
Glitch employees vote to form union, joining CWA - lflux
https://cwa-union.org/news/releases/tech-workers-app-developer-glitch-vote-form-union-and-join-cwa-organizing-initiative
======
Apocryphon
My highlights:

> 90% of the workers indicated their support for joining CWA and authorized
> CWA to be their bargaining representative

> about half of whom work in the New York City headquarters and half of whom
> work remotely throughout the country

> Employees at major American tech and game companies have grown increasingly
> active and outspoken about workplace issues, including sexual assault and
> harassment, ageism, unequal pay, “crunch time” (i.e. long-term overtime and
> overworking), poor treatment of contract workers, inadequate racial and
> gender diversity, and lack of transparency and inclusion in decision-making
> around controversial contracts with the U.S. Department of Defense and
> Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

> “We appreciate that unlike so many employers, the Glitch management team
> decided to respect the rights of its workforce to choose union
> representation without fear or coercion."

> CWA was founded by telecom workers, and supports media workers through its
> Newsguild-CWA and NABET-CWA sectors.

~~~
m0zg
Game studios especially need this. I'm a conservative in most other labor-
related things (liberal on social issues), but holy shit the devs are abused
by the game studios.

~~~
pkaler
Former game developer here. Game studios don't need unions, they need better
management. Basically, an 18-year-old QA tester gets promoted to lead QA then
associate producer then assistant producer and then producer. The producer
manages by industry lore. And industry lore is terrible.

Unionization is not going to fix the management training problem.

~~~
einpoklum
> Game studios don't need unions, they need better management.

If workers unionize [1], they can force bad management out, or curtail its
badness, or in extreme cases - replace management with collective ownership.

[1] - in an independent, non-corrupt union.

~~~
manfredo
Or game developers can just hire non-union employees. The reality is that game
development studios can get away with poor work life balance because there's
people who are passionate about making games and are willing to accept poor
working conditions to get a chance at their dream job. This Stage Actor's
Guild exists, but aspiring actors still have to work second jobs to put a roof
over their heads. When a job is a lot of people's dream job, conditions are
going to be poor because the supply of potential labor is very large as
compared to the demand.

Also, I have no idea where you get the idea that unions can somehow force
collective ownership. The company belongs to the shareholders, unions don't
magically get to take other people's property.

~~~
Apocryphon
Employees usually receive shares as comp, don't they?

I will say that the horror stories and bad press coming out of the video
gaming industry will possibly have a chilling effect for new grads who would
otherwise jump straight into it. Eventually management will run out of non-
union workers to hire. Or the non-union workers themselves will demand better
treatment.

~~~
manfredo
> Employees usually receive shares as comp, don't they?

Non-voting shares, yes. Voting shares are usually only given to very senior
people, if ever, and not nearly enough to form anything close to a controlling
ownership of the company.

> I will say that the horror stories and bad press coming out of the video
> gaming industry will possibly have a chilling effect for new grads who would
> otherwise jump straight into it. Eventually management will run out of non-
> union workers to hire. Or the non-union workers themselves will demand
> better treatment.

Decades of game development suggests otherwise. Like acting, it's people's
dream job. And when the supply of labor exceeds the demand workers do not have
leverage.

~~~
Apocryphon
For decades there was no interest nor action towards unionizing in game
development. Greater scrutiny into the industry from modern game journalism,
and perhaps worsening experiences as the industry heads towards Hollywood-like
AAA titles produced by monolithic studios, is surely causing _something_ to
change.

~~~
manfredo
Game developers' experiencing the misery of crunch time and layoffs is
something I've heard about firsthand since the early 2000s at the latest.
Reading accounts from earlier games' development cycles suggests that this has
been common for even longer than that. Game development has always had
cyclical labor demands and tight deadlines.

I think you need to qualify the claim that these experiences are worsening. In
fact, from most of the veteran developers I've talked to report the opposite:
before the proliferation of the internet crunch time was way more serious
since patching was not a viable option. Nowadays it's pretty much the norm
that games have significant bugs for the first week or two and still need to
mature after release. This creates greater room for error and less pressure to
fix every bug before release.

~~~
Apocryphon
That's fair, perhaps conditions haven't been substantially worse than in
previous console generations. But it sounds like there's something driving the
push towards unionizing/organizing, whatever it is. And it sounds like the
general public is more aware it being a brutal industry.

~~~
pandaman
Despite the popular belief, game developers are pretty well paid. Not every
indie or QA contractor, of course, but it's a rich industry with 6 figure
salaries and profit sharing/royalty bonuses in successful studios. So, of
course, any union would love to represent game developers for a share of their
income. Likewise, you don't often hear of, say, restaurant workers needing
union representation because they do not make much money and rarely interest
unions. This is what's driving calls for unionization IMHO.

And I agree with manfredo, I started in the industry in 90s, and crunch was
already there. If anything, the situation improved in mid 00s, with CA
strengthening exempt employees classification and later 00s with ea_spouse
lawsuit. E.g. mandatory crunches are gone, it used to be that people were
forced to stay late and come in on weekends even if they had nothing to do but
good luck pulling this now. Nowadays people mostly crunch either because their
bonus comes out of the game's sales (and/or metacritic score, like in EA) or
because they are paid OT.

~~~
einpoklum
> So, of course, any union would love to represent game developers for a share
> of their income

You're talking about the large, collaborationist unions we know in the US -
e.g. those in the AFL-CIO - where "the union" is an external entity to "the
unionizing workers"; and often with the bureaucratic motivations you describe.
I specifically mentioned that's not the kind of unionization I advise.

Also, payment is just one of many issues in a workplace. The basic need for a
union is that the company's owners have the mechanisms for thinking,
discussing, deciding acting collectively and concertedly, but its employees do
not. That's what a union should be.

On that basis, employees may want to tackle issues like:

* Treatment by managers/management * Workplace culture * Physical working conditions * Workforce size vs. "squeezing" of existing employees * Advancement opportunities within the company/organization * Professional standards

and so on.

Finally, remember that a gaming development house has a lot of employees other
than developers per se: QA, art, production, administrative etc.

> Nowadays people mostly crunch ... or because they are paid OT.

If people make a good salary, they don't work overtime because they don't need
to. There must be some kind of psychological pressure in that direction.
Overwork should be avoided.

\- who have joint interests and may wish to discuss things, take decisions,
and act collect

~~~
pandaman
I am not discussing whatever reasons you envisioned for unionization of our
industry from the outside. I am just noting where the unionization effort is
actually coming from. Pardon my cynicism, but I don't believe the big union
care about anything other than payment, which drives their fees. Otherwise, as
I said, they would had been pushing in retail with, at least, same effort as
they do in the games industry.

>If people make a good salary, they don't work overtime because they don't
need to.

Sure, they don't need to but, nevertheless, they like their fat bonuses.

------
lbotos
Here is a question:

Why don't we have more smaller unions in America, but instead these GIANT mega
unions?

I get collective bargaining is better with more numbers, but it feels like
there is no way to have a "new" union exist?

~~~
baybal2
Bigger union == bigger bargaining power

Other countries have much less liquid labour markets, or have bargaining
powers of unions backed by governments, so they don't have to grow so much to
make a difference.

~~~
dantheman
Bigger Union == More Corruption

How does this bigger union give them any more bargaining power against glitch?

------
gadders
Interesting development. Glitch used to be Fog Creek, where Joel Spolsky
talked of treating developers well (latest hardware, private offices etc) and
paying them well. I wonder if the culture has changed and that's why the
developers felt the need to create a union.

[[https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2006/09/07/a-field-guide-
to-d...](https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2006/09/07/a-field-guide-to-
developers-2/)]

~~~
hinkley
Joel talking about the great care they took to build their offices (in a way
that I felt was a huge mistake) was sort of the beginning of me realizing that
he doesn't get everything right.

There's also an uncanny valley effect, where ignoring a problem entirely means
that your employees may have needs they aren't aware of, and as soon as you
shine a light on it, their job satisfaction is actually lower until you get it
right.

I think a couple of my bosses understood this intuitively and would invite us
to participate in developing solutions. We are much more patient with
ourselves than with others.

~~~
Apocryphon
What's wrong with how they built their offices, in your opinion?

~~~
hinkley
There's a lot of crappy office politics that circles around access to
daylight. You invariably have a mismatch between Valuable Employees and
Valuable deskspace, jockying for position becomes a distraction and having
multiple grades of desk just kind of beats the newer employees about the head
and shoulders with how little they matter.

It is, in a word, fractious.

The best solution I've seen for this is to keep most of the windows in public
spaces. If I go for water or to the bathroom, I should get daylight. Impromptu
meeting spaces and lunch spots: daylight.

The thing is, developers say they want daylight at their desk, and then they
realize that they can't actually work in natural light (this has gotten better
in just the last few years, but I've been watching this happen for 20), and so
the people who 'own' the windows end up closing the blinds to work in peace.

The worse this ever got, we had the top floor of a building and so many blinds
were closed all day that we might as well have rented space in the basement
for half the price/ft²

So now if I am to get any daylight it is at the sole discretion of someone
already on an ego trip? No thank you.

Move the desks so that people can _see_ daylight but aren't _in_ daylight. All
the windows stay open, your AC bills are a little lower, and the steepness of
the pecking order is not quite so brazen.

~~~
hinkley
I'm still trying to locate the iteration that bugged me, but from what I can
see of their new-new-new offices, they seem to be more in keeping with the
style I talk about above:

[https://medium.com/make-better-software/beyond-open-
offices-...](https://medium.com/make-better-software/beyond-open-offices-the-
new-fog-creek-headquarters-bc2f70d7c7dc)

... except that there is so little workspace that I had to stare at the
picture for about fifteen seconds to figure out if they did, in fact, have any
employees at all.

------
ridv
I hope the CWA treats them better than they treat the SUNY grad students they
represent.

All State University of New York graduate students are also represented by
CWA. [1] Out of the lowly salary I earned as a grad student, I had to pay dues
to them throughout the entire five years I spent in grad school. I never felt
like they particularly cared about us or got to see a return on this
investment.

They made a show of coming by the campus once in a while, especially when
elections were happening, but other than that I can't recall a single time
where I felt it was beneficial to be part of the CWA.

[1] [https://cwa1104.com/apprenticeship-
program](https://cwa1104.com/apprenticeship-program)

~~~
nwmcsween
This is the thing with unions they don't care about one persons issues at a
workplace but general issues like pay when compared to other companies in the
same field. If the company previously had toxic people in high places the
people will just adjust to follow union rules while still being toxic.

------
baybal2
I've been hearing for a long time that there were attempts at making a union
at Microsoft back in nineties.

Anybody privy to the info how it fared?

------
whoisjuan
Ignorant question. But how do union dues work? Is it a percentage of your
paycheck or a fixes cost?

Also I assume there’s a formation/founding cost. How does that work?

~~~
kyoob
It's usually a percentage of workers' paychecks, between 1-2% is pretty
standard.

Founding, organizing, and legal stuff for newly forming unions can be handled
by the larger organization (e.g. CWA) using pooled dues from existing unions
within that organization.

~~~
sevenf0ur
Losing that much per paycheck with nothing guaranteed in return would chaff me
after awhile. I hope it works out for them.

~~~
johnpowell
I was a union HVAC guy for a few years. And one very nice thing was that there
were union shops and they went through the union to find employees. So if work
dried up at one place the union would take care of getting my unemployment
going and then when work came up they would call and say that I was needed
elsewhere.

This probably wouldn't translate well to software. But it works great if you
are installing ducts. Same goes for plumbers and electricians. My sisters
first husband was a union electrician. That is why I looked into getting a
union gig. I hate job hunting.

In the years I did it I worked for five different companies. I didn't have to
run around dropping off resumes and doing practice tests. I just got a call
from the union and was told where to go to work. And I made significantly more
than my non-union counterparts. Easily more than the dues I had to pay.

~~~
fiter
Is this one of the angles that unions use to sell themselves to companies?
They can help by providing a well of valuable resources to draw on in an as-
needed basis. When both hiring and firing would be an easier proposition, I
could see more activity occurring as a result. These people would have
experience at different companies and could provide their knowledge like many
say is the benefit of people rotating jobs a lot in the SF Bay Area.

~~~
dragonwriter
> Is this one of the angles that unions use to sell themselves to companies?

Unions don't sell themselves to companies in the first place.

~~~
fiter
Why not? I would presume that would help with regard to union busting, scabs,
outsourcing, etc.

~~~
dragonwriter
> Why not?

The same reason your criminal defense attorney doesn't sell themselves to the
public prosecutor's office.

~~~
fiter
Are you implying that public prosecutors have the option to not interact with
criminal defense attorneys, because companies certainly have the option to
hire employees that do not work for unions.

~~~
dragonwriter
> Are you implying that public prosecutors have the option to not interact
> with criminal defense attorneys,

No, I'm implying that working for an actor’s counterparty compromises your
ability to represent that actor in adversarial interactions with the same
counterparty, which is a core function of unions with respect to employers as
it is with defense attorneys with respect to prosecutors.

> companies certainly have the option to hire employees that do not work for
> unions.

Not in the US; even where union shops are prohibited by state right-to-work
laws, adverse employment decisions on the basis of union membership or union-
related activity by an employer are prohibited by the National Labor Relations
Act. That is, in some cases, employers are allowed to hire employees who
aren't members of a union, but they aren't legally permitted to hire employees
_because_ (even in part) they aren't members of unions.

~~~
fiter
You're even more compromised if you are removed.

In the US, do you think companies have not moved manufacturing from union
plants to non-union plants? Do you think they have not moved manufacturing out
of US plants? Do you think this does not have to do with union membership?

I believe the adversarial view of unions and employers results in inefficiency
and waste. I was suggesting an alternative view of unions and employers, but I
believe I now understand you: you think this is impossible.

~~~
dragonwriter
> You're even more compromised if you are removed.

Unions (or their leadership) perceived as serving management _are_ removed,
invariably and swiftly, by their constituents, whether through decertification
or leadership elections.

~~~
fiter
I cannot tell if you are intentionally misreading my statement. If you are
not, what I meant is that the union would be removed.

~~~
dragonwriter
That's what I am saying, too. I'm just saying that being beholden to
management is a more certain way for them to be removed than being
adversarial.

------
ryanmarsh
Do unions (specifically this union) promote and standardize levels of
craftsmanship or is that still an unsolved problem?

I kinda wish proper guilds would become a thing in tech. I feel they could
solve both the craftsmanship and workers rights problems but oh well...

------
quest88
I wonder why they need a union. Is something currently not working in their
favor?

~~~
throwaway10018
Throwaway account because duh. Note that I am not a current Glitch employee,
but am well-connected to Glitch née Fog Creek.

Management was basically incredibly incompetent, for a long time, and were so
unfair to employees at the company that they felt this was the only option.
There is a Tweet stream a couple months ago from someone who left the company
who highlighted the amazing degree to which they were unfairly reviewed and
unfairly criticized, alongside how much work product they were expected to
produce (which was unreasonable). I have enough corroboration to say that the
tweet stream as written is fairly unbiased, and that their experience was
common. My understanding is the employees felt backed into a corner.

I think unions can be very, very valuable, but I think needing one at a small
company that took a series A round quite recently speaks more to management
failure than anything else. I'm happy that they unionized, because it sounds
like they needed to, but I am so fucking disappointed that it was necessary.

~~~
quest88
Thanks for the report, exactly what I was looking for!

This is something I wish had been in the article. Even something vague, like
"Employees reported they were unhappy with management and the performance
evaluation system. The union with CWA will work with management to blah blah
blah".

Agree that it sounds like a management failure.

Thanks!

~~~
mamoswined
[https://glitch.com/glimmer/post/the-year-in-
glitches/](https://glitch.com/glimmer/post/the-year-in-glitches/) > But as we
rapidly grew our team, we failed to commensurately grow the processes and
infrastructure necessary to support everyone properly. The result has been a
lot of needless stress and tension and frustration. On its own, this is a
significant problem, but when we’ve talked a lot about wanting to build a
company that does these things better, a failure here is twice as painful for
the people on our team who are affected. As the person who most often talks
publicly about the positive ambitions we have here at Glitch, I’m also the
person ultimately responsible for the times we haven’t delivered on those
promises.

------
pmoriarty
The recent flowering of union membership in the tech industry really warms my
heart and makes me hope that this is the start of a pro-union resurgence
nation-wide that reverses the conservative anti-union backlash that has
dominated the US for decades.

Unfortunately, conservatives have been mostly successful in gaining control of
the courts, so expect union-busting measures to be rubber-stamped by them.

There is likely to be much conflict between labor and owners.

~~~
chrisco255
My concern as a libertarian is that unionizing tech will lead to
calcification, decline of agility and innovation, and diversity of business
structure. There's no question that the U.S. has been more innovative in tech
than other countries over the past few decades. That's thanks to an
entrepreneurial culture that encourages risk taking. Unions attempt to limit
risk to employees. In doing so, they limit the agility of organizations. That
is a significant trade-off worth pondering and debating.

~~~
vangelis
Funny, I feel the same way about MBA mills and slash and burn private equity
firms.

~~~
SpicyLemonZest
That's a pretty universal viewpoint. Even the most business-friendly people
would be skeptical of someone saying that private equity "warms their heart",
or talking about how we need to stop MBA-busting and reverse the "liberal
anti-MBA backlash".

------
pje
Congratulations!

------
godzillabrennus
Six months from now we will likely be wishing we had union jobs.

------
ColonelSanders
For a union, it's concerning when some things are more tailored to the whims,
edge cases, personal niches of the most vocal, rather than shielding the
common denominator of the cooperative from management's business decisions.

I'd like to explain what I like, and what I'm concerned about:

> Employees at major American tech and game companies have grown increasingly
> active and outspoken about workplace issues,

Very union related, that's what unions are for.

> including sexual assault and harassment,

Already unlawful. They are addressable to the NLRB and civil legal system.

> ageism,

That's vague, but there are protections against this

> unequal pay,

Not sure what this means, pay between workers of the same level of seniority
performing the same responsibilities? Overtime? A lot of things factor into
equal pay. A junior employee isn't going to make as much as a 20 year
employee.

> “crunch time” (i.e. long-term overtime and overworking),

Looks right. These are covered in union contracts

> poor treatment of contract workers,

If they have union membership? Wouldn't it be about defining a standard of
what a salaried employee is?

> inadequate racial and gender diversity,

What does that mean? Inadequate to whom? What makes those characteristics
worthy but other characteristics not?

I find it very hurtful and insensitive to people who struggle, suffer,
overcome odds, from difficult upbringings, but not member of some class or
facet. Why reduce the struggle, character, and worth of someone down to those
things? Where does this come from?

What does this say to your colleagues who don't have these traits? Do they
have life easy? Have you walked a mile in their shoes?

> and lack of transparency and inclusion in decision-making around
> controversial contracts with the U.S. Department of Defense and Immigration
> and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

That is not the kind of decision I think employees should be deciding. Though
if a larger organization wanted to allow someone to move somewhere else in the
org, that seems fair

~~~
Apocryphon
> Already unlawful. They are addressable to the NLRB and civil legal system.

> That's vague, but there are protections against this

> Wouldn't it be about defining a standard of what a salaried employee is?

Unions can be an additional safety net/layer of protection/tool against these
discriminations and abuses. In a time when HR departments are often derided as
existing to protect the company instead of workers, and it often takes either
media exposure or self-publishing (as with Susan Fowler) for discrimination
against protected classes to be acknowledged, a union could be a place for the
discriminated to turn to where HR reps fail. At least then you don't have to
hire your own lawyer.

> unequal pay,

This might be a gender gap criticism meaning unequal pay between workers with
the same title but of different genders.

> That is not the kind of decision I think employees should be deciding.

Why? The stigma of culture war and political battles aside, why shouldn't
employees take part in making business decisions in general?

~~~
ColonelSanders
> Why? The stigma of culture war and political battles aside, why shouldn't
> employees take part in making business decisions in general?

Basically, no.

That's what's management is for.

They can become manager's if they want to impact that, though.

Are they qualified to understand what they're talking about? If they have a
disagreement, is there a reason why they wouldn't raise it via proper channels
rather than effect other things that are vital to the organization?

Are they big picture thinkers that have taken the time to digest the system,
uninfluenced by social pressures? Some people don't care about their
organization's goals, their coworkers, and decide to act out for their own
vanity, at everyone else's expense.

And that is one reason why management exists. To answer your question, while
they may be wrong, there's a purpose in shielding decision making away from
those who lose sight of the org's goals.

The point of the union is when management makes decisions, which can be unfair
and uncaring to the worker, that their rights, safety, and livelihood also are
represented with fairness. The alternative I offered to you was, in an
organization large enough, they could request to move to a different project.

~~~
fogetti
Saying that they can become managers is like saying they can become the
president of the U.S. The point is that you cannot become a manager at all if
you disagree with management in the first place (and that doesn't mean you
don't have the chops). Also the number of management seats are limited. The
number of union seats has no upper limit.

~~~
ColonelSanders
> Saying that they can become managers is like saying they can become the
> president of the U.S.

I don't think that analogy is proportional, since that'd make a manager at a
furniture store on par with a head of state. But I get it, there isn't
unlimited management roles. Because if there were, everyone would be on their
own.

If you want to influence and shape business decisions - you want to be a
manager.

How do you become one? By showing competence as an employee and joining a
lower management position. Successes are how they climb the ladder. Yes, they
definitely can innovate, and they can also play it safe.

People in upper management also hop between companies and have similar
positions.

~~~
fogetti
I think you don't understand what I said. You can't climb the ladder if you
disagree with management. And that's not because you have no talent and
management has the talent. There is no such correlation.

Is this clear now or do you need more help to understand?

