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Comment by Doches | Hacker News Reader

From the tail end of the OP:

> I’m a Computer Scientist. We don’t have unions and we don’t collectively bargain. Basic workers rights are our responsibility

I've always been bothered by this question. Why _don't_ we have unions? What is it about the tech industry that makes it so resistant (especially in the US) to labor organization? I work in the EU for a US company, and my American colleagues universally seem to find the idea of collective bargaining _preposterous_. Often, they even seem offended by the idea!

Is this a particularly American trait, or something endemic to tech?

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When we are young hubris and arrogance are quite up there. We are worshipped with $100K+ salaries and it goes to our head. We do not think about age-ism or time needed to spend with a spouse, a child, or a parent. There is a lot of stuff that comes down the road, but right now, all we know is that we are gods. No need for a CBA - even though other high paying professionals use it. No use of agents who can bargain better on our behalf.

We know we can do it all. And we do. Life slowly comes into play. Family, health, house... the dynamics change. Your control diminishes. You look behind and a new generation is at the employment door. You keep your skills up with what time you have available but not sure if you have chosen the right skills to upgrade. Too many variables. A good portion of your retirment is likely at the mercy of the stock market.

Having an entity representing the interests of an employee is not in the interest of an employer. It makes them more expensive. So change is going to be difficult. It is hard for a union to grow if the drivers are older. It requires the early and middle part of the employee age distribution participating to be effective as they are not easily replaced.

I think it's a bit of both.

American society indoctrinates people with the negative aspects of labor unions. They're run by radicals or the Mafia, they have rules which limit innovation, hold back talented individuals, sanction goldbricking, and on and on. The pro-union side of things is not often promoted in the mainstream.

When the pro-union side of the story is promoted, it's usually in a context where a company was doing something extremely bad to extremely vulnerable people. It's a tough sell to convince an engineer that they're in the same position as an early 20th century lumberjack or coal miner.

I've known people in tech who think of themselves as self-made people and so they further don't like the idea of collective bargaining on a philosophical level.

As a born and raised American, I associate union pay with tenure (how long you have worked for one company) or flat pay. This sounds okay when productivity does not vary much by employee like factory workers.

However, knowledge workers like software developers can very in productivity by orders of magnitude. Companies can therefore pay far more for more productive employees if they can differentiate employee productivity. As someone who has worked with people whom I consider a net negative on our output, A union based pay that brings my income down to the lowest common denominator is the last place I would want to join.

Unions often lead to better terms but lower pay. Europeans are, in general, OK with that.

Americans, in general, value their salary more than anything else, which is optimized by individual bargaining, rather than collective bargaining.

Indeed, if you compare US programmer salaries to (e.g.) UK programmer salaries, the difference is apparent: Outside of specialized industries like finance, the pay in the US is much higher, and the gap grows much more with seniority[0]

I am not aware of any CS union in the UK, but in many senses every European country runs a lot of collective enterprises (healthcare, education), and has strong unions for many other industries, unlike the US; I believe the difference in [0] is, at least in part, due to the "collective" vs. "individual" mindset.

[0] https://www.daxx.com/article/it-salaries-software-developer-...

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