Thread regarding Cisco Systems Inc. layoffs

...to ensure things like voluntary redundancy are options.

At least in the US with employment-at-will you can always volunteer to leave. The idea that it's good for anyone at Cisco to pay for its best employees to go to its competitors should be the IQ test used to determine who should be laid off.

We are unionised in my country. The US LR benefits are incredibly generous - we get less! We can have a union representative and they must do documented consultation but that’s it.

Sadly, a union shouldn’t save jobs that are deemed redundant.

As LR approach a union would be helpful in leveraging collective employees voice into one to ensure things like voluntary redundancy are options. Last LRs company had dictated all terms. Union would ensure that packages those that are unfortunately selected are fair and that those at end of career that maybe want to leave can and those that are maybe mid career could stay. We never had one because it’s end of career to formalise one at work.

If you are interested then google IT union in your respective country. In the USA several have increases in size due to changes at companies like Amazon.

You didn't understand this discussion at all. The US doesn't have "tight labour laws" at all. You need more than flexible labour markets to innovate, but it's not enough.

@1gcr+1r5dNgsY https://labourrightsindex.org/heatmap-2022/2022-the-index-in-text-explanation/trade-union

If what you were saying was true then countries with fewer labor protections than the US would be doing better or at least as well on innovation. It's just false.

If employees own stock and get laid off because of poor management decisions, were their interest as shareholders served?

https://www.seedtable.com/ - if you want lists.

@1jxn+1r5dNgsY You struggle to name just one new innovative company. Skype is one, true, which was a great example—interesting that it came from a country that was communist 10 years beforehand.
I think you prove my point.

Cisco just like any other company has only their shareholders in mind...

As required by law.

The endless posts here about "unions" (no OP, this is no where near the first) are just people who don't want to take responsibility for their careers and have the company burp them and tuck them in for life. A union won't fix Cisco's broken leadership and it won't make Cisco develop software effectively, and these are the reasons Cisco has slowly been tightening the noose it tied around its own neck.

Unions have definitely done some great things, but they've also choked many companies to death leaving everyone out in the street. For Cisco I predict a union would result in the latter.

@jyx+1r5dNgsY Europe has innovation, they just don't have big tech with high valuations. Part of it is regulations, part of it is cultural, part of it is fragmentation. You have innovation like Skype, but it was gobbled up by Microsoft. I think the Netherlands had something like Amazon before Amazon, but didn't expand outside Dutch speaking areas. You create something in the US you have a single 300+ million market. China has a 1Billion+ market. Europe is not a single market with a single language and a single set of regulations. Some of it is that the markets in the US will give billion $ valuations to companies that never turn a profit because maybe someday they will. Also, innovation can happen in transportation, pharma, industrials, energy, agricultural, financial sectors. It's not limited to big tech or phone apps.

You can look at countries in Europe which have great companies

There are almost zero innovative companies in European countries that have onerous labor laws. Any of the seriously large European companies are 70+ years old (like Shell and Total) or car companies. There's a few German supermarket chains. Telephone companies (very old). A few pharma. SAP is about the only one that comes to mind.

@zhx+1r5dNgsY I think the shareholder primacy argument gets said a lot so people believe it, but it's relatively new in the history of things and may very well change again.

Unions and guilds aren't just for uneducated workers. They exist for writers, legal, and healthcare.

You can look at countries in Europe which have great companies and great labor protections.

@zhx+1r5dNgsY no one is diminishing the efforts that individuals are making in any company to improve the world and the people around them.

The desire and drive to create a union with your peers is to improve the company, technology and job that we love. Unions want to stay employed at a company and not abandon it. Just with better job conditions.

And I don't think that anyone does not appreciate the opportunities that the company has provided to them. It does seem though that this appreciation in becoming more and more unidirectional when the company does not appreciate the surplus value that an individual contributor provides back to the shareholders.

Just because a system works in a specific way it doesn't mean we have to comply and accept it without at least arguing to improve it.

The number one responsibility of corporations to make decisions that positively affect their shareholders. As simple and callous as that sounds, that is the reality. The board serves the shareholders. Today affected more than just tech workers. Unions have been trying to strengthen their numbers for decades by infiltrating the technology sector. Thankfully they have not been overly successful otherwise the world we get to live in and benefit from by being employed with companies like Cisco would look vastly different. Layoffs are never easy but they happen. We have all likely been on the receiving end of one at one point or another in our careers for some reason or another. Instead of lashing out and bashing the company that has likely been very good to you during your tenure, you could have a little more humility and be thankful for the blessings that you’ve been given so far in your life. Unions have had their place in history in ensuring that people that don’t have an education or aren’t highly skilled can have at least a decent standard of living. I can’t believe that anyone in tech today would want to have to fall in line with a union and not have the ability to be rewarded individually by their own merits.

Sorry to burst some people's bubbles but most of us (even to the director level) are just skilled workers.

I guess the extra money that unionised workers earn are theoretical...

https://www.bls.gov/news.release/union2.nr0.htm

@fjw+1r5dNgsY
I’m going to assume you are just misinformed rather than intentionally being malicious.

Unions are the reason we have weekends and holidays off and generally have 40-hour work weeks. Along other things.

They have been inherently beneficial but like everything else involving humans can be mismanaged.

However, there is no doubting the benefit they’ve had. Workers in unions have higher pay and better benefits than non-unionized workers.

Yes, though the 'anymore' makes me laugh. Tech has been suffering through layoffs since I started. Honestly we should be a trade union by now, but we all think we're too smart and special for that.
Tech is full of the smugest, stupidest people.

So you want to diminish yourselves to the level of just being considered skilled labor rather than the professionals that you are? You all deserve more than being associated with a union. Stay free and in charge of your own careers.

Agreed.