I never understand employees who don't want to unionize. It just shows what a sorry state the labor movement is in.
My union has done nothing perceptible during the course of my employment, outside of protecting employees who are under performing.
My union dues cost 1% of my salary, and my perception is that they're taking that money and spending it on protecting bad employees.
I have friends who are higher up in unions at other workplaces, as well as friends who are involved with labor law. The impression all around is that my union and its representatives are "not good".
Unions don't automatically make working conditions better. They need to have good people working in the union to achieve that.
True. Unfortunately, many unions are incredibly milquetoast. However, even in such cases the union can still function as sort of an insurance policy against future severe abuses. Folks can also engage with their union: they will listen to workers.
Uh, the same group dynamics that cause cliques to form and higher powers within bureaucracies also can happen in unions. This happens regularly, and I've been a part of one, where regular workers were not listened to but the upper "management" of the union (can't use that word though) controlled the fates of everyone below.
You needed regular workers to rebel against the union to even get representation against management. All the while they collect dues.
Plenty of unions are good. But acting like all of them are, or why you can't understand why everyone wouldn't want to unionize, is really naive.
You derive 100% of your income from your employer. Your employer derives ~0.01%-1% of their income from you.
You derive 100% of your income from your union membership, which is a mandatory term of your employment. Your union derives ~0.01%-1% of their income from you.
(It actually derives even less than that, because it operates as a syndicate representing workers across multiple employers).
Almost every modern union is the textbook definition of controlled opposition.
The only escape is likely violent revolution of the anarcho-capitalist or anarcho-communist variety, these systems still share the problem of rich and powerful people with guns.
Now, there may be more than one equal among the top corporate leadership, and there might be more than one equal in the top union leadership. So, instead of having to have N unions, you could have N/m where m is the number of voting equals at the top of each level of the hierarchy.
This is not entirely facetious, many democratic countries essentially work like this. For example, Americans have a county legislature, a state legislature, and a federal legislature, and to some extent (a greater extent early in the country's history), they perform this sort of nested bargaining.
Except by the union.
I see it everywhere, this weird argument that "shitty unions are shitty." Well, yes. "Shitty [anything] is shitty."
Unions are a tool. That tool can be misused! But it can also be used well for great effect.
Sorry your union isn't working well for you.
Deauthorization of a union is much more difficult than forming a union in the first place. It is very difficult to obtain sufficient support for deauthorization without the union leadership hearing about it, at which point they can usually find sufficient reason to expel the member from the union. If there is an exclusive contract with the employer (which is usually the case in the US), this may result in the employee's termination.
Even if there is enough support for deauthorization to require an election, the NLRB has the authority to overturn the results of the election, and it has historically wielded this power quite generously in favor of the union.
I posit that if the market of the labor you're offering isn't very advantageous to you anymore, and if you're being mistreated by an employer when you're in a position where you can't use your financial means or time to fight back for whatever reasons, you will feel the need of someone else to fight for you because you can't just find an employer that will shower you with money two blocks away. And when I say "mistreated" I mean that everything you are entitled to in your contract is not something you can count on, so no severance, and when I say you're not in a financial position to fight back I mean that you don't have the means or the time to sue, even if you're 100% in the clear legally.
If you believe that will never happen, you're likely correct. I don't think my apartment will be on fire without me noticing too, it's a very low risk of that ever happening in my life, but I still want a smoke detector. I just can't take the risk. Same thing with union membership for me, I can't take the risk of being treated the same way my ex-wife was treated when she was simultaneously struggling with depression (and wouldn't have gotten anything she was entitled to from her employer during her medical leave if someone else hadn't fought for her).
That is incorrect, in the US if my workplace decides to unionize I'm forced to pay union dues. I am fully in my right to criticize unions as they can be foisted upon me without my consent.
However, unions here in the US have done untold amounts of lobbying to government and employers to make them mandatory. The argument is usually that, "if membership is voluntary, some people will forgo membership but still reap the benefits of our negotiations, therefore you must force them to join us." Considering that many politicians (particularly in rust belt states) win office by getting big union endorsements, this tactic works very well.
I would be likely to join a union that was voluntary, because if the leadership started doing things I disagreed with, I could quit the union, or join a competing union that was more in line with my beliefs.
This would require that the AFL-CIO, UAW, Teamsters, SEIU, etc. all reverse decades of their own established policy not to pursue members-only unions.
It would also require legislation that makes it possible for a worker to dissociate from a union that they don't want to represent them. There is immense opposition by labor organizers against anything remotely resembling this shape of law, so it is unlikely to happen.
Yes, but you want to take on both organized labor (AFL-CIO and the like) and anti-labor forces at the same time... well, good luck to you.
I mean that earnestly, not sarcastically. "Uphill battle" doesn't even begin to describe it.
Both entrenched unions and corporate interests support the status quo. It strengthens strong unions but makes organizing new unions harder.
As I've explained above, this is true but misleading. They are required to represent all workers in a bargaining unit, but they can define the bargaining unit however they wish, including defining the bargaining unit to encompass only workers who have decided to sign up for the union and pay their dues. The only thing they cannot do is create contracts which apply to non-members and refuse to represent those non-members.
> Mandatory membership is illegal.
This is a common misconception. Closed shops are illegal, but it is legal for an employer to require (pursuant to a union contract) that employees join the union within 30 days or risk being fired (excluding railway, airline, and government employees).
Unions can also expel members from their union, and if they have an exclusive contract with the employer, this may result in the employer being forced to fire the employee in question, depending on the reason for which they are expelled.
This statement is misleading to the point of it being a lie.
It is perfectly legal for a union to define the "bargaining unit" as "people who join this origanization".
Unions don't want to do this though. They instead want to force everyone to join.
Members only unions are explicitly in the National Labor Relations Act.
Well, obviously. They can make whatever negotiations that they want for their own benefits.
What they cannot do is negotiate for other people who have chosen to not join the union, which is what the word "exclusive" implies.
So yes, they can negotiate. For themselves. Not for other people. Which makes sense, why the heck should they have the right to negotiate a contract for people that they don't represent?
The can absolutely negotiate for themselves, though. Just like you and I can negotiate a contract for ourselves.
[1] https://www.nlrb.gov/rights-we-protect/whats-law/employers/i...
I am absolutely in favor of voluntary organizations. Just don't make it illegal for me to work at a job while refusing to join one.
This is true but misleading. Unions can define their bargaining unit as they choose. It is perfectly legal for a union to decide that its bargaining unit consists only of members (ie, people who have signed up for the union and have paid dues to it). That is exactly how unions work in almost every other OECD country, and which is why employees in countries like Germany, the UK, or France often have the choice of which union they want to represent them at their current job (or the choice not to be represented by a third party at all).
In the US, the main labor union syndicates (AFL-CIO, UAW, Teamsters, etc.) have all decided not to pursue this, instead only forming unions when they can get enough support to unionize all employees in a given class.
> You can choose not to pay anything in most states.
Technically true (27 of 50 states), but the main hubs for tech workers are basically all in states where this is not true (California, Oregon, Washington, New York, Massachusetts, Colorado, Illinois, etc).
Why all the hostility? If there are changes at your employer that you don't agree with, like unionization, just quit and take a different job. There's approximately zero unionization in the software development field right now, so you'll have tons of choices. No one's going to force you to stay in a union job if you don't want to.
Organized labor has introduced customs that you benefit from and take for granted.
All you have to do is look at the difference in quality of life that came before and after the changes we obtained from organized labor in the 1800s/early 1900s.
Most people don't appreciate the extreme asymmetry between those who control capital and those who create the wealth of nations (26 individuals have the same worth as 3.5 Billion individuals)
In fact, just look at the quality of life of a worker in a place with strong labor (say most of the EU) vs say, the US.
My wife is from the UK, I've looked into things there. I make 4 times what I would make in the UK, and that's before the additional taxes I'd pay (and before you ask the additional taxes for the NHS exceeds my spend for health insurance + copays). Sure they get about two weeks more vacation but I wouldn't trade that for 3/4ths of my salary why should I be forced to do so?
Also the UK is not a good example of a place with strong labor. It's much closer to the US. Look at quality of life in places like Germany or Austria.
A simple payscale.com comparison (not vouching for the data, it's just the first hit on google)
Average Software Engineer Salary
UK: £34,981 ($44908 USD) [0]
US: $83,483 [1]
The median salary is roughly double, if you are an outlier that number grows to about 4 fold.
[0]https://www.payscale.com/research/UK/Job=Software_Engineer/S... [1]https://www.payscale.com/research/US/Job=Software_Engineer/S...
I put up with it because it's a 'take it or leave' it condition of getting a paycheck.
Yes, but some things have structural properties that lead to shittiness. Some would argue that unions have this property.
You can be as clever as you like but all systems are exploitable.
Your general attitude sounds defeatist and strange on a community that is all about improving from past mistakes and learning to build better systems by breaking existing ones.
There are shitty unions, but there are also shitty companies and you only have the right to affect one. If people say shitty things, should you abandon free speech or should you engage in the free speech you believe in? Most people would say the latter because they think free speech is an important right. I guess a similar conclusion would be that worker participation is too important to be left to shitty unions.
And may be even impossible depending on the people under its governance.
But I'll stick with my point. Creating an union right now is not completely safe, so there are reasons to be wary of people proposing them, and to debate the details. There is even reason to not create one if the details are not right.
Management doesn't pursue these people because of the effort involved with dealing with the union.
I'm open to a system that allows all of these things to happen.
However - applying that system on a micro scale (one workplace at a time, through unions) introduces way too much friction between employers and their employees, employees and their peers, and employers and unions.
It also causes an internal conflict for the employee - where they have to mask their lack of contribution by busywork, ultimately feeling unfulfilled in their life.
Unionizing all workplaces is a sub-optimal means to distribute wealth.
Of course Arizona itself has a weird kind of reverse union of hospitals that covers nursing that afaik hasn't been challenged yet, which seems like it would be either a right to work or trust violation. Can't speak to a broader sense.
Even under right-to-work laws, the employees can still be required to be covered under the union contract. Right-to-work laws just mean that the union can't forcibly withhold or charge dues from people who aren't union members.
It's a similar reason to why you still have to pay taxes even if you don't want to become a citizen.
Unfortunately I don't think I can share the details here.
Let's say gamedevs unionize. What prevents EA from moving their studios to Poland or China?
Culture, for one thing. Especially game series like Fallout or GTA live from the absurd amount of US-centric cultural references in even the tiniest details.
Sure, we've all heard the anecdotes of a union protecting some guy who probably wasn't competent or cut out for the job. But how do you like your weekends? Benefits? Work/life balance? It's not perfect, but those things would gradually erode away without unions to fight for and defend them. Don't think companies will preserve that forever just out of the goodness of their hearts. Don't think it's just a permanent, inviolate fixture of our culture now. It's a hard-earned way of life that our ancestors carved out for us.
Actually, those things are gradually eroding away this very moment, because unions are now terribly weak and most Americans have internalized this contrived hatred of organized labor. It's not going to go well for workers in the future if we're so complacent. Make no mistake, you and I both enjoy the fruits of bitter and intense union battles from previous generations. They may seem unnecessary relics of the past now, but without them we'd be back in tenement housing working 16 hour days and making barely enough money to afford rent and food from the company store very quickly. Lots of industries are already pushing us back to that state. Be grateful your career has a union. It's definitely well worth one percent of your salary.
If the union is successfully scaring the management from pulling any shenanigans on the good workers, then, they have a lot more free time for the borderline cases.
As for moral character: let me introduce you to the average person in management at a large corporation!
Unions may not always do the right thing. And there are lots of cases out there where unions have too much power or abuse that power. And sometimes you have an annoying co-worker who is so zealous about taking cases to the union that they seem to be in an extractive relationship with the company.
But that just means that unions are another human institution. Apparently the nearly-infinite number of cases where management abuses their power doesn't count? Where management is in an extractive relationship with the company?
If you want negotiating power over certain issues, for many kinds of workers or concerns, unions are the only game in town.
You can, and the company can choose to not hire you. There is a huge power imbalance between employers and employees. Right now, this is muted because the job market is so tight. This will not be true forever.
> Just because it's something you personally find advantageous doesn't mean others feel the same way, and no one should ever be forced into it.
As a society, we make decisions against the will of individuals for a greater good all the time.
Of course we do. Doesn't make it a good idea all the time.
I noticed you've emphasized this twice. You have to admit that this pro-active idea of "join a union before you _really_ need the union" is not that compelling of a sales pitch to a lot of developers who already have good paying jobs. It's human nature.
>I never understand employees who don't want to unionize.
Do you really want to understand? I think the reasons are obvious: most programmers don't see any economic benefits to paying ~$500 (or whatever amount) annual union dues for very little gain.
If you can prove to developers that paying $X would return tangible benefits in excess of those fees, there would be an unstoppable movement. The proof isn't there yet.
As many programmers have testified, they already get excellent pay, benefits, work hours, etc without union representation. Yes, of course some programmers are suffering in terrible jobs but not enough of them (yet) outnumber the people who don't want to pay for a union.
I can easily understand why some programmers want a union. But it's a mystery why union supporters also can't see why some don't want it.
Join a union so your kid doesn't have to direly need a union.
If you don't have kids, substitute an imaginary version of you who's growing up and falling in love with the same craft you did, except right now.
One example - teachers. In the public sector, teachers are unionized yet underpaid, and in general terms, have unfavorable work conditions.
In the private sector, teachers get paid much better and have the freedom to actually run their classroom in the way they see fit.
The union isn't the cause of this disparity, but it clearly doesn't overcome it.
While this might be true wherever you are from, it is definitely not universal. Every US state I have lived in has been the opposite.
At a private school, the advantages to teachers are the student base is self-selected and can be expelled, and the school can teach things a public school cannot (often religious).
At a public school, pay, benefits, and job protections are much better.
Being able to "run your classroom the way they see fit" is a school-by-school work culture thing, but a teacher with more job protections would always have more leeway in how they ran their classroom. A teacher working at-will could never truly run their classroom the way they saw fit, because "do X or you're fired" is always a possible ultimatum.
Ideally the government should have worker protections in place that do exactly what a union does.
Of course in reality you need groups to represent the workers to put pressure on the government to do that. But I'd rather give money to groups like the EFF who specifically push policy and lawsuits over a group like a union.
Should Software Engineers want to remain a part of the professional class over the long term, it would be ignorant to not push for these things and introduce further supply restrictions around who can and cannot be a software engineer just as how accountants, lawyers, actuaries, ect have all done before them.
This is funny for me to read, because you probably intended to imply that's a bad thing. I'd also question whether the forms of domination which the founders of the unions of old has decreased or just changed form - and even given that it has decreased, what is an acceptable level of exploitation? I would say none, and many union members would agree with that supposition.
Today not being that bad means that today is still bad.
It's a trade, one person trades their time, knowledge effort and skill, the other trades money and other compensation. As I said, I'm not even anti union. I would rather see a guild around software development over a union though, based on reputation over protecting the bad performers. It could be considered A union, but wouldn't act like a typical union in practice.
If you are more senior, and submit that a junior is ready to move into a journeyman role, your reputation is also at least partially on the line if they cannot do the work, or put in the effort to get there.
No person's wants should ever infringe on another's rights.
Some theorists define exploitation in capitalist society as unequal exchange of labour, see John Roemer for instance; other more traditional critiques see it similarly but it may apply individually (such as Marx's theory), and yet others see it as a class issue. Of these, they can be grouped into PECP (Profit-Exploitation Correspondence Principle) and CECP (Class-exploitation Correspondence Principle). There's a lot of talk and debate as to whether which of these, if any, is a viable or possible way to characterize modern relations of production.
>It's a trade, one person trades their time, knowledge effort and skill, the other trades money and other compensation.
In the employment relationship, this trade is assymetrical, hence the need for either strong labour laws, a rich union culture or both.
>No person's wants should ever infringe on another's rights.
The critique of capitalism begins with a critique of rights-based thinking. In short, some people don't believe that rights are a useful tool to characterise how society ought to look, since it is clear that despite universal rights, some are clearly more able to take advantage of them than others. The propertyless have right to property. So what? Where does that get them most of the time?
This is an assumption, and a logical fallacy. The whole problem of doing something "for the greater good" is that no one on Earth can definitively define what is good and what is not. Trying to do so is the bottomless rabbit hole we call ethics. OP is correctly pointing out that your view of unionizing being advantageous is subjective.
This is simply moral relativism. That argument holds up only under specific, ad-hoc circumstances. A group of people can very easily come to a conclusion that an action should be taken because they agree on it, and find out later that the consequences of that action were detrimental.
If a group of people collectively make a decision that is not consistent with evidence and their ethical system, then they are not making decisions correctly. I don't think anyone here is debating that decisions can be incorrect.
No it's not. The poster was seemingly espousing a belief that because he didn't want a union, it is morally wrong to force one on him. That is inconsistent with a belief in the benefits that government coercion can sometimes be a good idea. A union could conceivably be a bad thing or a good thing, but to dismiss it with a rights-based argument simply doesn't make sense.
> The whole problem of doing something "for the greater good" is that no one on Earth can definitively define what is good and what is not.
All endeavors may fail. We make decisions based on probability of outcomes. This is the same for both individual and collective decisions. If we cannot make collective decisions under uncertainty, then there is no point to any government whatsoever. Also, if we cannot come up with a baseline of ethics to evaluate possible outcomes, then we can't make any collective decision either.
> A union could conceivably be a bad thing or a good thing
> As a society, we make decisions against the will of individuals for a greater good all the time.
You are contradicting yourself. If a union could be a good or a bad thing, then one cannot use the argument that we do things for the greater good without presupposing that a union is a good thing. You are indeed assuming your own premise as true, which is indeed a logical fallacy.
There are historical arguments for and against particular unions for particular people, and there are studies of the impact of union activity.
"That's subjective" is the start of a debate, not the end of it.
No I'm not. In these comments I am arguing against the premise that a closed shop union is automatically invalid because the coercion would be wrong. The advantages that a union can have is not subjective under pretty much any reasonable ethical framework. If your ethical system can not produce judgments about public policy based on evidence, then it is useless.
Subjectivity is a different thing from uncertainty. The goal of ethical systems is to provide a way to make ethical decisions based on evidence. If we can agree on some ethical concepts, then objective decisions can be made given those concepts. The selection of an ethical system is subjective, but it's pretty obvious that it must allow for coercion.
Is it hard to see why an individual might be against that?
> Is it hard to see why an individual might be against that?
It's not hard to see, but individuals who prioritize their own desires over the greater good of their community are often (rightly) regarded as selfish. It is hard to have much empathy for someone who has their selfishness thwarted.
I think a lot of people would be better off with a union, though really I more advocate cooperatives.
I'm represented by a union at my job and I also negotiate these things myself (well, the union has a bargain for minimum working conditions, so I can't say "if you pay me $1000 I'll move my desk to the HVAC room"). The union comes into play more for things like health insurance and retirement benefits. I can't imagine an individual having much luck getting their insurance copays reduced, but the union seems to have a decent amount of success.
Turns out, you do need someone to do that for you, in fact you're almost always in better shape if you do get an advocate.
Having a collective agent is almost the polar opposite.
Things like retirement and health benefits are not negotiated at the individual level. having a personal representative likely wouldn’t help much in that area, but a union would.
In the event that your personal agent is negotiating for you personally, but also for several teammates, of course there is then a conflict and your interests may be traded for the interests of another one of his clients, which is an issue.
This is still better than having your interests pooled together, but not as good as having ONLY your interests advocated for.
It's not objectively better to negotiate by yourself, stop pretending like it is.
Ok that's not entirely true, I get that unions can help guide a one-shot prisoner's dilemma to cooperate-cooperate. But those are increasingly rare in a broad economy. My main objection is that I don't want to be part of a group that claims to "represent me", if I want a representative I'll appoint one myself. My secondary objection is that I don't want to be entangled in a legal structure where people far away can determine that because of such-and-such the union is going on strike and I'm not allowed to perform my job even if I want to. My third objection is for software related fields specifically, that a union will raise the barrier to entry, which so far has been kept incredibly low for the betterment of many people who came up from lower-middle class or lower and has allowed the field to expand to meet supply and across a pretty distributed set of locations.
Every person I know in a union talks trash about their union like they talk trash about their family. The union will annoy them on a daily basis -- and then they'll remind you that it's all between friends, and everything is far better than back before they had representation.
It's not a reason to add another bureaucracy on top of the existing one we all hate either.
I've been represented by a union and their representation was wholly disadvantageous to me to a significant monetary amount as a result of their 'screw the new guy' policies and priorities. To wit, things would have been far better for me without them.
You need to be a part of a terrible union to understand why people would think that way. It's pretty simple once you've been in one that siphons off dues and does very little to combat management, of which there are many groups that will do this.
Just a personal view-point. I don't have direct union experience other that what I read about. Teachers union/nurses union/workers union typically going on strike every few years to get a cost-of-living increase in wages. Unions of tradespeople seem to be better though, but it still seems like salaries are constrained in those areas.
For anyone who thinks that they have a strong bargaining position, or enjoy great perks: Try asking for an escape from the open-office-floor-plan-hell, by getting your own office. You'll quickly see exactly how valued your special snowflake concerns are to the company.
I see unions as a way to protect employees from being unfairly taken advantage of (long hours without commensurate benefits and choice on your part, dangerous working conditions, bad salaries/wages). A bad office design is a bad office design and you need to convince your company that it's not in their best interests by other means or work elsewhere. Using a union to deal with all this will only end up in causing bad-blood all around. For certain things legislation is better -- you can blame the "government" boogeyman instead of being pissed with each other.
There is a minimal amount of employees, I think around 30, where there is legal support for the workers to organize and request the presence of the union in the company.
Usually it requires a voting process for everyone to decide if they are willing to adopt one or not.
One of the unions that represents IT is IG Metal.
Maybe what I am asking is -- does having unions constrain pay-hikes in any way?
I managed to get pay raises, while other friends of mine had their salary frozen.
I guess the situation might be different across the industry, a fellow German HNer might provide a better picture.
Why should I go through the extra effort, financial loss, etc. Typically to help support engineers less productive than I to keep their jobs? No thanks.
Although, we just took on an intern who absolutely kicks ass, and runs circles around people who've been doing it for 10 years. That kid makes me nervous lol.
It's at least partially because it's so many programmers' "dream job." So many people get into programming because of their interest in games, then take jobs in the industry. They then are willing to tolerate/justify worse working conditions because they are doing something they are passionate about and the company culture has evolved to exploit that.
Theory: Because people like developing games, the industry has gotten used to overworking workers and replacing them with fresh meat once they burn out. There's more than enough replacements eager to work on games.
Workers have more power now due to the red-hot tech job market. This will not be true forever.
On the other hand, I've never seen a deserving and talented software engineer out of a job for very long. And if you're talented you will get paid much much more than average.
The only software engineers that want or need a union are the ones that need artificial barriers to keep them employed.
These dues can be very significant if you factor in the pay you lose as an above average employee, when you can no longer negotiate your own salary.
Unions are not a good thing for everyone in a highly competitive market with big differences in employee performance.
Maybe. Ask all those immigrant workers.
> unlimited vacation(s).
lol. rhetorical b/s.
But I'll note that even engineers who are less productive than you deserve stability and some level of control over their work lives.
So maybe consider it part of your moral imperative as a "winner" in the current economic environment to make sure other people can taste the benefits you enjoy -- even if you have deemed them "less productive."
At whose cost? Do developers even less productive than that next tier deserve stability? Does the worst employee deserve stability?
All those protections have a cost borne by someone.
Yes.
They don't deserve the best jobs at the fanciest companies, of course, but every single human being alive deserves stability. That's the baseline. If we as a civilization cannot provide that, then we need to keep working at it.
If that is your goal, software developers in western nations should be the least of your worries.
The ones who are not productive are usually the ones that interfere with my ability to be productive.
I'm an engineer and in general if I want to work in the game industry I will end up taking a salary that is significantly less than I would if I joined any non-game tech company.
Case in point, I've worked with someone at a game company that compared to the rest of the industry treats its employees very well. He was making at most $110k a year as a lead senior engineer (not including bonuses). He left the game industry and joined a well known soon-to-IPO startup as a senior engineer. He is now making $175k base with additional bonuses and stock options.
I'm not complaining, but trust me, the game industry is a different beast. It's much worse if you aren't an engineer -- artists, designers and QA are often treated as disposable.
As much as I prefer not to have government involved in much of anything, it's far simpler and far easier to legislate than to attempt to unionize. Unions tend to under-serve their average and above average members and is often not worth it. In the end, most would be happy to be compensated for personal expense and mandated overtime.
The biggest issue is generally a side effect of compensation. If the level of compensation after 40 hours exceeds the benefit to the company (reduced time to completion) they will pay or not. When it's effectively free, they will push. When less than half are willing, you won't get movement to/from a union.
There are also already lots of laws regarding payment to non-management, blue collar mostly hourly emloyees. Programmers are an exception, more so if salaried. There could probably be enough support to reduce the exceptions so programmers and IT in general are covered.
Also simply stating the thing someone says and saying it's a canard will convince no one.
Person 1: makes argument
Person 2: "Ugh this canard again?!"
Person 1: Uh yes. Nice talking to you.
I have dismissed it as a canard because this argument of "well if they don't like working there they can leave" has been done to death on HN, usually on threads about bad working conditions, at places like Amazon warehouses or on video game QA teams. And I point you to those places for my arguments against yours, because they've been repeated again and again. People often can't leave their job because of personal circumstances. They need the money. They need the health insurance. They have lack the resources to find another job quickly. They have families to feed. And sure, you'll rebut with "well they just have to suck it up and deal with it, and they must be sucking up and dealing with it if they haven't left." Which is correct to a point but is this an optimal result? Do we want a society where people are forced to stay at jobs they hate, that actively harm their mental if not physical selves, because of a resource distribution? When we produce enough to ensure that everyone can have a better standard of living? Which is the second, you could say, prescriptive, part of the argument. But the point is that the first argument has been debated before and I choose to dismiss it because we would be rebashing a very dead horse.
Since becoming a software developer, my life has been great and I have never needed a union's help. My TC is well over $400,000/year and after everything I've seen in my previous industry, I never would have reached that with a union.
Any sufficiently complex system will over time inevitably develop goals of its own, unrelated to the system’s announced goals.
Unions represent... the union.
The labor movement is in a sorry state because unions live longer than their useful period.
There are spots where unions remain useful... but those are few and far between.
Have you been aware that real wages have not been rising with productivity since the 70's? Inequality has also risen massively. You may be in a comfortable position in your job, but a very large proportion employed people in the US are not financially secure.
Folks forget now, but the existence of a large middle class in the US is due to reforms pushed by the labor movement in the first half of the 20th century.
On one hand, it's great the labor movement pushed for reforms in the first half of the 20th century. But we're in the first half of the 21st century now and as you point out, real wages haven't kept up with productivity and lots of people are financially insecure. So has the labor movement been slacking for the past ~50 years?
Of course, there's a whole lot more to financial insecurity than labor compensation, but you seem to be arguing for unions being one part of the answer to that. But we have unions, so where's the disconnect?
Exactly the opposite. Unions started forming after WW2 which is when the middle class began its decline.
People being "not financially secure" doesn't mean that a Union represents their needs. Those are two separate - if related - issues.
"folks forget now" you seem to be ignoring one of my main points: Many Unions out live their usefulness.
There are points where Unions are great - and some of those points do exist today. I think Unions are important with regards to government agencies, for example - because the "employer" is massively disconnected from the lower level employees and in many aspects not accountable.
But the vast majority of Unions get created... maybe full-fill a purpose... then continues to exist as a detriment. A bureaucracy that exists unto itself and stops representing the worker and instead becomes another detached entity that's, for all intents and purposes, a net negative and a drain on a company.
IE: The auto industry.
You show me a union that factors in their base and covers the entire spectrum - and not 100% one party or political ideology... and we can begin talking about how a Union could or would represent all it's members...
In relation to tech jobs, as I understand it union sign-up rates are quite low and that may be a function of the pretty decent wages the median tech worker makes. On the other hand I was listening to the news today and in my country they are experimenting with the idea of turning certain tech roles into trades and they say that the large tech companies might go for it. Not everyone is suited to 3rd-level ed. at the age of 18 and some learners are way more practical than theoretical oriented. If you could learn on the job and earn small wages while you're at it rather than racking up massive student loan debt that'd be super. Even better if you joined a tech union right out of the gate.