Thread regarding Dell Inc. layoffs

@az+1k2f1586t - unions are generally terrible for most employees if you value staying employed. After the US/Canada based unions refused to make changes in my last company, we just managed people out through normal PIP processes. Eventually we shut down a division in one of the sticky areas and laid everyone off. That’s what often happens when unions move in. The union bosses still make the money, and the workers at the bottom still lose their jobs.

It was the same in the EU. I worked closely with unions in Germany, France, and Spain. Eventually they had to give in or we would have pulled out of those countries entirely. It took about 14 months of pressure and negotiating, plus shutting down the US based division as a threat, but eventually "the man" won out.

At the end of the day, a US based corporation holds all the cards. The only real leverage workers have is to take their labor, knowledge, and skills to an employer who treats people with respect instead of like cattle.

@as where I live its been this way for 30 years.

Its past time to unionize. These same clowns talking about buggywhips and "union....stagnant" have been doing so on every union post on this site for, for the past year. They are most likely HR. Maybe JC and MD...........

But here's the truth: In 2024, approximately 603,000 union members were employed in Texas, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. It can be done.

And a trash man in Boston can now making two to three times your salary at Dell. How about them facts.........

We've been fucct for years. Lets stand and unite: https://www.joinifpte.org/tech

@ay those all sound like good things for employees and bad for the management caste which is good.

@ad+1k2f1586t - from my experience on the executive side at another tech services company, dealing with unions wasn’t rosy. You don’t get the top performers. You end up stuck with low-performing employees you can’t remove because of union protections, and you also lose the ability to implement necessary changes to grow or even keep the business afloat.

Unions drove up our labor costs through higher wages, forcing us to raise prices. That cut sales, which meant we had to scale back hiring. We couldn’t afford new engineers at the inflated wage rates, and with growth stalled, there was no reason to hire them anyway.

The reality is there was no benefit for most workers. Earlier in my career, working in support, I was more open to unions. Now I see them as a drain on the business and not a sustainable model.

As for Dell, they have treated employees as little more than numbers since at least the 90s. That culture is not changing, and bringing in unions would only speed up the company’s decline.

Where I live there is only one (1) guy on the truck. He drives, picks up trash and recycle cans using a semi-automated arm.

Automation/AI is already reducing the number of guys needed on a trash truck.

If you don’t use the correct trash cans the pass by your house.

@ak
"Unions as useful as buggy whips"

"Immediate 16% pay increase
43% increase over the next 5 years
Zero premium health care
At five years a driver can be earning $140k per year."

Doesn't sound very useless to me. They're still not settled so the union must think the company can do more.

Unions as useful as buggy whips

@a4 Yo dipsh-t. JC gets paid 250x what you make specifically to keep your pay down.

His stock pays him $250k a quarter just to own it.

Employees don't pick their boss. Union members vote on their reps. A union's job is to allow workers to collectively bargain with their employer that has board appointed leadership with one of their goals being minimizing pay.

If the complaint is that the union is not reflecting the desires of its members then it's acting like the business, but you've got more chance of changing your union rep than your COO.

But that's a tired, regressive line of rhetoric from union busting shills or gullible goons that just like being subjugated because someone told them being worked to death is a badge of honor.

With all the increases in productivity due to automation, they could be a leader and do the right thing and switch to 4x8s to maintain head count like a lot actually leading nations are. But the goal is and always will be squeezing customers and employees for every last dollar they can.

You can't rugged individual your way out of it. Even if you are THE best, one day you won't be, or you'll be too expensive, or just outright replaced entirely by AI even if it can't actually do the job.

We have no incentive to automate or improve. Every thing we improve increases the chances someone else will be laid off and their duties handed off without any increase of pay.

It's not just Dell. It's automatically every publicly traded corp and most privately owned ones.

Given all major media is owned by billionaires and push the same anti union rhetoric, it shouldn't be hard for yall to put together it's specifically because they don't want us working together to increase our bargaining power.

Ah yes, the union...stagnant, scheduled pay, required dues and fees, someone who gets paid 5x what you do to make decisions about your career and the protection of the lcd worker while a small group actually does the work. Plus it will never happen in Texas with right to work laws etc.

If a union can that with trash collection, imagine what a union can do with BILLIONS in AI.