Coming from a public accounting background, I’ve seen a variety of businesses. Somewhat obviously, I’ve seen some be successful with unions and others be successful without, which makes sense, as unions are neither inherently good nor bad. They are a tool which can change the power dynamic and incentive structure of workers and employers throughout an organization, but there is nothing inherent about having a union that guarantees ineffective operations, just as the absence of a union does not indicate that employees are getting shafted.

Generally speaking for well run, ethical companies, whose management actively try to do the right thing, unions add unnecessary redundancy and bureaucracy. When there is a sense of trust between employer and employee, communication flows between employees and managers, employee working conditions are safe and healthy, and compensation is reasonably fair. For companies that are shady and treat employees poorly, unions help enforce structured communication and transparency between managers and employees.

Usually I look for symptoms of bad management when hearing about employees who want to unionize. In tech, we can generally assume reasonable working conditions and pay, so Kickstarter unionizing screams “toxic management” for me, personally. I haven’t heard management’s defense, but ultimately the burden is on management to convince a majority of its employees that they don’t need a union. Clearly they haven’t, and given how easy it is to appease developers, this is particularly damning.