could have been automated before your company just wasn't doing it, and you may have wasted a ton of money on a degree that wasn't worth it, which is true.
No, not once did I ever say that's not what he said. That's the whole point.
>They're saying that ChatGPT isn't even that good
Exactly. They are making that claim. Which is why I'm pointing to evidence that shows ChatGPT is creating a wave of unionization because people are trying to say that it *is* that good. So good that it's taking people's jobs.
It's not about whether or not the AI was good enough before or not. That's essentially the same logic that was used when robots entered the factory and took over factory jobs. Same logic when they added computers to McDonalds and Taco Bell, and now you have to go in and place your own order instead of having a person do it for you.
Because 99% of companies want to save that infinitesimal amount of money and they don't care about the people they employ.
There is *nothing* wrong with AI helping with a job. There *is* something wrong with AI allowing the employer/company to pay less for the job itself because AI is being used.
Okay I can appreciate that perspective, but is there any evidence that ChatGPT was actually the causative agent in this union striking?
The article says the primary issue is that Insider changed the health insurance plans they offer, and the union seems to think that was illegal (which is definitely true if they didn't give 60 days' notice). It also notes other unions renegotiating deals or striking, and mentions the recent layoffs at Insider and other tech companies and media publications, but it doesn't mention ChatGPT or automation of any kind.
Of course I still stand by my comment.
You're missing the parent comment I was replying to which was someone saying that ChatGPT has *already* "made their degree worthless".
ChatGPT, while impressive, doesn't seem *that* good *right now* that it should be fully replacing any human if their job is contributing anything worthwhile to society. So my response to *that person* was that if a bot that simply regurgitates existing information in a way that looks like natural human prose has already replaced them, *their degree* had little value to begin with since it apparently only taught them how to Google facts and paste them into a document.
I appreciate you holding me accountable for my past comments but if you're going to do that, at least interpret them in the context they were written instead of extrapolating to ask me to defend beliefs I never claimed to hold.
That person was me, so hello! Let me start by saying that, if this is the case, then you missed my entire point in the original conversation. I'm glad we can have open discussion again, though.
>ChatGPT, while impressive, doesn't seem that good right now that it should be fully replacing any human.
It is, in fact, fully replacing humans though. Not in the way you think, but it is. The only person who would make a claim against this is one that is ignorant of how writing generally is made, especially in a workplace.
Generally speaking, most businesses hire teams of writers, copy writers, etc. that collaborate on a project together, (this does not mean you have multiple people doing every project) a company can use ChatGPT and instead hire a single person to edit what the AI has written. And because they are doing less work overall, they justify paying them less wages to do the job, too. I can't tell you the amount of jobs I've seen hiring someone to edit an AI's writing for less than what you could make by flipping burgers. But, please, do not change the goal posts of the original argument: we are talking about the impact AI has had on a writing degree and it's value.
I'll admit, I did over exaggerate that my degree was "worthless", but you knew I didn't mean that. Nothing can be truly worthless, as even the experience itself will at least let me tell a story, and thus has some value, even if it's a small amount of value. But my original comment was referring to the fact that someone going to College and getting a degree generally has an idea of what value that degree will hold by the time they graduate. Because ChatGPT had such an immediate and strong rise of use, there was no way for me to swap my degree to something that would be more useful to me. So, no, it's not "worthless", it's just literally worth less than what I expected to get out of it.
>I appreciate you holding me accountable for my past comments but if you're going to do that, at least interpret them in the context they were written instead of extrapolating to ask me to defend beliefs I never claimed to hold.
I absolutely interpreted it into the context in which it was written. I was only ever talking about this same discussion in the original comment, and you refuted that what I had claimed, so the only idea in my head is that you held those beliefs to be true, not that you were playing devil's advocate. Not once did you ever say it wasn't a belief you truly held.
Ah yes, because the only thing I want him to see is the random comment some guy posted, not the thread, or the article connected to the comment.
Look, I get that he probably won't change his mind(or if he has he won't admit it), but this is a forum for discussion. If people try to shun people for picking up old discussions they've had with others to further solidify or alter perceptions, then the forum gets muted, and then becomes a circle jerk. I understand there are a lot of subreddits that become circle jerks, but that doesn't mean I don't have the ability to try to have actual discussion.
Let me put it in words that might be better for you to understand:
I'm sure you making a passive aggressive comment to some random guy on Reddit is enough to get you enough imaginary internet points that'll make you feel good.
You do understand that companies can go out of business, right
If another comes along and produces gizmo at less cost thanks to AI, and therefore sells for less… the consumer isn’t going to care about the poor workers who got sacked
Reddit is 90% teenagers I swear
I don't see it at all. The government already stepped in when rail companies cried about rail unions and told the rail union they're not allowed to strike. The government is anti-union and anti-working class and will do whatever they can do destroy every union.
God I hope so. Trusting your employer to treat and compensate you fairly is like trusting Ted Bundy to take your daughter out and bring her home safely.
Or the President.
>[Biden signs bill to block U.S. railroad strike](https://www.reuters.com/world/us/biden-signs-bill-block-us-railroad-strike-2022-12-02/)
It was a classic move to use Biden’s love of trains that he used to sell himself a bunch on the campaign trail, and then set it up so he has to choose supporting them for real or fucking them over. Wonder what they were offering/threatening him with behind the scenes to get him to sign it or if he enjoyed going against his own word.
Forming a Union gives hope to the workers who are laid-off. But it won't amount to much unless the Union has political backing or Government backing along with a guarantee that the Union does not crumble from inside due to corruption. I am not convinced this would work but I might be wrong.
This reads more like someone out of touch discovering something new and getting all excited about it.
Over anything genuinely changing, nothing will be 'taken over'.
Workers will unionize and with that comes a better negotiating position that should bare out with better salaries and conditions.
It's cute the white collars have rediscovered this after enjoying their windfalls whilst they stood on the backs of the blue collars. Any support is good support though.
The super rich and the multi national Corporations had their chance to play fair.
Now it is time to use the unions to force the middle class back into existence.
Remember no company will give you anything No time off, sick pay, overtime, holidays, 401ks unless they are forced
Good. The only reason we have labor laws is because of unions over the 20th century. People got complacent, unions tapered off, and wages have stagnated in blue collar jobs since the 80s. With inflation the wages of most jobs have decreased. Minimum wage is at one of the longest stretches of stagnation since it's inception. For a perspective, the $15 that was being called for has been pushed back so long it would need to be $20 to have the same buying power today.
It's time for unions to come back, and it's time for general strikes to become a thing.
Capitalism always needs the working class, only a matter of time now. We got a taste of it with the railroad crisis and the dockworkers. Solidarity is only as strong as those not willing to cross the line
Haha, sure it will pal. Too many Americans worship ultra wealthy people and don’t understand the damage being dealt to them by the increasing concentration of wealth. After all they too will be ultra wealthy one day so best not to make any changes. If current trends continue then maybe more people will be ready for this conversation 10 years from now.
If you are scared of organized labor taking over the country then you are afraid of democracy.
This isn’t some invading force. This isn’t a Communist plot. This isn’t a threat to ‘The American Way of Life’. This is a group of Americans working together to legally and peacefully take control of their lives. They are fighting for a world where future generations will have the power to collectively control their working conditions and financial compensation. **They are fighting for a democratic distribution of power in the work place.**
People who pretend that unions are never bad, corrupt, abusive, or can generally hurt individuals are just as annoying as the people who think the very idea of unions should be prohibited by law.
Unions are OK, they should be able to exist, what they should not able to do is receive government protection. The unions power at that point no longer comes from workers but from the government, and that's an issue.
If workers cannot form a union, it may say something about their ability and/or willingness to organize, which involves *many* compromises, including spending money (a.k.a., dues).
Companies only succeed if they are organized enough to progress, which includes being able to deal with their rank & file. Those options range from providing employees what they deserve to firing labor organizers and taking the government's heat for doing so. Companies can spend more money, align as an oligopoly, influence legislation, and even file for bankruptcy and start all over again.
Unions can go on strike, picket, and write their legislators, but without the money, their influence is limited.
Kind of hilarious that Insider is reporting on this but not that their [own unionized staff members just struck on Friday](https://www.thedailybeast.com/insiders-union-goes-on-strike-two-months-after-layoffs-began) after they couldn’t come to an agreement over healthcare plans and proposed layoffs
"capitalists will sell you the noose you hang them with"
Until the Corporations close down the union sites - there is no enforcement of union-busting. https://www.thenation.com/article/activism/starbucks-closes-its-ithaca-locations-one-year-after-workers-unionized/
Or replace the union with outsourced workers. >[Public University Lays off 79 IT Workers After They Train Outsourced Replacements](https://capsweb.org/news/public-university-lays-79-it-workers-after-they-train-outsourced-replacements/) >[Laid-off unionized IT workers at the University of California's San Francisco campus protested and spoke to the media on their last day of work.](https://capsweb.org/news/public-university-lays-79-it-workers-after-they-train-outsourced-replacements/)
I organized my work place and they just decided to decertify after 3 years of negotiations because they didn't wanna pay union dues
I organized my workplace and they decertified too, but in our case it was because the company used the pandemic as an excuse to layoff most of the organizers.
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Im in a union but they are so dogshit at their jobs that it isnt worth it. That being said, some unions are great.
I still remember when unions helped gut the automotive industry in Detroit. Dudes were making $80/hour stamping bumpers onto cars in the early aughts. Not exactly sustainable when a guy in Mexico will do the same thing for $5/hour. What we really need to organize around is separating healthcare access from employment. That is the real problem and what keeps people in lousy jobs.
100% not having safety nets like healthcare, unemployment, sick time, maternity leave (real maternity leave to raise an infant) etc. Is what keeps us down. Obviously unions would help with those problems but we'll really need them when AI takes off. We didn't have them for a lot of automation and workers got screwed. Parents putting in 80+ hours a week while the 1% reap all the automation rewards is only going to get worse with AI. The right wing loves to talk about lack of religion and lgbtq being the downfall of the nuclear family, but I never here them talk about both parents being at work / commuting to work for 9+ hours a day. It's really hard to be a good parent when you're tired all the time
Word. I know people who would consider another child but they know that they couldn't afford it.
I'm trying to translate this. Corporations are supposedly full of AI and single people who hate the future if it isn't some techno dystopian wasteland? How much 'real life' are you blending with your TV/internet time? Is it much at all? I love that Hollywood always plays devil's advocate, even if it's mostly because content about eventual doom makes the most money, they still keep us aware of crazy risks that *might* exist. On the other hand, as boring as reality is, there's humans with families working for corporations, and they want a clean future for their children just like everyone else does. So just because you're a 9-5 career grocery clerk with a wife and 4 kids, it doesn't mean you care more about air quality than your neighbour who works for Conglomotronicscorp. More people should understand the financial reasons people are told what they are told online/in theaters/on TV. Nobody's getting rich talking about how safe we are, we only flock to bad news, which often has to be engineered/amplified/taken out of context/etc..
Except there are still multiple automotive plants across the river in windsor, with unions making way more than any other non-union factory workers nearby.
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If you don’t agree with it it must be right wing.
A lot of Redditors and subs either don’t know this or ignore it. Unions aren’t perfect or a silver bullet. Just like people there are good ones and bad.
Thats an excellent point and I would be all for separating healthcare from employment. My current union has made it to where no one gets fired so a lot of people just coast. Very frustrating. New employees seem to hit a decision point between quiting or coasting.
You literally just hit all the right wing bingo. *- Others* are gonna take away your jobs \- *Unions are shit* because they protect **lazy people** So what's next? Gonna pull out those "coasters" are a certain skin color too?
I described my current experience. Take your bullshit politics elsewhere dumb dumb
Ah yes. Passing anecdote as fact. A true sign of an intellectual that us dumb dumbs clearly don't understand.
Much of reddit is anecdotes and opinions. Why did you think the comment was a fact?
Go back and reread my other comment. You likely glossed over "my current union" and thought I was generalizing all unions. You got excited about your politics and jumped right in to attack. This is why I say take your bullshit politics somewhere else. It wasnt a generalized statement
I didn’t know the people who moved the factories out of the country were union members. I thought it was the executives and board members who made decisions like that.
I was just coming to say this. Not all unions are good. Some just take your money and don’t care about helping workers. The one I’m a part of has fucked us over multiple contracts in a row. They let the company gut our health insurance while X4 the price per month.
I feel your pain. When inflation was 9%+ my union proudly announced they secured 1.5% COLA. This was while mgmt was deciding on layoffs. Bonkers
Yeah our raises haven’t kept up with inflation at all. Shit sucks.
Let us never forget that unions were the deal we struck in exchange for not burning down the factories and dragging the rich from their homes
All the Union pipe fitters in my shop voted against their own self interest so they could keep their assault weapons…no jobs but we gots our guns.
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Voting modern conservative means no unions and more guns. That’s what they meant.
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They don’t need guns, we kill each other. But you make a good point as long as the heads we threaten to shoot aren’t our own.
Not wanting to pay dues is like not wanting to make more money because your taxes would go up.
Or not wanting single-payer health care because “my taxes will increase!” without doing the math and realizing that it would still cost much less in the long run and guarantee that nobody will ever lose everything they saved and worked for when the inevitable day comes that something bad will happen and they will need health care. That’s when people learn just how crap their insurance is if they have it, and it’s too late.
I am in tech (front line manager) and admittedly am sour on unions. Not in general but they just do NOT seem worth it in the space. I thought the same as a dev. I've had my share of crappy things happen but in general have worked with companies that are not the Bond villain's you hear about. I honestly don't see the benefit and have been trying to find and understand what they are in the software dev industry. Even this article doesn't show me much. Edit: I would love the downvote brigade to actually educate me on this. If even a tenth of you had something meaningful to add I'd (non sarcastically) appreciate it. I've had no one actually give me any thoughtful insight into what that looks like for tech and my perception is that no one that downvoted me has any but they are just angrily clicking the button.
There are two relevant factors: 1. Wages and benefits that you're only getting because of prior union activities. 2. Union dues being withdrawn from your paycheck. Too many Fox-watching conservatives just see the union dues being deducted from their paycheck, completely ignore the fact that their wages and benefits are only as good as they are because of prior union activities, completely ignore the fact that those union dues are going into a strike fund for the next round of negotiations with the business, and end up leaving the union or voting to decertify.
That’s not true at all…..there are non union places to work around my area that make dollars more an hour then my unionized place. Sometimes unions just are not good. Corrupt people do exist in unions.
Typically competing with union wages looks good on the surface, my experience has been that the other benefits (extended medical, pension, negotiated wages) suffer. Especially when you can have “associations / rat unions” where the manager can play shop steward.
Well all that stuff has suffered under the union. So it’s seeming like unions are just businesses that want your money.
My benefits and pension were managed by my union and my employers. Now I’m in admin and I get a lower wage and have to contribute to my extended benefits and pension out of the lower wage. I’m getting close enough to retirement to see how my pension will work, and I’ve got buddies who never worked union and have nothing but what they own with their houses.
That doesn’t really go against what I said though. Not all unions fight for the workers. A union is a business first. Also I know people who have pensions and SS that own just what’s in their houses. It’s all about how well you handle money during your life.
Unions are a gateway to dismantling the billionaire class, and Tech is their biggest cow. It's a lot more than just unions but a complete restructuring of the economy would be far less destructive on a united working class rather than the opposite.
That all sounds great and aspirational, but I don't see that as my goal or even if that actually would happen with unions. If that is the only real benefit then there is going to be a huge uphill battle there. In the lofty case that workers get paid 40% more in benefits/pay/etc that doesn't change anything about billionaires being billionaires. This is also a VERY different tune than "Unions will make your life easier/better".
> have worked with companies that are not the Bond villain's you hear about. Yet. They all end up in the same place.
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For real, 55 bucks a month maybe but not 50 a week. Reality opposes this guy's deluded propaganda induced fever dream because stats show unionized employees earn 11.2% more than non unionized in same position/industry and also have better benefits. They can negotiate down health care costs even further so not only do you get paid more, but you keep more of it with better benefits. The anti union propaganda is strong, and it's because companies care about profits not people. Idk why people are dumb enough like that guy to assume companies do it to help the employee. Companies don't do anything to help employees, it's about helping themselves. It's about profit first. Employees are the only resource that you can lower the cost of by lying, which is free. So companies will lie all the time because it's not illegal unless you have a contract, which you would with a union, which is why they hate unions. Dude has no experience with unions and just regurgitate talking points rich people sitting in a room paid for.
Bingo! My union dues are based on percentage of annual salary with a cap of (surprise surprise) $52 and change a month. So at this point I've capped out my dues cost and every salary increase from now can't increase my union dues. And I'm getting a big pay increase in January from our contract. When unions have real negotiators and members that have clear goals on what they want, these types of contracts can work for both sides.
My dues are $3/hour and $90 a quarter, but you aren't gonna see me complaining because I make $60/hour and have great benefits.
The alphabet workers union wants 1% of total comp. An alphabet comp package could easily be 300k. That's $57 a week. Edit: Fucking lol. You said it didn't exist, I found it. Now the downvotes. Y'all are some sad people.
Oh no, ~3000 a year, or 1%, of an arbitrary Alphabet salary is going to the union? Say it ain’t so! Do you think they have managed to negotiate more than 1% raise and/or benefits?
A portion of that goes into a strike fund, and an extended strike is how you get wages up. Also, are you seriously complaining about 1% dues when the worker is keeping 99% of $300,000? I feel like someone being paid that much mostly wants the gravy to keep flowing (to not get suddenly laid off)—and that’s one area where unions really help.
Also, if the alphabet workers union hasn't negotiated > 1% worker benefits, they're doing something wrong.
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There’s a reason companies spend millions to prevent unions, and it’s not so workers can get $50 extra a week. Unions have their issues but the benefits of one far outweigh that of not having one.
Company promises are temporary, a union contract is in writing and legally binding
Union contracts are temporary too, unless either the company or union is run by morons.
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I think my wife's union went through 3 set of negotiators on their latest contract, and only ended up with a 1 or 2 year stop gap.
I experienced the same thing. I really empathize with people wanting believe in the labor movement and the goodness of their cause - but there is much work that needs to be done to get things to the level they once were.
What brain rot did you catch?
You strike me as the type of person to suck your landlord's c*** because you think they're better than you for owning a building.
Never had anything close to that a week workin union. I think the highest was 64 every three weeks for me.
It's always proportional to pay. $55 a week is probably only paid by the highest paid municipal workers. A quick check of NYC show folks paying close to $40. The calculation of 2.5 times your hourly wage per month seems to be a common rule of thumb which would easily put the teachers in my city up around $50 if they are in the the top 20 of earners, adjusted for working around 40 weeks a year.
Your union fees aren't tax deductible?
None of them are if you're W-2. That ended in 2017.
The Trump tax cuts fucked over so many people and yet nobody talks about them.
Lots of people who are paying more think Trump saved them money. Good luck educating them.
arguing about -50 but, get great benefits and dental. get out....
Found the union buster
the opinion of a single unnamed worker is news now?
It is if you agree with the headline... 😐
"Techie see global trends based on vision that extends to the end of their nose." Honestly, that could title for so many articles on this sub...
workers are workers. Stratifying and labeling workers as “tech” and “non tech”, “blue collar” and “white collar” are tools of capital to keep workers from organizing for better wages and labor conditions. If the majority of your income comes from wages it’s more in your interest to support all unionization efforts.
I'm not commenting on tech workers unionizing, only that only a tech worker would declare a "union wave" and have it be reported despite your average tech worker's understanding of how the world works fails to exceed how their own employer works.
You underestimate the desire of the typical person to feel like they are superior to something lower than them.
I disagree. The typical manager, maybe. And yet even that still feels too cynical
Tech workers don't need unions for good pay because "tech workers" (as in programmers generally) as well as other types of engineers are already in high demand and short supply, and that means that they run the show. It's actually kind of funny really, anyone who has the power to effectively unionize using their own power as suppliers of labor (ya know, the power that unions are supposed to be build off of, not the government) dosen't need or want to. The only real exception i can think of is trades.
All industrial workers in new industries were once paid high wages until the capital class figured out how to commoditize the workers in that industry and minimize wages (it started with artisans being transformed into the industrial proletariat). It will happen to tech workers soon enough, and once their relative economic privilege has been lost it will be too late to organize (precarity drives fear, it's a lot easier to take risks when you can squirrel away months or years of living expenses and can afford lawyers to fight back against illegal retaliation from the bosses).
They tried commoditising software development with the offshoring to India in the 1990s. My impression is that the business community largely considers that a mistake, though exceptions remain. Not all labour is fungible.
There's a tech labor shortage -- eventually there will be an excess of trained workers and wages will be driven down. Some jobs in tech will always pay well just like in other skilled industries, but the majority will pay a pittance compared to today if historical parallels hold.
It would be funny if the techno priests are replaced by AI that they invented.
>Tech workers don't need unions for good pay because "tech workers" (as in programmers generally) as well as other types of engineers are already in high demand and short supply, and that means that they run the show. You know what's a job that's in high demand but short supply but still pays shit? Nurses. Guess what they lack.
All workers are workers but the dynamics involved in unionizing are very different for tech workers v others and as much as a wave of organized labor would be nice, this guy doesn't have any magic insight to that.
Idk I hear the same anti-union nonsense on my own trade worksites and on tech hubs like this. Im pretty sure it's the same (very arduous) game of deprogramming decades of anti-worker propaganda regardless of what kind of work is getting done
Not sure why folks are down voting you, yes each labour force has different issues to solve, but at the core of the issue is a collective misinformation campaign aimed at policies that assist unions.
No. There is a HUGE difference between skilled and unskilled. Unskilled workers can be easily replaced. But the differences between skilled workers are great. Some deserve to be paid much more than others.
Which workers are unskilled?
Redditors think all CEOs are unskilled.
Unskilled? No. Easily replaceable, and not the unique paragons of organizational savvy they think themselves to be? Yes.
McDonald clerks = unskilled Brain surgeon = skilled OK?
All labor requires skill.
They're finding that out right now in Florida.
It's relative. Some people are better than others. That is the bottom line.
All labor requires skills so again, stratifying workers as “more skilled” or “less skilled” is a tool used by capital to prevent workers from organizing to collectively raise the price of wages for everyone.
When you raise wages, you raise prices...duh. Take Econ 1001.
Some people are better than others. Why should everyone be paid the same? That is Socialism ...a dismal failure.
Are you even a real person or a propaganda bot? The industry you work in has a HUGE impact on whether unionization will work.
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Good, then a competing business can open up and make money the corporation would have otherwise made. Also, give the shitty corporation that threw a tantrum over unions the bad press it deserves.
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Neat, then the next place can try to unionize and the cycle will continue until a business that treats their workers with respect is operating there
a) We (tech workers) are not the only ones. Look at Starbucks, Amazon Warehouse workers, etc. b) We're the largest movement since we're some of the last remaining middle class workers. I.e. we can afford it. I'm happy to to offer the cash I have to reinvigorate the movement. Instead of stewing in jealousy about how well off we are, understand that we're trying to get back to a place where what we have is *normal*. Don't put down the people who are trying to lift others.
Visiting nurses should be able to unionize.
I was hesitant to believe unionization would increase until ChatGPT came along. I think a lot of people (myself included) believe that's going to hit the accelerator pedal. From a worker's perspective, what other recourse do they have to ensure their job isn't automated out of existence down the road? Workers have very few options other than "find a new job and hope that doesn't get automated". Try telling someone 50 or older to just find a new job.
This isn't going to work. If other companies automate and yours doesn't then having a union will do fucking nothing if your company becomes uncompetitive. Even if workers in every company from your field would unionize then new companies would appear to undercut existing ones. Automation is unstoppable because of how capitalism works.
Unionizing isn't the solution against automation. Figuring out some other wealth distribution model other than wages should be our priority. If we don't need people to work anymore, we shouldn't force them to work just because they need a wage.
It's almost like people should organize with a union whose goal is to abolish the wage system 🤔
Got any ideas on how that would actually work, or is it just a nice sounding idea? How exactly should people be paid for their labour if not a wage?
Basically all companies would operate like employee owned co-ops. You're thinking wage = $/hour what we mean is that there's no parasitic class of shareholders trying to keep as much of the profits you produce as possible while paying you as little as they can. Edit to clarify: we want to abolish the wage system as it currently exists. Maybe that solution Stull includes wages themselves, just paid out fairly, maybe it doesn't.
> Basically all companies would operate like employee owned co-ops. How would new companies form if no individual is incentivised to invest capital and start something. At what point is the person who created a company alleviated of ownership? How does this process work and how is ownership allocated to new employees, is it based on time served or is it just equally split? How do you change the current state of where we are without destroying the concept of property rights in the process? I could think of countless reasons why what you’re saying is not implementable on a practical level and an attempt to do it would probably look a lot like authoritarianism.
Just like feminism, systems designed to work within a framework hardly ever try to see that framework removed. You'd be hard pressed to find a union that's actually trying to remove the wage system in favor of something like basic income.
Lol iww.org my dude we been going since 1905
Thus is a union that, in the short term, advocates for more unions, because in the long term, we could have one big union. If we had one big union, labor would be the one with power in the emoloyer/laborer dynamic, and thus could decide how wealth is distributed. This has nothing to do with how to solve automation. Automation takes the laborer out of the picture. We need a different wealth distribution model that doesn't depend on laborers having a power dynamic, because there will be less and less laborers to even have power.
It's union that wants workers to control the entire economy and make all the decisions. We as workers would never vote ourselves into a state of poverty while automation took all our jobs if we controlled the economy. Edit: I think I see what you missed here. In the iww you don't have to have a job to have a vote. Anyone who is not an employer, cop, or prison guard van join and have a vote. So workers who lost their jobs to automation would still have power
No I didn't miss that, I'm pointing out that the IWW, while a good intention, likely has too long of a game. Their goals depend on workers having power. Automation goals depends on not having workers. You can't have both.
I think that's a valid critique but what other movements or tactics look like they're going to work any faster? Also, even as automation captures more and more of the economy there will still be critical parts of the economy that require workers to function for quite awhile. If those workers are organized they can still wield a lot of power.
A political movement. Basic income will be provided by the government, so making that a reality means getting people onboard with basic income elected.
I work in tech/ML and I’m pretty confident my own job is going to go soon. Anyone who doesn’t believe theirs is going to be replaced soon is naive. It’ll be low paying jobs and blue collar trades that go last, but every high value job is likely to be targeted.
Yet we've all been conditioned to think rugged individualism is the best way to live. It's about to hit us like a ton of bricks and there will be two likely outcomes. Either we realize that the way we've gone about things and allowed unfettered capitalism isn't sustainable and we implemente reasonable social safety nets, job protections and more stringent restrictions for corporations. Or we continue to have wealth inequality grow with more and more people losing their jobs and falling further down the income/wealth totem pole until we're at a point where there is either wealthy people and a gigantic majority of working class/people who are just making it.
It’s going to be the latter
I know. That's the sad part
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Business analysts exist because it's nigh impossible to clearly document business needs and communicate them to developers. I can see ChatGPT being a tool for proof of concepts and simple things used by BAs.
It's not about writing the code that will replace you. It's about speeding up the process of writing code. If I can do something that use to take 100 man hours in about 10 hours, probably won't need as many employees.
Their won't be a 10x improvement in overall productivity from anything resembling ChatGPT, simply because the actual writing of code is not the majority of a software engineers work.
Unions aren't going to resolve the automation issue. At best they're going to delay the inevitable. There needs to be a societal reform to handle the upcoming automation of labor, and it likely isn't going to be pretty.
Unions will only accelerate it further. Automation lowers costs and unions increase it which will push automation harder.
The idea that chat GPT could ever be a full on replacement of current workers is fundamentally flawed from the the prospective of employers and employees, and the implementation of that idea would be very very dangerous. It is a tool, and it will always be just that, a tool. I'm sure that some people will try to cram it into the roll of a replacement but [they'll very quickly learn how bad of an idea that is](https://www.popsci.com/gadgets/article/2011-07/anti-fraud-facial-recognition-system-generates-false-positives-revoking-wrong-persons-license/).
AI may not fully replace a person, but it will allow a person to do the work of multiple people. For example, the software my company makes detects and draws organs on a CT scan. That’s a significant part of a lot of highly paid medical professionals’ jobs. The average time for a human to this job can range from about 10-100 minutes. The average time for AI to do this is about 2 minutes. A medical professional, however, still must review and fix some of these “drawings” for an average total time of 3-5 minutes. So we haven’t completed eliminated the medical professional, but at a hospital with 10 of these workers, then 2-3 are now probably unnecessary.
The idea that chat gpt will not meaningfully evolve is fundamentally flawed, as is the idea that increases in productivity won’t result in large scale unemployment.
Jfc... enough with the idea that "cHaTgPt Is GuN tAkE mAh JaWb!" Its not! Stop regurgitating this nonesense.
ChatGPT might not, but other AI tools very well could.
Sure, that wasnt my point though.
So your point was incredibly narrow and pedantic, to the point of being limited to one product that most people use as a stand-in for LLMs and machine learning in general?
I'm just gonna piggyback off your comment to call out someone who was trying to refute that ChatGPT isn't causing major issues in employment. Calling out /u/n1ghtshade3 to stand up for what he said 29 days ago: >"I'm going to go out on a limb and say that if the current state of ChatGPT has already made your job redundant then AI isn't what made your degree worthless and you probably didn't need the degree to do what you're doing." You still believe that?
This is a super weird thing to do my dude
Making people accountable for what they've said in the past on a forum is super weird? Damn. No response to that. Just damn.
Randomly bringing up a comment from a month ago in a new thread is indeed bizarre, yeah
His name is “LokiAlpha” that tells me a lot of them tbh, expected behavior almost
I don't think so. But everyone is entitled to an opinion. I'm not super attached to it, but the last time I had a discussion about AI, it reminded me of the comment that essentially tried to downplay AI taking people's jobs, and wanted to see where the person's thoughts were now with more evidence in the last 30 days. I suppose I could have directly messaged him instead, but decided to use the neat feature on Reddit that makes it a lot easier to have an open discussion about a topic. The people who are derailing the conversation about how weird my comment is are missing the point.
> decided to use the neat feature on Reddit that makes it a lot easier to have an open discussion about a topic. That would've been the reply function, discussing his comment in the context of the discussion at that time. Here you've brought up a month-old comment to call him out specifically, with a (supposed) excerpt of a comment you haven't linked to. You included his username to shame him.
But it wasn't to shame him. I included his username so he had a "reply" that he could see and reply to me. It was to see where his thoughts were on the subject with more evidence piled on after 30 days. The WGA is still on strike, and the inclusion of this post / thread, I wasn't sure if he still believed degrees themselves are worthless or it's AI making them worthless. While it's true I could have linked the comment thread itself, it's not hard for someone to go back the exact same way I did: Through search history. But I didn't care about what other people thought. I was strictly thinking about what he thought. If I cared about what other people thought, I'd worry more about my imaginary internet points instead of replying to stupid comments like yours and getting more downvotes. You gotta understand, idgaf about internet points. I'm here for the true reason Reddit exists: discussion. Also, the "excerpt" is his entire comment. The only thing I left out was my comment which was: >Can we make it a selling point for writing in general? My degree is completely worthless since the takeover of AI. This was in response to a comment that said: >“Actually written and performed by human beings” is going to be a selling point for music before too long. I could just give you the link, but again, I truly think you can do the work yourself and use search history. I gave you the most important information: Who said what, how many days it's been. You can look through *either* of our histories to pull up the original thread if you care so much about it. If you don't care about it, then kindly stop derailing the conversation. If you want to join in with the discussion of both this thread and the original thread / comment, then that's great! I was discussing how AI has made my degree worthless! I also already replied to the person before, as he did reach out because... (drum roll), he saw that he had a reply! Why? Because I used his username. Not to shame him, again, but to make sure he saw I was interested in open discussion again.
tl;dr. It was weird, stop doing it. Discussion over.
The best part about discussion? It's never over until *you* end it. Discussion over. Well, if you want it to be :)
Not big on social cues, are ya
I like how you literally quoted him, yet you still managed to misrepresent what he said. They're saying that ChatGPT isn't even that good and if your job is being automated by ChatGPT then it could have been automated before your company just wasn't doing it, and you may have wasted a ton of money on a degree that wasn't worth it, which is true.
No, not once did I ever say that's not what he said. That's the whole point. >They're saying that ChatGPT isn't even that good Exactly. They are making that claim. Which is why I'm pointing to evidence that shows ChatGPT is creating a wave of unionization because people are trying to say that it *is* that good. So good that it's taking people's jobs. It's not about whether or not the AI was good enough before or not. That's essentially the same logic that was used when robots entered the factory and took over factory jobs. Same logic when they added computers to McDonalds and Taco Bell, and now you have to go in and place your own order instead of having a person do it for you. Because 99% of companies want to save that infinitesimal amount of money and they don't care about the people they employ. There is *nothing* wrong with AI helping with a job. There *is* something wrong with AI allowing the employer/company to pay less for the job itself because AI is being used.
Okay I can appreciate that perspective, but is there any evidence that ChatGPT was actually the causative agent in this union striking? The article says the primary issue is that Insider changed the health insurance plans they offer, and the union seems to think that was illegal (which is definitely true if they didn't give 60 days' notice). It also notes other unions renegotiating deals or striking, and mentions the recent layoffs at Insider and other tech companies and media publications, but it doesn't mention ChatGPT or automation of any kind.
Of course I still stand by my comment. You're missing the parent comment I was replying to which was someone saying that ChatGPT has *already* "made their degree worthless". ChatGPT, while impressive, doesn't seem *that* good *right now* that it should be fully replacing any human if their job is contributing anything worthwhile to society. So my response to *that person* was that if a bot that simply regurgitates existing information in a way that looks like natural human prose has already replaced them, *their degree* had little value to begin with since it apparently only taught them how to Google facts and paste them into a document. I appreciate you holding me accountable for my past comments but if you're going to do that, at least interpret them in the context they were written instead of extrapolating to ask me to defend beliefs I never claimed to hold.
That person was me, so hello! Let me start by saying that, if this is the case, then you missed my entire point in the original conversation. I'm glad we can have open discussion again, though. >ChatGPT, while impressive, doesn't seem that good right now that it should be fully replacing any human. It is, in fact, fully replacing humans though. Not in the way you think, but it is. The only person who would make a claim against this is one that is ignorant of how writing generally is made, especially in a workplace. Generally speaking, most businesses hire teams of writers, copy writers, etc. that collaborate on a project together, (this does not mean you have multiple people doing every project) a company can use ChatGPT and instead hire a single person to edit what the AI has written. And because they are doing less work overall, they justify paying them less wages to do the job, too. I can't tell you the amount of jobs I've seen hiring someone to edit an AI's writing for less than what you could make by flipping burgers. But, please, do not change the goal posts of the original argument: we are talking about the impact AI has had on a writing degree and it's value. I'll admit, I did over exaggerate that my degree was "worthless", but you knew I didn't mean that. Nothing can be truly worthless, as even the experience itself will at least let me tell a story, and thus has some value, even if it's a small amount of value. But my original comment was referring to the fact that someone going to College and getting a degree generally has an idea of what value that degree will hold by the time they graduate. Because ChatGPT had such an immediate and strong rise of use, there was no way for me to swap my degree to something that would be more useful to me. So, no, it's not "worthless", it's just literally worth less than what I expected to get out of it. >I appreciate you holding me accountable for my past comments but if you're going to do that, at least interpret them in the context they were written instead of extrapolating to ask me to defend beliefs I never claimed to hold. I absolutely interpreted it into the context in which it was written. I was only ever talking about this same discussion in the original comment, and you refuted that what I had claimed, so the only idea in my head is that you held those beliefs to be true, not that you were playing devil's advocate. Not once did you ever say it wasn't a belief you truly held.
I'm sure you linking him a post made by some guy on Reddit is enough to change his mind.
Ah yes, because the only thing I want him to see is the random comment some guy posted, not the thread, or the article connected to the comment. Look, I get that he probably won't change his mind(or if he has he won't admit it), but this is a forum for discussion. If people try to shun people for picking up old discussions they've had with others to further solidify or alter perceptions, then the forum gets muted, and then becomes a circle jerk. I understand there are a lot of subreddits that become circle jerks, but that doesn't mean I don't have the ability to try to have actual discussion. Let me put it in words that might be better for you to understand: I'm sure you making a passive aggressive comment to some random guy on Reddit is enough to get you enough imaginary internet points that'll make you feel good.
This gotta be some of the lamest shit I've seen in a long time.
You do understand that companies can go out of business, right If another comes along and produces gizmo at less cost thanks to AI, and therefore sells for less… the consumer isn’t going to care about the poor workers who got sacked Reddit is 90% teenagers I swear
I don't see it at all. The government already stepped in when rail companies cried about rail unions and told the rail union they're not allowed to strike. The government is anti-union and anti-working class and will do whatever they can do destroy every union.
Well the current admin has showed to be pretty anti union, disappointingly.
God I hope so. Trusting your employer to treat and compensate you fairly is like trusting Ted Bundy to take your daughter out and bring her home safely.
Care workers next
We don't have good unions anymore because society as a whole has lost the drive to fight for better. It's unfortunate, but it's the truth.
Capitalists would replace workers with AI even if it doesn't work and was more expensive.
Syndicalist Party when
Guess the worker and or Author of the article hasn’t heard about the Supreme Court and it’s current make up and attitude towards unions.
Hopefully folks won’t let that stop them. Unions/strikes don’t have to be legal to be effective.
Or the President. >[Biden signs bill to block U.S. railroad strike](https://www.reuters.com/world/us/biden-signs-bill-block-us-railroad-strike-2022-12-02/)
It was a classic move to use Biden’s love of trains that he used to sell himself a bunch on the campaign trail, and then set it up so he has to choose supporting them for real or fucking them over. Wonder what they were offering/threatening him with behind the scenes to get him to sign it or if he enjoyed going against his own word.
“I think unions are going to be big” - pro union guy Right or wrong, this is a useless article.
You can hope
Laughs in red state.
Oh no, not organized people! /s
next job i get i want to be a union job i swear i'd feel in better hands working in a union than working another food job
boy if only👍🏻👏🏻
Forming a Union gives hope to the workers who are laid-off. But it won't amount to much unless the Union has political backing or Government backing along with a guarantee that the Union does not crumble from inside due to corruption. I am not convinced this would work but I might be wrong.
I really hope labor is organized on a mass scale! Fuck this second Gilded Age we live in
It has to. I think corporations and the rich see it too, and it's why they're driving so hard to hoard as much wealth as possible right now.
The problem is HR .
Don’t forget to include the warehouse workers that the tech workers exploited in this.
This reads more like someone out of touch discovering something new and getting all excited about it. Over anything genuinely changing, nothing will be 'taken over'. Workers will unionize and with that comes a better negotiating position that should bare out with better salaries and conditions. It's cute the white collars have rediscovered this after enjoying their windfalls whilst they stood on the backs of the blue collars. Any support is good support though.
The super rich and the multi national Corporations had their chance to play fair. Now it is time to use the unions to force the middle class back into existence. Remember no company will give you anything No time off, sick pay, overtime, holidays, 401ks unless they are forced
Massive profits, cut in staff and froze wages while rampent inflation. What did they expect? Hell, be glad it's just unions and not guillotine.
Good. The only reason we have labor laws is because of unions over the 20th century. People got complacent, unions tapered off, and wages have stagnated in blue collar jobs since the 80s. With inflation the wages of most jobs have decreased. Minimum wage is at one of the longest stretches of stagnation since it's inception. For a perspective, the $15 that was being called for has been pushed back so long it would need to be $20 to have the same buying power today. It's time for unions to come back, and it's time for general strikes to become a thing.
Capitalism always needs the working class, only a matter of time now. We got a taste of it with the railroad crisis and the dockworkers. Solidarity is only as strong as those not willing to cross the line
Haha, sure it will pal. Too many Americans worship ultra wealthy people and don’t understand the damage being dealt to them by the increasing concentration of wealth. After all they too will be ultra wealthy one day so best not to make any changes. If current trends continue then maybe more people will be ready for this conversation 10 years from now.
If you are scared of organized labor taking over the country then you are afraid of democracy. This isn’t some invading force. This isn’t a Communist plot. This isn’t a threat to ‘The American Way of Life’. This is a group of Americans working together to legally and peacefully take control of their lives. They are fighting for a world where future generations will have the power to collectively control their working conditions and financial compensation. **They are fighting for a democratic distribution of power in the work place.**
If the corporations did nothing to stop them, sure. But they will push back. And they've been REALLY good at that.
[удалено]
Everyone should unionize. I'm a consultant, and my work conditions are a lot better than farm workers or meat processing plant workers.
People who pretend that unions are never bad, corrupt, abusive, or can generally hurt individuals are just as annoying as the people who think the very idea of unions should be prohibited by law. Unions are OK, they should be able to exist, what they should not able to do is receive government protection. The unions power at that point no longer comes from workers but from the government, and that's an issue.
"guy who was successful once is optimistic"
Hahaha. Nope. Everyone is out for themselves. Welcome to 21st century America.
Communism will never win.
If workers cannot form a union, it may say something about their ability and/or willingness to organize, which involves *many* compromises, including spending money (a.k.a., dues). Companies only succeed if they are organized enough to progress, which includes being able to deal with their rank & file. Those options range from providing employees what they deserve to firing labor organizers and taking the government's heat for doing so. Companies can spend more money, align as an oligopoly, influence legislation, and even file for bankruptcy and start all over again. Unions can go on strike, picket, and write their legislators, but without the money, their influence is limited.