I am a software engineer who used to work in a "unionized" workplace. It was quite nice, and the union would negotiate increases in time off and fight against policy changes that were worse for us. The union leaders were elected every few years (very important IMO) and the union was only within the (rather large) company; there was no affiliation with a larger union.
Which country were you in at the time? Union laws vary substantially by country so I think this is relevant to understanding different unions and people's experiences with them.
Yeah, I have the choice of about 3 unions where I work, all of which are big unions because there can only be one per industry in Australia. All three have wasted way too much time and members' money on vanity projects that I don't want to join.
It was Germany. I put the union in quotes because the direct translation is Works Council.
I think that some software engineers in Germany are covered by the larger unions like IG Metall and Verdi, but my understanding is mostly for those that work in companies that make physical goods like Mercedes, Siemens, etc.
So all of the comments I've seen so far are (predictably) armchair snark from both sides of the political spectrum. Perhaps the reason for this is that there is a very conspicuous lack of information here. For all we _actually_ know, this could be a fake account posting a fake announcement to a fake twitter.
1. Why did the Fastmail employees decide to form a union? Were the working conditions poor? Was the pay below market rate? Abnormal working hours? Not enough vacation or maternal/paternal leave?
2. Has Fastmail released a statement on this? What is their position?
3. Who comprises the leadership of this union?
4. What is the charter or mission of the union? (What are they seeking to accomplish or remedy?)
5. What percentage of Fastmail workers are members of the union? (Does the union have a target membership percentage?)
6. Is the union seeking to renegotiate the employment contracts of its members at this time? If not, are they expecting to in the future?
7. Will it be possible to work at Fastmail in the future without being a union member, or will union membership be (formally or informally) compulsory?
8. Who are the members of the union? (By job type, I mean. Engineers? HR? Janitorial staff? Managers?)
9. Does the union charge dues and how much?
10. Are there union meetings and if so, how often?
11. What action can a union member take if they disagree with a union decision, or the overall direction the union is taking?
I am going to assume your questions are in good faith.
While I know nothing about this specific campaign, I am a member of the union they purport to be joining and have worked on a half-dozen new organizing campaigns. Local 13000 is a real local, and it would make sense for them to be joining it.
Most of your questions can be answered by reference to labor law and the union's internal "law" (i.e. the CWA constitution, sector and local bylaws), both of which are available online. Here is what we can say at a high level based on those resources (and in a few instances, my personal experience of the union).
#3 - Per CWA guidelines for locals engaged in new organizing, the leadership of the unit will be an organizing committee that represents each work group in the sought bargaining unit. The typical guideline is a committee of at least 20% of the sought unit. The CWA does not go public with new units without at least of 70% of the unit expressing interest in writing ("signing a union card").
#6 - The use of the term "renegotiating" is misleading. Collective bargaining agreements supersede individual employment contracts by definition. Typically, the CWA conducts an election of workers in the unit to choose a bargaining committee, which then bargains with the employer assisted by paid staff and/or lawyers. In any case, the contract must be ratified by a majority vote of the members for CWA to enter into it. Only then would their "employment contracts" be superseded. That said, the overwhelming employment contracts in the united states do not bind the employer in any meaningful way, and are not meaningfully negotiated. Where there are meaningfully bargained contracts, such as in broadcasting or entertainment, union members can and often do allow certain provisions to remain in force, using the union contract to set a floor on conditions. This is very common in Hollywood.
#7 - This depends a great deal on where Fastmail conducts its business in a legal sense, and is a somewhat unsettled area of law with increasing relevance due to remote work. In the United States, unions have a "duty of fair representation" to represent every member of their unit, have basic democratic processes, etc. This is typical in democratic countries. It is also typical for union members to equally share the cost of running the union to ensure that there is no free-riding. In the United States, federal law mandates that unions have a duty of fair representation, but some state laws allow people to avoid paying their share of the costs of that representation. These so-called "right to work laws" were proposed in response specifically to African American workers in the South seeking to form unions that could not be undermined by free-riding (cf. the Memphis Sanitation Strike).
#8 - The union may propose any unit. The employer may challenge that unit. If challenged, the National Labor Relations Board determines whether the workers in the unit represent a "community of interest." This standard evolves constantly as successive administrations appoint members of the National Labor Relations Board.
#9 - This is determined by the executive board of the local, which is elected by members according to procedures in the local bylaws. In some locals, this will be a fixed amount; in others, it will be a fraction of gross income. I pay 1.67% of my overall income in dues and saw a raise substantially greater than that when we ratified our first contract. Some members saw raises as high as 10%.
#10 - See the bylaws for meetings in the local. The unit meetings would generally be organized by the elected bargaining committee, and then by stewards. All locals of the CWA will have a business meeting monthly, but individual units (i.e. groups of workers at a given company) typically meet more often and delegate someone to go to meetings of bodies representing larger groups. Activity in unions is, generally speaking, highly uneven. In my unit, there is some sort of union discussion in our slack daily. Tech worker units are, as a rule, more active than those in other fields.
#11 - See the local bylaws, sector, and international bylaws, which lay out a comprehensive system of elected offices, delegation of democratic authority. The primary recourse is to petition their elected officers/stewards, many of whom will be their immediate peers and have an interest in maintaining good relationships. Failing that, they can support the candidacy of new officers in regular elections. Failing that, they can run themselves. Outside the elective process, all officers are bound by the decisions of collective bodies like the local's executive board (which are recorded in meeting minutes all members have the right to access). Major decisions about union policy go to a vote of delegates to the international convention (there was one last year), many of whom are rank and file members. If any officer (or member) violates the the bylaws, the CWA has procedures (laid out in the links below) that allow members to bring up officers up on charges. Charges are ultimately evaluated by juries with rank and file representation. Finally, under some circumstances there could be appeal through the courts under federal laws like the Labor Management Relations Act and Labor Management Reporting Act.
Thank you for the response. There is lots of interesting info here that the announcement doesn't even hint at.
I'll also note that I had no idea when I wrote this (as most probably do not) that Fastmail is apparently an employee-owned company, which changes the color of this dramatically. I'm still not totally sure I see the point of the union in this case, but it means that some of my questions are essentially not applicable here.
Bron seems like a good CEO. He's come up through the ranks at FM, so hopefully he's fully onboard with the workers. I had an account when they first got off the ground, survived the Opera days, and built their little email empire. I followed Bron and RobN on Twitter and on blogs.
As a Fastmail customer: great! More power to them.
If anything, any negative reaction by Fastmail, the corporation will act as a signal for me to start thinking about moving away. You know a company is morally bankrupt if they fight their employees unionizing. I don't think Fastmail will do that though.
As a Fastmail customer (and software developer who is unfamiliar with how unions would/will work in this space), why would I not already be concerned? My first impression is "man, they must not be treating their employees that well if they decided they needed to bring in a third party to help them negotiate."
However - I'm not well versed in this area and willing to learn - why is this a 'good' sign?
The best time to form a union is when things are going well at a company. It’s easier to use your union to solidify existing benefits than to ask for new ones.
You unionize in the good times so you’re protected in the bad times.
(Not saying that’s what happened here, just saying you cannot really judge what unionization means from the outside)
As for why that’s a good thing in general, that depends on how you feel about unions. If I have the choice between union made goods and non-union made goods, I buy the union made goods. So I’m always happy to see a company unionize.
Unions don't always indicate there is a problem in need of solving. It's just a group of employees agreeing to bargain collectively with their employer, which helps balance out the negotiation power between employees and the employer and creates a stable, well-defined employment relationship.
The decision to unionize isn't about a "third party." It's a decision to negotiate collectively versus individually. Collectively you have more bargaining power, it's a pretty straightforward and obvious calculation.
It is potentially a good sign if Fastmail management voluntarily recognizes the union - that would imply that management and employees are on relatively good terms and the union is not asking for enormous changes.
Even if you love your company, love how you're treated, and don't want anything to change, forming a union still gives you two big advantages. First, it gives employees more influence and voice over the future of the organization, and second it protects the current conditions you love so much and makes it much more difficult for management (which can change at any time) to take them away in the future.
> “We want to establish certainty and codify all of the things that we like about E&E into this new world order,” said reporter Emma Dumain. “E&E News is the most family-friendly newsroom I’ve ever worked in,” she said. “I feel supported by my editors as a working parent and that support helps me be a better journalist.” She wants to make sure everyone has the same support, no matter who their editors are or who owns the company.
> Leah Nylen, who has been involved in four company sales over 15 years, said that each one led to changes in benefits, bosses and sometimes layoffs. The day the Politico sale to Axel Springer closed, management informed workers that because of an oversight their 401K would be frozen for the rest of 2021. “If employees had had a seat at the table, I doubt something as important as our retirement and healthcare savings would have been missed,” Nylen said.
> With union recognition nailed down, Organizing Committee members immediately began informing coworkers about the new rights that brings. A legal protection known as “status quo” requires management to maintain the same wages, hours and working conditions that existed when the union was formed, unless they negotiate an agreement with the union or reach a final contract. “Just a week-and-a-half after going public, we have all of these new protections,” Snyder said.
How's it going two years later? Well, not great honestly, they still haven't agreed on a contract, but Politico is still going strong and I imagine most people there are still happy with their decision to unionize.
Here's an article about voluntary union recognition: https://www.americanprogress.org/article/voluntary-recogniti.... This is not an unbiased source, but you can ignore the framing if you want and just use it as a big collection of links to voluntary union recognition examples.
I think people just come at it from an odd point of view. Would trying to minimize AWS bills seem morally wrong to people? No, it wouldn't. But when you try to lower bills of other suppliers, say labor rather than compute, it is suddenly evil.
Do you have any examples of case law to support this claim you’ve made? As a layman my understand of fiduciary duty is not very good, it is easy to imagine how things might in the long term interest of the business, or might not be, and it seems like it would be extremely difficult to prove either way in court.
Does anybody know what motivated the unionization effort? This is relevant to me as a Fastmail customer, because if the employees aren't being treated well that's a very poor reflection of the company.
Fastmail is, IIRC, employee owned. A lot of works on employee-ownership (coop or otherwise) suggest using union structure as a mechanism for procedurally protecting workers (both for things like negotiation and for due process purpose for adverse action, etc.) preemptively as a check against problems happening in the top-down the employees-as-owners -> top management -> line management -> employees-as-workers chain, rather than in reaction to problems.
I wouldn't read too much into it. Unions are just a counterweight to corporate interests in the best case. The places that union bust out in the open are usually the worst offenders, and Fastmail doesn't seem to be that.
It is not necessary for a company to be especially bad for a union to be desirable. Some workers simply like a fair bargaining arrangement and having more say in their workplace.
I don't have any insider knowledge at Fastmail, but the fact that a labor union could get organized and come into being without any drama from the company probably indicates that the upper levels of the company respect their employees enough to not fight its creation. Seems good, imo
I don’t know anything special about it, but I wouldn’t interpret it necessarily as saying anything negative about Fastmail. For example, lots of perfectly nice companies get bough by giant behemoths. For all we know, Fastmail might have perfectly nice management that understands that future owners, rather than them, are the enemy.
Top-level management doesn't even have to be "the enemy" for a union to be very nice to have—companies of more than like 30 people are gonna have a shitty, abusive middle-manager somewhere and a union gives employees cover to resist their bullshit at far lower personal risk.
"No, I won't be (coming in on Sunday/'just doing this one extra thing before leaving after hours'/breaking company policy and legal requirements for safety or waste disposal or whatever), please see [section of union agreement], if you'd like to continue this discussion I can bring in my rep and, as required by policy laid out in [other section of union agreement], your boss, and we can all have a chat about this" will get a lot of abusive pricks to tuck tail and STFU in a hurry, with low risk of effective retaliation.
Congrats to the team! This might be the reminder I needed to finally subscribe. Gmail’s spam filter has been nonexistent for the past month (300+ clearly spammy email reaching my inbox).
I'm a happy Fastmail customer, but I would not recommend them on the basis of their spam filter. It's competent but makes at least a few mistakes a week. Google's was better for me.
I had the opposite experience. Gmail's filter was useless, letting in tons of spam, and then putting normal emails from family members, also using gmail, and who I have emailed many times in the past, into spam. Fastmail's is drastically better for me.
For me Gmail takes way too much legitimate email and sends it to spam. Fastmail strikes a better balance by sending little ham into the spam box, but letting a little bit of spam into the inbox.
for me both are far better than o365, which even marked legit business mail (o365 invoices :)) from microsoft itsef as spam!
I'm generally content with fastmail, but the webmail would need some polish. (and by polish I do not mean the user hostile react rewrites MS and Google are pushing)
I just had the reverse problem - gmail decided to stuff half of the mail for 2 days into spam, and I had to spend half an hour manually extracting them back. No idea what happened, most mails were from previously known good addresses. That said, I rarely get spam that's not intercepted nowadays, no more that 1-2 per day.
I can’t speak to the spam filter itself, but having masked emails goes a long way to sandboxing potential spam sources. I’ve been quite happy with fastmail.
Readit News
I think that some software engineers in Germany are covered by the larger unions like IG Metall and Verdi, but my understanding is mostly for those that work in companies that make physical goods like Mercedes, Siemens, etc.
1. Why did the Fastmail employees decide to form a union? Were the working conditions poor? Was the pay below market rate? Abnormal working hours? Not enough vacation or maternal/paternal leave?
2. Has Fastmail released a statement on this? What is their position?
3. Who comprises the leadership of this union?
4. What is the charter or mission of the union? (What are they seeking to accomplish or remedy?)
5. What percentage of Fastmail workers are members of the union? (Does the union have a target membership percentage?)
6. Is the union seeking to renegotiate the employment contracts of its members at this time? If not, are they expecting to in the future?
7. Will it be possible to work at Fastmail in the future without being a union member, or will union membership be (formally or informally) compulsory?
8. Who are the members of the union? (By job type, I mean. Engineers? HR? Janitorial staff? Managers?)
9. Does the union charge dues and how much?
10. Are there union meetings and if so, how often?
11. What action can a union member take if they disagree with a union decision, or the overall direction the union is taking?
While I know nothing about this specific campaign, I am a member of the union they purport to be joining and have worked on a half-dozen new organizing campaigns. Local 13000 is a real local, and it would make sense for them to be joining it.
Most of your questions can be answered by reference to labor law and the union's internal "law" (i.e. the CWA constitution, sector and local bylaws), both of which are available online. Here is what we can say at a high level based on those resources (and in a few instances, my personal experience of the union).
#3 - Per CWA guidelines for locals engaged in new organizing, the leadership of the unit will be an organizing committee that represents each work group in the sought bargaining unit. The typical guideline is a committee of at least 20% of the sought unit. The CWA does not go public with new units without at least of 70% of the unit expressing interest in writing ("signing a union card").
#6 - The use of the term "renegotiating" is misleading. Collective bargaining agreements supersede individual employment contracts by definition. Typically, the CWA conducts an election of workers in the unit to choose a bargaining committee, which then bargains with the employer assisted by paid staff and/or lawyers. In any case, the contract must be ratified by a majority vote of the members for CWA to enter into it. Only then would their "employment contracts" be superseded. That said, the overwhelming employment contracts in the united states do not bind the employer in any meaningful way, and are not meaningfully negotiated. Where there are meaningfully bargained contracts, such as in broadcasting or entertainment, union members can and often do allow certain provisions to remain in force, using the union contract to set a floor on conditions. This is very common in Hollywood.
#7 - This depends a great deal on where Fastmail conducts its business in a legal sense, and is a somewhat unsettled area of law with increasing relevance due to remote work. In the United States, unions have a "duty of fair representation" to represent every member of their unit, have basic democratic processes, etc. This is typical in democratic countries. It is also typical for union members to equally share the cost of running the union to ensure that there is no free-riding. In the United States, federal law mandates that unions have a duty of fair representation, but some state laws allow people to avoid paying their share of the costs of that representation. These so-called "right to work laws" were proposed in response specifically to African American workers in the South seeking to form unions that could not be undermined by free-riding (cf. the Memphis Sanitation Strike).
#8 - The union may propose any unit. The employer may challenge that unit. If challenged, the National Labor Relations Board determines whether the workers in the unit represent a "community of interest." This standard evolves constantly as successive administrations appoint members of the National Labor Relations Board.
#9 - This is determined by the executive board of the local, which is elected by members according to procedures in the local bylaws. In some locals, this will be a fixed amount; in others, it will be a fraction of gross income. I pay 1.67% of my overall income in dues and saw a raise substantially greater than that when we ratified our first contract. Some members saw raises as high as 10%.
#10 - See the bylaws for meetings in the local. The unit meetings would generally be organized by the elected bargaining committee, and then by stewards. All locals of the CWA will have a business meeting monthly, but individual units (i.e. groups of workers at a given company) typically meet more often and delegate someone to go to meetings of bodies representing larger groups. Activity in unions is, generally speaking, highly uneven. In my unit, there is some sort of union discussion in our slack daily. Tech worker units are, as a rule, more active than those in other fields.
#11 - See the local bylaws, sector, and international bylaws, which lay out a comprehensive system of elected offices, delegation of democratic authority. The primary recourse is to petition their elected officers/stewards, many of whom will be their immediate peers and have an interest in maintaining good relationships. Failing that, they can support the candidacy of new officers in regular elections. Failing that, they can run themselves. Outside the elective process, all officers are bound by the decisions of collective bodies like the local's executive board (which are recorded in meeting minutes all members have the right to access). Major decisions about union policy go to a vote of delegates to the international convention (there was one last year), many of whom are rank and file members. If any officer (or member) violates the the bylaws, the CWA has procedures (laid out in the links below) that allow members to bring up officers up on charges. Charges are ultimately evaluated by juries with rank and file representation. Finally, under some circumstances there could be appeal through the courts under federal laws like the Labor Management Relations Act and Labor Management Reporting Act.
Local Bylaws: https://www.cwalocal13000.org/_files/ugd/5e3432_517e9a7e2c71... CWA Constitution: https://cwa-union.org/for-locals/cwa-constitution
I'll also note that I had no idea when I wrote this (as most probably do not) that Fastmail is apparently an employee-owned company, which changes the color of this dramatically. I'm still not totally sure I see the point of the union in this case, but it means that some of my questions are essentially not applicable here.
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I have been ecstatic about the quality of service. Fingers crossed management does the right thing and retains their customers and employees.
If I lived in a place where there was an IT union like the Communications Workers of America union that covered IT people, I'd join. They are in a battle at the moment: https://cwa-union.org/news/cwa-leaders-and-federal-call-cent...
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If he was the union wouldn't be necessary, right?
If anything, any negative reaction by Fastmail, the corporation will act as a signal for me to start thinking about moving away. You know a company is morally bankrupt if they fight their employees unionizing. I don't think Fastmail will do that though.
However - I'm not well versed in this area and willing to learn - why is this a 'good' sign?
You unionize in the good times so you’re protected in the bad times.
(Not saying that’s what happened here, just saying you cannot really judge what unionization means from the outside)
As for why that’s a good thing in general, that depends on how you feel about unions. If I have the choice between union made goods and non-union made goods, I buy the union made goods. So I’m always happy to see a company unionize.
Even if you love your company, love how you're treated, and don't want anything to change, forming a union still gives you two big advantages. First, it gives employees more influence and voice over the future of the organization, and second it protects the current conditions you love so much and makes it much more difficult for management (which can change at any time) to take them away in the future.
Here's one illustrative example: the staff of Politico and E&E News announce they are unionizing (https://newsguild.org/staff-of-politico-ee-news-are-unionizi...). Why?
> “We want to establish certainty and codify all of the things that we like about E&E into this new world order,” said reporter Emma Dumain. “E&E News is the most family-friendly newsroom I’ve ever worked in,” she said. “I feel supported by my editors as a working parent and that support helps me be a better journalist.” She wants to make sure everyone has the same support, no matter who their editors are or who owns the company.
> Leah Nylen, who has been involved in four company sales over 15 years, said that each one led to changes in benefits, bosses and sometimes layoffs. The day the Politico sale to Axel Springer closed, management informed workers that because of an oversight their 401K would be frozen for the rest of 2021. “If employees had had a seat at the table, I doubt something as important as our retirement and healthcare savings would have been missed,” Nylen said.
Less than two weeks later, management voluntarily recognizes the union: https://newsguild.org/politico-ee-staffers-win-union-recogni.... Everyone seems pretty happy.
> With union recognition nailed down, Organizing Committee members immediately began informing coworkers about the new rights that brings. A legal protection known as “status quo” requires management to maintain the same wages, hours and working conditions that existed when the union was formed, unless they negotiate an agreement with the union or reach a final contract. “Just a week-and-a-half after going public, we have all of these new protections,” Snyder said.
How's it going two years later? Well, not great honestly, they still haven't agreed on a contract, but Politico is still going strong and I imagine most people there are still happy with their decision to unionize.
Here's an article about voluntary union recognition: https://www.americanprogress.org/article/voluntary-recogniti.... This is not an unbiased source, but you can ignore the framing if you want and just use it as a big collection of links to voluntary union recognition examples.
Any company would oppose their employees unionizing; they have a fiduciary duty to do so
Is that actually so?
https://www.fastmail.com/digitalcitizen/the-future-of-ai-wit...
I wouldn't read too much into it. Unions are just a counterweight to corporate interests in the best case. The places that union bust out in the open are usually the worst offenders, and Fastmail doesn't seem to be that.
I don't have any insider knowledge at Fastmail, but the fact that a labor union could get organized and come into being without any drama from the company probably indicates that the upper levels of the company respect their employees enough to not fight its creation. Seems good, imo
"No, I won't be (coming in on Sunday/'just doing this one extra thing before leaving after hours'/breaking company policy and legal requirements for safety or waste disposal or whatever), please see [section of union agreement], if you'd like to continue this discussion I can bring in my rep and, as required by policy laid out in [other section of union agreement], your boss, and we can all have a chat about this" will get a lot of abusive pricks to tuck tail and STFU in a hurry, with low risk of effective retaliation.
I'm generally content with fastmail, but the webmail would need some polish. (and by polish I do not mean the user hostile react rewrites MS and Google are pushing)
[0] https://www.fastmail.com/blog/exciting-news-fastmail-staff-p...
https://code-cwa.org/upcoming-trainingshttps://collectiveaction.tech/