I really don't understand the lack of unionisation in the USA. In Europe it is endemic, even in tech, and seems to have nothing but positive impact for workers. (I'm represented by Syndicom.)
There is power in a union.
There is power in a union.
I agree, but also with the caveat that the union has to be good. And I think that was a significant issue here which is that there isn't union know how about how to organize and operate in a pre-IPO, pre-profit, pre-critical-mass startup.
Anyone who has worked at startups knows that there are ways workers get screwed that are specific to startups. The whole idea of liquidation preference for example is nutty given that a 1x return doesn't change a fund's dynamics but does rob employees of a meaningful chunk of cash.
But then the other dynamic is that there is both a very real chance of the company failing and everyone losing their jobs and of the need for some people to lose their jobs in order for everyone else to keep them.
I think unions could work in pre-IPO startups if they were aligned with the IPO. There would still be a lot to bargain for and they could help soften the downside of failure while chiseling off more equity for the staff.
But this unionization effort didn't seem particularly savvy about the dynamics of being pre-IPO. For example getting busted by "investors might not want to invest if this succeeds" is not a particularly savvy way to go down. I wouldn't want people bargaining on my behalf who hadn't proactively predicted that concern and countered it.
But that's not particularly a knock on Medium's organizers. I just think this is an area of unionization that hasn't been invented yet and it would have benefited from people who saw it that way.
Sure, you could try to outlaw that, but these regulations always seem to have loopholes. You'd need unions with basically no borders stretching across continents, which I frankly find terrifying.
Having been IT in an international company, I can tell you that we were not fond of some of the European unions because they would push back against anything that anyone over there didn't like. This included things like "you guys need to stop using Windows 7 on 5-year-old laptops and start using Windows 10 like the rest of the company". I guess maybe from their view that was still a "positive impact for workers", but they were a huge pain point.
There is an incredible amount of anti union propaganda in the USA.
Unions are also blamed (rightly or wrongly) for the downfall of Detroit and auto manufacturing in the US. For tech, the view I’ve seen is “things are good, why risk it?”
What killed off the textile mill manufacturing in North Carolina, a state with the lowest (tied with South Carolina) unionization in the country?
The difference is unionized factory workers in the 1930s in Michigan sent their children to college, like Larry Page's auto worker grandfather. Non-unionized North Carolina textile workers could not afford college, and their children worked at textile mills until they closed down, and their grandchildren are in worse shape than they were.
If american union organizers signalled they really cared about positive impact for workers rather than pushing one side of the culture war, they'd be more successful.