Unfortunately, the scare tactics and propaganda of large corporations have won out in the USA. Folks hate collective bargaining with a passion.
The whole temporarily embarrassed millionaire, individual exceptionalism, hero worship is a quintessential part of American culture, one that definitely helps employers in their price negotiation with employees.
You don't get paid what you're worth, you get paid what you negotiate. But the ability to negotiate is a privilege. I go into this a bit more in a sibling comment.
Which is ironic, because the same SAG-AFTRA that negotiates multi-million dollar contracts for movie stars is the same union that represents background actors and actors in infomercials.
What do you mean by this? I mean I guess I get less PTO than other countries, but I get way more pay. I could just take a month of unpaid vacation if I wanted to, and still make more than my European counterparts. Tech also gets great healthcare (unless you work for a startup or something I'd guess).
Not disagreeing that unions would probably be a net-positive for tech workers, but saying that tech in the USA gets a worse "benefit package" is pretty dishonest.
Ultimately, I think we agree though, since you're saying it would be a net positive. The options you mentioned (taking unpaid PTO) are possible, but there are many employers who would then see you as unreliable (unless you're top level in terms of skill).
I also think it takes a great deal of privilege to say "I can negotiate so who cares". While I agree with you that negotiation is important (it's how I got my current salary), you should think about those who come from poorer / less secure backgrounds. These people often don't want to blow their chance, so they take whatever offer comes their way. It's kind of a "rich get richer" thing, where those with confidence (growing up with a well off family, hence a safety net) are the main ones negotiating. Do not underestimate the importance of a safety net when it comes to negotiating, even for yourself. One thing that keeps me at my 9-5 job is knowing I need healthcare and a place to sleep with electricity (I have a lifelong genetic condition, sleep apnea, which untreated will result in my untimely death). My family is abusive, narcissistic, and unreliable. Being so incredibly on my own, I'm extremely risk averse. I imagine others, who might need insulin or some other thing would be the same.
So ultimately, I find the "just negotiate" line to be at best naive, at worst unempathetic.
I will say that much of the reason I don't want to join a union comes from this kind of response, where advocates disregard discussions of specific policies in favor of sweeping statements about class issues. I don't think an organization trying to declare class warfare between software engineers and managers would be able to effectively represent my interests.
https://www.inc.com/suzanne-lucas/did-steve-jobs-lower-your-...
In any case not everyone works for FAANG, and even those that do can suffer unfair termination, various forms of discrimination, or other issues.
The reality in the US that productivity has outstripped wages since the 70s. This has been a huge and tragic net loss for general prosperity, because when wealth is concentrated and workers deal with debt and rent-seeking - from college loans, healthcare, high property prices, and others - the cost-of-entry for a viable small businesses becomes unreachably high.
Startups are not s substitute for small-but-profitable small businesses, some of which have the potential to become much larger businesses through genuine organic growth rather than investor goosing.
Unionisation isn't about your personal circumstances, it's about everyone's personal circumstances. Part of it is about keeping wages high precisely because this gives smart creative people to build new businesses if they choose to.
And before someone says "But what about wage costs?" - remember, you are paying inflated costs anyway, but with no benefit. You're paying them to people who tend to be extremely rich already - health insurance companies, banks, landlords, property speculators, and financial speculators.
If you pay them to workers you get the Fordist model of increased general prosperity with more people with more money being able to afford - and create - more of everything.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-Tech_Employee_Antitrust_L...
I've just always seen life as "unfair" and "up to you to fight for what is right". A labor organization/union has always struck me as "too good to be true" and unrealistic.
Flying seems impossible too, but yet planes take off every day.
[1] https://www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/2013/04/art2full.pdf
[2] https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0160449X16643321
There also seems to be a popular misconception that unions prevent you from negotiating for yourself. Unions set salary and benefit floors, not ceilings. If you think you are a superstar negotiator, you're free to demand a higher wage than that floor.
Actors and football players have unions, yet also have an incredible wage disparity between the top and bottom end of the pay scale.
- Unions add more politics to an already increasingly political environment. I don't want to spend an hour or more every month in a meeting to vote on stuff I usually don't care about.
- Unions cost money, and while 200$/2 weeks (which is what one big union in my country charges) might seem reasonable to you, I don't like being forced to do anything.
- Unions usually end up with rules regarding who gets promoted and who doesn't. Broke your back working OT to help out the company? Well tough luck Martha came in one month before you and has priority on promotions.
- Unions make it harder to fire under performing employees. While that might fit in your ideal society, I prefer working with overachievers.
Would you prefer these decisions to be made unilaterally, without any input from you? Because that's the status quo. If you are happy with these decisions being made unilaterally, don't vote. If you aren't, you have more of a lever than you do without a union.
> - Unions cost money, and while 200$/2 weeks (which is what one big union in my country charges) might seem reasonable to you, I don't like being forced to do anything.
I'm assuming most of that money is going into a strike fund. Having a strike budget makes your negotiating position much stronger, just like how if you don't live paycheck to paycheck, your negotiating position is much stronger.
If most of that money goes into administrative expenses, you may want to consider voting to reduce those expenses.
> Unions make it harder to fire under performing employees.
Unions require management to follow a process to fire employees, under-performing or otherwise. My wife worked in a union for 8 years, and plenty of poorly performing employees were fired during that time. The difference is that they weren't fired arbitrarily. You'd appreciate protection from that, if you were to ever be fired for political, personal, retaliatory, or just purely fabricated reasons.
If your management can't figure out how to document how an employee is underperforming, and to give them notice to shape up, I'm not sure your management can be trusted with anything.
> - Unions usually end up with rules regarding who gets promoted and who doesn't. Broke your back working OT to help out the company? Well tough luck Martha came in one month before you and has priority on promotions.
Did the union make those rules, or did management make those rules in an effort to control costs, and then blame it on the union?
Unions are democratic, by the way. If you don't like tenure-based promotion, vote to change it. You have no such recourse with a manager who arbitrarily promotes people they like.
- Unions often ignore individuals because "the majority aren't affected by that scenario"
- Voting on stuff monthly? Seems to be a really active union. Must be getting ready to strike and if that's the case why wouldn't they check to make sure they have broad support for one. Also, no one is literally holding a gun to your head. You can vote, vote no, or not vote.
- Don't know what union this is but dues I've seen are 1-2%. Whoever is getting paid $5000/week I'd like to join that union, too. Fine, maybe it's a really good union that charges 5%. I'd still want in because someone is taking home $2000/week.
- The word is seniority and this has nothing to do with unions. It's how factories from the very beginning have doled out promotions. Job for life and all that. Since most people don't want to be working the shit stirring tank how do you get promoted out the shit stirring tank? A simple metric the factories and offices came up and the union workers agreed to.
- Unions don't control this. But if someone gets fired for underperforming you know who's going to get a labor lawyer? The worker who's been paying dues to collectively have a lawyer on retainer. You see if I get fired, I get told I was a poor performer with no evidence. If the worker in the union gets fired there lawyer is going to want to see the evidence. And you'd be amazed at how poorly most companies document this. See the union doesn't keep someone from being fired. But it does make sure the firing is fair.
And if you’re a software engineer, it’s usually not hard to be frugal enough to save up enough to have the luxury of saying that.
We really need country-wide social safety nets, not attempts to force companies to retain people they don’t want.
Good. I don't want promotion to be a race to the bottom for whoever works the longest hours. If you're gonna try to get ahead of me by doing OT, screw you.