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Comment by phillc73 | Hacker News Reader

Nonetheless, if such a Tech Workers Union existed, joining as an act of solidarity would benefit all fellow members and offer you a level of protection to insure you never experienced any of the aforementioned scenarios.

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Not interested, personally. I can only picture being made worse off by being in a union. Fortunately, it’s insanely difficult to get well-paid ambitious people to join a union, so there is little danger I’ll come closer to experiencing a tech workers union than reading about the idea in impractical internet comments.

> well-paid ambitious people

Hollywood actors and other people in showbiz? Professional athletes? Doctors?*

*https://www.forbes.com/sites/johngoodman/2014/09/03/the-doct...

It's not at all difficult to get well-paid and ambitious people to join a union. The Screen Actors' guild represents people who are as ambitious as, and far better paid than, the hottest tech superstars.

What amazes me is, for how curious tech workers tend to be about, say, new frameworks or languages or whatever, they're so amazingly incurious when it comes to talk of unions--and in fact not just incurious, but so willing to repeat stuff that just isn't true.

>The Screen Actors' guild represents people who are as ambitious as, and far better paid than, the hottest tech superstars.

Are you just making up SAG claims throughout this page? Did you look to see what SAG members actually make?

Avg SAG member makes far less than a software developer. Tech superstars make well over an order of magnitude more than an avg SAG member. Tech superstars include unicorn founders, who again make more than an order of magnitude more than even the very top stars.

Here's one place listing how low SAG members generally are paid. You can find others if you like.

https://www.backstage.com/news/actors-income-falls-far-below...

I didn't make any claims about the pay for all SAG members, but only that they are absolutely a union that highly ambitious, highly-paid people willingly join (counter to the parent poster's claim that unions don't appeal to such people).

Also, yeah, a handful of tech company owners make more than actors? So? Does that matter at all to the rank and file, who, by fault of not acting collectively, are leaving money on the table year after year? "Your boss is a billionaire, don't unionize" is the argument to make here?

>handful of tech company owners make more than actors?

From the numbers I posted, the majority of tech workers make far more than the majority of actors. Do you dispute this?

If the benefits of unions were so clear, would you have to keep using this comparison dishonestly?

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