In the EU unions are not as tainted as in the US, but we still have neoliberals on the right, and 'progressives' on the left, both clamoring individualism for their own agendas.

There is no solidarity left : earlier this year my country ( NL ) threw all elderly under the bus ( we have no room for you on intensive care ).

You know what happened? They got scared. That was all.

I remember the 80ties : all unions would have united and the entire country would have revolted.

In an ideal world the HR department would be considerate of every employee's needs and there would be no need for unions. But in practice the incentive structure of the HR department doesn't allow that, so you need a competing incentive structure to balance things out (the union). Neither can achieve the goal perfectly on their own.

To be blunt, most of my observations of traditional unions have given me the impression that they prevent the hardest workers from advancing and protect mediocre workers who do the bare minimum. The incentives appear to create a negative work environment for those who do want to excel, even in traditional union careers such as teaching and nursing.

I agree with you that the trend of asking Leetcode (or any rote-learning) style problems hurts candidates. I have no moral problem with software engineers bargaining collectively to reverse a trend that is harmful to the industry.

That being said, I think there is a tendency for organizations created around a cause to find themselves rudderless when that cause is finally achieved. The urge to not disband and instead look for another cause is often too strong, even if they don't feel quite as strongly about the new cause.

I genuinely would like to know how traditional unions obtained their negative stigma. My guess is they were started with equally noble aims.

> getting a large group of people to say no to leetcode.

I assume you mean LC to be a stand-in for the types of interviews that focus on LC-style questions? LC didn't invent these and they're certainly not to blame when companies ask senior SWE candidates to invert binary trees.

How do you expect to establish/coordinate such a union without any funding?

Where are the going to get the money to pay for lawyers and negotiators? Sure everyone wants something for free, but no one wants to pay for it.