"I'm sorry, the union is opposed to postgres. You can either roll your own DB or use Oracle. Oh, and you're not allowed to store more than half a million rows without a Union Approved database administrator."
Think of all the job descriptions that have become irrelevant, for most startups, in the last decade: "DBA", "sysadmin", "IT". Even in the past year or two, thanks to docker, there's less need for "devops".
Unions exist to protect the interests of today's--not tomorrow's--workforce.
So yes, I certainly believe that a union would say "companies that use docker hire 90% fewer sysadmins than those that do not. We have 70,000 members with that job description. The next collective bargaining agreement will forbid it.
Labor unions have historically been anti automation. If you think software unions are somehow different then the burden of proof is on you.
Imagine that 10 years from now someone invents an AI that can magically take a set of plain english specifications and output a working, high-quality CRUD web app, making a single engineer as efficient as 10. Do you think the software engineers union at BigEnterpriseCo would let them use it?
Do you have actual examples of irrelevant jobs in software engineering that have been kept on because of unions? How about unions advocating for proprietary software in order to keep out open source software?
Given that many software unions already exist, the burden of proof is on you to prove that such things are actually happening. It's unreasonable to expect someone to prove the negative here.
If union members benefited from automation, they'd be all for it. Why should someone be for a change that makes them jobless? Corporations certainly don't lobby for changes that decrease their profits.
This is like when the Luddites were labeled anti progress, when in reality they we're anti being replaced and left to starve in the streets, with the industrial automation being the linchpin in a set of events that caused said starvation.
Share the wealth or don't be surprised when people will fight you over it.
When you form an organized labor bloc, it's not like the Teamsters come in and manage your field for you. The people deciding what workplace changes to push for are the developers themselves.
Besides, unions would most certainly be more pro-open source than any corporate entity. Open source gives everyone the opportunity to be heard and have their feelings and thoughts actually affect outcomes; this is more or less the same goal of a workers union.
Unions, like all organizations, have institutional inertia. And they do good things and bad things.
If unions REALLY wanted everyone to have the opportunity to be heard and respected feelings, there would be no violence and intimidation when people move to cross a picket line.
It happens. It's ugly. And it shows unions are NOT about respect for anyone's feelings that don't align with the 'endorsed' way of thinking.
Crossing a picket line doesn't elicit an ugly response because people are upset about how others are thinking.
It elicits a response because scabs directly undermine the union's main leverage with which they bargain collectively.
It's about power, not thought control.
because scabs
The comment I replied to states unions are violent and don't care about feelings that aren't part of an 'endorsed' way of thinking. I stated another more direct reason why they would have the same reaction which has nothing to do with attempts at thought policing, but rather with their reason for existing.
Maybe the difference feels subtle, but it's an important one.
I've got a feeling you aren't interested in discussing the actual argument that unions aren't primarily attempting thought control, and that 'thoughts' aren't the reason for violence in the event that people cross the picket line. It's the fact that the act is taking bread out of people's mouths.
If the term 'scab' upsets you a great amount, please note that in the majority of the western world, the use of scabs is restricted or illegal. Accordingly, their use is often in the context of illegal attempts to undermine labour's negotiating leverage during strikes. The US is the notable exception to this trend, largely due to judicial interpretation, rather than direct legislative efforts.
I'm quite sure tech unions would end up being heavily pro-open source, with the result of more code being open sourced throughout the industry.
I say this as the TL of a team at Google that fought (and won) to open source our project. It wouldn't have happened were it not for me and a few other engineers pushing for it to happen.
I can easily see a union boss say "Our Oracle employees' wages will be undercut by these unauthorized developers using FLOSS alternatives. This is unacceptable. It is our job as union representatives to insist on the highest standard of professional software, and demand that all unionized software houses use Oracle."
Much of the opportunity in the software industry comes from software developers undercutting other software developers. You & I like it when we're the beneficiaries, and not the dinosaurs being undercut. There's no guarantee (and actually a pretty strong selection incentive against) the innovative developers being the ones with political power.
Oh, wait...
ETA: more seriously, unions can push for or against bad practices, just as management also can. Broad generalizations almost always represent ideological campaigns more than an objective appraisal of the on-the-ground landscape.
24-7 isn't required if your org only depends on system between working hours.