My Dad owns a construction company in a highly unionized region. He is an advocate for unions, although he acknowledges that quality varies among them. That said, many of the conditions where unions are beneficial don't seem to apply in tech:
* Vocational training: unions in our area run schools to train craftsman (e.g. carpenters). This increases productivity and screens for quality.
* Shifting workforce: Construction companies expand/contract as they get big jobs. The union is a clearinghouse that enables tradespeople to switch between companies as they expand/contract. The union also helps by running benefit programs that travel with the workers.
* Commodity-ish labor: Most carpenters have about the same productivity, so it makes sense to negotiate their compensation in bulk. Unions don't work as well when productivity/value varies greatly between workers.
I also worked as an apprentice carpenter for several summers during college. I wouldn't say that the carpenters I worked with had a glowing view of the union. They seemed suspicious that the union reps were corrupt, and talked about how they would "shut down the job" over minor union infractions. They also believed the "hall" was corrupt/political in how it matched carpenters who were out of work to jobs. Several were also contemptuous of what they saw as the union discouraging hard work (if you were working hard, you were "ruining the job.")
The main point I am trying to make is that unions are complex from both the employer and employee side.
Vocational training absolutely could be done in tech, web/app development is much closer to carpentry than it is to computer science in my view.
Unions are definitely complex, it's not a silver bullet to solve issues in the workplace. But at its core it's a group of people negotiating as a unit: the rest is just the natural evolution of a group where some power has been attained. More members means more organization needed to keep everything straight, and more organization means more barriers to joining. Once there's a real structure to the power a union gets, it's subject to the same people problems as an other organization.
Those were my initial feelings as well. I guess the issue comes down to focusing on software development as a skill and having that skill rewarded in manner you can count on.
Our industry is really similar to actors. They have SAG and their guild negotiates with the MPAA. So every studio needs to belong to MPAA. Every year they negotiate the daily/weekly minimum rates for actors with SAG. They are pretty flexible with different rates for indy films vs big budget films.
It's not so hard to imagine a software developers guild where they negotiate for a daily/weekly minimum for developers, dba's, qa's, devops, and such...
If you are celebrity equivalent of a developer, then you can get paid more. There are no real restrictions. You don't see famous actors getting paid below the daily minimum. When they work for a big budget film they typically get x multiple times the daily rate. Also, if they want to work on an indy film they can agree to those minimum daily rates as well.
I think its flexible enough so if you want to work for a nonprofit you can just accept the daily/weekly minimum vs asking full price if you work for FAANG.
I don't think it's a crazy amount of protections but it sets aside a basic set of standards you can expect from job to job.
If your are making over 120k they suggest actors create a loan out corporation at that point...
Can you imagine all the FAANG companies having to setup a Software Industry Association to negotiate with a Software Developers Guild every year? It seems plausible. It's probably in their best interest as well. These companies could just dump any social issues on to the union and just focus on making profits. The ability to lock out competitors might force other big software dev employers to join the association as well.
Your points make sense, but it stands in contrast to unions of other industries like voice acting (SAG-AFTRA) where voice actors/actresses can vary a lot in quality/desirability and aren't exactly a commodity. I actually honestly don't know how voice acting unions could be successful.
I think the real point of value for a programmer union would be figuring out the logistics of setting up a really good retirement plan that works between multiple employers. This is one place where individuals on their own cannot effectively negotiate - they have to take whatever retirement plan prospective employers offer, and if they work at small companies you're just happy to get offered something reasonable, rather than something optimized.
If there was a programmer's union that let you join as a union employee, you could take salary concessions for the union-mandated retirement plan contributions, and have both parties wind up ahead simply on tax-efficiency metrics. $110k salary and $100k salary + $10k retirement plan contribution cost the exact same to the company, but the latter has a lower overall tax burden on the employee.
Though it may not seem like safety is a big concern in tech right now, there are areas where it will be of concern. For example, Unions may be a good method to force safety concerns in self-driving cars and in IoT devices. Unions may help with health-care data and privacy. Unions may help with other forms of sensitive information like in judicial work and military work.
I'm not saying that unions are the only way to force safety, but they have been an effective force for safety in other areas in the past. Their effectiveness should not be discounted out of hand.
1. Tech is not a space where training can help improve worker's quality? Or is it just something that people are expected to do on their own and people who don't suffer?
2. You might be surprised to learn about the number of contractors in tech.
I used to be all around anti-union. Now that I'm older I regret that position. There are bad unions and there are good unions. Sometimes they can be corrupt, but they never really exceed the corruptness of the corporate powers they negotiate with. It's an imperfect solution, but it's the only one that seems to work. The idea that we are all lone super stars that need to negotiate for ourselves is not only selfish, but more than likely wrong. Even if I considered myself a super-coder, should I be willing to sacrifice the well-being of everyone else in my field?
Tech workers feel pretty good here in the US because they are compensated better than most. The time to organize is now, not after worker supply has increased or during a recession when workers are more desperate. We have real issues (Ageism, Working Conditions, etc) that we'll never be able to address individually.
> but they never really exceed the corruptness of the corporate powers they negotiate with
I'm not convinced that is the case, nor is it an either or (union or corporate powers).
Your protection by the union depends on what the union negotiates... beyond that their ability to effect change pretty much stops there. Then you are again at the mercy of your employer. I've had first had experience with "oh yeah they can do that" union situations.
Also premature organization IMO is much like premature optimization, more likely to be a bigger problem and miss any real issues.
Ironically, not only do tech workers aren't worried about this, they embrace it and encourage it. An enormous amount of work is being done to lower the bar, make things more accessible, reduce the need for diplomas and certifications, downplay the value of experience, etc. Basically ensuring that they'll see significant competition in the future (those initiatives don't help "a little". They literally change the landscape of the industry).
So it's a bit hard to convince people that they should work to protect their job when they're already working so hard to do the opposite (with the well being of others in mind, of course)
I'm always amazed at the complete double standard between unions and companies.
Look at the discussion here: lots of people arguing against unions, saying they're just plain bad, or they're good in some industries but not in tech, or we just don't need them, or whatever.
And not to say that these arguments are wrong, but....
Hands up, how many of you think that it's a good idea to run a business with employees as a sole proprietorship?
I'm pretty sure there are no hands up. The first thing you do when you're going to create a business with employees is to organize. This is so ingrained that we don't even think about it. When was the last time you saw "Ask HN: do I need to incorporate?" Of course you do. There are many questions around where to do it and what type of corporation to create and what ownership structure you want to use and so forth, but there's no question about whether it's a good idea.
When employees band together to negotiate collectively, we call that a "union" and we come up with many reasons why this may not be a good idea.
When employers band together to negotiate collectively, we call that a "corporation" and nobody takes even a moment to wonder whether or not this is a good thing to do.
If workers are better off without organization, maybe the same is true on the management side? Instead of big companies, we should have individual managers on their own, employing a team as a sole proprietor.
When employers band together to negotiate collectively, we call that a "cartel" and it's radioactively illegal, and not a single person defends it as a good thing.
When employees band together to negotiate collectively, we call that a "union" and have a variety of opinions on it; with plenty of people thinking it's a good thing.
Corporations don't seem remotely analogous to unions and are mostly created for legal reasons, not for anything related to collective negotiation?
> When employers band together to negotiate collectively, we call that a "corporation" and nobody takes even a moment to wonder whether or not this is a good thing to do.
The benefit in tech is options. Don't like your job, get another one. Don't like your boss, get another one. For many locations it's just the matter of turning a button on Linkedin or for many people sending some emails.
That keeps people idealistic, vocal and demanding of the behavior from their employer/bosses. This is not the norm in other business functions. Unfortunately.
This current state of affairs gives employees a lot of power, as you observed, but it's important to realize it will not last. The downturn will come. The question is whether we want to use our current ephemeral labor power to protect ourselves when the downturn comes, because organization will be 100x more difficult when things go to shit and people don't think they have the luxury of risking their career to build a union.
that's all fine and good but it won't last. once the labor supply catches up with the demand (and it will -> just look at the vast number of new engineers created in the last 5 years from 2019 Dev survey), it will be all over and all that bargaining power will go away. We're already starting to see the beginning of that with the awful hiring practices we've been seeing.
You're describing what Beverly J. Silver's "Forces of Labor" [1] refers to as "marketplace bargaining power," one of labor's "structural" (ie endemic) sources of political leverage.
> Marketplace bargaining power can take several forms including (1) the possession of scarce skills that are in demand by employers, (2) low levels of general unemployment, and (3) the ability ofworkers to pull out of the labor market entirely and survive on nonwage sources of income.
Marketplace bargaining power is valuable, but it's not perfect, safe, infallible, or free to exercise--especially if one is here on a precarious visa.
Additionally, as the tech job marketplace expands into the global economy, marketplace bargaining power approaches 0 (think: outsourcing).
> Labor's marketplace bargaining power has been undermined by the mobilization of a world-scale reserve army of labor, creating a global glut on labor markets. Moreover, to the extent that the global spread of capitalist agriculture and manufacturing is undermining nonwage sources of income and forcing more and more individuals into the proletariat, marketplace bargaining power is undermined further.
Tech workers are then left with other sources of structural bargaining power, which we had better not neglect:
I look out my window and watch the birds fly by and wonder why a human like me needs a boss, or a "job creator" or some other euphemism.
It's hard for me to comprehend someone so slavishly minded to conceive of a concept like "don't like your boss, get another one". Sometimes I ponder what is going on in the minds of "men" who conceive such a notion, just like I sometimes see a homeless man in the gutter drinking a bottle of wine and wondering what is going through his mind.
Tangent - there was an article on the NYTimes the other day about how their editorial work was trivializing Bernie Sanders political impact the last election and actually using misleading headlines to distort the truth. I’ll try to find the link (on my phone now). It was pretty eye opening and had links to sources as well as exposing some of these editors and their role working for the Clinton camp.
I call this out because I see a steady stream of NYT articles that focus on big tech in a negative way.
Big tech has its problems and should be regulated. On the other hand, I question the NYT and their motive. This clearly isn’t honest journalism but NYT focusing on companies that are now directly competing with the NYT.
The problem is that Sanders is in a democratic primary. If people in the circle of democratic party thinking aren't valid sources for reporting on a democratic political candidate, who is? Clinton was the party nominee -- all of the players will have done something connected to that campaign.
The democratic party is a big-tent and demands consensus. When all of these connected folks eyeroll at the guy, it hints that he would have trouble governing. An "out-there outsider guy" persona works for the GOP because the GOP is a political machine party... some state senator from North Dakota would kill kittens on TV if instructed to.
Well, yeah. First of all, tech is a threat to established media. They were asleep at the wheel in the 2000's and most of the 2010's and missed that many people started getting their news from online sources. Secondly, established-leftist-media such as the NYT is anti-tech because their belief that tech helped elect the current administration. You will see these calls to action dissipate when a new administration gets elected.
“In other cases, highly compensated engineers may see themselves as independent operators who have plenty of leverage on their own and thus do not need to join a union effort.”
This is definitely my feeling. When I can just open up LinkedIn and browse all the unsolicited interview requests I get, I don’t end up feeling like I really need a union to protect my current job - I can always just leave and go somewhere else if I’m unhappy.
That said, if someone asked me to vote for it I might do that, but I wouldn’t put the effort into organizing myself.
This is going to be a unpopular opinion. I think a tech union would likely be good for the average tech worker - and bad for absolutely everyone else, broader society included.
Cartels and price-fixing agreements are extremely lucrative, which is why they were commonplace until outlawed by antitrust legislation, and why cartels like OPEC still operate today. Unions and collective bargaining are no different. Unions are equivalent to a cartel of labor-suppliers, and collective bargaining is identical to price-fixing.
Just like with cartels and price-fixing agreements, unionizing would likely benefit the average tech worker. It would also have an extremely bad effect on innovation, bureaucracy, and cost-of-tech-development which would spill over to consumers in the form of higher prices.
I'm in favor of breaking up big corporations, as well as implementing a wealth tax, raising the top tax rates, and strengthening the social safety net. But I don't think encouraging the formation of cartels and price-fixing agreements is in society's best interests.
The only parties that I'm aware of which are forming cartels (and getting slapped on the wrist for it) are American software companies.
Seems odd to accuse not yet existing entities of the same crime that their opponents have been already convicted for.
Furthermore, a lot of software companies are filthy rich. If anything, American corporations are squeezing the last drops of profit through creative (read borderline criminal) accounting, outsourcing, faux-contracting and other creative arrangements. Said additional profit is not shared with the employees, invested in society or used in any productive way.
How is it benefiting anyone that Apple is buying back stock for example or that they have hundreds of billions parked somewhere?
This comment is worth discussing about because it actually criticizes the macroeconomic effects of unions, not just another "well I don't need a union and I don't want to be stuck paying dues" personal complaint. It's an interesting point for union proponents to debate, and perhaps a next-gen tech union should try to address the concerns.
Another solution to add to the ones you mentioned can be the promotion of founding tech companies run as worker cooperatives, similar to Mondragon in Spain. If tech companies leadership will flirt with anti-hierarchial management fads like flat organizations and holocracy, why not putting their equity where their mouth is and allowing the workers themselves to own the means of production?
This reads like you're equating collective bargaining with salary negotiation, but there are a ton of other dimensions where negotiating as a group would be beneficial. I've worked at a number of companies where I was well paid, but had an expectation of overtime. The environment of crunch produced a product that was so unstable I had to be on call, and was occasionally awoken in the middle of the night by things that would never have made it to production if there had been industry-standard practices in place.
That's where collective bargaining could come in handy in software. There needs to be some recourse for when shitty companies abuse its employees.
You know all the advanced research and tech used in the UK telecom industry system post ww2 (first electronic exchange etc) was built by union employees.
In my opinion, unions are very valuable in cases where employees cannot effectively realize market value for their skillset.
This can happen for a number of reasons:
1. In cases of specialized skills (like working at a factory where you've trained on a particular machine).
2. In cases of natural or artificial monopolies (like working for a federal government).
3. In cases where companies and workers incentives are misaligned (like that of a construction worker).
Probably more that I'm missing.
I don't see how the current software engineer market meets this condition.
There are more open software engineering jobs than there are software engineers. If my employer mistreats me, I'll leave and go to a different company, and likely I can find a job just as good very easily.
I'm not sure how a union would benefit me personally.
How confident are you that this climate will continue for the rest of your working life? How confident are you that this climate will extend past your working life?
There has to be a balance of power between labor and management. When management has too much power, that power will be abused. When labor has too much power, that power will be abused.
Unions make sense when labor doesn't have any power. Do programmers have enough power? I'd say yes. Maybe not across the board but -- in general -- yes. We aren't coal miners, that's for sure.
The countries with the best human welfare indicators also have the highest percentage of people in unions. It’s the only countervailing force against plutocratic power.
Maybe unionization needs a disrupt? I'm not against unionization in a lot of industries, but it just doesn't make sense in its current form for the tech scene or any other high demand position. It feels like an outdated mechanism used for people who were happy to sit in the same role, doing the same thing, for 45yrs.
It’s generally my understanding that unions tend to decrease labor mobility, and are most effective for improving working conditions when labor mobility is naturally very low, as in industries dominated by a few players (shipping, auto) or where company-specific knowledge becomes very important (retail, maybe construction?). Industries with a high proportion of freelancers tend to form guilds, which are slightly different and often focus on licensure (barbers, doctors, lawyers). But programmers — like managers, accountants and bankers — have highly transferable skills that give them lots of employment options. Additionally, programming creates its own communication skills by (literal) networking, which aids programmers searching for jobs (they can send code samples over a wire). As such, competition for labor is more effective in tech than in many other fields.
How come the NY Times doesn't push for unions for Wall St? Surely these guys slaving away over spreadsheets for Silicon Valley level pay should be unionized too, right?
> “Associating unions with blue-collar work and making it a stigma to talk about unions in white-collar circles, that’s very deliberate”
This is my observation too, right now there is simply a correlation that doesn't have to be.
It doesn't matter that you get paid a comfortable amount, and that another startup delivers snacks all day, and another startup delivers catered food to you: you aren't getting paid what you are worth to these companies.
The board members are just the VCs and the founders and they aren't in a position to change that. The fraction of a fraction of a percent equity that they told you "was a generous amount" after feeding your face has nothing to do with what a more equitable amount could be. Doesn't give you any information about all the scenarios in which you would get nothing because the strike is too high and the preferred shares liquidity preferences are too onerous.
Even the cash component of tech compensation could likely be 75-150% higher. This has nothing to do with the stagnating wages in other sectors, we are working with this generation's largest and fastest growing companies and could accelerate comp growth and other changes.
I think that's not the only factor. Unions will also cap wages for the highest earners. And everyone thinks they are going to end up in that 1 percenter salary.
I acknowledge that there are definite issues at play with employment in the tech industry, but, come on; we are one of the most coddled and well-payed segments of the entire laboring economy. Maybe unions aren't being organized because we aren't forced to work graveyard shifts with few to no breaks for very little pay? I'm not sure the actual issues at hand in the tech industry are best addressed by unions (at least in the traditional sense).
I already feel distrust for my outspoken colleagues who purport to speak for me when making demands of management, but would treat me like James Damore if I dissented from their opinions.
The last thing I want is to let those same people formally represent me in a union. Given the current climate, those are very likely to be the people who would be running it.
Tech unions are a way for bureaucrats to take a tax off the backs of hard working tech workers with no benefits.
I am well off, have a flexible work life balance, and I enjoy my job. There is nothing that a union would bring to the table for me.
If there was a union in Silicon Valley in the early 80s, we would be no where close to where we are today. Look at the stark difference between a Silicon Valley worker vs someone working at Boeing or other unionized shops.
[+] [-] ttcbj|6 years ago|reply
* Vocational training: unions in our area run schools to train craftsman (e.g. carpenters). This increases productivity and screens for quality.
* Shifting workforce: Construction companies expand/contract as they get big jobs. The union is a clearinghouse that enables tradespeople to switch between companies as they expand/contract. The union also helps by running benefit programs that travel with the workers.
* Commodity-ish labor: Most carpenters have about the same productivity, so it makes sense to negotiate their compensation in bulk. Unions don't work as well when productivity/value varies greatly between workers.
I also worked as an apprentice carpenter for several summers during college. I wouldn't say that the carpenters I worked with had a glowing view of the union. They seemed suspicious that the union reps were corrupt, and talked about how they would "shut down the job" over minor union infractions. They also believed the "hall" was corrupt/political in how it matched carpenters who were out of work to jobs. Several were also contemptuous of what they saw as the union discouraging hard work (if you were working hard, you were "ruining the job.")
The main point I am trying to make is that unions are complex from both the employer and employee side.
[+] [-] vcarl|6 years ago|reply
Unions are definitely complex, it's not a silver bullet to solve issues in the workplace. But at its core it's a group of people negotiating as a unit: the rest is just the natural evolution of a group where some power has been attained. More members means more organization needed to keep everything straight, and more organization means more barriers to joining. Once there's a real structure to the power a union gets, it's subject to the same people problems as an other organization.
[+] [-] erik998|6 years ago|reply
It's not so hard to imagine a software developers guild where they negotiate for a daily/weekly minimum for developers, dba's, qa's, devops, and such...
https://www.sagaftra.org/production-center/contract/810/rate...
If you are celebrity equivalent of a developer, then you can get paid more. There are no real restrictions. You don't see famous actors getting paid below the daily minimum. When they work for a big budget film they typically get x multiple times the daily rate. Also, if they want to work on an indy film they can agree to those minimum daily rates as well.
I think its flexible enough so if you want to work for a nonprofit you can just accept the daily/weekly minimum vs asking full price if you work for FAANG.
I don't think it's a crazy amount of protections but it sets aside a basic set of standards you can expect from job to job.
If your are making over 120k they suggest actors create a loan out corporation at that point...
https://firemark.com/2015/01/12/should-you-have-a-loan-out-c...
Can you imagine all the FAANG companies having to setup a Software Industry Association to negotiate with a Software Developers Guild every year? It seems plausible. It's probably in their best interest as well. These companies could just dump any social issues on to the union and just focus on making profits. The ability to lock out competitors might force other big software dev employers to join the association as well.
[+] [-] themacguffinman|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ThrustVectoring|6 years ago|reply
If there was a programmer's union that let you join as a union employee, you could take salary concessions for the union-mandated retirement plan contributions, and have both parties wind up ahead simply on tax-efficiency metrics. $110k salary and $100k salary + $10k retirement plan contribution cost the exact same to the company, but the latter has a lower overall tax burden on the employee.
[+] [-] Balgair|6 years ago|reply
Though it may not seem like safety is a big concern in tech right now, there are areas where it will be of concern. For example, Unions may be a good method to force safety concerns in self-driving cars and in IoT devices. Unions may help with health-care data and privacy. Unions may help with other forms of sensitive information like in judicial work and military work.
I'm not saying that unions are the only way to force safety, but they have been an effective force for safety in other areas in the past. Their effectiveness should not be discounted out of hand.
[+] [-] ap3|6 years ago|reply
There are laws that work has to be assigned to union shops, etc
[+] [-] nathanvanfleet|6 years ago|reply
1. Tech is not a space where training can help improve worker's quality? Or is it just something that people are expected to do on their own and people who don't suffer?
2. You might be surprised to learn about the number of contractors in tech.
[+] [-] bsder|6 years ago|reply
I'm not sure I agree with this, but I'm not even sure I concede that programmers have that large a differential.
I still have yet to see genuine scientific evidence that this differential exists in programming.
Or, alternatively, I don't concede that there isn't a 10x difference in master vs apprentice carpenters.
[+] [-] LarryDarrell|6 years ago|reply
Tech workers feel pretty good here in the US because they are compensated better than most. The time to organize is now, not after worker supply has increased or during a recession when workers are more desperate. We have real issues (Ageism, Working Conditions, etc) that we'll never be able to address individually.
[+] [-] duxup|6 years ago|reply
I'm not convinced that is the case, nor is it an either or (union or corporate powers).
Your protection by the union depends on what the union negotiates... beyond that their ability to effect change pretty much stops there. Then you are again at the mercy of your employer. I've had first had experience with "oh yeah they can do that" union situations.
Also premature organization IMO is much like premature optimization, more likely to be a bigger problem and miss any real issues.
[+] [-] shados|6 years ago|reply
Ironically, not only do tech workers aren't worried about this, they embrace it and encourage it. An enormous amount of work is being done to lower the bar, make things more accessible, reduce the need for diplomas and certifications, downplay the value of experience, etc. Basically ensuring that they'll see significant competition in the future (those initiatives don't help "a little". They literally change the landscape of the industry).
So it's a bit hard to convince people that they should work to protect their job when they're already working so hard to do the opposite (with the well being of others in mind, of course)
[+] [-] lallysingh|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mikeash|6 years ago|reply
Look at the discussion here: lots of people arguing against unions, saying they're just plain bad, or they're good in some industries but not in tech, or we just don't need them, or whatever.
And not to say that these arguments are wrong, but....
Hands up, how many of you think that it's a good idea to run a business with employees as a sole proprietorship?
I'm pretty sure there are no hands up. The first thing you do when you're going to create a business with employees is to organize. This is so ingrained that we don't even think about it. When was the last time you saw "Ask HN: do I need to incorporate?" Of course you do. There are many questions around where to do it and what type of corporation to create and what ownership structure you want to use and so forth, but there's no question about whether it's a good idea.
When employees band together to negotiate collectively, we call that a "union" and we come up with many reasons why this may not be a good idea.
When employers band together to negotiate collectively, we call that a "corporation" and nobody takes even a moment to wonder whether or not this is a good thing to do.
If workers are better off without organization, maybe the same is true on the management side? Instead of big companies, we should have individual managers on their own, employing a team as a sole proprietor.
[+] [-] Zarel|6 years ago|reply
When employers band together to negotiate collectively, we call that a "cartel" and it's radioactively illegal, and not a single person defends it as a good thing.
When employees band together to negotiate collectively, we call that a "union" and have a variety of opinions on it; with plenty of people thinking it's a good thing.
Corporations don't seem remotely analogous to unions and are mostly created for legal reasons, not for anything related to collective negotiation?
[+] [-] manfredo|6 years ago|reply
No, we call that illegal: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-Tech_Employee_Antitrust_L...
[+] [-] negamax|6 years ago|reply
That keeps people idealistic, vocal and demanding of the behavior from their employer/bosses. This is not the norm in other business functions. Unfortunately.
[+] [-] ahelwer|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] thorwasdfasdf|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rexpop|6 years ago|reply
You're describing what Beverly J. Silver's "Forces of Labor" [1] refers to as "marketplace bargaining power," one of labor's "structural" (ie endemic) sources of political leverage.
> Marketplace bargaining power can take several forms including (1) the possession of scarce skills that are in demand by employers, (2) low levels of general unemployment, and (3) the ability ofworkers to pull out of the labor market entirely and survive on nonwage sources of income.
Marketplace bargaining power is valuable, but it's not perfect, safe, infallible, or free to exercise--especially if one is here on a precarious visa.
Additionally, as the tech job marketplace expands into the global economy, marketplace bargaining power approaches 0 (think: outsourcing).
> Labor's marketplace bargaining power has been undermined by the mobilization of a world-scale reserve army of labor, creating a global glut on labor markets. Moreover, to the extent that the global spread of capitalist agriculture and manufacturing is undermining nonwage sources of income and forcing more and more individuals into the proletariat, marketplace bargaining power is undermined further.
Tech workers are then left with other sources of structural bargaining power, which we had better not neglect:
1. http://libcom.org/library/forces-labor-beverly-j-silver
[+] [-] bsder|6 years ago|reply
That's okay until you are "old" or "average"--and that next job isn't coming.
Then you will wish that there were some unions around to help you.
[+] [-] crimsonalucard|6 years ago|reply
A union is forever.
[+] [-] peisistratos|6 years ago|reply
I look out my window and watch the birds fly by and wonder why a human like me needs a boss, or a "job creator" or some other euphemism.
It's hard for me to comprehend someone so slavishly minded to conceive of a concept like "don't like your boss, get another one". Sometimes I ponder what is going on in the minds of "men" who conceive such a notion, just like I sometimes see a homeless man in the gutter drinking a bottle of wine and wondering what is going through his mind.
[+] [-] aminadude|6 years ago|reply
I call this out because I see a steady stream of NYT articles that focus on big tech in a negative way.
Big tech has its problems and should be regulated. On the other hand, I question the NYT and their motive. This clearly isn’t honest journalism but NYT focusing on companies that are now directly competing with the NYT.
Edit: article I was referring to https://fair.org/home/sidney-embers-secret-sources/
[+] [-] Spooky23|6 years ago|reply
The democratic party is a big-tent and demands consensus. When all of these connected folks eyeroll at the guy, it hints that he would have trouble governing. An "out-there outsider guy" persona works for the GOP because the GOP is a political machine party... some state senator from North Dakota would kill kittens on TV if instructed to.
[+] [-] unknown|6 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] eanzenberg|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] javagram|6 years ago|reply
This is definitely my feeling. When I can just open up LinkedIn and browse all the unsolicited interview requests I get, I don’t end up feeling like I really need a union to protect my current job - I can always just leave and go somewhere else if I’m unhappy.
That said, if someone asked me to vote for it I might do that, but I wouldn’t put the effort into organizing myself.
[+] [-] noego|6 years ago|reply
Cartels and price-fixing agreements are extremely lucrative, which is why they were commonplace until outlawed by antitrust legislation, and why cartels like OPEC still operate today. Unions and collective bargaining are no different. Unions are equivalent to a cartel of labor-suppliers, and collective bargaining is identical to price-fixing.
Just like with cartels and price-fixing agreements, unionizing would likely benefit the average tech worker. It would also have an extremely bad effect on innovation, bureaucracy, and cost-of-tech-development which would spill over to consumers in the form of higher prices.
I'm in favor of breaking up big corporations, as well as implementing a wealth tax, raising the top tax rates, and strengthening the social safety net. But I don't think encouraging the formation of cartels and price-fixing agreements is in society's best interests.
[+] [-] blub|6 years ago|reply
Furthermore, a lot of software companies are filthy rich. If anything, American corporations are squeezing the last drops of profit through creative (read borderline criminal) accounting, outsourcing, faux-contracting and other creative arrangements. Said additional profit is not shared with the employees, invested in society or used in any productive way.
How is it benefiting anyone that Apple is buying back stock for example or that they have hundreds of billions parked somewhere?
[+] [-] Apocryphon|6 years ago|reply
Another solution to add to the ones you mentioned can be the promotion of founding tech companies run as worker cooperatives, similar to Mondragon in Spain. If tech companies leadership will flirt with anti-hierarchial management fads like flat organizations and holocracy, why not putting their equity where their mouth is and allowing the workers themselves to own the means of production?
[+] [-] vcarl|6 years ago|reply
That's where collective bargaining could come in handy in software. There needs to be some recourse for when shitty companies abuse its employees.
[+] [-] walshemj|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] CSMastermind|6 years ago|reply
This can happen for a number of reasons:
1. In cases of specialized skills (like working at a factory where you've trained on a particular machine). 2. In cases of natural or artificial monopolies (like working for a federal government). 3. In cases where companies and workers incentives are misaligned (like that of a construction worker).
Probably more that I'm missing.
I don't see how the current software engineer market meets this condition.
There are more open software engineering jobs than there are software engineers. If my employer mistreats me, I'll leave and go to a different company, and likely I can find a job just as good very easily.
I'm not sure how a union would benefit me personally.
[+] [-] LarryDarrell|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dawhizkid|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] leftyted|6 years ago|reply
Unions make sense when labor doesn't have any power. Do programmers have enough power? I'd say yes. Maybe not across the board but -- in general -- yes. We aren't coal miners, that's for sure.
[+] [-] viburnum|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] stcredzero|6 years ago|reply
"Only?" It can itself, become a nexus of plutocratic power. The best antidote to corruption is transparency and the dispersal of power.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rStL7niR7gs
[+] [-] mawburn|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] scythe|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] povertyworld|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rolltiide|6 years ago|reply
This is my observation too, right now there is simply a correlation that doesn't have to be.
It doesn't matter that you get paid a comfortable amount, and that another startup delivers snacks all day, and another startup delivers catered food to you: you aren't getting paid what you are worth to these companies.
The board members are just the VCs and the founders and they aren't in a position to change that. The fraction of a fraction of a percent equity that they told you "was a generous amount" after feeding your face has nothing to do with what a more equitable amount could be. Doesn't give you any information about all the scenarios in which you would get nothing because the strike is too high and the preferred shares liquidity preferences are too onerous.
Even the cash component of tech compensation could likely be 75-150% higher. This has nothing to do with the stagnating wages in other sectors, we are working with this generation's largest and fastest growing companies and could accelerate comp growth and other changes.
[+] [-] jjeaff|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bsmith|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kodz4|6 years ago|reply
https://www.instagram.com/p/BzJO6ELjJT9/
https://www.instagram.com/p/BzJP9nlDA5c/
Thinking that unions are going to have an effect is like believing flies effect pigs.
[+] [-] throwaway132435|6 years ago|reply
The last thing I want is to let those same people formally represent me in a union. Given the current climate, those are very likely to be the people who would be running it.
[+] [-] baybal2|6 years ago|reply
Is it so, or my memory is playing tricks with me?
[+] [-] docker_up|6 years ago|reply
I am well off, have a flexible work life balance, and I enjoy my job. There is nothing that a union would bring to the table for me.
If there was a union in Silicon Valley in the early 80s, we would be no where close to where we are today. Look at the stark difference between a Silicon Valley worker vs someone working at Boeing or other unionized shops.
[+] [-] rexpop|6 years ago|reply
[deleted]