> You can feel however you want about power, about not joining a union, about not paying dues, but the employer always has more power than the employee; they pay you a small fraction of the value you produce for them, you collect a paycheck at their leisure, and they can replace you more easily than you can find another job.
"Balance of power between labor and management" doesn't mean 50:50. It means the employee has some leverage.
The employer should have more power than the employee. Just like the president should have more power than the citizen, the general should have more power than the private, and the parent should have more power than the child. Power differentials are necessary.
> The employer has a workforce and resources at their disposal, you bring to the table only your time. You can eschew unions all you want, but it's simply untrue to state that "a union is no more pure than management."
Unions are pure when they are correcting an imbalance of power. They're corrupt when they're are accumulating power for its own sake.
> I'm sorry you feel condescended to to be told this, presumably yet again. Perhaps we can find a way to preserve your feelings, because condescension isn't my intent; I'm just trying to address a century's worth of anti-union propaganda.
After reading this paragraph, I have a really hard time believing that condescension isn't your intent. I don't think "unions are bad," I think they are a valid tool to correct power imbalances but they're just a tool, sometimes there is no power imbalance, and a union for programmers is a terrible idea.
> By the way, labor organizing is significantly harder than volunteering at a soup kitchen. In the past, employers have hired private armies (the Pinkertons, etc) to attack and kill labor organizers; these days, despite it being illegal, employers often fire workers for legally-protected labor organizing activity. No one's being fired from a soup kitchen.
Yeah, we've all heard the stories about Google putting out hits on dissident employees.