[vcarl]

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.

[sixplusone]

Carpentry/electrical/plumbing/factory product and process is very standardized, but IT is still quickly evolving and requires adaptation and innovation, making it harder to predict how well someone will handle a new problem based on previous work.

Welders or house framers take designs from engineers and (mostly) work to spec. I have to be the architect, engineer, and builder, usually only based on the approved visible UI, or rough description of a problem.

[ttcbj]

True, but one difference is that the market for carpentry talent is local. So, a company that is supporting a union in city X has a reasonable expectation of benefiting from its training.

With remote work, computer science is much more global, so someone could easily be trained by a union and then go work for a company that doesn't support the union.

Interestingly, this is one of my Dad's main complaints about unions these days: That our city trains great carpenters, but then they are recruited away to non-union areas.

[sgift]

> Interestingly, this is one of my Dad's main complaints about unions these days: That our city trains great carpenters, but then they are recruited away to non-union areas.

Why do they take the offers? I don't want to write anything bad about your father, but I think people wouldn't leave if they were paid well / felt good all around at their current job?

[lonelappde]

Seems that a fix for that would be to attach a loan/bond to the training that gets repaid by cash or by credits for working at a member employer.

[barry-cotter]

Strong unions could do vocational training in software but the private sector is doing a more than reasonable job of that and their incentives are to increase supply, not restrict it. Lambda School has only existed for two years and is already educating an appreciable fraction of the software engineers in the US.

One of the economic failure modes of strong unions is excessive credentialisation and a dualised labour market. I’m most familiar with unions in Ireland and we definitely have some of that. A plastering apprenticeship is either three or four years. Learning to plaster is at most a six month job. Se situation with tiling. For a knowledge worker example more directly relevant to programmers the teachers’ unions really push credentialisation and dualistation. During the recent economic downturn the government wanted to decrease the wage bill so the teacher unions doubly shafted aspirant teachers. They negotiated a doubling in the length of teacher certification, from a one year Higher Diploma in Education to a two year M.Ed. and a lower pay scale for teachers hired after a certain date. Education in pedagogy doesn’t even have any demonstrable effect on teacher effectiveness so this was pure waste with no benefit. Even before that in Ireland a permanent job as a teacher is fantastic but it will take the average new graduate of a teacher training programme at three to five years of substitute work, with no paid holiday or other benefits to get one, if they ever do.

In the U.K. with its easier entry and lower credential requirements [1] getting a job is easy but the working conditions are comparatively dreadful.

Unions generally make things better for those on the inside by making them worse for those on the outside.

[1] Do you have a psychology degree and want to teach Math? Do a conversion course and you can.