Hi James,
just to understand correctly: are you talking only about the legal concept of a 'union' or also about all informal structures where the wmf staff could somehow influence how things go? I mean for example, I could imagine that in an organisation with more than 100 people, a representation of sorts outside the usual hierarchy might be imaginable and potentially beneficial. That representation could possibly be to the board, to the C-team or otherwise. Or are such structures already in existance (have been in existance)?
Lodewijk
On Sat, Mar 5, 2016 at 9:51 PM, James Alexander jamesofur@gmail.com wrote:
A traditional union is also difficult, honestly, because of the nature of the WMF as an incredibly global organization. We are a huge mix of staff in SF from the US, staff in SF on Visas (I don't know if this matters), Full Time Equivalent contractors outside the US (and numerous different ways to do that os that it's better for the staff member such as being a 'vender' of a sole company etc), temporary contractors and more. I am not perfect at Labour law but I'm fairly certainly not all of those can actually unionize together officially and so no matter what we do a huge portion of the force would be outside of a union and not get the legal protections that provides. There are other options I imagine, and people are looking into it, but sadly unionization laws weren't really written with the idea of us in mind.
Now that said I'm not 100% sure a union would really be the most beneficial thing for the org. I'm just not sure they would be able to fix many of our issues while at the same time probably adding some of their own. They can be hugely beneficial when used in the right place but I'm not sure this is one of those (they also take a long time to set up and so would not really help for the specific, current, issues). Of course as a manager I don't have a vote (and won't be protected) anyway if we go down that route so my opinion is mostly academic.
James User:Jamesofur [Manager, Trust & Safety, WMF]
On Sat, Mar 5, 2016 at 11:47 AM, Gerard Meijssen < gerard.meijssen@gmail.com> wrote:
Hoi, That would not be a bad idea in and of itself. However, the kind of troubles are not necessarily the kind where a Union has its experience. Thanks, GerardM
On 5 March 2016 at 20:45, Gordon Joly gordon.joly@pobox.com wrote:
On 05/03/16 16:49, Gerard Meijssen wrote:
Arguably, the employees have a bigger stake in the Wikimedia
Foundation,
they are not even represented.
Then they should unionise?
Gordo
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