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Comment by ycHatesFreeSpch | Hacker News Reader

Socialism aside, the unionization of tech workers is extremely important. Failing this, they will be exploited at every damn job. Unions exist in local governments, so why not at private firms too. It's time to organize. A lot of CEOs and CTOs will hate this idea, of course, and will do anything to make you believe otherwise.

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I'm 46 years old. I can't think of one example where I was exploited as a tech worker. I'm from a union town, grew up in a union family. I support unions. The UAW was very important to the country and the middle class. I'm just not sure where the need is in tech. I think it might hurt us, if anything. Tech workers are not fungible. We do have quite a bit of leverage. Your average factory floor worker is fungible and has almost zero leverage.

I am also worried about who would end up leading these unions. If traditional blue collar jobs, where members are most certainly not Left-leaning already end up with literal communists in the leadership, I cannot imagine how bad it would get when the membership is largely Left-leaning.

I have heard too many stories of overworked programmers (lots of stories if you google it), especially in the gaming industry, and let's not forget Amazon's NY Times story a few years back, to think that there is no worker exploitation going on in the industry like you say.

I think your examples are valid. I wonder though if it's a choice for someone to work 80 hours a week at $40k to make video games versus 37 hours a week at $80k doing forms over tables stuff for The Bobs. Is that a choice or exploitation?

It's a choice to get a highly competitive "dream job" that's full of long hours and crap pay. It's exploitation when you're given crap pay, work extremely long hours, your company clears close to two billion dollars in profit that year, and then lays you off (to use recent news about Activision Blizzard as an example).

I'm not necessarily against companies making money, because fully automated gay space communism isn't yet a practical option. I'm not against working long hours, and I'm not against prioritizing things other than money in someone's career choice. That's all valid! What I do have a problem with is companies taking advantage of people and hurting them.

I would suggest reading about crunch I the video games industry, and remember that people take big pay and benefits cuts just to work in these places. Here is one to get you started: https://www.gameinformer.com/b/features/archive/2018/01/16/c...

Tech workers are becoming more fungible. More and more employer consolidation in the industry. More globalization.

You're thinking only one move ahead, at best.

Negotiation works best when done from a position of strength.

Tech workers face the same issues as most white collar workers. It's common to be unfairly treated in regards to promotions, workload, overtime etc. But the biggest issue is probably equity. It would probably be worth unionizing just over that.

This exploitation seems to take many forms. Being paid a multiple of the median income, working indoors under climate-controlled conditions, and (at least in my case) being paid to do that which I’d do for free anyway.

My grandfathers mined coal and milled steel. They needed unions. I don’t see any benefit to unions for me.

Look at airlines and auto companies for the danger of extreme unionization. You can kill the goose that lays the golden eggs. Unions generally only work in monopolies (think old school telecom) where there is a surplus that is protected from competition. In this case it’s just about dividing a fixed pie.

The best thing for workers is to have many companies competing for their talents. That’s why counterintuitive things like lower corporate taxes can sometimes benefit workers. Same with reducing barriers to market entry.

Unionization is also extremely important to protect the non-tech workers at tech companies who do not have the same leverage as the salaried engineers.

Their undoing contract will mean less if it doesn’t have ability to veto any attempt to farm out work to cheaper or less regulated labor markets.

Why should they have such ability? If someone else is ready, willing, and able to do the same job for an overall more attractive package to the company, I believe the work should go there, whether or not it's the work that I used to do or wished I would do next year.

Well because it’s one of the main drivers of layoffs—which is part of job security which is one of the main factors in wanting to unionize in the first place.

I understand the obvious reason they want that ability. That doesn't extend to explaining why a random American technologist is more deserving of (ie "should have a right to") that job than a random other Earth citizen technologist. (I say this as an American technologist.)

Ok then why have these unions at all, if it’s not to add worker rights? A union for the sake of unionizing but not afforded rights to guide how people are hired, fired, furloughed, outsourced, etc., is just a pretense. Can you imagine firefighters’s unions saying, yeah, we don’t care how you reduce costs, you wanna fire us and hire prison labor instead, just do it, we’re good!

Besides, if I lose a job to a worker in Romania, China, India or Brazil, I can’t simply waltz on over there and say “Hey youse all, I just landed, I don’t have a work visa, but you all gotta play fair, gimme a job, you took mine!”

It’s a reasonably safe bet to conclude that I’m not a union supporter for technology jobs.

I’m not sure it’s a good fit either. I’ve had to interface with unionized tech workers and getting routine things done took extra effort.

My point is that if they institute a union it then should also be a strong union that looks after its workers.

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