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Kalium

I'm sympathetic to the idea, but I've also yet to encounter a decent pitch. Pitches I've heard so far:

* A union could support privacy efforts

* A union could support other unions

* A union could advance political goals

* A union could impose moral rules for projects members are allowed to work on

None of these are actually reasons I'd want to sign up for an organization where the core value proposition is surrendering autonomy for collective bargaining to improve my working conditions. These are the pitches of people who want to use the political power and funds of a union for their personal political goals.

I want to hear a unionization pitch that's grounded in things relevant to my work. No more overweening unions trying to do everything and sacrificing the workers, thanks. I remember Detroit.

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A union could ensure better QOL for tech workers by:

1) capturing more of the value the workers create for them, vs. for capital, in direct dollar compensation or in other benefits, by bargaining from a much stronger position than individual workers, and

2) providing easier and more even access to counsel, support, and protection against all sorts of personal and professional abuses, at work,

Where #2 is a bucket that holds a whole bunch of really nice stuff, including ensuring management doesn't fail to provide what was won in #1 in lots of small ways that aren't worth fighting for an individual but are for a larger group.

Basically the same core things any well-functioning union provides.

Things I'd consider in addition to the two excellent items you mentioned:

3) Negotiating better IP control. Side projects, open source, etc. are locked down at various companies.

4) Better treatment for oncall. I know folks who have had to work for 17 consecutive hours for an incident and got nothing.

5) Better treatment for crunch -- tech workers in games have this particularly bad, but it's not limited to just that industry.

6) Salary minimums

7) More control over how the company outsources/contracts with workers

8) All sorts of other side benefits that could be collectively funded -- union libraries, training, networks, publications, resources for new professionals, discounts on union developed software, etc.

9) Parental leave, sick time, and other basic benefits

Edit:

10) Ensure and oversee processes to protect people who end up on the public stage. If you believe cancel culture is a thing, maybe having a union rep on hand and an established process for managing firings would be in your best interest.

11) Forced arbitration is another thing I'd consider talking with a union about.

So many people have this notion of a labor union built on what it means in an industrial context. But there's plenty of other models that could be applied where you don't have to, for example, promote people based on seniority. I wish it was easier to talk about this stuff without people hand waving away the idea immediately.

Do we live on the same planet? Tech jobs are insanely awesome compared to basically every other job out there. I've consulted for unicorns, the amenities for employees are ridiculous. Employees are incredibly sought after and can (and many do) regularly shop themselves around for better offers.

That doesn't mean there isn't more value to extract for workers—very probably there is—or more that could be done to even out availability of things like parental leave, for example, or that an easy, cheap, acceptable route to professional and legal counsel & insurances outside the direct control of the company one is working for wouldn't be very valuable—and besides, the overwhelming majority of tech jobs aren't the kind you're talking about, even restricting ourselves to the US.

[EDIT] more to the point, if your company doesn't say things like "you know, this contract pays really well, no need to negotiate for more even if we think we could get it" there's no reason employees should have that kind of attitude about their pay & work conditions.

Where does the money from to fund those amenities? The surplus generated from their wage labor. You can pay someone $300,000 a year and expect to make $400,000 from their contributions.

It can absolutely be the case the workers are well treated and still be losing their surplus value.

As I replied in another comment, the moral justification for unions is to prevent mistreatment of workers, not to transfer as much of the wealth created by a company to its employees as possible.

I'm not sure who defines 'the moral justification for unions' but I see a moral justification just from balancing the power dynamic between the company and the individual worker. Negotiating as a single worker against a company one has profound disadvantages.

> prevent mistreatment of workers, not to transfer as much of the wealth created by a company to its employees as possible.

The wealth is created by the workers, not the company. And some would argue that keeping too large of a share of that wealth is, in fact, a mistreatment of workers.

Unions require a moral justification for the legal protections they enjoy because they are a cartel of employees who use the threat of financial harm to prevent employers and individual workers from freely entering into mutually beneficial work arrangements. Generally speaking, some special justification is required to curtail the freedom of an individual or group in order to benefit some other individual or group. In the case of unions, that justification is that some employers held so much power in their relationship with employees that they were able to make the employees suffer to an extent that we find unacceptable. The justification was not merely that there was an extra 10% of salary that could be extracted from the company.

Just because some companies choose to be nice does not mean that they don't still maintain an unequal amount of power.

Similarly, just because some jobs produce more value doesn't mean the companies arent otherwise misbehaving.

You are assuming that companies somehow hold more power in negotiating with their employees. But it's not at all clear to me that that's the case. Both parties are able to walk away from negotiations and fulfill their needs with other parties. There is a symmetry there that speaks against there being any power imbalance. What is the mechanism by which you think companies wield more power than employees?

Moreover, I'm finding this notion that some economic actors have more "moral" right to a big slice of the profit-pie than others really hard to pin down. As in, it sure seems like the idea collapses as soon as you breathe in its direction, unless I'm missing something big.

[EDIT] that is, I don't follow why it's fine (presumably) for companies to seek to maximize returns, negotiating as a large block of people pooling their labor and capital, but not for workers to do that.

I own a business. I have undertaken lots of work and risk to get this business off the ground. Why should someone else, who has risked nothing, be entitled to anything other than a reasonable work environment and wages that both parties agree to if I decide to hire them?

There's an information imbalance. Free markets only function correct with complete information. You as an employer have access to data on market trends that I as an employee do not. One function of unions is to remove that imbalance, either by removing the ability to negotiate entirely, or by providing employees with more complete information. This leads to a more efficient labor market. Presumably an efficient allocation of labor is what you want, right?

Employees don't ever look at job boards?

Why shouldn't they find a way to negotiate from a stronger position and gain a higher price for their time, if they can? Wouldn't you, negotiating a contract for your businesses services with another? Entitled's got nothing to do with it.

If unions are just about extracting higher wages and not about combatting injustice, then, IMO, labor organizing should not be protected by law, since it's desired end is to use the threat of financial harm to force companies and individuals to enter into arrangements that they would not obtain otherwise. Should a company's suppliers enjoy legal protection so that they can band together for the purpose of using threat of financial harm to extract higher prices from the company and preventing the company from doing business with other suppliers?

That is one moral justification. Parent just provided another.

They get those amenities because the people employing them are making so much more money off of them that the cost is easy to swallow.

So what? The existence of someone else's profit is not justification for it to be taken. The moral justification for unions is that they prevent mistreatment of employees, not that they can transfer as much of the company's profit as possible to employees.

Do you also oppose companies negotiating "unfair" contracts that extract "too much" of some other company's profit?

[EDIT] I mean... wow, is it immoral if an individual negotiates with the aim to gain as much pay as possible, or only if workers band together to do so more effectively?

I would oppose a cartel of companies acting in a way that extracts too much money from consumers. We have a whole area of law for dealing with this. Unions are a cartel of employees who use the threat of financial harm to limit the freedom of employers and individual workers from freely entering into mutually beneficial work arrangements. I think this is justified if the purpose is to prevent employers from exploiting workers. I don't think it's justified if their sole purpose is to use power to extract more value from the employer.

> I would oppose a cartel of companies acting in a way that extracts too much money from consumers. We have a whole area of law for dealing with this. Unions are a cartel of employees who use the threat of financial harm to limit the freedom of employers and individual workers from freely entering into mutually beneficial work arrangements.

How so? An employer has a monopoly of jobs at a particular workplace, so why not let a union have a monopoly of workers to fill the jobs at that workplace. IIRC, union representation is at the workplace level, and different unions can compete to represent the workers at that workplace.

> Unions are a cartel of employees who use the threat of harm to limit the freedom of employers and individual workers from freely entering into mutually beneficial work arrangements.

Individual workers are in a weaker negotiating position than employers, so without a union it's highly likely that, on average, they are receiving lower compensation than they might absent that weaker bargaining position (the short-version explanation being that, in the typical case, it harms an employee more to miss an opportunity than for a company to pass on an employee, simply due to the nature of the two entities). I don't see why employees being in a weak bargaining position does not cause "harm" but their banding together to be in a stronger position does, nor why, given that position, they should be expected to voluntarily make worse deals than they could. Further, we collectively choose, via government, to permit such a thing as a corporation to exist in the first place, so in my view there's no natural or moral argument for the state of their being in a better negotiating position than labor, and even if we go on to arrange things such that they are made weaker than labor, somehow—not just equal or less-dominant—it's gonna take more than the simple fact of things being that way to convince me they're being harmed in some sense that should make me feel bad for them or that some moral wrong is being committed.

I don't think corporations, provided their privileges and their very existence by force of law, are being particularly harmed in some sense worthy of moral assignment by having to deal with strong collective bargaining entities for labor, nor that we can call gains in negotiations made by those labor entities unfair or immoral if they aim to gain the best deals they can without also having to label much of Capitalism as such (I might follow you down that road, actually, as I'm not sure it's wrong and it seems, at first glance, consistent, at least).

> Individual workers are in a weaker negotiating position than employers

Are they? In normal conditions (which seem to largely prevail in most parts of the U.S. labor market), the negotiating positions of both parties are fundamentally determined, not by either party, but by unrelated 3rd parties who are participating in the same labor market. Employers would like to pay as little as possible and employees would like to earn as much as possible. But the ability of both parties to achieve their desired outcome is dependent on their ability to walk away and obtain a better price (whether they're buying or selling labor).

Yes. Being rejected by an employer in the typical case hurts a prospective employee more than it hurts the employer doing the rejecting. I mean, look at who applies to whom and who’s usually perceived as being the stronger party in interviews. That tells the story right there.

[edit] how about this: you find a case where a normal employee tells a company they need to spend a half hour typing their job ad details and past pay for the same position into a web form especially for that applicant before they’ll even be considered, then also reformat their ad to match new specs the applicant gives them, and submit that to the applicant as a word document, and the company actually does it, and I’ll eat my hat. Employees are plainly the weaker supplicant in those interactions. Yes they’re “free” to do otherwise, but their job search will... go poorly.

Have you ever been in the hiring side of the table? Employers take a risk when they hire. They’re signing up to make large payments twice a month starting immediately. Yet they won’t know if the hire is any good for months. Both parties are taking risks and committing resources. That’s part of kicking the tires on a new economic partnership.

> The moral justification for unions is that they prevent mistreatment of employees, not that they can transfer as much of the company's profit as possible to employees.

In your opinion. In my view, one of the many moral justifications of unions is that they create a more even playing field between workers and already organized management/capital, and that includes the workers receiving a greater share of the profits the they had an essential role in creating.

A worker without a union is like a defendant without a lawyer.

> A worker without a union is like a defendant without a lawyer.

That's a bad analogy, but good unions are about self-organization of workers, not being assisted by _external_ factors.

It's also a bad analogy because unionization is, as its name suggests, forming a collective from individuals. The represented defendant is still just one person facing the justice system - and can thus hardly ever challenge its bounds.

So - unions are important, but think bigger! Take over the playing field, don't let it continue being controlled by management/capital.

> A worker without a union is like a defendant without a lawyer.

That's a bad analogy. Defendants cannot avoid a hearing. Employees can just get another job. Starting businesses is hard. It entails a lot of risk. Risk that was never taken by employees. And employees are not bound to the fortunes of the company the way owners are. If the company loses money or goes belly-up, the employees get new jobs. But the owners must simply bear the loss.

> That's a bad analogy. Defendants cannot avoid a hearing. Employees can just get another job.

I don't share your quibbles, but all right. How about this:

A worker without a union is like going to court without a lawyer.

A lot of court cases are optional. You can always just not demand what you're owed or pay whatever your asked. If you lose, just hope the next person you do business with will be more trustworthy.

> Starting businesses is hard. It entails a lot of risk. Risk that was never taken by employees. And employees are not bound to the fortunes of the company the way owners are. If the company loses money or goes belly-up, the employees get new jobs. But the owners must simply bear the loss.

So what? None of that is a convincing argument that non-business-owners should not benefit form organization. It's not like owners are the only ones taking a risk [1], workers do too. Do you think they somehow fantastically shift into equivalent new jobs whenever their laid off? Workers invest in company-specific knowledge and put down roots near their employer that are harder relocate than capital, for instance.

You also oddly fail to differentiate between groups like the struggling small business owner and the private equity firm billionaire who lays off 10,000 workers just because he'd prefer that he and his shareholders be richer. Whatever sympathy the former deserve is not due to the latter.

[1] they're the only ones risking capital, not the only ones taking a risk.

Yes, employees face a hardship if their employer fails. But the hardship is temporary and they are able to get a new job and replace their stream of income. The business owners, on the other hand, lose a stream of income that is fundamentally irreplaceable (since it was tied inextricably with the business). The owners are, thus, invested in a business in a way that employees are not. That doesn't mean I think that business owners are some oppressed class. I am merely pointing out why the owners have no obligation to share in the success of the company beyond the wages which are mutually agreed to.

Here's another way to put it: do you think employee pay should be reduced if a company in unprofitable?

Am I to understand that you see labor as systemically privileged under Capitalism?

No, I simply see it as one party to a transaction, similar to any of the company's other suppliers.

Editing to expand: Being able to depend on a regular paycheck is a helluva thing. Sure, you don't participate in the upside of a company. But you don't participate in the downside, either. That's the bargain that labor makes. If you don't like the bargain, then take some risk and start a company. Most people prefer a steady paycheck, though.

Couldn't the union have some sort of democratic structure for deciding what political goals are popular and enforced? In that case it wouldn't really be any one person's political goals.

That's what a political party is.

The reason these (ex) Googlers are trying to pressure Google's management to drop certain projects is because they know they can't win the argument to eliminate America's borders at the national or even state level via the normal political process. Their goals are not popular and people do not want them to be enforced, hence the dubious and unethical strategies these activists-cum-workers rely on.

Maybe the case for many political matters but there are indeed many things which DO have broad political support that are not currently practiced by large corporations. A union might help for those cases.

Which ones do you have in mind?

Any abusive practices with broad aversion in population. I would have to think of all the examples. I know there are things many don't want Facebook to be doing. Someone below said this: `e.g. "want facebook to stop listening in on your conversations? FB Local 404 did that for you" or "Sick of Instacart stealing your shoppers' tips? So is the Instacart Developers' Guild" and so on.`

This sounds like a list of disputes I would like my union to stay out of. A union representing me has one job: to look after the working conditions and compensation of myself and my colleagues. All this other stuff is a series of distractions.

I could have sworn I pointed to this exact behavior as an anti-pattern just a few comments ago, and was told not to worry because democracy. Given how readily this particular goal cropped up again, I suddenly find myself less than completely reassured. I suddenly find myself wondering, once again, if the people who want me to join a union actually care what I want or just want power.

If you have colleagues that have children, would advancing paternity leave also represent the interests of the group?

If you have colleagues that are diabetic, would advancing policies for cheaper insulin not represent the interests of the group?

Maybe the answer is no, but for those colleagues who are have more complicated needs the answer might be yes.

Lastly, if a union doesn't at least represent a re-balance of power then it is ineffectual.

When I have colleagues that have children, I would expect our union to negotiate for parental leave policies. I might expect some minor amount of support to go towards encouraging local politicians to advance that item, but it should be little more than an endorsement of the idea.

When I have colleagues who suffer from diabetes, I would expect our union to ensure excellent health care is provided as part of the contract. I would not expect our union to try to involve itself in something drastically removed from its core competency like how research is managed and pharmaceuticals are regulated. I would certainly not want our union to expend resources on the matter - there are guaranteed to be more substantive matters closer to home that would benefit from those same resources.

You're absolutely right. A union can, should, and must represent a rebalancing of power. It's just perhaps possible that it's not appropriate for this rebalancing to extend into every possible sphere. This is doubly true in a context of limited resources.

I don't know who Instacart are but Facebook don't listen in on your conversations, do they? WhatsApp has end to end encryption and FB Messenger is getting it.

I asked for examples because this sort of wafer thin anti-corporate virtue signalling is insufficient to convince me to pick a fight with my own employer in 'solidarity'. Like most of the population I don't worry about Facebook or Google invading my privacy, instead I enjoy their free services. If they did something I really hated I'd just stop using them: there are other search engines and Facebook isn't especially critical. I already use it much less than I used to. Nothing they're doing justifies being labelled as abusive, let alone taking explicit action.

I suppose it could, but I've never heard of a union that does. Generally the union leadership has the power to decide on their own what the union's goals are, and the democratic structure is only there to elect leadership and approve things like strikes and new contracts. (To some degree that has to be true - collective bargaining doesn't work if the union representatives don't have the power to make commitments on the union's behalf.)

In theory, yes! You're absolutely, completely right.

In practice, democratic processes have a tendency to be less than fully detail-oriented and allow a reasonable amount of latitude in leadership. I'm maybe the smallest bit reluctant to sign up for a system where the people doing the organizing are explicitly dreaming about abusing leadership positions.

When someone tries to describe unions but defines capitalism instead.

Unions are businesses. They provide labor in exchange for compensation in a mutually negotiated contract. Thus unions are unquestionably a capitalist constuct.

Perhaps I've missed something? Can you help me if there's anything I've overlooked?

"Democracy" doesn't solve everything.

What if I don't like what people voted on? Then I'm screwed.

Instead, I would much rather bargain for myself, instead of collectively bargaining with others who might not agree with what I want.

A union is a democratic structure itself, so it could indeed organize around workplace-specific concerns and its members could vote to abstain from larger political actions.

You literally just need to scroll up a few lines.

Please make a public example of this termination within the group. Please also make it a very strong part of new hire training for the group. I want it clear that we have a zero-tolerance policy for violating our [anti-competitive, wage suppressing] policies.

A union could also put an end to crunch time, a union could ensure better pay (or pay at all, to hear some salaried people talk about it) for on-call time, a union could protect politically unpopular people from arbitrary firing (i.e. they could be fired, but it would have to follow a process), a union could give workers a seat on the board (codetermination, as it's called), a union could establish a slimmer pay gap between workers and management/shareholders.

A union does not mean: pay/rank based solely on seniority, that you can't plug in your own equipment on your desk, that do-nothing people stick around forever. These are a few of the popular disparagements of unions that are not a built-in function of a unionized workplace.

Better pay, better conditions, and protections against arbitrary firing are all reasonable pitches. Why has nobody I've worked with ever thought that far? Rhetorical, I suppose. Probably too many DSA meetings.

Seniority pay, strict work rules, tenure, and more are all products of the incentives around contract negotiation. Those incentives can easily turn toxic. They're the results of needing to have something to bring back to the membership as a victory over Management, producing the equivalent of pork barrel spending.

As you say, these are not built-in. They're just failure modes of a particular political system.

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