[vcarl]

One significant change since that era of unionization is that programmers can't actually shut down the business with a strike. If programmers stop working, that doesn't actually directly impact revenue—if a group of factory, warehouse, or service workers strike, then the business halts until the strike is resolved. SRE/Ops could take down revenue generation, but that starts to be something with legal liability. Laws prevent businesses from hiring new workers to break a strike, but if you sabotage the code, then my understanding is that there could be criminal charges against you.

That's not really relevant in the context of Amazon's _warehouse_ workers unionizing, but I think it's an interesting constraint for us as software developers.

[omeze]

I don’t work at AWS bit I think youre being a bit optimistic about the level of automation most services have. If there are no SREs present for a month, things will break at even the most sophisticated tech shops.

[vcarl]

I meant this as a commentary on the strike as a tactic for tech workers generally. SREs and Ops are the teams that seem most able to effectively use a strike to disrupt revenue, to be sure. Many services, though, would be able to operate for months or longer without intervention.

[throwaway17_17]

Your statement that ‘Laws prevent businesses from hiring new workers to break a strike’ is not legally correct. The Mackay Doctrine (from the US Supreme Court in NLRB V Mackay) explicitly formulates the right of employers to hire replacement workers. There are some requirements on this action by employers but just wanted to get the legal facts out there.

[vcarl]

Cheers for the correction, though I'm loathe to learn that's the state of labor law.

> Mackay Radio has been called "the worst contribution that the U.S. Supreme Court has made to the current shape of labor law in this country."

> Nearly every criticism of Mackay Radio is aimed at the Court's "duplicitous distinction" between firing and permanently replacing striking workers.

Interesting, too, that the decision apparently contracts the laws it was interpreting. This is a grim section to read[0]. Reading this, it seems like the case was approached with a predetermined result in mind, and apparently 2 of the justices declined to participate.

[0]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/NLRB_v._Mackay_Radio_%26_Tel...

[leakybit]

Tech is a depreciating asset, if you don't have programmers adding to that asset, you will eventually no longer be a tech company.

[tonyarkles]

There’s an interesting nuance to that though: I have built a lot of one-off tools for my clients that get the very occasional update, but basically continue to hum along maintenance-free. A month or two ago I finally was given a chance to shut down an Ubuntu 10.04 server because the client decided they no longer needed the tool that was running on it; the software outlived its usefulness. Could they have invested money into improving it? Maybe. Would it have been a good investment? Really hard to say.

There’s a big labour dispute going on in my city right now. 700-odd refinery workers are locked out (the employees announced a strike, the refinery locked them out to prevent unpredictable disruption), and the refinery is running on a skeleton crew of replacement workers. Because of blockades put up by the picketers, the refinery has chartered a fleet of helicopters for emergency transport. Additionally, the replacement workers are living in a camp on-site. Overall, the refinery was running at about 80% capacity, and even when factoring in the additional overhead from the camp and helicopters, their profit margins apparently went up due to the reduced labour costs of not having to pay the entire 700-person staff.

Then the demand for refined petroleum products dropped dramatically due to COVID. I haven’t heard much about what’s going on now profit-wise, but they have dropped production significantly. We’re now into month 5 of the lockout, and it’s the workers that are demanding to go back to work, not the refinery bending over backwards to try to get them back.

All in all, I guess what I’m getting at is... don’t assume you’re not replaceable just because you built the engine that makes money for your company. Any company worth its salt has an established Business Continuity Plan that addresses what to do in a whole number of disasters, and labour disruptions are in those plans.

[throwlaplace]

>a group of factory, warehouse, or service workers strike, then the business halts until the strike is resolved

Well indeed I am suggesting a warehouse worker that we as software engineers support financially