| ▲ | epolanski an hour ago |
| Unions have 33% voting power in Volkswagen board. Germany has very strong labor protecting laws. Replacing line engineers and operators is very difficult. Volkswagen is firing 100k employees in Germany none the less. The idea that you can successfully unionize in software..in US..Where you could simply retain a small number of staff key members pay them very well and put them on a mission of outsourcing and milking the IPs..I don't see it. The best moment to unionize wad 20 years ago. Now there's not enough leverage by the staff. |
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| ▲ | georgeecollins 5 minutes ago | parent | next [-] |
| >> The best moment to unionize wad 20 years ago. Sadly true in the USA. The number of people working in games is dropping like a rock. Maybe in Europe. |
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| ▲ | lenkite an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Volkswagen Group (and in general German manufacturing) profits slumped by ~50% because of banning Russian gas and stringent U.S. import tariffs. The increase in gas costs made German manufacturing uncompetitive compared to China. |
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| ▲ | mejutoco 10 minutes ago | parent | next [-] | | One main reason is they are not selling as much in China. > Over the past few years foreign carmakers in China have been flattened by local rivals such as BYD that have fast become world leaders in electric vehicles. As the Chinese market has gone electric, foreign carmakers’ share of it plummeted from 62% in 2020 to 35% last year. VW has lost its position as the top carmaker in the country. Last year it sold 2.9m cars in China, down from 3.9m in 2020. Only around 200,000 were EVs. https://www.economist.com/business/2025/12/04/to-halt-their-... > because of banning Russian gas That is the symptom. The real reason is the lack of diversification from Germany, assuming that hard discount would last forever. | |
| ▲ | cdud3 7 minutes ago | parent | prev [-] | | That and like crazy increasing burocracy. |
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| ▲ | small_model 25 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Not quite true, the CEO has to go and convince the owners this makes sense, the owners include various labour representatives who can veto it forcing VW to slowly die. |
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| ▲ | bitwize an hour ago | parent | prev [-] |
| It's almost as if... laborers in every field (the proletariat) have to unionize as a class against the ownership class (the bourgeoisie), seize the means of production, and reorganize society to their own benefit because the bourgeoisie surely will not! |
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| ▲ | wizzwizz4 31 minutes ago | parent | next [-] | | I don't think "the means of production" hits the mark. Most of us programmers have the means of production: a 20-year-old laptop with a new battery is sufficient for most serious webdev and appdev work. What we lack is permission to labour. If I do what I think needs to be done, instead of what my employer tells me to do, then I don't get paid by my now-former employer (which is fair), and then I don't eat (less fair) or keep my house (truly baffling). This despite the fact that the work I would choose to do is much more valuable to society at large than most of the work I can get paid for. I've seen this idea discussed by others, but I don't know any pithy slogans for it. (Unfortunately, it's the ideologies with the catchiest sound-bites which tend to dominate in the "marketplace of ideas".) Gamedev is different, since even games from 20 years ago (e.g. Half-Life 2) require a higher-spec computer to develop than to target. The games you can make on a 20-year-old potato are limited: for those, I can see how the "means of production" idea might be more applicable. | | |
| ▲ | yifanl 28 minutes ago | parent [-] | | This is one of the oldest ideas of civilization, wanting society to be ruled by philosopher kings (who happen to be people just like me!). | | |
| ▲ | wizzwizz4 4 minutes ago | parent [-] | | Hey, I don't want to rule all of society! I'd just like to be able to contribute to it meaningfully. Rewriting some corporate app from React to Flutter, replacing one set of bugs with another, is not a good use of resources. I can do so much more! … but the people most in need of my skills do not have the money to pay for my food, housing and electricity, even if I were to forego all other luxuries. I don't think myself wise enough to know how to fix this, and given that fact I certainly don't want to rule; but I can at least point out the problem. |
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| ▲ | mghackerlady an hour ago | parent | prev [-] | | but that's communism, which is bad because the Department of Education said so while making us read fiction | | |
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