Kickstarter Fires Pro-Union Staff For Attempting To Bring Large Number Of People Together In Pursuit Of Dream
The Kickstarter CEO has today launched a blistering defence of his decision to fire two staff for attempting to form a union, saying that their attempt to bring people together, pool resources, and harness a collective to make something wonderful happen represents “a fundamental undermining of our mission as a company.”
Speaking exclusively to Point & Clickbait, Kickstarter CEO Aziz Hasan explained that he was sympathetic to the idea of a lot of people all supporting one larger project because it “sounded like a pretty neat concept”, but that the idea was, quite specifically, bad when it was his employees doing it.
“Of course everybody wants to work together with other like-minded people and realise a shared dream,” said Hasan. “That’s what we are all about here at Kickstarter. But our employees, and I can’t stress this enough, shouldn’t be allowed to do that.”
“A union might be the right fit for other companies, but not for Kickstarter, because of one important difference,” Hasan continued, pausing to tweet out a link to an already-funded campaign for a glow-in-the-dark typewriter. “The difference is that I am the CEO of Kickstarter and I like being in charge and not having to consult any of my workforce about my decisions.”
“It simply makes sense.”
The remaining non-fired workforce at Kickstarter have contested Hasan’s claims, suggesting that they actually have quite a lot of experience in things like collective action and “consulting with the people who make your project come to life.”
“We’re still waiting for benefits that were promised to us years and years ago,” one anonymous worker exclusively told Point & Clickbait. “The ball really got rolling on unionisation when we realised that Hasan hadn’t updated us on the dental benefits we’d been promised by 2014 in over a year.”
Hasan, who says that quashing further dissidence is a stretch goal the company hopes to achieve in the next financial quarter, believes that these employees are simply misguided and don’t understand how “complex” the issue of unionisation is.
“A lot of people think it’s just as simple as everyone saying, well, we can’t do this on our own, but what if we all helped each other out and made the dreams denied to us by capitalist society come true, right,” said Hasan. “And again, yes, it absolutely is that simple, but not if my employees are the ones doing it. Then it becomes pretty complex, I think.”
“Besides, with the benefits we offer, what possible reason could our staff have for unionising?” he asked. “They’re automatically given a copy of every webcomic’s card game that gets funded. That’s a $1200 per month value.”
Kickstarter plans to contest claims that they may have inappropriately and illegally fired their pro-union staff, hiring top-gun lawyers who will argue before the courts that workers should not be allowed to pool their money “unless the company can take 5% of all the fees” and “not be liable in any way”.
