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Comment by hayst4ck | Hacker News Reader

This is why we need tech unions. We should be able to take an ethical stance without getting fired.

Unions are to defend employees rights, not to defend ethical stance on random topic. For political issues there exists normal democratic process, where you can take your stance to the streets, boycott, vote, be elected etc. You must understand that stable and successful democracy is a sophisticated mix of checks and balances, including what powers are given to unions and worker councils. Give them too much power beyond the original scope and the consequences can be disastrous for society. Imagine pro- and anti-immigrant activists halting operations of a big business and you can do nothing to them, because taking one side will result in the protest from another side. What value does that bring? Don’t they have other venues?

I love the built in assumption there that generating value is more important than a stable polity.

Generation of value comes after people have settled themselves into a stable, working equilibrium. Prioritizing value creation above that is just adding a bias meant as a mechanism of control wirlded by those who have already "escaped" that control.

Look back at 1940's for indications of the attitudes when "Unions" were considered too powerful. Shipyard workers were striking for better working conditions at a time when much of the country were worried about the existential threat represented by the Axis Powers.

That war effort generated negative value by any sane definition. Yet the stability of the populace was so prioritized that we fairly effectively neutered the network effects of collective bargaining as a result. To a degree that any European union member would find befuddling. (And never had a concommitant restoration force after the existential pressure was dealt with. Funny how that ratchet works).

The 70's with the ATC strikes and the Administrative response were another example.

Stable and consenting polity > value creation. As evidenced by the fact we will destroy value to achieve a new working equilibrium to build from.

They weren't fired for taking a stance, they were fired for how they took the stance.

This needs to be emphasized more. It's not that they took a stance, it's definitely how they did it that warranted being fired over it.

What's a good way to take a stance?

In a quiet email to the CEO which will promptly get deleted, and will never hit any big media or HN's frontpage is what a lot of commenters here would argue for.

Being "polite" is nice if the person you're talking to is also nice. If the guy wanted to bring attention to the fact he did it very well.

I mean, this may be a good way to take a stance, for someone who deeply cares about a particular issue. But it's also definitely going to result in being fired, from any company. The two things aren't incompatible. Lots of good ways to take a stance have deprived lots of people taking those stances of far more than just their jobs, like their freedom, temporarily in many cases (like Dr. King) and permanently in many others (like Navalny). Making a stand is often laudable, but also often personally consequential.

I'm with you on this.

What US-backed Israel is doing is utterly abhorrent, and protesting makes sense; I can understand why an employee wouldn't want to aid them in any way - but with oil and gas off the coast of Northern Gaza, the US about to build a port for it, and the US, UK, France and Germany govs supporting Israel to the hilt, real sanctions are not going to happen. Hell, the west is still supplying Israel with weapons, and Israel hasn't even been kicked out of EuroVision!

But... one person disrupting a meeting will have limited effect, and is guaranteed to result in a firing.

IMO a better plan would have been a petition, signed by as many employees as possible. Failing that, looking at strike action through union(s) could be a good idea. A single employee has very little power - but if a significant number banded together, their power is much greater.

The manager's preferred way is with them in private so they can keep their thumb on the network effects and optics, or just bury it altogether.

Any means of generating substantive resonance within an org is jealously reserved by those at the top of an organizational hierarchy.

It's a Catch-22, but part of Activist 101. If you aren't drawing ire, getting retaliated against, or getting surveilled by someone, odds are you aren't being a terribly effective Activist.

Others have commented on different avenues and the consequence of it. I will introduce you to another way. Organizing. If you dislike a stance your company or community has, organize others that feel this way and plead your case to the company or community. Unions do this. Student Orgs do this. Political dissent does this. It's probably the most effective method for getting the unheard, heard.

The guy should have started a movement, or a group, using the points from the guest speaker on why they shouldn't have had that speaker, etc etc... This organization of people holds more weight than an individual. This is the way.

Almost every state now has at-will employment laws. The company doesn't need a reason to get rid of you.

As with any real way to take a stance. You will get fired/jailed.

Which is why we all continue to support our corporate overlords.

The go to excuse of every apologist ever, which will be applied to anyone that takes a stand in an effective manner.

The being fired is an implicit sign that the people trying to control the collective narrative of the organization feel their grip slipping.

> The go to excuse of every apologist ever, which will be applied to anyone that takes a stand in an effective manner.

Nothing about screaming in the middle of a meeting is effective. It's just a selfish tantrum. It doesn't change anyone's mind.

> The being fired is an implicit sign that the people trying to control the collective narrative of the organization feel their grip slipping.

Fantasy thinking, pure and simple. Being fired is a sure sign that the employee did something dramatic and pointless, and suffered the consequences.

But how he did it is the important part.

I mean Aaron Bushnell could have written angry letters to his representatives, but he didn't. He lit himself on fire outside of the Israel embassy after declaring he would not take part in genocide and screamed "free Palestine" with his dying breath. And because of that, today I am writing about what he had to say.

If you think the correct response to genocide is politically discussing it with management then I don't think you really understand the gravity of the situation.

I suppose he knew he was out either way, at least this way it's harder to cover up.

Google is known to retaliate in backhanded ways when people take a stance in a way that is allowed, such as Ms Koren in 2022

> Agree to move to São Paulo, Brazil, within 17 business days or lose your job.

https://web.archive.org/web/20240226163002/https://www.nytim...

Internally Google has a super pro-isreal constituency (i.e. jewglers), and seems to viciously retaliate against alternate viewpoints.

https://www.globes.co.il/news/article.aspx?did=1001460684#ut...

tech unions are unlikely to support random employees disrupting company events like this. they would instead provide an internal system for routing complaints in a consistent way.

Honest question: Is this a common function of a union? For instance, I don't seem to recall hearing much about auto-workers taking ethical stances and being protected from termination by their union. But it's also not something I've paid much attention to, so maybe this is indeed something unions do. I'm genuinely curious.

The UAW recently called for a ceasefire:

https://uaw.org/uaw-statement-israel-palestine/

That is not the same as what I asked about.

Historically yes it is a massive part of what unions have done and continue to do. For example there have been many examples of dock workers refusing to transport South African or Israeli goods. That this is done as a collective action organised by union is what protects workers from individual retaliation.

Ok, that makes sense, but are there examples of individual action, where the union then protects that individual from the consequences of that action?

Their stance wasn't the issue. Their actions were.

I don't think such behavior would be tolerated most anywhere.

Of course, one person's ethical stance is another person's inane diversion. Imagine someone started disrupting a PR event by calling Biden a pedophile or whatever the outrage du jour is. Do they deserve protections?

Sometimes people use the phrase "adults in the room" and I think anyone who is not capable of separating a specific issue from a specific policy or not adults. Clearly, as you said, it would be chaos if exceptions for not following rules were given at the discretion of how popular a political issue is.

If the person thinks the cause is worthy of being fired of that's completely their choice, but that doesn't mean the rule itself is immoral.

I am pro unions.

Your argument gives me pause. Maybe it's not that good of an idea.

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