Staff at CD Projekt Red are uniting with others in the Polish video game industry to unionise. The union was formed aft…
  • Sinfaen@beehaw.org
    1·
    1 year ago

    And Epic Games announced a big layoff coming soon. I dunno what’s happening in the industry rn, but it’s not looking good

    • John_Coomsumer@beehaw.org
      1·
      1 year ago

      The only thing happening in the industry is the same thing happening in every industry and most of the first world:

      The wealthy owners and executive leader roles have learned that COVID, COVID supply lines, interest rates, ‘consumer sentiment’, and inflation, are all very easy scapegoats that both the public and investors will easily buy as reasons for lowering product quality and availability, while also firing employees, squeezing the non-fired ones to death, and raising prices. This has lead to almost 2 straight years of corporations showing record profits (even adjusting for the inflation that they are largely responsible for in the first place).

      This downward spiral will continue until some force with nearly as much power pushes back.

      This is typically and ideally a representative government in the form of regulation or taxation. But the US government has suffered decades of regulatory capture and congressional gridlock.

      So the only other potential option is a large amount of highly populated unions. Which have to fight against nearly 100 years of media and political demonization and nearly 150 years of ‘american independent attitude’.

      The perfect modern system has all 3 parties; unions, government, and corporations, equally strong and antagonistic. Just as the perfect modern government would have the executive, legislative, and judicial branches equally strong and antagonistic. Neither could be much farther from the case here.

      Stronger bigger unions. Weaker smaller corporations. And a government that actually functions. All are necessary to fix our current shit show.

  • Hot Saucerman@lemmy.mlEnglish
    1·
    1 year ago

    Other devs, please follow suit.

    This industry needs class consciousness in it yesterday.

    Just because you’re paid well doesn’t mean you’re not being mistreated.

    It’s valid to be thankful for what you have but to also know you deserve more.

    • AlexWIWA@lemmy.mlEnglish
      1·
      1 year ago

      I wish developers would learn that just because they’re well paid doesn’t mean they’re getting the full value of their work. Your CEO didn’t become a billionaire by paying you the full value of your labor.

      There’s always room for more and unions can get that.

      • tias@discuss.tchncs.de
        1·
        1 year ago

        This is from a Swedish perspective, but: My experience with unions has been that they think it’s more important that nobody is paid more, than to pay everyone what they’re worth. In other words they’d prefer everyone being paid equally over raising the minimum wage. Their motivation seems based in jealousy more than a sense of justice. The money they collect from their members is spent on offering stupid IT courses that nobody (except unskilled people) needs, or stuffing their own pockets.

        I like the idea of a union, but to me it seems like the actual unions we have today either lack real problems to solve or forgot about them. Every time a representative comes to visit I just get angered by how out of touch they are. They should focus on their core values and get rid of all that idiotic fluff, so they can lower their fees and recruit more members. But like any organization they grew fat and slow.

          • tias@discuss.tchncs.de
            1·
            1 year ago

            *or forgot about them.

            Ensuring that people know how to use Excel is not a problem that the union should be spending money on.

            At my office we can work at any hours of the day that we prefer, as long as we check with our coworkers and do our agreed 40 hours / week. When the union heard about this they told my employer that we must do all our work during daytime.

            Their reasoning was that our liberal hours give us the opportunity to take on more obligations in our personal life at daytime (such as taking kids to soccer practice) which means we have to work in evenings to make up for lost time. And this, in turn, means we don’t get enough rest. So basically they don’t trust the employees to take responsibility for how much rest they need and want to stop them from doing personal chores during the day.

            We (the employees) finally won against the union in this, but what I kept thinking during this ordeal was “jeez, don’t they have more important issues to address?” If they did, why would they be meddling with this.

    • reinar@distress.digitalEnglish
      1·
      1 year ago

      Just because you’re paid well doesn’t mean others are not being mistreated

      FTFY
      without unions there could be a huge salary disparity between devs in the same role, in the same company, even in the same project. I’ve personally witnessed more than 2x, heard about even more.

      Sometimes it’s more than justified with individual’s performance and impact, sometimes it’s not. Some people are just better skill-wise, some people are better at applying pressure on their employer, holding business-critical knowledge hostage or simply negotiating.

      Point here is - while unionizing might make things better on average, there would be a very real pushback from people who are benefitting from current system and this is not necessarily management. For management in some cases it would be even a net benefit, since they don’t have to deal with primadonnas and someone tying things to themselves just for leverage.