“We have heard a range of views from staff, including concerns from those who have felt pressured to support union efforts and those who are confused by the unionization process,” the foundation added in a frequently asked questions section. “We have also seen a misunderstanding around what the union can do for global staff and Wikimedia movement communities.”
LMAO, fuck off with this bullshit. I noticed WMF spokepersons love this vocabulary, everyone except for them is “confused”, if you disagree with WMF’s actions it’s just a “misunderstanding”.
Oh that is just standard copy straight out of the union-busting playbook. In law you would call it “preserving the objection” which basically means they know it’s BS but at least if they don’t back down from it they can burn more time and money because now the process has to accommodate for all this “pressure” “confusion” and “misunderstanding” that po’ 'ol liddle Wikimedia just can’t make sense of.
The egregious part of this is they have loads of money in their reserves, ask for donations every year in a misleading way like they’re on the brink of bankruptcy. And now they won’t even recognise their workers union.
This is exactly why I quit donating the past couple years. Bunch of clowns running that organization.
Yes. I wish they would just guarantee hosting of wiki projects for 30+ years… But no they always ask money for their other projects…
I heard the final goal is to amass enough money to live fully off the capital gains.
While the “volunteers” making it happen for real get nothing…
That’s not the problem, 'tho. Wikipedia is volunteer-written and needs money to pay for the SW development and the servers.
The issue is that they are not upfront about their strategy and that they are resisting unionization by the workers who develop the software.
A leading wikimedia software developer (@brooke@bikeshed.vibber.net) lost her job a while ago, most likely due to her involvement in the unionisation effort.
I’m still glad we have Wikipedia as a foundation instead of a publicly traded corporation. The fact that there are way worse offenders doesn’t exempt them from scrutiny, though.
true
Every corporation proving like always that it hates its workers and only exists for executive profit.
Wikimedia is a not for profit foundation. Not a corporation.
Oh dude go look up it’s business filings. Foundations are corporations
Not-for-profit is still a corporation, and the distinction simply means that they need to reinvest profits back into the company. A for-profit company can sit on massive amounts of stockpiled wealth, while a not-for-profit needs to find ways to reinvest that back into the company. To be clear, they can still sit on a lot of money. But all of their money needs to be earmarked for something, instead of just being a rainy day fund.
Open Ai at one point was one too…
Being a non-profit doesn’t make the org structure immune to greed.
I mean, Trump and kids had a non-profit.
This does not imply it is workers’ owned or that it does not have ridiculously high payed managers.
Well if not because greed or shitty people in management, why oppose unionization?
Greed or shitty people in management doesn’t make something a corporation. There’s plenty of anti-union efforts from the non-profit sector.
See: Susan G Coleman
Komen
Has there ever been a corporation or company that welcomed unions? Serious question
Yes, but they don’t make news or to the top of lemmy for very long ever. Paizo is an example of a relatively established company that welcomed unionization. I’m sure there are others.
Yes but they are small.
My last company I worked for in Sweden even one of the bosses was in the Union, the whole company had a very friendly approach to the wokersunion even if a minor dispute occured here and there they were oftenly switly solved.
The Union is strong in my current company and the leadership does not see it as a threat.
Work morale is very high here and the company is extremely dynanic and solution oriented from top to bottom, and we are about 50 people. Also Scandinavia.
Scandinavia, going from viking pillaging to being the worlds example on how to be social and nice… You guys are fucking amazing
Yes, a company I worked for did. They were a mission-driven org that was established to reduce poverty in historically disadvantaged groups. Along the way they, like many mission-driven orgs, became so poorly managed that their employees got pissed at them and decided to form a union. The org voluntarily recognized them, and now gets kicked in the face every 3-4 years during negotiations because the org is still poorly run.
I suppose co-ops?
Traditional company? Maaaybe some mom and pop no one has heard of. I wouldn’t count on it.
Closest we’ve got is companies not actively union busting
Cops
Wikimedia Foundation announced it would not voluntarily recognize the union
Surprise, surprise. Of course not, unless there is explicit law requiring them to do so.
I mean, what did they expect? Normal case is that they have to fight and win first.
Well you have to wonder if at a support so high Wikimedia couldn’t skip the “fight and win” stage to earn some goodwill which might get them more favourable terms. In open confrontation, everyone loses. Takes energy away from everything else and generates a ton of bad publicity.
the law is that they have to recognize if a majority of workers vote to unionize in an National Labor Relations Board secret ballot, so in any case this is a formality
Asking for recognition is considered a courtesy. It’s a symbolic act to establish that management will be the ones standing in the way of the workers, not your union
This doesn’t really seem fitting to this sub, but I guess this is tech related news because they have multiple websites?
It’s a tech company not recognizing a union of tech workers, a dynamic which will impact the development of several pieces of critical software. I would say it belongs.
“Get yer politics outta my c/technology” – but everything related to technology is political… this post is a great example.
In modern society, it’s getting harder to separate politics from a lot of things, and the people who whine about it just look like cartoon ostriches with their heads in the sand.
