And is it not true?
The results we’ve seen when such workers realise this (see Googlers more-or-less ept attempts to change management policy) is the test for this. A strong union would stand them in much better stead.
So there's a downside.
As a highly-skilled contracting worker, I care nothing about changing my client companies policies. Their values are a curiosity to me. I negotiate my rate, do the job, submit my invoice and move on. So maybe I'm not the person who can appreciate the advantages in a full-employee situation.
you seem to be inferring that skill level should influence compensation, and since unions are primarily in the business of bargaining on wages, the downside is that they introduce some ceiling or whatever
but, that's not how all unions operate. many are focused on working conditions/presence of work/benefits alongside. your average SWE doesn't care about these things because their job is physically and mentally easy, plus they are wooed with free food/working conditions/intellectual challenges etc. so average software guy is sated and doesn't have much incentive to rock the boat.
but, let's run with your example. suppose there is probably a large amount of variance in ML engineers. suppose some have a skill set 1x (average ML engineer) and a few have a skill set 5x average
the 5xers like yourself (maybe) probably feel great, they have tons of disposable income and don't feel any particular pressure because their work is intellectually fulfilling etc. so no need for collective bargaining. don't hold me back! you say as you cash check after check
but, in the case of ML engineers, one thing they are creating is self driving trucks which is a market worth hundreds of billions of dollars! management throwing them $500k, $1mil etc. a year is absolute pennies relatively despite being a large absolute salary
were you to pipe up about this as a contractor, you'd just get run out of town. but unions may be able to take the collective and say "we are an insanely talented group of specialists worth 10x what you're paying us, so pay us... or we quit"
there are unions like screen actors guild that mandate membership but function as a sort of "loose" union insofar as they have extremely talented people alongside entry level people (high skill variance) vis-a-vis more manual labor (e.g. nurses, coal miners) whose variance in "output" is way more narrow
And if these ML experts fail to create an automated trucking system then will they be the ones to pick up the tab? Of course they won't. This means that the money spent on them still matters, because you're not guaranteed success.
If you can't handle the risk, don't start the company. If your business depends on you convincing people to take less pay, might not be a great company.
If you're saying "talented but lazy people who don't use their talent to provide value shouldn't be paid more" yes, we all agree on that. Nobody is trying to argue that point.
This is a misconception spread by capital to make you think unions are going to hurt you.
The media company I work for recently unionized. I assure you the junior staff still makes less money than the senior staff. What the union bargaining got wasn't flat wages. What it got was a higher wage floor for new hires, better PTO, more flexible working hours, and a consistent yearly raise/compensation schedule, things like that. No senior employee's work is devalued.
The tradeoff isn't between senior and junior workers. It's between workers and owners.
But are you really the best (non-managerial) negotiator in the entire company? Statistically speaking, the odds of that are low. And with a union, you could have the very best negotiating on your behalf. Yes, you'd have to give them all the information—but you have to do that now with your managers, in an adversarial setting, and you could instead do it with the negotiator in a friendly meeting where they're actively working to help you get them the information to get you the best deal.
Or, maybe you really are the best negotiator in the area. Wouldn't you like to get some extra pay from the union to be that guy above, and use that negotiating skill on behalf of the rest of the senior workers? (Don't think they'd pay you extra for that? Well, you're the best negotiator around—make it happen!)
Or maybe you not only genuinely believe there's no one who could possibly be better than you at negotiating your compensation, but also genuinely don't care that other people have the opportunity to be paid what they're worth, too. In that case, all I can say is I Don’t Know How To Explain To You That You Should Care About Other People.
No thanks!
So if your field is skilled programmers, why do you think a union formed by you and people like you would insist upon rigid pay scales, rather than pay individually negotiated based on skillset, competency, and demand?
Heck, even if there is a national union for your field, if there's no local, you would be in a position to significantly influence what route the local went.
And even if there is a local, if you joined it, especially if you're such a good negotiator as you seem to think, why do you think you wouldn't have any pull in determining compensation ceilings?
Plenty of places have wage schedules:
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Schedule_(US_civil_ser...
Throw a "Senior" or "Level II" or III in the position, and it can move someone to a different level.
I've also seen places allow for an extra boost via a "market allowance" mechanism.
Not a lot about 'Level III' in that discussion.
The middle-ground could be guilds like SAG/ACTRA: base requirements for working conditions and benefits, but clauses for independent compensation (but perhaps with a floor).
Tom Cruise and the guy playing Taxi Driver #2 are both card carrying members, but it doesn't stop Cruise from making more given that he's less replaceable than John Smith.
Isn't SAG an existence proof that this isn't necessarily the case? (This shouldn't be read as an endorsement of all things union, or of SAG in particular, just that it doesn't seem to fit the claim.)
It's weird that people have this idea that all unions always look/work a certain way when they're so varied from field to field (never mind country to country).
Off the top of my head, you could very easily have a union that says "These are the specific job requirements and expectations for this job. Here are the tiers of skill in this job type. Here are the floors for compensation at each tier. Here are the guaranteed rights and working conditions that the owners must maintain (PTO, Health coverage, overtime, etc). Any grievances will first go through mediation with a Union Rep/Lawyer available." and call it a day. That covers about 90% of what most pro-union supporters actually want to happen.
> Isn’t that just smart? Why would I, the hypothetical investor risking my money on a venture, tie that money to a specific employee? That’s putting all of your eggs in one basket.
Similarly, why would as a hypothetical employee work without the protection of a union?
> 1) Payscale -- a professional is in a better position to have a substantial emergency fund, to get through a sudden layoff.
It would be higher yet with unions.
> 2) Demand -- Some professional skills are also in high demand, which makes changing employers easier.
Easier, yes, but not easy.
> 3) Upward and lateral mobility -- In a union shop, mobility is often rigidly defined by seniority, whereas in many professional services, the employee can be more in control of their career. Contrast this to something like the airline pilots union, where a pilot has to start over as a rookey if they change airlines. When I started my last job, I was able to negotiate more weeks PTO because of my years of experience in the field.
Yes except in tech you are an old man by 40, so yes enjoy your 5-year senior developer status... And enjoy your retirement at 40. It's a mythology that you are better off in tech because of the lack of unions because of the super high salaries, etc., which are only to be found in a small segment of the industry.
1) Payscale -- a professional is in a better position to have a substantial emergency fund, to get through a sudden layoff.
2) Demand -- Some professional skills are also in high demand, which makes changing employers easier.
3) Upward and lateral mobility -- In a union shop, mobility is often rigidly defined by seniority, whereas in many professional services, the employee can be more in control of their career. Contrast this to something like the airline pilots union, where a pilot has to start over as a rookey if they change airlines. When I started my last job, I was able to negotiate more weeks PTO because of my years of experience in the field.
I don't get how this is a "con" of working for a hypothetical union. Why couldn't a collective bargaining agreement create better wages? Why couldn't a union help prevent a sudden layoff in the first place?
>>2) Demand
Some professional skills are currently in demand, which currently makes changing employers easier. Again, saying "Well if my job sucks, I can just go get a different job" might be true today, but it might not be as easy tomorrow. Also, this isn't a "con" but an alternative solution to the same problem a union would solve. If your job is enjoyable and paying you well (ideally what the union should be doing) then why do you need to change jobs?
>>Upward and lateral mobility -- In a union shop, mobility is often rigidly defined by seniority
There's no reason for this to be needed. You can make a union without this problem. NFL players don't make more money because they're older, they make more money because they provide more value to their teams. They're also in a union.
Bad unions exist. Good unions also exist. Why not just say "if we're going to make a tech sector union, we need to make it a good union that meets most people's needs" instead of saying "some unions can be bad, so never make a union"?
Whereas when I do this as a Unix/Linux systems engineer, I get constantly rewarded. Or I build up my track record and take those skills to a higher paying employer.
And yes, good and bad unions exist. It is quite possible that bad unions tend to form around certain types of professions (factory machine operator, teachers unions, etc). Whereas actors, sports teams, etc. have more in common with high tech workers (individual contributions can have outsized impact), so it is possible that a "good" union would form around the tech industry.
Personally, I'd like to see something more like a trade guild, which sets a base set of guidelines that their members have to follow, and also minimal acceptable standards that employers would need to follow in order to be able to higher quality workers from the guild. The benefit to the employer is that the guild would basically give them workers that are of at least a known minimum skill level for a given position.
The general idea is that there is always an inherent imbalance between an individual employee and their employer after an organization reaches a certain size (I don't think unions really need to exist in <10 employee situations). As organizations get larger, the loss of a single employee gets less and less painful to the company while staying the same for the employee. To counter the imbalance collective bargaining serves as a maximize the pain on employers for performing actions against their labor.
Let's just clear something else up: "Guild" and "Union" do have specific structural nuances, but are also both used to generally describe "labor collectives/organized labor".
You say you want a trade guild but think a union is potentially problematic. I say they're basically the same thing. This is a semantics discussion about how best to organize and structure your labor collective.
You need to think about others, not just your particular case in order to understand what drives people to support the idea of union.
Isn’t that just smart? Why would I, the hypothetical investor risking my money on a venture, tie that money to a specific employee? That’s putting all of your eggs in one basket.
> even in a company that genuinely does try to be the best in digital media, things can slip through the cracks, and a bad manager can make a world of difference. I had always gotten along very well with my bosses at Vox, but that could change in one corporate reshuffling. I also started to worry about the future: What if, in a very volatile journalism industry, I’m laid off, or Vox is sold off to another company? Who’s to say the next owners would be as good as the current ones?
Journalism isn't the same thing as "writing listicles for Buzzfeed", and even that isn't always as easy as it might seem to be to laymen.
Consider that Hollywood is unionised even though the pay differential between an extra and a star is far greater than in tech. They can make it work, why can’t we?
Many European countries have unions for the whole company, and there are several factors as part of the wage.
Collective agreement is just one of the pieces.
Nothing prevents the existence of bonus tied to performance.