Hacker News Reader

Comment by throw0101a | Hacker News Reader

> It's strange to me that technology workers are seemingly unwilling to unionise

A better model may be a guild like actors have (SAG).

Certain 'base-level' protections are agreed to with regards to health and safety, working hours, perhaps minimum salary guidelines, healthcare, retirement plans/pensions (?), etc. However things like salary can be independently determined. Paying dues would also give access to employment lawyers and dispute resolution mechanisms.

Just as (e.g.) SAG makes sure everyone on set is safe (both Tom Cruise and Jane Smith who plays Waitress #2), but people can be paid according to their (perceived?) importance to the project.

View on HN

The SAG is a labor union. “Guild” is just part of the name.

Many people instantly bristle at the word "union". It's worth distinguishing between the gatekeeping and seniority effects of a "union" as understood in the currently-not-pro-union mind and the potential benefits of a collective voice using more descriptive nomenclature.

Most unions don't have "union" in their name, I don't think it's an issue of nomenclature. People know which organizations can be colloquially referred to as a labor union.

That said people just have problems understanding how unions work. It's a collective voice. How that voice is used is up to the union members. If you want that to include gate keeping and seniority protections that's up to the members. If you want it to be a political lobby, same thing.

>It's a collective voice. How that voice is used is up to the union members.

I've never been in (or had the opportunity to be in) a union, but it seems like you could apply this exact same argument to the US congress. Congress is a collective voice. How that voice is used is up to the voters. Of course, it's far from that simple in the real world.

Do you have some organizational mechanisms in mind to prevent such an institution from eventually evolving gatekeeping and seniority (or to dislodge it from power if it does)?

So re-brand it. How about ‘collective’? Bernie Sanders literally lost the election because he couldn’t rebrand socialism and instead called it socialism.

I also don’t thing developers need a traditional labor union. We probably need baseline guidelines where non-compliant companies would be seen as ‘very lame, avoid’. Similar to a coding standard.

How would you keep the baseline protections reasonable enough so every startup and tech department would be proud to support it?

I see a lot of ‘Made in NY’ startups, even open source stuff use that brand, it feels like developer community is ripe for something like this.

> How would you keep the baseline protections reasonable enough so every startup and tech department would be proud to support it?

It would take a few years of back and forth of negotiation. Of course not all organizations would have employees may necessarily be part of it.

Holywood is a 'closed shop' where you basically need to be in the union / guild, but that is not true in every industry.

I'm in Ontario, Canada where a lot of car OEMs have plants: the Detroit Three plants are all unionized AFAICT. However the Cambridge Toyota plant is not: the CAW has been asking the employees for a while, but they always said 'no'. Seems that Toyota has a different mindset towards their employees.

Similarly Air Canada has been unionized with pilots for a while, but WestJet (~Southwest) only recently unionized: turns out the pilots there were tired of crap.

So it may not be an all/nothing situation.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com