Ask HN: Software Unionization | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Software Unionization

12 pointscjhanks12 comments

It has been my observation that there exists a division between management and engineering in both smaller and larger software companies. As a consequence, management in many software companies has become less about the advocacy of employees and more about controlling people's free will.

Are there any existing software engineers unions? Has there been any past attempts at creating them? If so, do we know why they failed?

To be clear about what a "union" is in this context:

- Hours should be within "reason" (agreed upon during hiring and salary negotiations) and an employee should not be required to work beyond them, but should be permitted if they so choose of their free volition.

- Wrongful terminations would receive legal support from the community which prevented larger companies from abusing the legal system to prevent justice.

- Hostile work environments for all would be handled through cooperation between union mediators and company advocates.

There would of course be dues, but hopefully the very existence of a union would be enough to dissuade some of these companies from acting ruthlessly.

Any thoughts are welcome, even if they believe this to be a bad idea.

Kickstarter recently voted for a union and was able to negotiate excellent terms for their layoffs.

Check out their website here: https://kickstarterunited.org/

On another note, unions are a wonderful idea for increasing worker power. I don't understand how people expect others to care about democracy, voting, etc. when we're stuck in a dictatorship 8 hours a day at work. Unions make the workplace more democratic, which will overall make people care more about democracy in general, IMO.

Perfect, thank you for sharing.

Bro bro bro bro where to start on this one?

The fun loving my hobby is my work technology crowd ever getting serious about professionalism and unionizing when there are clueless eager greenhorns pouring in at an exponential rate who will work for the privilege of wearing casual clothing and pizza once a week? C'mon get serious you expect these people to be invested in their own careers apart from chasing approval?

In other news there seems to be a quiet revolution happening -> https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23404116

As if it'll gain any traction but here's hoping.

Unfortunately, you are probably right. But if we want software to stop being in various states of "broken" forever, we will need professionals not scared of losing their jobs for doing the right thing.

This sounds like syndicalism, and I think it's another great route to improving worker freedoms. I wish them well.

Yes it's on the shoulders of the hoi polloi who individually are utterly disempowered to do something about it -- I guess nothing has truly changed since the middle ages except tastes in music and dress.

I've done my part fighting false corporacy bro. It's always the same scenario played over and over a bunch of diddling directors and middling managers cuddling up to their overlords while the team is sold up the river based on their performance evaluations. You'd think we'd learn to DRY but we can't apply systems thinking to our corporate citizenship it's easier to be governed by morlocks.

Speaking of dress have you ever seen an engineering culture where people take their jobs seriously enough to dress up for work, outside of the movies? Huh me neither.

Ever wonder why the root word of investment is 'vestment' as in 'article of clothing?'

For me it was the millionth time I saw my manager wearing the same printed sweatshirt with an illustration of an astronaut that caused me to lose all hope for this industry as a whole.

Edit - I guess you may not see the correlation but it goes to attitude

Software people are so keen to fit in yet not seem organized that they refuse to dress up for work and this is a litmus test for whether they will ever be a strong group versus a collection of free radicals. Doubtful until a new generation able to see through the games comes through kinda like -> https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23404186

The answer is always right under our noses but we refuse to see it. It's hard to wake up someone who is pretending to be asleep as it's said.

Well written (I laughed), thank you for that.

I would love to have a contract (union or not) that details the performance review policies and other aspects of the job. I'm tired of my company not following their own policies to the detriment of employees.

I hate that my contract is a one page document that says they can make new policies or change policies at any time without even making it known to you. I don't think anyone would play a sport where one team could change and enforce the rules on the fly and the other team had no power.

My one concern with a union is that it could lead to job losses. What I mean is that outsourced labor is already cheaper, so if there is a push for higher pay or hour restrictions on salaried employees, then we could see outsourcing increase. It really aucks to see your career dry up after spending 5 years becoming an expert just because the company wants to outsource the work.

Here's what I understand and seen of Unions: Unions were made to protect workers because they were being overworked and in many cases, forced to work in horrible conditions where they could potentially die.

What the average engineer has to worry about: being over worked, emotionally abused or fired for any reason (at will employment).

Really good engineers/devs are pampered by tech companies. They will never get overworked or emotionally abused because their managers will do everything they can to make them stay.

Average / mediocre engineers get pushed out because they are compared to the productive ones, and will then begin their job hunt all over again, while the company goes and tries to roll the dice in finding another uber productive engineer.

Because you have this divide of pampered workers and forced out workers, I don't see a case where you can unify the two parts to be on the same page. The better engineers don't have any incentives to form / become a union while the average engineer has no leverage.

This, exactly this.

The only thing I would add, is that it isn't necessarily good engineers that have no incentive. I have mediocre engineers who have no incentive - they agree with their managers on everything so they are treated well.

The only civilized way to get money or power is to make people who have it like you enough to give you some.

> management in many software companies has become less about the advocacy of employees

What? The companies were never paying managers to do "advocacy of employees".

Yep that's just the illusion to keep the peasants in line by making them think they have representation. A great comparison was the first Russian Congress (under Nicholas 2, I think)

The subject of unionization among software engineers and other workers across the tech industry has been growing in popularity over the last few years (and months, in particular). As others have mentioned, workers at Kickstarter – including engineers – agreed to unionize recently. Employees at Glitch (a mostly remote workplace) also recently unionized[1].

While software engineers enjoy relatively advantageous working conditions compared to workers in other occupations and industries, overwork/exhaustion (also known as "burnout"), discrimination, a lack of due process in discipline/terminations (i.e., "at-will" employment), etc. remain commonplace within the industry and field. While software engineers have some measure of professional leverage with which to advocate for themselves, the inequality of power between employer and worker within the workplace remains unresolved. Collective bargaining and unionization directly addresses that imbalance.

I work as a software engineer and also volunteer with an organization called the Tech Workers Coalition in New York[2] that aims to educate people in our industry about the labor movement and provide resources to help people learn more about successful organizing and their legal protections in the workplace.

Several unions, including the Office and Professional Employees International Union (OPEIU)[3] and Communication Workers of America (CWA)[4] have devoted greater resources to helping workers in the tech industry organize in their workplaces.

Throughout the history of the tech industry, there have been attempts to organize unions[5]. Many of those efforts have been unsuccessful. These failures have been explained in some cases as the result of the industry's "seductive" allure[6] or the stubborn individualism of professional programmers[7].

I don't believe that either are useful explanations. An alternative explanation, offered by the sociologist Peter F. Meiksins, is that organized labor in the United States entered a rapid state of decline beginning in the late 1960s, just as the modern technology industry and software profession was beginning to grow[8], i.e., software engineers and tech workers weren't joining unions because very few people were joining them in general, not because of any unique aversion.

There has been new, though extremely modest, growth in union activity in recent years, especially among younger workers in industries like healthcare and digital media (an aside: I was a member of the organizing committee of a union at a digital media workplace). With some renewed in the labor movement, it makes sense that software engineers and others would be looking toward unions and collective bargaining as a way to gain a stronger voice in their workplaces.

PS. I also gave a talk on tech workers and the labor movement at EmpireJS in 2018 that might be of some interest[9]

[1] https://www.wired.com/story/how-kickstarter-employees-formed...

[2] https://techworkerscoalition.org/nyc

[3] https://www.opeiu.org

[4] https://www.code-cwa.org

[5] https://archive.scienceforthepeople.org/vol-8/v8n1/rumblings...

[6] https://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1356&dat=19831225&id=... "The union-free workforce is…the result of a mystique as likely to seduce production workers as millionaire entrepreneurs."

[7] https://www.computerworld.com/article/2589356/programmers--a...

[8] https://engagedscholarship.csuohio.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?a...

[9] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bnLpXPCXKGA

Reply on news.ycombinator.com