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Comment by losteverything | Hacker News Reader

And this..

The websites' archives have also been completely wiped, leaving no trace of past articles.

There should be clear outrage!

This is retaliation for the staff unionizing. The wiping is a petty final insult to try to deprive them of even their body of work.

Maybe. Or perhaps the potential unionization was the straw that broke the camel's back at an operation that was already hemorrhaging money.

I can see someone running some projections in a spreadsheet of how much unionization would cost the company, which was already losing money, and someone else deciding it's just not worth it anymore.

If unions can see the budget sheet and negotiate accordingly, they wouldn't kill the company. They want to keep their jobs, this is nonsense.

Why should unions get to see the budget and negotiate? It's not their business and they aren't entitled to that information. If they don't think their salary is fair, they can always seek work elsewhere.

Congrats, you just added one more nail in the coffin of capitalism.

No worries. Socialism's coffin was nailed shut and buried long ago.

Wait, you think people shouldn't negotiate their salary?

They are welcome to negotiate salary. They aren't welcome to private information that isn't theirs such as the company budget.

"My precious!"

You seem terrified of the idea that they might choose to negotiate as a group for some reason, even when they go about that in a perfectly voluntary fashion.

I don't see the problem.

If companies get bigger, they get more specialized people.

When you got 3 people, the dev is probably also the admin and the tech support, if you got 30 you get multiple people for each job.

It's only logical to get some specialized people (the leaders of the union) to negotiate salaries, while the rest of the the workforce does their work.

Sure, if you see the companies success independent from the employees success this doesn't make much sense, but if you see the both entangled, why shouldn't this be okay?

Why not? They do most of the work,maybe they should have the opportunity to chime in on how the business is run. Maybe they might actually be able to offer positive suggestions. So yes, it is to some extent their business.

Pretty unlikely that they were completely bankrupt to the point where they couldn't afford the hosting bill for even another day.

Nevermind that leaving the archives up while not paying writers would generate ad revenue at very low cost in the short term. Instead now they have to refund advertisers with incomplete campaigns.

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