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

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.

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.

Control. Unions get a seat at the negotiating table. With a union things have to be done by mutual agreement, and the workers have recourse if things go wrong. Being a manager is much more powerful without a unionized workforce, finance notwithstanding.

They often personally take unionization as an insult or betrayal, so they try and get revenge using the one thing available to them at that stage. With overwhelming support, it’s only a matter of time before the vote passes and they are forced to recognize the union.

This is not uncommon. Managers want to rule over people without restraint even in nonprofits.

See: Susan G Coleman

Komen

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…

Oh dude go look up it’s business filings. Foundations are corporations

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.

Has there ever been a corporation or company that welcomed unions? Serious question

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

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.

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

The pillaging was actually only a very small part. The vast majority of going Viking was pure trade or, when conquest was on the table, colonization. That’s how you get the Rus Vikings. When a bunch of pagans see unguarded temples, though, all filled with gold, and their gods would be pleased by the offering of such things? Yeah, they’re going to pillage. It was often far easier to just trade with the people already there, and so they did. The idea that they’re all there to make blood-eagles and die in glorious battle is ridiculous. They had a complex civilisation that set up many of the mediaeval trade routes throughout Europe and into the middle east.

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.

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.

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 disagree I think the fact the boss of wikimedia is very well paid and that he is benefiting at the end of day from free labor.

They could reward/pay the most important contributors and they don’t. Yes it’s voluntary but it’s also a comparatively very “” small “” group of people that write a big chunk of wikipedia.

I absolutely can’t stand that the boss of such utility service as wikipedia thinks first about his salary rather than rewarding their contributors.

Also you say this is not a problem but I’m sure the Union would have pointed out the same thing I just did.

That’s not the problem, 'tho. Wikipedia is volunteer-written and needs money to pay for the SW development and the servers.

Also you are missing an important point if you just say “hey they are volunteers, they choose to work for free”. It’s not like that because as I said it’s a few contributors that do the bast majority of article edits.

I’m wasting my time if you think that wikimedia has one problem and that’s it. Multiple problems that would need to be adressed by a Union.

There are multiple studies showing that paying volunteers can backfire in many ways. It could turn an hobby into a chore, attract the wrong kind of contributors, or sour those that do not have enough time to qualify for money. Plus, any metric you were to use to assign rewards would quickly be gamed by the wrong kind of people.

We can discuss about how much the administrators are paid, but please, for the love of god, let’s not pay editors.

They’ll just move the goal posts again.

This is exactly why I quit donating the past couple years. Bunch of clowns running that organization.

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

“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.

Had to double-check that I wasn’t having a stroke because of this headline

Could someone eli5 why they are unionizing all of a sudden?

I get that unions are good for the workers and that they give better wotker representation. But a ship must be led by captain, not being actively undermined by its best mate so this gives me an impression that management did something BS that the workers/ volunteers disagree with all of a sudden.