- cross-posted to:
- news@lemmy.world
- cross-posted to:
- news@lemmy.world
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I heard that Unions are especially important in the US because it’s how many workers get their healthcare (which is easy to overlook if you’re not from there, and aren’t really familiar with the Private system)
Isn’t that something they get through insurance that they get through their jobs?
if their job offers it, but desepration and exploitation mean they dont always have to to hire people
If you want a comparison for at my current company:
Insurance through what my union negotiated with my company is about $90/mo for dental/vision/medical. $200 annual deductible on medical.
Insurance from my company if I had a non-union position here is $300-400/mo. $1000 annual deductible on medical
This is for a single person btw.
My wife’s total insurance bill this year (union) for the full family is $390/month (full family) for the most expensive and inclusive plan. Deductable is $1500 for the family. They also have a fully sponsored HSA of $2K/year to cover these costs and the option for and FSA.
Our total out of pocket expense for this year will be around $7k.
Last year we where on my insurance through a non-union company.
$1350/month, $4K deductable, and $7600 HSA funded by me. Total cost for insurance last year was around $24K.
Most of our medical costs are for my wife’s medication for a chronic illness that costs $75k per year. Don’t get me started on how hard it is to get the bastards to pay for it every year. I spend on average 6 weeks every spring to get the insurance to authorize paying for the drug
Jesus that is insane.
Yes, meaning that employers have their workers by the balls since losing your job means losing healthcare.
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You should get a plan though healthcare.gov or your states alternative.
Even if it’s a high deductible plan it could save you from financial problems.
Its also often complete garbage as well. It costs an additional several hundred dollars a paycheck for limited coverage and a high deductible (even if its not technically a high deductible plan).
Not all jobs offer insurance, no. Only larger companies have to.
In my years of work, I think I’ve pretty much run the gamut of insurance experiences.
My current position (non-union) offers pretty good health insurance that is sponsored by my employer, but I’ve worked other (non-union) jobs in the past that had no insurance offerings whatsoever, and at that time I had to obtain insurance through the marketplace which sucked.
I’ve also had insurance provided by the state (not great, not terrible), insurance provided by a union job, and also on a nationalized government healthcare plan while living abroad (which I luckily never had to use).
In the US, it’s just such a mixed bag. My current insurance is substantially better than the insurance I had through my old union, and even some of the marketplace plans offered broader coverage on paper. The union plan was among the most affordable for sure, but there were only a couple packages available and both had fairly limited coverage.
The problem is simply the existence of a market for insurance in the first place. With the ACA, large employers must offer insurance that is affordable for the majority of their employees, but there is no stipulation that the insurance be good, and many people who are worse off end up paying substantially more out of pocket as a result, which still leads people to bankruptcy. Unions have it harder when forced to negotiate with both the employer and the insurance company on trying to secure the best deal for the employees because neither want to let unions have their way.
It’s maybe different for VFX, but I think for writers and actors, because the work is so erratic anyway and 'cos studios are trying to turn everything into a gig rather than a job, the WGA and SAG are ultimately the main providers.
That and you might not work more than a few months at a single company even if you’re employed all year. Getting insurance through the union ensures you’ll actually be able to have insurance while you’re working. And I’m not sure this is true across all Hollywood unions, but I think it’s typical to have a “bank” of hours you’ve worked that count towards insurance coverage even if you’re unemployed for a bit.
correct, if your employer offers anything good. even if they do offer anything, it means losing employment and being sick could get costly if not terminal.
I hope it’s the 2nd of many more. I believe that this, along with the striking demands of writers and actors being met, would fundamentally shift and alter the economics of production again and lead to better quality shows and movies.
You seem pretty optimistic about this, but I don’t think the demands will be met until the studios exhaust every trick in their playbook and are forced to negotiate.
Keep supporting the strike though.
You seem pretty optimistic about this, but I don’t think the demands will be met until the studios exhaust every trick in their playbook and are forced to negotiate.
Well, yeah. If I wasn’t optimistic I wouldn’t be able to be involved in political discourse. On a long enough scale, the masses win. It’s literally a war of attrition, and if you start it from a position of despair or pessimism you’re setting yourself up for failure. I’m not a WGA or SAG member, but I am I fan, and it’s really heartening to think about how for instance, the YouTube Channel Star Wars Explained has been putting a disclaimer on all their Ahsoka content that it was produced during the strike, which means that many people are having their lives impacted by a strike action for the first time.
Keep supporting the strike though.
Exactly! My hope is that by sharing my viewpoint about what it could mean for us as fans and consumers, I prevent people from losing faith or support in the strike, because I am well aware of how the AMPTP literally had one of its reps’ say they were waiting for the strikers to start losing their homes before they went back to negotiate.
The fact that strikes are even happening at all is heartening. The US labor movement was subservient to electoral interests, hesitant to engage in more confrontational actions for too long and it drained union membership and crippled wages.
Good news!
With Monday’s filing, a labor board election could commence as soon as two to three weeks. If a majority of these workers vote in favor of unionizing in that election, the studio would be required to begin good-faith negotiations for a contract covering these workers as a group.
So in less than a month we should know much better.
What would be (if any) the disadvantages of a group of workers unionizing?
Employers are forced to compensate employees with a fair and reasonable wage, benefits, vacation, sick time, job security, and an open dialogue on working conditions, safety, and mental health. You can see how this is undesirable.
I am very pro-union. I was a Teamster for years (Local 495).
I now work in the game industry. A good chunk of the gamedevs I know are pro-union, but there’s enough of those opposed where there’s effectively a question mark.
Generally, the holdouts tend to think:
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Union leadership is corrupt/greedy, and they don’t want to give union leaders money for “nothing” (as they see it)
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Being in a union means everyone would need to be bound to strict regulations - keeping exact track of time worked, having exact lunch breaks, documenting everything. As-is in the game industry, the “standard” at most places is hands-off, take lunch whenever, stay at lunch however long you want, clock in/out whenever, nobody questions you as long as your work is getting done. People like this and don’t want to risk losing it
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Being in a union threatens close relationships with management. I can say that when I was a Teamster, management was outright adversarial and conversations with them weren’t fun. In the game industry, management is quite literally my friends and people I chill out with. There’s a very, very blurry line between “friends” and “bosses” - some bosses are horrible, to be sure, but the general vibe is casual
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There’s a lot of benefits in the office like free snacks, free swag, a place to chill out and play games at work, etc. People are afraid that this would count as “compensation” and thus being unionized would mean that you’d have to pay for snacks or swag or whatever - or that it could be taken away as retaliation from management
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Retaliation is a thing. It’s illegal. US government doesn’t care. Corpos get a slap on the wrist because of plausible deniability. EA has been downsizing recently and they “coincidentally” cut the contract with a QA team that just unionized. Hmm.
Again, I myself am very pro-union. However, to some extent I can see the logic in each of these bullet points - I disliked the guy running my Teamster local way back when because I felt he was too soft and captured by management. I can understand needing to clock in/out (fairest way to ensure nobody is being overworked), ruining relationships (can’t have accusations of bias from being friendly), and losing benefits (although this can be put into a contract). And nobody can deny illegal retaliation is a real thing.
So I can understand where the holdouts at least are coming from. It would take a shitty workplace for unionization to happen, shitty enough that all those bullet points above aren’t enough to keep the union holdouts in line. I hear Blizzard is really bad from people who have worked there, and my money is still on them being the first “big” dev to unionize - assuming Microsoft doesn’t come in and clean up.
I’m actually the reverse of this, a former programmer who is now a school bus driver (and a Teamster). Another bullet point for your list would be that programmers tend to think of themselves as being a lot better than most other programmers and thus deserving of much better compensation. The general union mindset of everybody getting paid the same (or more based purely on seniority rather than ability) doesn’t really fit very well with that - even though it’s necessary to prevent managers from using workers against each other.
Yep, you’re 100% right. People who have the same job can be paid dramatically differently, and the “reasoning” is that one guy is better at things than the other.
I got a 9% raise this year because I outperformed everyone else on my team, but I know that my 9% raise came at the expense of someone who only got a 2% raise. A union contract would give everyone like a 4-5% raise, which people dislike because they always think they’re going to be the ones on top of the totem pole.
Me? I want predictability. Game dev is extremely unpredictable.
- Being in a union threatens close relationships with management. I can say that when I was a Teamster, management was outright adversarial and conversations with them weren’t fun. In the game industry, management is quite literally my friends and people I chill out with. There’s a very, very blurry line between “friends” and “bosses” - some bosses are horrible, to be sure, but the general vibe is casual
Imagine how much less fun the conversations would be without the union. If your management is a bunch of dicks that’s not going to change because you’re unionized, but now you will get a voice.
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More time off, so you need to find things to do outside of your work.
The very real risk of illegal retaliation. Since most states are at-will employment, workers can lose their jobs for a whole host of reasons that definitely aren’t just the company retaliating for union activity.
Well, the police union isn’t great.
Maybe next, Cinderella’s mice will organize for better workplace cheese and a fairy tale ending to overtime woes.
That’ll be the day.
Would it be great? Hell yes, they’re treated terribly in the industry. But Disney, basically the most powerful and very evil people in the business world, will never let something like this happen (unless they believe it can somehow be twisted to serve them).
They’ll kill to stop this, don’t think a few carefully planned accidents are too risky compared to everything they stand to lose over the next 100 years because of this.
They don’t even need to go that far, a few well placed threats in the right places, against the families and children of these good people, will do the trick.
Disney have a blank cheque to spend on identifying the pressure points that will gain them the most leverage in these people, and then exercising the most efficient plan to make their problem go away.
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