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Comment by mmcwilliams | Hacker News Reader

At the same time, there should also be room to discuss the pretty good examples of employers being corrupt and even engaging in wage-fixing collusion against workers across companies within an industry. On this site there’s plenty of anti-worker sentiment and not enough discussion of the misdeeds [0] of the employers.

[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-Tech_Employee_Antitrust...

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There are plenty of issues that should be on the table when it comes to technology workers like equity arrangements, severance at high risk companies, systems for promotions, actual vacations, open source funding, health care between employment etc. The reason it won't happen isn't because there isn't cause, or that employees would suddenly sabotage the company, but that any such organization would be a politic force. Especially in a country like the US where there are only two parties as contenders and only 50% of the eligible population votes. It doesn't take that much to change the political landscape, which is why no one can be allowed to.

Companies view everything as a cost whether it is infrastructure, health care or rights. They lobby broadly to minimize those costs and to keep their own position. And that is unlikely to change. If there is any argument against unions it is that it is already too late. Unions ultimately work by having a war chest for strikes. The company, or the employer organization, then have their own war chest. Tech companies have so much cash, and the cost of living is so high, that a strike wouldn't even be thinkable for many many years. Making an effective union impossible.

I’m not sure I’m convinced that going into any discussion that prefaces worker organization as “impossible” is entirely in good faith. All industries view worker-related expenses as costs (they are) so I don’t see the exception in this case.

What I do see is that a $350-400M settlement was seen by insiders as being short an order of magnitude, meaning that the 65,000 tech workers affected by this wage-fixing crime left a lot on the table. Class actions lawsuits, it seems, aren’t the correct tool for this kind of negotiation and unions are a viable alternative.

I guess my comment can be read both ways, but for what it is worth I support unions. It is just that people tend to discuss it like it is a choice of equal difficulty. The tech companies now are so large, and have so much capital and influence that it might take 10 years in the best case scenario to even have a choice to sustain a union. Unions just like any other organization are effective because the things they have. You would have to build the capital, institutions and influence in face of the companies. And that only happens when they are afraid of conflict. But the only thing they are afraid of is losing is influence so the might for example have to tax their offshore earnings to contribute to infrastructure spending and social reforms. So they will fight unions at all cost, because that is one of the few ways that could happen.

That’s fair and I’ll admit that I read your comment as a slight-of-hand anti-union statement akin to the linked Amazon video. There’s a lot of FUD spread about organizing that masquerades as well meaning advice: the company will fight it, they’ll shut down your shop, it’s not worth doing it, etc.

I don’t disagree that companies will fight unionization in the industry but that describes the history of unions and ironically workers are better protected these days by the NLRA and the low likelihood that business will hire armed goons to attack striking workers violently than in the days where large strides were made by the labor movement in the US.

Well... better get started now, then!

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