New York Times tech workers vote to certify union | Hacker News Reader

New York Times tech workers vote to certify union

nytimes.com

332 pointshughmandeville325 comments

I'm surprised they weren't already in one. I worked at a competitor (the Wall St. Journal) years ago and all software engineers there had to be part of the union.

Unions in the news industry are extremely common and powerful.

My subjective experience with it was that union membership was mostly inconsequential for developers. The market for programmers is so strong that people would just leave if they weren't treated well or compensated fairly.

> all software engineers there had to be part of the union. Is that legal? Can unions or companies force you to join the union as a condition of employment?

It depends on the state. This is what “right to work” laws are about.

A business can be a “closed shop” and require payment of a fee. Though you don’t, technically have to be a member. The fees are not “dues” they’re essentially “agency fees” or “fair share fee” that make up for the benefits you’re getting due to the union.

The fees are usually very close to Union dues so most people just join to get all the rights.

Exceptions are “Right to Work” states which explicitly outlaw closed shops.

Of course they can - unless you live in a jurisdiction with a so-called “right to work” statute.

If you weren’t forced to join then, in theory, management could subvert and then break the union by hiring lots of new employees who are compensated to “opt-out”.

That’s absolutely insane that a union can prevent people from working for a company without paying for their “protection”.

Yep. That's why I will vigorously oppose any unionization drives. It's incredible that people would acquiesce to being forced to accept whatever contract some union boss negotiates.

Why is it bad to be forced to generate revenue for the union as a condition of employment, but ok to be forced to generate revenue for the company as a condition of employment?

The business has customers and pays me a salary. The union is simply a parasite, extracting value from the organization.

Objectively, if you voluntarily join a union shop, there's nothing wrong with that. I would never do it, but it's at least a free market transaction.

But it's unconscionable that a union might show up at my work and demand I start paying them for the "benefit" of negotiating on my behalf. I would instantly quit. Thankfully the Alphabet union is a tiny farce.

Why is the union a parasite, but not the company’s shareholders? In both cases employees are forced to send them revenue. So why is one good but the other bad?

I wouldn't consider shareholders good or bad, but neutral. The revenue you send them today is compensation for the capital they provided to get the business to where it is today (or, in many cases, liquidity for earlier employees who built the company). They provided meaningful value to secure that revenue stream.

Meanwhile, the union provides no value to the business.

It does provide value to the business, but to the employees rather than the shareholders. The question is why should interactions with the shareholder reps be compulsory, but not the employee reps? Why is compulsion fine for one but not the other?

> It does provide value to the business, but to the employees rather than the shareholders.

At best, unions provide a redistributive function (transferring income from high-performing to low-performing employees). In practice, their net benefit to employees is negative.

> The question is why should interactions with the shareholder reps be compulsory, but not the employee reps? Why is compulsion fine for one but not the other?

The shareholders own the company. They bought it from the original founders and employees who built it. Without shareholders, there would be no company.

Unions are just mafia bosses who showed up later demanding to be paid. They were never involved in value creation.

Without the employees, there would also be no company. You cannot work at the company without being forced to generate money for shareholders. You also cannot at the company without generating money for the union (if membership is compulsory). Once again, why is one bad and the other one good? Why is one a “mafia boss” and the other legitimate? It’s identical compulsion either way.

> Without the employees, there would also be no company.

This is incorrect. A company is more than the employees. See holding companies or any of the many companies that have gone through mass layoffs/restructuring.

> You cannot work at the company without being forced to generate money for shareholders.

I’m not forced, the whole point of wanting to work for a company is to enter into a mutually beneficial agreement where you make them money and get money in return.

> You also cannot at the company without generating money for the union

This is a third party that has no business interfering with the agreement I’m trying to enter into with a company to sell it my labor.

> It’s identical compulsion either way.

I don’t think you know what “compulsion” means. One of the things is voluntary, one is not.

Shareholders provide capital, and a management function by hiring management.

Huh? If there’s no union you’re forced to accept whatever contract the company boss decides upon. At least in the union situation you’ve had an advocate in negotiating the contract. In either situation if you don’t like the end result you can just quit.

Yes, I always have the option to quit. Which I had in the first place. It's just as possible (in fact, probable) that the union negotiates a worse contract than what I could have gotten myself and I'd be forced to quit a job I liked. That's a strictly worse outcome.

> At least in the union situation you’ve had an advocate in negotiating the contract.

They're not an advocate for me. They're an advocate for the union. Those are not at all the same thing.

At the end of the day these arguments always come down to people thinking they're superior than the peasants who "need unions", possibly because they can't imagine organizations where people work for the welfare of people other than themselves.

Careful. You are fighting a strawman here.

First, I don't think there are 'peasants who "need unions"'.

Second, there are people who might want a union to negotiate for them. Just like there are people who prefer having a lawyer represent them in court. Having such preferences (or not) doesn't make anyone superior or inferior. But it also doesn't mean that we should all have the same preferences.

> [...], possibly because they can't imagine organizations where people work for the welfare of people other than themselves.

Eh, lots of organisation, including companies or political parties or charities, do that kind of stuff all the time. Doesn't mean that I want that I automatically want to hire the services of any such organisation.

Eg I'm fairly sure that most churches are run by basically altruistic people who only have my salvation in mind. Understanding that doesn't make me into a Christian.

What if labor rights and regulations provided nearly all the same benefits as unions but across the board to everyone, union member or not? Union membership could still be something you could choose to do, but the better working conditions be legislated so everyone in the country, no matter what job, had fair working conditions?

I’m someone who is not necessarily pro-union but understand that working conditions could be improved. A great example is 40 hour work weeks. I have never been in a union but because there are laws regulating a standard work week and mandating overtime if you go over, I have benefited from that. We could all collectively as a country lobby for this instead of each individual workplace fighting the same battle one thousand times over.

Not every anti-union argument is based on the one you are postulating.

Tom Brady, the greatest quarterback of all time, with a professional agency to negotiate on his behalf, was in a union. Tom Cruise is in a union. Steven Spielberg is in a union.

There may be philosophical reasons to oppose a union, but contracting isn’t generally an issue. If you have more negotiating power than the union, you can just negotiate on top of the union contract, like sports and entertainment stars do.

The existence of some unions which don't enforce collective bargaining doesn't negate the fact that most worker unions limit the negotiating power of individuals. In fact, they actively attempt to eliminate it and socially/professionally isolate anyone who prefers to negotiate directly.

Most software developers, even top performers, are not brand name celebrities. If the union forces everyone to follow a contract, they will need to comply. Realistically, tech unions will end up looking a lot more like journalist unions than football stars.

This is explicitly the goal of the new NYT union: they are looking to "begin negotiations for a contract with management."

Some union boss negotiating my employment contract is my worst nightmare. I have friends who work in union companies and they hate the union's policies but are terrified of going against the union bosses.

Barry Bonds and Michael Jordan were not in the union, and they are considered the very best (or top three) in their sport, respectively.

Sports is different. Sports leagues legally collude with each other when hiring.

Basketball teams have a salary cap for their entire roster.

I’d rather have no advocate than a moron advocate. The last thing I need is Charlie Kane as my agent.

No, I am not forced to work that particular job.

Many people think they individually can get a better result negotiating themselves than having some "racketeer" negotiate in their name. With the historical connections of US unions to organised crime, they can hardly be blamed.

It's difficult to think of a more textbook example of racketeering.

Why is it racketeering when a union prevents me from working for the company without contributing to fees, but not when management prevents me from working for the company without contributing to shareholder profits?

The company can hire you. Your unionized coworkers can decline to work with you, or for the company, if they do so. Would you deny them that right?

No. Some union agreements specifically forbid the company from hiring non-union employees. That's what makes it a closed shop.

"Right to work" states have it right here. A union should never forbid you from voluntarily transacting directly with an employer. If they do, they're just a protection racket.

Ok, so the union has negotiated a contract with the company, and as a part of this negotiation the company has agreed to specific terms of employment. Should they be prohibited from engaging in those negotiations, or agreeing to those terms?

I don't think the union contract should cover people who don't want it.

If the company consents and an employee comments consents, why is the union when relevant? Why should they be able to barge in and mandate their terms?

Careful! If you keep going in that direction, you might speak out against minimum wage laws next.

It's a contract that the company has agreed to -- if they violate that contract, the consequences apply. Or should they be able to violate contracts negotiated between private parties?

If a company signs a contract with a supplier of aluminum or electricity should that contract cover every other supplier as well?

Why do you only make this exception for suppliers of labor?

Yes, because it is monopolistic/anti-competitive behavior. In isolated cases, it doesn't seem so bad. But you eventually end up with entire industries dominated by unions where you can't work at all without paying their protection money.

We have laws against corporations using market power to force monopolies. Unions also should not be able to legally monopolize the labor market.

I would agree that if unions were significantly larger and more powerful than corporations then there might be an issue (just as corporations being significantly larger and more powerful than individual workers is an issue - that is after all what unions exist to address). But I highly doubt this union is bigger and more powerful than the NYT, and I rather doubt that any union is as big and powerful as Google/Facebook/Amazon/Apple/etc..

Many unions are active in entire industries (or more). Many companies are much smaller than that.

Sure, and maybe in cases where a single union has a monopoly on the labour supply for an industry then certain counterbalances would be appropriate, like allowing smaller companies operating in that industry to negotiate collectively with that union. I really don't think that's a relevant concern in this instance though.

I wonder if there have been situations where someone was banned from a union, but then couldn't find employment in their trained profession and home state because of the closed shop contract.

Who is going to tell him his work is paying for HR people that exist solely so the company can get rid of him when it wants to? Middle managers scheming to juggle his work for their own benefit? CEOs that collude with others to restrict his work mobility?

A union is just a counterweight to executives. If you are not paying for the former, you are definitely paying for the latter.

The company's management can prevent me from working for the company without contributing to shareholder profits - do you also think that is bad? If not, what's the difference?

You write "compensated to 'opt-out'" like it's a bad thing.

Unions are a tool, not a goal.

> compensated to “opt-out”.

Didn't you basically just describe the goal of a union? Better conditions for their workers?

Well, the theory is that management will make the conditions worse after breaking up the union.

Very similar to the myth of 'predatory pricing'.

Sure, just like companies can require you to work at certain times as a condition of employment, or wear a uniform as a condition of employment, or a hundred other things.

Letting it go the other way just results in freeloader syndrome: unions fight for improved work policies and work culture for all, but you can get much of the benefits without paying in. So many people don’t, which ends up weakening the union in the long run.

You are right that free-loading is a problem in theory.

But being forced to pay for services you don't actually want is also a problem.

It's being forced the same way any other terms of employment are forced on you, and your option in this case is the same: go somewhere else.

We know from history and other countries that broadly speaking, if you weaken unions with right-to-work laws, workers as a whole end up worse off. It tilts the power relationship between employees and employer towards the employer.

If you look at peer countries with stronger, more present unions, you find that workers are usually considerably better off there.

> We know from history and other countries that broadly speaking, if you weaken unions with right-to-work laws, workers as a whole end up worse off.

> If you look at peer countries with stronger, more present unions, you find that workers are usually considerably better off there.

Compare and contrast https://pseudoerasmus.com/2017/10/02/ijd/

Also compare European countries. The more neoliberal ones tend to be richer.

> It's being forced the same way any other terms of employment are forced on you, and your option in this case is the same: go somewhere else.

In some sense, yes. And you can read my comment as an argument in favour of me avoiding union shops.

Though if paying union dues is optional, the unions present in a company will have to show they can do something to actually improve the situation of the workers and not just collect dues by just existing

The problem here is that much of a union’s work is improving the general work culture and policies to be more labor-friendly. Letting people pay union dues optionally means they get a lot of the benefit of the union without paying for it. Classic free rider problem.

That's exactly the time to unionize! The employer has limited leverage to bust any union efforts.

When the employment market is weak and you are scrounging for a job it's a lot easier to threaten/scare everyone into submission.

But why bother?

I wouldn’t even bother raise concerns to a manager in this employment environment, yet alone be willing to fight for a union if something annoyed me.

This also describes an environment where the union doesn't seem to be offering any significant benefits to developers. If unionizing doesn't improve your working conditions, what's the point of the union?

I think the idea is that you form the union when you have leverage and don't need it so that if you ever lose leverage as an individual in the future (e.g. if the developer labor market becomes oversaturated or demand for developers tanks), you will still have some leverage as a member of the collective.

Seems kind of like insurance - you pay for it when you don't need it so that you have it when you do.

Oh, I get the idea. We're just talking about a situation described by the commenter above where the union is already formed. It is apparently unable to provide any substantial benefit except the hope that it might be useful at a future date.

This leads me to wonder if it's really doing anything of value for the workers it's supposed to be defending, supporting, and empowering. Like the insurance policy that you suspect will be cancelled the first time you try to make a claim.

This is generally why Insurance is more regulated in certain industries, eg. Motor vehicle insurance can’t drop you because the get a claim about how you totaled someone else’s Lamborghini. Are there similar protections that regulate unions themselves?

Yes. Unions are tightly regulated under the NLRA and by the NLRB, both of which constrain their collective bargaining powers, right to form, etc.

Car insurance companies can very much drop you if they deem you to high of a risk.

But they can’t drop you to avoid paying a claim if you have insurance.

If demands for developers sink - aren’t you screwed anyway? How often in the history of labor have unions ever kept companies from just outsourcing? Did it help employees in the car market?

My solution for 25 years as always been to change jobs.

Forming the union when you have leverage helps later when you don't.

If a union formed when you have leverage doesn't deliver when you do, why would you expect it to deliver when you don't?

If I understood the parent comment, there are two kinds of leverage being discussed here: there's the leverage that individual tech workers currently have (as high demand, high income laborers in a hot market) and then there's the leverage inherent to collective bargaining.

I believe the GP was saying that unions can deliver when circumstances give individuals large amounts of leverage, but they don't need to. But we all know that good times don't last forever, and unionization does provide sufficient leverage when individual leverage evaporates.

I understood the point. My counterpoint is that if a union doesn't use the leverage of collective bargaining to deliver when it's in a good position to do so, it rather weakens the argument that the same union will decide to use its leverage when individual leverage evaporates.

Organizations run on precedent, policy, and consistency. Arguing for the potential for inconsistency seems to me to be a rather weak reed. Especially since the WSJ's been a union shop for 80-ish years.

More likely, IMO, is that the union as a whole did not care much about the developers and was more concerned with other parts of the membership. There's one union covering the whole shop, so this seems pretty likely.

As parent said, in good times (demand >> supply), the difference between individual optimal and union optimal is relatively small. Or negative!

In bad times (demand << supply), the difference between individual optimal and union optimal is very large.

Ergo, you're not going to see a lot of union benefits in good times.

People don't pay a monthly subscription for a lawyer their not likely to use even though a lawsuit or criminal charge is one bad day away. You're view of supply and demand matches that of a paranoid actor rather than a rational one. If ever the market were to contract, there are alternative solutions like savings, downsizing, or looking for another job. It's not as though one company has a monopoly on all the job opportunities in the world or working in that one company is the only way to feed oneself.

A union is not a panacea. For many people, unions are just as much of a hassle as a bad job and without the benefit of self-representation. And when all breaks loose, the last thing most reasonable is trade their agency

> People don't pay a monthly subscription for a lawyer

That's a pretty poor analogy. Some people do keep lawyers on retainer. Also, if you don't have legal representation at the point in time you're sued/charged, you're not required to represent yourself, and can still hire a lawyer.

Unions are probably closer to insurance. You can't buy insurance after you crash your car and expect them to pay out, neither can you join a union after you've been given the sack and expect representation.

>Unions are probably closer to insurance.

I think this analogy is more apt than you realize. Internet commenters absolutely love to shove insurance down the throats of people who can afford to self-insure against or simply are not exposed to the particular outcome in question.

Insurance against what? If you (a tech knowledge worker) is unionized, does it mean that the company must not remove the tech that you use, so that you get job security? Would unions have a say in such decisions?

I don't see unions as being useful, unless there's some pre-existing guarantees that the union can provide (like insurance - you pay a premium and get a known quantity of payout).

> People don't pay a monthly subscription for a lawyer their not likely to use even though a lawsuit or criminal charge is one bad day away.

Sure they do. TurboTax offers for an extra fee on filing legal insurance that covers a legal defense if the IRS challenges you.

One of my past employers offered a legal program as an optional perk we could opt in to, as well.

https://www.abajournal.com/web/article/law-firm-subscription...

I don't believe the Turbotax product pays for a lawyer. Non lawyers can represent you at the IRS though I'm guessing certain criminal matters would need a lawyer.

The turbotax product is also not called "legal defense" but "audit defense" presumably for that reason.

They definitely blur the lines on their marketing; a TurboTax MO. Such plans definitely exist, though.

https://www.legalshield.com/

> If you receive a speeding ticket or other moving violation, you can call your lawyer and they will handle the situation for you. This plan benefit is one of our most popular as it can reduce or eliminate points on your license and reduce or eliminate fines with no additional lawyer fees. Representation under this benefit is provided when you or your family members have a valid driver’s license and are driving a non-commercial vehicle.

> Your lawyer can represent you in uncontested divorce proceedings. Uncontested Divorce is a divorce in which neither party is represented by separate counsel and all issues are agreed upon in writing without negotiation by your Provider Law Firm, net assets of the marriage are under $500,000 and no division of retirement benefits or QDRO is applicable.

> Your membership includes representation by your lawyer if you or your spouse is a named defendant in a civil suit. Each year of membership, through your fifth year, earns you additional lawyer trial defense and pre-trial preparation hours as follows...

I don"t know anything about that particular product but I've read anecodotes about the lawyers being terrible that are provided by such services.

A better example is perhaps liability insurance. The insurance company will pay for a lawyer and has an incentive to pay for a good lawyer since the insurance is on the hook up to the policy limit if the lawyer loses.

people do pay insurance (Sometimes even legal insurance) in the hope they do not have to use it.

People do not pay monthly subscriptions for a lawyer because they are extremely expensive. Those that can, do have lawyers on retainers though.

And what’s stopping tech companies from doing the same thing manufacturing companies do when they don’t want to deal with unions - hire cheaper labor overseas?

My hometown use to be booming with multiple manufacturing plants. Every time the union got involved, the plants just picked up and left.

Overseas labor is also cheaper than non-union US labor.

> Every time the union got involved, the plants just picked up and left.

Unions have been around - especially in manufacturing - long before they started offshoring production. The cost of labor in China and elsewhere was simply too low, unionized or not.

The unions kept pushing for increased pay. But regardless, what good would unions be to prevent outsourcing?

> The unions kept pushing for increased pay.

Sure, that's their job. Individuals do the same thing; unions just mean everyone negotiates as a group instead of one at a time, with a more balanced power dynamic.

> But regardless, what good would unions be to prevent outsourcing?

Unions aren't magical. That doesn't mean there's zero value in such a scenario.

They can negotiate rules and limits on layoffs, they can negotiate severance and healthcare coverage during such an outsourcing, etc.

How are they going to “negotiate”? If they say “no” what are the union members going to do strike? The company is trying to get rid of them anyway.

I'm not sure how useful this is going to be if you only read portions of the replies.

Unions negotiate in advance. They set up multi-year contracts between employees and management. These often involve limitations on the company's ability to lay people off, or otherwise meaningfully change employment conditions.

They're not unlimited, and they don't go forever, but it tends to mean there's a lot fewer "surprise! you're all fired tomorrow!" scenarios, because there's contractual protections in place that companies won't give individuals without bargaining power.

Again, unions aren't magic - they can't prevent all layoffs. They can make them harder to do, and they can protect employees better during one.

If the company isn’t competitive and can’t pay their negotiated rates - they file for bankruptcy. When has a union ever protected workers when a company was in distress? The auto industry? The airline industry? Flight controllers in the 80s?

> If the company isn’t competitive and can’t pay their negotiated rates - they file for bankruptcy.

That's hardly the only scenario. Sometimes they're chasing more profits.

> When has a union ever protected workers when a company was in distress? The auto industry? The airline industry? Flight controllers in the 80s?

Auto is a good example. In the last recession, UAW made significant compromises to keep the industry afloat. https://newrepublic.com/article/155088/gm-uaw-workers-strike When the industry bounced back, they struck to ensure those concessions were rewarded: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019_General_Motors_strike

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2021_John_Deere_strike is another recent example of unions winning significant concessions after a company threatened to offshore.

From your John Deere Wikipedia article

> Investment bank William Blair & Company estimated that the strike likely reduced Deere's output by between 10 and 15% for the fourth quarter of 2021 and the first quarter of 2022.[29]

The strike led to an increase in the already-inflated auction prices of used Deere equipment such as tractors and other used agricultural machines.[30]

It really depends on the numbers here. Were the companies paying say $12/hour in current terms and the union was asking for more or were they trying to get $35/hr raised beyond what was reasonable for the work?

What’s “reasonable” is the same as the market demands for their skillset. If the companies could pick up and move to another state or a cheaper country, what does that tell you?

It tells me that they don't care about anything but their profits and, as a society, we need to stop being okay with that. Employees are not just an inconvenient cost that should be minimized in any way possible. They're human beings who have a right to decent quality of life. They have a right to be paid a living wage for their work. It's sick that there are people out there that believe otherwise.

The unions didn't destroy those towns. Those companies did.

If you believe employees have those “rights” then the government should provide them - not private industry.

A union is like an insurance policy, or a lawyer on retainer, or a contract in writing. It doesn't do anything when times are good, that's not what it's for.

And like an insurance policy, it costs you.

Not all insurance policies are good.

Oh absolutely. But the remedy for that is to be actively involved and hold them to account, not dismiss the whole thing as a scam.

You want me to be actively involved in all insurance contracts that are offered to me, and try to lobby them to be better?

Seems like just saying No to them would be the saner option.

(Similar also for unions you don't want to participate in. Or political parties, or companies etc.

Joining and getting involved is fine, if that's what you want. But avoiding is just as valid a response.)

You have to judge how much involvement to have. Just signing up and forgetting about it is a pretty bad idea. But not getting insurance at all because you've heard some insurance sucks and doesn't pay out is an even worse one.

Most kinds of disaster preparedness are thankless, seemingly pointless work until the disaster in question happens.

Insurance is a broad term.

I agree that is some forms of insurance are useful. Eg catastrophic health insurance at a good price.

But that doesn't mean I need to insure my phone. Or buy health insurance that covers glasses.

I do agree with that much. But having a manager attempt to fire me under false pretences was, subjectively, the worst and most stressful experience of my life; I've had scary medical incidents but those are something everyone is on your side for, a human actively trying to wreck your life is so much worse. YMMV I guess.

You have my sympathies. I just don't think unions are going to help on balance here.

If someone doesn't want to work with you anymore, they should be allowed to just fire you. Instead of having to come up with false pretenses.

See also how Orange in France ended up bullying their own employees in order to entice them to quit; mostly because they weren't allowed to just fire them. (Some of the victims were even driven into suicide.)

So it's like buying a lottery ticket every day for decades expecting to win millions. They don't show value and there's no indication they ever will, and it costs a significant amount of money.

Often, the unions themselves are corrupt.

> So it's like buying a lottery ticket every day for decades expecting to win millions. They don't show value and there's no indication they ever will, and it costs a significant amount of money.

Money has diminishing returns. Paying to gain a small chance of winning big is generally foolish; paying to eliminate a small chance of losing big is often wise.

> Often, the unions themselves are corrupt.

This seems to be a distinctly American quirk. Maybe figure out what you're doing differently to the rest of us that causes that, rather than attacking an institution that works very well elsewhere.

> This seems to be a distinctly American quirk.

Not so much American. They are very corrupt here in Australia. There are union leaders or related staff in court pretty much every working day in court down here.

> This seems to be a distinctly American quirk.

Not at all, they're pretty much corrupt across all of South America as well. I don't have first hand experience elsewhere, but have heard similar stories from who do.

Most problem I see with unions is that they tend to run their own causes at some point. It is difficult to keep them focused on the interest of workers and they can get tangled up in contemporary issues. Corruption is another problem since possible. If I look at some unions some people in tech wanted to start, I don't really see the issues of worker prioritized.

That said, because corporations seem to default to exploiting workers to the maximum degree possible, they are a necessary evil.

I don't know how bad working for the NYT is, but I wouldn't be surprised that instead of arguing for employee conditions, they try to influence editors and dejure editorials the might not like.

Because you now have a strike and a contract and a grievance process as additional collective leverage.

Or I can just say “f%%% it” and get another job. With remote work being as popular as it is now, I don’t even have geographic restrictions.

Unions are insurance against capitalist hubris.

Competition is insurance against that, too.

Alas, unions can have their own principal-agent problems and bureaucracy and hubris.

alas, competition can have its own problems too.

In complicated situations it may be that you want more than one insurance against bad things happening.

I'm happy for people to join unions, if they want to.

I'd just be against being forced to join unions, or against giving unions any special legal privileges.

(Eg one such privilege would be not enforcing contract clauses about employees giving up their right to strike in exchange for some pre-agreed compensation.)

Competition usually turns into collusion and consolidation.

I find it weird that nobody is seeing this in tech.

The automovotive market used to have garage based startups a long time ago. It used to have fierce competition and workers could get pay raises without unions.

Then gradually everything fell under 3 big companies, workers fought the concentration of market power by unionizing (and lost) and for decades there was just the big 3.

It's not even a question of if or even who tech will consolidate under any more - it will be someone who is currwently a household name. It is when.

It's coming.

You are saying that unions don't actually help?

No they clearly would.

Indeed, even in our beloved tech industry, the biggest employers have absolutely colluded to keep workers' wages down:

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/apr/24/apple-goo...

And still people trust management...

You can distrust both management and unions.

No, it's the same hubris: politics over personal human connection, concentration of power, collective mass over the individual, corruption on all levels.

I'm pretty sure going from "we can terminate your employment without cause" to "okay these are the reasons we will terminate your employment" is a HUGE stress relief for people.

Unions, even when they're not doing much, bring in stability.

Turning the decision to fire someone into a hyper-formalized procedure mostly seems to result in environments where terrible people never get fired, like the DMV.

1. The DMV is actually an amazing quality of service. Ive lived in a couple of states. California was just on another whole level of bad. Anyway, DMV is actually really efficiently done.

2. What part of firing people do you think is going to fix the bureaucracy?

One bad person can ruin a team and cause good people to leave. See California where it can take 5 years to fire a bad teacher and 100000s of dollars.

Same for me in New Mexico two weeks ago. I had an appointment and had a new license and license plates within 25 minutes. It was an excellent experience.

There was a guy next to me who hadn’t read about the required paperwork and tried to argue. His experience probably wasn’t great but that was his own fault.

The DMV is an outdated example.

I remember decades ago standing in line literally for 3 hours to finally get to talk to the person at the desk only to be told I had the wrong form. Then back to the end of the line.

I honestly can't think of anything that has improved as much in my lifetime as the DMV.

Only if the organisation is thoroughly incompetent, and in that case it's already a terrible place to work. Of course it's possible to put too much bureaucracy around firing people, but the correct amount is not zero.

From my casual observation it’s rare that terrible or incompetent people get fired but politically not well connected people.

Not really. I haven’t been “stressed” about losing my job in decades. I keep my skillset up, my resume in sync with the market, my network strong, and have a go to hell fund.

The only time it has ever taken me longer than a month to go from “I’m looking for a job” to “offer” is for my current job. That was only because I wasn’t really looking and was focused on this one job where the interview process took a month to schedule.

Good for you? Not everyone lives where jobs are plentiful. There are a lot of reasons a perfectly competent person may struggle to find a new job if they lose their current one. There are plenty of reasons a person may not be able to float for even a month between getting fired and getting a new job. It's nice that it's easy for you, but that doesn't mean everyone else is just lazy or incompetent because it's not easy for them.

We are talking specifically about tech workers. My company’s headquarters is on the opposite coast. Remote work is a thing.

Theres a lot more reasons that can lead to job loss other than technical competence.

Being in a union gives you a slice of ownership in the company you're working in. It allows you to have support if you're getting bullied. It also creates a wonderful dynamic with your coworkers.

But yeah, framing this as a technical problem is missing the point entirely.

I realize that. My financial livelihood is not dependent on my current job. It’s dependent on my ability to get another job.

It is purely about you taking control of your own career and not wait for the union or government to protect you.

The demand for software developers is not new. It’s been there since I started working in 1996.

Taking control of your own career could mean supporting a union.

This is what you're saying: Do you use any type of insurance? If so why are you waiting for these companies to compensate you? Just take control of your own life and don't use them.

Unions are a system of mass negotiation. The same systems that make our economy work.

How well have the union shops fared in the economy?

Our economy works based on supply and demand and individuals making the best choices for themselves. Again I get back to Amazon (where I work). They weren’t forced to completely redo their compensation packages across corporate because of a union. They were forced to do so because SDEs were quitting like crazy.

They've worked pretty well in the fact that we owe unions the fact that were working only forty hours a week.

SDEs quitting like crazy would've had a much stronger impact if it was an organized strike and AWS literally went down.

Salaries employees often work more than forty hours a week. But why do you want to take away an individuals agency to decide what’s in their own best interests?

At the bare minimum: unions increase job security and provide a formal disinterested (or even positively interested) recourse mechanism against your employer. They also decrease your employer's ability to leverage the collective pressure of other employees against you.

When the recourse is that you can easily pick up a new job, usually with a raise, the union doesn’t have a lot to offer.

I’m also happy to be able to negotiate myself.

Think about what happens when you get older and those job offers are harder to get, or you have a family you’d like to spend time with, or your health is a limiting factor, or the new owners look at the payroll and decide your job could be done better by their buddy’s company in Romania. The time to invest in a union is before you need it.

To be honest, I don't actually want to work at a place that has better job security.

Obviously, I wouldn't mind better job security for just myself; but if the downside is that my employer can't get rid of the dead wood, I'd rather work elsewhere.

Unions don’t prevent getting rid of dead wood, people get fired from union jobs regularly. The point is they need an actual pretext to fire someone, and layoffs are more difficult.

It’s mostly protection vs the Amazon style fire people regularly so we can avoid paying unemployment insurance when we do seasonal layoffs etc.

The Police Union and the Teacher's Union have certainly been reported to be responsible for making it hard to fire people.

Yet, both police and teachers do get fired.

Some of this just comes down to both being local government jobs run by a multitude of independent systems some of which are going to be far below average. There are ~13,506 school districts in the US, so the bottom 5% consists of 675 different systems with a huge range of issues.

The other issue is it can be hard to get replacements.

Police do get fired, but the city is often forced to rehire them, because of the unions and the arrangements they've had put into law.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2017/investigations/...

A cop can be fired for sexually assaulting a teenager in his squad car, and end up getting rehired by the same department.

The police union is famously regarded as different than other unions, but I have heard of many teachers getting fired (see sibling comment)

And I've heard of teachers who are universally disliked by students, teachers, and administrators who are too difficult to fire. These are people who get switched to a new co-teacher every single year because the last one refuses to work with them again.

I'm not anti-union but it's a double edged sword.

The last thing I want is job security for incompetent coworkers. You see this playing out in teachers unions where they go to bat for sexual predator teachers.

So the only time in my life I would have actually wanted a union was when I grew bored on a project I was on for a few years and coasted for 3-4 months doing minimum acceptable amount of work, before deciding I'm going to rot there and switching jobs. If only I had a union, I could have been coasting for years ;)

If you're driving safely at sixty miles an hour, what's the point of a seatbelt?

Collisions without a seatbelt are dangerous at much lower speeds.

And you might be driving safely, but you can't control what other people are doing.

In any case, what does this have to do with unions?

To advance organized labor for all.

You say it like that's a good thing in itself?

It is. Labor providers are organized and connected in all sort of structures, ranging from golf club memberships and industry associations over questionably-legal wage fixing deals to ~~outright bribing~~ donating to politicians. In contrast, just about 10% of US workers are unionized [1].

This disparity is the reason behind a large part of wage stagnation and other areas where employment conditions are far behind of what has been achieved and fought for in Europe.

[1]: https://www.bls.gov/news.release/union2.nr0.htm

Absolute wages are higher in the US than in Europe.

Wages have not stagnated in the US, either. What measures of inflation do you use to come to that conclusion? The labour share of GDP has been roughly stable over the last few decades.

> Absolute wages are higher in the US than in Europe.

They are, but do not forget that in Europe, our take-home wages already have healthcare, social security and pension contributions taken care of, and our housing and general cost of living (e.g. groceries) are also vastly lower than in the US.

> Wages have not stagnated in the US, either.

They have, at least for the wide masses [1].

[1]: https://www.epi.org/publication/swa-wages-2019/

> They are, but do not forget that in Europe, our take-home wages already have healthcare, social security and pension contributions taken care of, and our housing and general cost of living (e.g. groceries) are also vastly lower than in the US.

Well, Europe is big. Cost of living differ between different places.

You can look at measures like 'disposable income' or similar metrics.

Doesn't really matter too much what specific metric you use, US incomes are higher.

Thanks for the source you linked to. To quote them:

> Changing the price deflator used to adjust wages for inflation can boost measured wage growth. But wage growth would still lag far behind growth in economywide productivity, [...]

They are either using difference inflation metrics for productivity vs wages, or their definition of 'far' is different from mine.

Have a look at the labour share of gdp. Eg at https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LABSHPUSA156NRUG or https://taxfoundation.org/labor-share-net-income-within-hist...

Since 1950, the amount of compensation going to labour has fluctuated around 59% - 65% of total GDP in the US. A fairly narrow range; and no reason to say anything like 'lag[ging] far behind'.

Because we are looking at a ratio, it doesn't matter how or even whether we adjust for inflation here.

So all productivity improvements that make it into GDP also make it proportionally into wages. You can't really ask for more, can you?

Whether wages have stagnated is then a question of whether real GDP has stagnated. And, alas, unions aren't really known for driving productivity in the US. Just the opposite.

Of course, you can argue about median vs average. And that's a very valid discussion to have.

More accurately: employers are forbidden by many different mechanisms to join forces, are actively watched to prevent the formation of monopolies, and punished when they do, and are often restrained in many other ways by regulations.

Labor is not only allowed to collaborate in order to form monopolies and cartels, but is also legally protected when it does.

Please do explain how this disparity is in favor of employers.

It is in spite of these differences that employers have great leverage, not because of them.

It's plain to see that the inherent coordination problems facing workers are much harder than the ones facing managers. It's plain to see that a capitalist is far better positioned to negotiate a labor contract than someone trying to feed their family.

Please explain how history has repeatedly shown capitalists more ready, willing, and able to exploit their position. See the recent labor price-fixing scandal in the tech industry for one relevant example.

"It's plain to see that the inherent coordination problems facing workers are much harder than the ones facing managers"

It is not plain to me. Employers are just people too, but if they try to conspire with other employers they must do so in secret lest their conspiracy be discovered and punished. Your example of wage fixing in the valley shows this in action perfectly. Yet if employees want to do the exact same thing for the exact same ends (manipulating labor prices), they are not only allowed to do it in the open, conferring great advantages, but they are also protected by the government from any sort of retaliation. They may even be allowed to use company property to organize with!

It's pretty clear therefore that labor has the advantage here.

"Please explain how history has repeatedly shown capitalists more ready, willing, and able to exploit their position"

It hasn't. That's a Marxist trope, not an accurate reading of history. History is full of businesses going bankrupt or being outcompeted because of rising labor costs, or indeed, being exploited by unions. The history of Detroit is a good example of that, or the entire British auto industry. Alternatively, look at all the software companies struggling to compete with FANG-boosted wages. It's hardly an environment where capitalists are exploiting the workers.

Coordination problems go up in complexity by the square of the number of actors. Since employers meaningfully participating in the labor market average many more than one employee, and employees average somewhere around one employer, employers start at a very significant structural advantage, particularly large employers. The scant legal protections you mention serve to help equalize this disparity, but it is laughable to suggest that they somehow put employees out ahead.

The history of labor is full of people killed and injured by police and other thugs-for-hire by capitalists who couldn't be bothered to care about anything but their profits.

"Coordination problems go up in complexity by the square of the number of actors"

Yeah? Then how comes unions are often bigger than companies, sometimes containing entire industries? This "fact" sounds made up. People are not random graphs.

As for violence, the history of unionism is full of union thugs beating up scabs, management, and anyone else who got in their way. Anyone can play the game of "long ago some people were violent". It's not relevant to today's situation.

The vast majority of employers have joined forces. Sole proprietorships are the only exception.

Meanwhile, 90% of workers are completely on their own.

Keeping the good working conditions. Without it you're a new management team away from everything going to shit.

Not even a new management team: an existing management team can change things, too.

But, so what? You can just work elsewhere instead.

As a manager it should be terrifying and strike fear into your heart at the thought that your entire team's last recourse is to just up and leave with no notice. With a union you can bargain, understand the problems, and resolve them.

I was a member of the Teamsters for about a year. That organization seems to thrive on creating a hostile relationship between management and staff. I’m a manager now, there’s absolutely no way I would want to invite that type of operating model into a current workplace.

If the organization that I work for creates an environment that is not conducive to retaining employees then I’m just as likely to leave as my team.

Given how easier - relatively to manufacturing - it is to challenge established players in tech, this shows tech unions are pretty much doomed.

Companies adopting this model will collapse very quickly with the lck of good talent. Good people will work elsewhere and their employers will thrive.

Depends on what kind of manufacturing.

If your company manufactures a commodity, like screws, they are also easy to challenge.

> With a union you can bargain, understand the problems, and resolve them.

What keeps you from talking to your team?

White collar union workers have higher compensation, better benefits and more time off[1]. They also report higher rates of life satisfaction[2].

Unions offer engineers more opportunities for democratic decision making at work, a place most workers spend 8 hours a day or more at. They also offer strong bargaining positions that can help developers own more of the value they create.

I'm sure there are things about the industry and employers that developers could improve. For example, there are quite a few engineers out there that have on call duty expected of them, sometimes unpaid or inadequately compensated. On call duty, often in places with higher rates of unionization or good labor laws, is compensated by 1.5x to 2x+ rate multipliers, includes additional bonuses, and on call duty isn't an expectation, it is voluntary

[1] https://www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/2013/04/art2full.pdf

[2] https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0160449X16643321

Developers are constantly complaining about things. Unions could fight for

* Access to remote work

* Pay that isn't adjusted by location

* Transparency in performance review and promotion processes

* Better leave policies

* Better equity access policies

* Opportunities to fire shit managers

* Elimination of forced attrition policies

Software engineers are paid very very well. We have better working conditions than most. But there are still big things that bother people.

* Manage on-call rotations.

Yep that's a great one. 24h on-call is garbage and unions could absolutely pressure businesses to have more reasonable policies.

What's the alternative to 24hr on-call?

Services that don't have strict SLAs. Or follow-the-sun support teams.

No strict SLA is unrealistic for many businesses (imagine NYT going down for an entire weekend), but follow-the-sun could work if employees really want it.

Agreed, the internet is core infrastructure and cloud services will increasingly handle more and more essential services. A union would put the on-call rules/schedules/compensation in the hands of the workers, not left to the whims of an unaccountable manager.

Im pretty sure if software development was unionized a brighter light would be shone on disastrous offshoring in the last two decades.

A lot of people lost a lot of money for a lot of shareholders with a lot of disastrous projects and by and large it was shrugged off and swept under the carpet as management realized that tech couldnt be treated as a production line affair.

Even to push against something as mundane as open offices, which are almost universally disliked by engineers, but these days favored by management.

unions protection are required when there is no major difference between workers, and thus, little job protection. SWE is not an industry where workers are interchangeable, and thus, need a union

What makes you think unions are required?

I’ve been a developer for 25 years. The only time I couldn’t just throw my resume in the air and get another job was between 2008-2011. But that was a function of a bad economy and my letting my skills atrophy.

When Amazon developers (I work at AWS in ProServe) saw their compensation not in line with the market, they didn’t talk about “unionizing”, they started interviewing and resigning en masse forcing Amazon to change their entire compensation model.

We will see in April how well that will work - when compensation changes for the year starts.

As someone who is newer in the industry, I can't say I feel the same. It was already fairly competitive when I was trying to get hired and now it is clear that huge numbers of people are getting trained for tech jobs and it is not clear that huge numbers of tech jobs will continue to be available.

That said, I don't think this is what a union is about. They provide a mechanism for workplace democracy that is far more powerful than the one you are implying some of us can get with the "fuck you I quit" attitude. Have you considered situations where people have less flexibility to change jobs because they have kids or a sick parent? Or how people could be protected from things like workplace harassment and discrimination? Or how you might just really care about the mission of a company and want to keep it on track?

The inherent nature of the institution of labour unions is about acknowledging what makes workers the same, even when they are different in many ways. People in power love when we view ourselves individually rather than as one large group because, when divided, we are easier to manage and exploit. You can simply admit that you are selfish and don't care about other people who haven't had it as easy as you have in this industry. But maybe you can imagine that there are many ways you could easily become less secure in your job and thereby understand the value of a union.

We are specifically talking about tech workers where especially post Covid, remote work is the norm.

I don’t work anywhere near Seattle or any other Amazon office.

How will unions help protect you from the laws of supply and demand? How will it protect you from outsourcing?

What protects you from workplace discrimination and harassment are laws. Besides, no one is crazy enough to say “we aren’t going to hire you or promote you because you’re Black (I am)”

You know how I got to the position where I could say “fuck you i quit” within three years after I graduated? By working my ass off, networking like crazy and interview prep. How is a union going to help me get or keep a job?

What if you do not want a future where you have to pay union dues and give up individual agency in your relationship with your employer? Unions might be a necessary evil to rectify massive power imbalances but that is hardly the case in tech, so all we are left with is the evil part.

I don't want to start a debate about solidarity or not since you made your position implicitly clear, but I am genuinely interested: Do you apply the same logic to having a police force while not being robbed, getting insurance or paying taxes? (these are various degrees of the same logic to me, not the same)

Solidarity to whom? A group of people that have the same super valuable skills as me? Why do they deserve any of my solidarity any more than anyone else? As to your point, I agree, it is all about degrees, and in my mind the degree to which we, in tech, need unions is 0. I don't buy, at all, the argument that if we should get unionized, with all the negative that implies, just in case we cannot do it when it is needed. Power moves slowly, compared to crime or natural disasters, and we will have plenty of time to react in the unlikely event unions in tech will ever benefit anyone beyond the union leaders.

As a start, you could join unions that organise cross-domain and make life for QA, tech support and many others nicer. Or achieve any other corporation specific goal that you can't change achieve your own (higher quality standards, 20% time etc., Better bonuses...make sure you get as much of the value you create as possible). Life could be even nicer basically.

If you are convinced you can still do it when programmers aren't in demand anymore and they won't immediately offshore those jobs, I won't convince you otherwise.

No union can force you to join it, same as no company can force you to work for it.

A union should not do much (and therefore not cost much) when the times are good.

Still, it could lobby for the workers' interest in, say, laws. God knows Big Tech is lobbying:

https://www.statista.com/chart/26673/highest-lobbying-spendi...

This of course isn’t a problem for HN posters, who are all 10x engineers or w/e.

Overall though, not having a contract, recourse and representation in a large company is a pretty big risk factor unless you just toil away in silence.

> Overall though, not having a contract, recourse and representation in a large company is a pretty big risk factor unless you just toil away in silence.

Why? I have an in-demand set of skills and could easily find a new job if I wanted to.

I'd much rather negotiate directly with my employer than have a union intermediating that relationship. If anything, it feels far riskier to have a politically-motivated union boss control my employment.

I have an in-demand set of skills and could easily find a new job if I wanted to.

Let's imagine someone makes an AI project that can turn requirements into code, and it actually works. Copilot has shown it's not impossible to generate working code with some machine learning but it's definitely a hard problem. There are hundreds, maybe even thousands, of founders working on this problem right now and maybe one will get lucky.

How long do you think you will be in demand for? Years? Months? Less? Perhaps you'll be fine because you actually define the requirements. Or you're in a job where the AI can't replace you. It would replace a lot of people working in the simple CRUD app end of the dev industry though, and that means pressure to keep wages up would fall away fast if there are more devs than dev jobs. You wouldn't get a raise if there are 20 devs who'd jump in to your role for less money if you left. You couldn't negotiate better terms. If you left you'd be competing with lots of others which puts more downward pressure on your salary.

That's one vaguely plausible scenario of how things might change in the next 10 years. There are many more. Right now devs are very well paid but we should all recognize that for what it is - an opportunity for industry disruption. Our salaries are (partly) lost profit. Companies don't want to pay us as much as they do; they pay market rates because they have to. If a company can reduce that cost by lowering wages or lowering headcount every tech employer is going to jump on the opportunity. Founders out there know this is a pain point, and they're working on solving it.

Maybe having a union for devs would actually be useful if that ever happens.

(FWIW technological change reducing manpower requirements has been a massive driving force behind unionization in many other industries. The scenario is sound even if the "AI writes your code now" bit is a little fantastical.)

If an AI can do my job, an AI should be allowed to do my job. I don't want a union to "protect" me doing a job which can be automated. That's a waste of human talent and potential.

It is terrible to hold back progress just to provide "make-work" jobs protected by unions. Should we still employ elevator operators?

In a scenario where my job is obsolete, a union would simply delay the inevitable. It might keep the company from replacing me with an AI, but the company would therefore eventually fail to competitors who could. In the meantime, the union would make people miserable and delay progress.

For what it's worth, I completely agree that developer jobs are on their way towards automation. Instead of trying to fight that trend with unionization, I focus on being part of it (building automation tools) and building a capital base.

Yes. Developers have always worked on automating developers' jobs. Both their own and other developers' jobs.

a union would simply delay the inevitable

Yes, which is the difference between having the time to offboard from your current career and do something else instead of being chucked out overnight and losing your house and everything else, multiplied by all the lost developer jobs.

Imagine the cost of that in the Bay Area. It'd be catastrophic to the entire region.

Slowing progress down a little can be a positive thing.

> Yes, which is the difference between having the time to offboard from your current career and do something else instead of being chucked out overnight and losing your house and everything else, multiplied by all the lost developer jobs.

That's what savings are for.

> Imagine the cost of that in the Bay Area. It'd be catastrophic to the entire region.

It would be a much-needed correction.

I don't want unions slowing down progress.

if such an AI truly could be created, then what would stop the developers made redundant by the AI from using the AI to start their own software company and coming up with new services? After all, it would be cheap now - no need to hire anyone any more.

Improvements to tech results in better - even if there's some temporary disruption to people as they are made redundant by the tech.

And it's not as if you cannot prepare - use the excess earnings that a software engineer earns today to invest and own a piece of that future productivity.

> Let's imagine someone makes an AI project that can turn requirements into code, and it actually works.

What's the union supposed to do for me in this scenario? Stop the march of progress to protect my job? No, thanks.

Unions are the reason why eg the NYC subway is so uniquely bad, for basically exactly the reasons you outlined. They oppose almost labour saving technology.

> [...] they pay market rates because they have to. If a company can reduce that cost by lowering wages or lowering headcount every tech employer is going to jump on the opportunity. Founders out there know this is a pain point, and they're working on solving it.

Yes, obviously. That's how progress works. Higher productivity makes economies richer. Competition makes sure to distribute the riches. (Add some government-led redistribution via taxes and welfare, if you feel like it.)

You think this is the slam dunk argument for your position but I think it is actually against. If you can make it so I don’t have to do some aspect of a job, that is desirable. I didn’t mourn the disappearance of so many specialized roles as the cloud took them. I celebrated that.

There is an abstract goal of human potential I have. I don’t want you protecting my job and stealing the future from mankind. No. If you can do my job better with a machine, then so be it.

If an AI can do my job, an AI should do my job. Do you really think a union will save you? Another company - even one from outside the country - will have a cheaper product.

One reason I generally dislike unions: you usually start imagining things about reality. And it almost always ends up bad.

> Let's imagine someone makes an AI project that can turn requirements into code

Developers can't turn requirements into code. Whole teams and companies struggle mightily to turn a partially-understood subset of the requirements into buggy code.

You would need full AGI, possibly superhuman in capabilities, to "turn requirements into code". At that point, suggesting you want a union to protect you from the Singularity... I don't know.

But does the new job have everything you want?

Prior to covid, HN basically constantly complained about the dearth of fully-remote positions. Yes, you could get another office job but if you wanted something fully-remote there was only a teeny tiny number of possible companies. Could unions have forced employers to offer this option?

Today, people complain about pay being based on location for fully remote work. Perhaps a union could actually achieve the goal of making your pay unrelated to where you live?

I definitely was not and am not a “10x engineer”. I spent most of my career until 2020 bopping around as an enterprise dev writing CRUD apps. It was never hard to get a job that paid twice the household income in the US - which is now $70K.

Just for complete transparency, I’m still an enterprise dev writing CRUD apps. I now use “boto3” and write a shit ton of yaml and I am a “consultant”.

Yes but it is time to revisit that logic.

Software engineers are well compensated relative to the rest of the population but that should not be a factor at all. Its all about value delivered relative to that organization, in aggregate.

Wages have stagnated for 30 years. There is a lot of catching up to do:

Until a single earner can afford a family home outright, in 5 years of compensation, down the street from where the company office is, then we can comfortably ignore any annual compensation package no matter how fantastic the dollar amounts seem, and collectively push for more.

Houses are positional goods. If you earn five times as much, your colleagues will too, and there will be a bidding war until the price matches your earning power again. See also: The absurd real estate prices in the Bay area.

Elizabeth Warren made that argument in her book "The Two-Income Trap". The economic gains from switching from the traditional bread-winner/house-wife household to double-income-households were eaten up to buy the "family home down the street where the best school is".

https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/06/28/book-review-the-two-in...

> Houses are positional goods. If you earn five times as much, your colleagues will too, and there will be a bidding war until the price matches your earning power again.

This requires the assumption that additional houses can't be constructed.

> See also: The absurd real estate prices in the Bay area.

See also: the Bay area.

>>This requires the assumption that additional houses can't be constructed.

In a lot of places near expensive cities, that assumption is pretty valid.

Well, a big problem for the US is that building most types of new housing is illegal.

See eg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Missing_middle_housing or your favourite articles on the evils of Euclidean zoning and minimum parking requirements.

Wages have not stagnated. What inflation measures do you use to come to that conclusion?

You are right that real estate has become more expensive over time in many places.

A big part of the problem (in the US) is that new construction of housing is almost illegal. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Missing_middle_housing

Throughout history a form of control has been to make people feel that they're better off than some other group of people, and so have more power, privilege & life is as good as it is likely to get. However it also comes with the implicit warning that they could lose that specialness if the boat was rocked. There is always somebody better off and with more power dictating that hierarchy to bother groups and the only way to address that imbalance is by collaboration and for employees, unionisation is a way to do that.

Tech workers are very much in that hierarchy and think that they're better off than most other people, so don't need a union. As a unionised, European tech worker it is quite likely that I have far more protections from my employer's whims than those in largely non-unionised countries (automatic minimum pay rises, job security, holidays, working hours, etc...) and I very much prefer it this way.

Honest question: why? Engineers are already compensated way, way above average and have loads of mobility opportunities. I actually work in a news org where most of the non-tech people are in one union or another but my team isn't. We have actually had a few union staff who wanted to do coding work and the union essentially blocked them.

> Honest question: why?

Because the existing union of news workers demanded that software engineers be included in their membership as part of some negotiation at some point.

Basically, it was a way for the union to grow its membership (and dues). It was impossible to opt out of the union and you had to pay dues, I forget how much but I think it was like 2% of your salary or something to the union.

Given the option I'm pretty sure most of us would have opted out of the union. I did know a few very senior software engineers who were nominally made managers so they could get out of the forced membership.

I would leave a company if they forced a 2% tax on me to join a union I didn’t want to join after I started working there.

Vote with your feet, just if management changed the role materially. The role would likely be filled quickly by replacement talent desiring the protections such representation offers.

You mean by someone who would be okay with their compensation being negotiated by collective bargaining? How many of the most aggressive, most talented engineers would be willing to give up their negotiating leverage to a union?

Most engineering roles don't require a "most aggressive, most talented" engineer. Someone less aggressive of modest talent is likely still a great fit for the work to be done. 10x-100x developers are overrated unless at an early stage startup where that skill level is crucial to get to product market fit and onward from there to sustainable hyper growth. Also, Dunning–Kruger. If you think you're super talented, allow the market to decide, and avoid organized shops.

The data is pretty clear that most folks aren't good at or able to negotiate an outlier comp package (with some orgs not even allowing comp negotiation for equity purposes), so collective bargaining would net them more than them attempting to negotiate on their own. Of course folks at the high end of the comp structure complain, but that seems to be a given regardless and will be ever present.

So, by your definition, the unionized shops would attract only “average” developers. How competitive will they be against companies that are more aggressive about recruitment by offering more talented people more money?

You work at a digital sweatshop (AWS [1], who cannot hire fast enough for the talent they bleed) but still don't believe in the merits of organization, so what would the value be in attempting to change your mind? Not rhetorical, I am genuinely curious.

Higher level, I have a hypothesis that this boils down to empathy capacity, which some cohorts have more than others (and there is likely a genetic component [2] [3]), and therefore appeals are unlikely to sway opinions). You believe in optimizing for the individual, others believe in optimizing for the collective.

[1] https://www.google.com/search?q=aws+sweatshop

[2] https://www.cam.ac.uk/research/news/study-finds-that-genes-p...

[3] https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/03/180312085124.h...

I work in Professional Services. I don’t have those issues. I am very much in control of my own projects and calendar. I manage my customers expectations and make sure that they understand the holy trinity - time, cost and requirements. We agree on the scope of work before we start on a project and I manage the timelines not to overwork myself.

This goes back to ensuring that I had a set of skills and experience so when I was initially contacted about an SDE position, I could say “no”, and they suggested I apply for a position in the consulting department.

I also didn’t go through the DS&A leetCode monkey dance and could apply for a remote position.

I was very much prepared to say “no” to Amazon if all I could get was an SDE position which required me to be on call or relocate.

If AWS ProServe does every get to be an environment where I don’t like the work life balance, I will leave here just like I left my other 7 jobs.

Google made something like $300,000 in profit per employee in 2021. Engineers are indeed compensated way above average but they are not capturing their full economic output.

Good! That incentivizes them to start their own thing, leading to more innovation for the rest for us.

The general resistance in this thread is something. Every day on here we all find issues with the industry as a whole, have complaints, identify negative patterns grounded in investment goals or profit. A huge majority of people on here agree: there are problems and things as a whole need to change.

Its not "what use is a union to me", it is that there is an ethical imperative to try and fight against the destructive force of profit seeking itself, when left unchecked. It is about giving agency to the only force that can stand opposed to those destructive forces.

Its fascinating that for a profession that likes to think its all about understanding complex systems, we have so many that oppose unionization.

Look at what unions did to Detroit.

Although a lot of the jobs from Detroit moved to Japan, a country with higher unionisation rates.

Look at what unions did to North Carolina.

North Carolina is in a tie with South Carolina for lowest unionization in the US. The textile mills promised workers if they didn't unionize they would be OK. They didn't, yet the textile mills closed up and left the country any how. After years of low pat they are now low skilled workers with little savings in a town without industry.

In Detroit, workers like Larry Page's grandfather battled during 1930s strike and wound up making a good living. He sent his son to college, and his son founded Google, holding aloft the improvised weapon his grandfather made in the 1930s UAW strike.

The difference is when Detroit was a union town, it produced grandsons like Larry Page. Burlington, North Carolina was never a union town and it was working class then and nowadays over one third of those under 18 are under the property line.

Also Detroit was in a union state when one-income families with the breadwinner working 40 hours a week owned a home, had a car (or two) working in a factory. Now Detroit is not in a union state, it is in a so-called right-to-work state.

Upvoted. I lived in Detroit and remember the news articles even from the early 2000’s with workers clocking in, then leaving and spending their shift drinking at strip clubs. Naturally the unions protected them.

I remember the UAW contract then where existing new hires kept their equivalent to $50/hr total comp and all new hires after that got $16/hr. The union more than willing to throw new workers under the bus to keep the older workers happy. Worker solidarity be damned - “fuck you I got mine”

American auto companies deserved to die. It was an absolute pit of rot and sloth. And I fully blame management too - they went along with it because it was the easy thing to do and ignoring union problems still let them meet their targets.

This is precisely why it's opposed by system thinkers. They understand that it doesn't make sense in this particular system.

I wouldn't frame unions as a "fight against the destructive force of profit seeking itself." Unions have every bit as much incentive to maximize profits as shareholders. It's about the distribution of profits between capital and labor.

> Unions have every bit as much incentive to maximize profits as shareholders.

This doesn’t make sense to me: a union member wants to be treated with respect even if making their working conditions worse would make more profit for the company. Similarly, a smart shareholder is willing to sacrifice short-term profits for long-term success — the idea that you’re supposed to screw everyone in service of the quarterly report is a [very successful] marketing campaign by the kind of MBAs who are hoping to profit before most shareholders realize what they’ve done to the company.

It probably depends on the specific tradeoff, but people accept poorer working conditions for higher wages all the time. See anyone working on an oil rig/fishing boat. Of course there are some margins where a union may focus on working conditions over wages but you can say the same about shareholders and managers.

Anyway, I didn't mean my original comment to be anti-union. I just think that framing unionization as anti-business/profit is both counter-productive and substantively wrong. It's about giving workers a seat at the table as proper stakeholders. But once that happens, it's in everyones interest to make the underlying business as successful and profitable as possible.

Yes - my point was simply that “as successful” and “as profitable” intersect but don't overlap. There are many formerly successful businesses where they cut too deeply into staffing, future investment, etc. to maximize profits and I would generally expect a union member to be more interested in the former goal than the latter.

It's about more than money. Workers should have veto power over management decisions that hurt the business' viability or that would violate ethical values. It is the next inevitable step in human institutional evolution--democracy making it's way into working life.

Some companies don't unions because they are built in. Messer Construction and Gore Industries are two examples. They are employee owned , operated, and managed.

That to me is a separate issue. Anyone with bargaining power can use that bargaining power however they want. Unions are just about giving workers bargaining power as proper stakeholders. If they want to use that leverage to make the company more ethical then they can (just as equity shareholders can use their leverage to do the same). But I'm skeptical that the end result will be more ethical business practices (outside the specific area of working conditions or course). Getting large numbers of people to agree on ethical values is hard, especially when there is a substantive cost.

A union does not necessarily play the role of migitation of negative externalities from a company's profit seeking activies. It still wants to maximum profits but with workers taking a fair share of such profits and under good work conditions.

For example, unions that represent workers in dirty industries are very often resistent to regulation of their employer's activities despite the harm it can cause to others. Coal mining, steel processing, etc...

They don't even necessarily lead to good value for money for consumers - for example they could use forms of worker accreditation to reduce the supply of workers to raise wages for existing workers and the increase the prices their employers can charge.

The unions in slovenia opose the reduction of income tax for workers (after years of saying that they want to tax the capital more and work less). So yeah... unions in some places are politics first, their own pockets above that, and workers fifth.

This very same argument could be made against liberal democracies, where there is a potential for similar dynamics of corruption to develop. However, almost no one would argue that liberal democracy isn't preferable to a system where one person or a small group can decide everything.

Unions give you a vote and that is better than the alternative. Preventing a union from becoming corrupted is another problem and there is a wide spectrum of structures among unions, not all are as you depict.

If most of the unions were good, and just a few corrupt, people would look differently at them... When the situation is reversed, with many corrupt ones, and only a few not, people stop supporting them.

Sounds great - higher taxes are good.

im just happy theres one more destructive force taking on the NYTimes.

i hope i live long enough to see the company perish.

Nope. Your statement acts like unions don’t involve trade offs - whatever your situation, unions will make it better.

The truth is there are trade offs - recognition of merit replaced by recognition of seniority, protection of bad workers (and the toxic effect on work culture that has) and “lowest common denominator” bargaining.

I’m certainly not saying unions don’t have a place, but workers should have a choice and in some cases, no union is actually the smart choice.

> ...and in some cases, no union is actually the smart choice.

Logic of Collective Action is a game theoretic framework to help make that choice. Very accessible.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Logic_of_Collective_Action

https://www.amazon.com/Logic-Collective-Action-Printing-Appe...

Exactly. If you believe corporations have too much power today, one of the best tools in your toolbox as a "check" on their power is unions and collective bargaining. It's about having a counterbalance on that see-saw.

Please, just because something is not perfect doesn't meed you need a union. I can speak from actual experience about how shitty unions are. Can you say the same? If you want to be treated like a child and micromanaged so that the company can protect itself against the worst employees, then by all means, join a union. If you want to sacrifice your individual privileges to help prop up everyone who works less hard than you, then join a union. This lofty idea about opposing destructive forces is naive hogwash.

Many don't feel like profit seeking motive generally has issues. Profit seeking is pretty much the thing that created the modern world. It just so happens that intent doesn't matter, results matter, and "ethical" intentions in economics pretty much always end badly.

Unions are a particularly good example. The incentives in the way unions, especially major ones and/or public ones, are set up are the worst one can possibly imagine - they combine the monopolistic power of a giant corporation with incentives for fiefdom building/CYA/lack of incentives to improve of a government bureaucracy, plus the vetocratic incentives of the local NIMBYs. The practice of unions - from US auto industry, to teacher unions, to police unions - bears this out.

I usually joke that I lost all respect for them when I learned that mafia were associating with the unions... all respect for mafia, I mean ;)

Unionization is not a panacea for the ills of industrialization! Accountability is the concept you’re looking for, and unions can be a part of it just as easily as they can fight it.

I need the long German word for “however this plays out, it will be used as a spurious example either for or against some extreme position”.

If it works out, great - that hardly means unions are a foolproof idea - and if it fails it’s hardly a condemnation of unions themselves. And yet, it will be interesting to see how this plays out!

Random Sample as Full Confirmation of the Extreme

I've hacked into (help from G)

StichprobeVollständigeBestätigungExtrems

Sadly that word doesn't work at all as is, and the mid-word capitalizations do not work either. Good effort tho :)

The random sample (Stichprobe) has to go last, as it is the subject. Extreme is probably the "extreme case" not "extreme value" in here, so Extremfall, but we need plural to consider all extremes at the same time - which has the added "aesthetic" bonus of adding another German umlaut in Fälle. Full Confirmation is just Bestätigung I'd say. So maybe

Extremfälle-Bestätigungs-Stichprobe = Extremfällebestätigungsstichprobe

(to make it plural, just add an n)

See this is cooler because it has EXTREME at the front.

That's confirmation bias, no?

It’s like oncoming confirmation bias - like a car wreck you see coming but the car in front of you doesn’t - and you’re helpless to do anything but honk your horn “nooooooooooo!”

we'll probably see a long trend towards more tech labor unionization. If you're up to it you can join the one big union in solidarity today:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Industrial_Workers_of_the_Worl...

Feels like right now in the labor market is when they would have the most leverage.

I bet that also means that they have leverage forming a union too. If the employer can't afford to lose em, that's a great time to cement power.

That's what I meant, actually. This is the time when workers have the most leverage to preserve that leverage for the long-term. Doing so through institutions like unions is one method.

Only if it's through industrial unionism like the wobblies. Craft unionism isn't scalable.

Can you explain the difference to me? I’m interested how small/independent businesses can unionize. I’d like to know more.

The goal of industrial unionism is to organize the entire working class so that everyone gets better treatment. It's a recognition that the goal of unionism should not be only for SWEs to enrich themselves, but rather most importantly show solidarity with all workers who are struggling.

Industrial unions are sector-wide and don't require organizing every single business. Here's a brief summary.

http://stephenkoppekin.net/craft-unions-vs-industrial-unions...

I've been on the fence and I've literally had the sign up page on tab for a week. Should I join?

Some highlights

> The workers voted in favor, 404 to 88

> The group is the biggest tech union with bargaining rights in America.

https://nytimesguild.org/tech-vote-count

That sounds like nonsense to me. I can think of single sites of a few defense contractors with more unionized engineers.

this seems like another example of "tech" being used to mean "delivering online ads"

This is not exactly relevant, but I wish these companies would just become co-ops. Less profit for the people at the top (probably) but you wouldn't need a union.

Since people talk about this being the start of a wave of tech unionization, how will success or failure be determined for this union? It would be cool if we could see some OKRs for the union and check in a year if this actually did anything.

I could see this being the start of a small wave. And that wave is exclusive to regions of the country and companies where tech workers lean extremely heavily left. I don't see this gaining widespread industry adoption though. The market is simply too hot.

What do others currently do to measure the results?

Is it just me or is there something strange about reading about this in the NYT itself?

It is, but I guess it's a good sign of neutrality that they did report on this.

Not at all. The paper always reports on its own issues and scandals throughout the years.

Unions are important and solve real problems. But I tend to think that they are a necessary evil rather than attacking the root or at least a deeper branch.

In my worldview there are two principles that I think are fundamental to a well functioning community (a workplace is just that):

- Meritocracy. The kind where better ideas and actions get more consideration. I'm thinking in terms of basic virtues here: loyalty, rationality, empathy, courage, cunning. Potential rewards and incentives should align but should always be in service of outcomes and not the goal in of itself. This is material/knowledge focused. - Consensus. To keep a peaceful, sustainable, fair, productive environment one needs a process to reconcile differing views and interests. Open communication, democracy, agency. This is people focused.

When a community doesn't follow these principles then it eventually degrades, becomes brittle and rigid until it crumbles under its own weight or a counterforce (such as a union) is formed. But what should happen is a disentanglement of power into meritocracy and consensus.

> Meritocracy

Large corporations who have been around a while are controlled by heirs who have never worked, the purpose of which (according to law) is to extract as much surplus value profit from those doing the work. It sounds like the antithesis of meritocracy.

Unions are organizations where union elections are comprised of those doing the work and creating the wealth.

https://archive.ph/htL2l

http://web.archive.org/web/20220304012409/https://www.nytime...

So will NYT be a union shop / the union will have a monopoly, have multiple unions, or have a mix of union and non-union work?

In a large and varied company like the New York Times you’re going to have multiple Unions representing different workers. The printers won’t usually be in the same union as the tech workers.

You’ll always have a mix of union and non-union work since managers can’t be in the union and certain types of work may not be covered by one of the current unions.

Thanks for the response. I’m surprised that managers generally aren’t allowed in unions. But then I guess that’s probably a case by case thing with different criteria for different unions. Still, there are 20+ million “managers” according to the AFLCIO, excluding professionals who manage staff, e.g. some engineers, doctors, etc. Probably 10–20% of all workers.

https://www.dpeaflcio.org/factsheets/the-professional-and-te...

At least the unions I've been around, managers were the ones the unions were there to keep in check. It would have been very undermining to the union if the managers were part of it.

The whole point of unions is to create an us vs them setup in which "management" is the enemy and "workers" are the poor oppressed victims. You can't have a union with managers in it for that reason, such an organization would be the same thing as the company itself.

One reason unions make no sense in the tech world is that the line between "workers" and "managers" is often very blurry. What is a tech lead, for example? And of course the whole notion of class warfare being something to encourage is just an obsolete and very dangerous early 20th century Marxist idea. Most sensible people have disposed of it a long time ago, but no surprise the New York Times never let it go given the extremism and bias of their staff.

> since managers can’t be in the union

can there be an union of managers then?

I can't speak for this situation, but before I moved to tech I worked in a heavily union industry, and all the union shops had in their bargaining contract that the employer could not hire anyone who wasn't in the union.

For people in the union it was great. For people not in the union, it sucked. And before somebody says, "well just join the union" (do you really think I'm that stupid not to have thought about that?) joining the union was really, really hard. You basically had to wait for somebody to either retire or die, because nobody ever left for other reasons, and because employees were super expensive and impossible to fire, union shops were extremely conservative with hiring. Union employees got paid double what non-union did and had 1/4 of the work to do, plus they slacked off like crazy and never got in trouble for it. The union was (or at least looked to us) like it was great for the employees. I'd hate to be the employer though.

That sounds very inefficient. How did that whole industry not get their lunch eaten by other states / countries?

A lot of union businesses also benefit from regulatory capture and have the inside track on government contracts as their main source of income. There's no effective competition for these types of industries.

Exactly. This industry is highly regulated and the unions help write the laws and regulations. Because of that it's mostly large players and very, very few small ones. The large ones all have agreements with the unions because at their scale it's impossible not to, and to get that agreement they have to agree to only hire union.

Also a lot of the materials producers that supplied us were union, and many of them didn't want to provide services to a non-union shop. I don't know if they had any formal policies against it (probably they didn't) but anytime we called or places orders, etc we were a super low priority for them.

> they slacked off like crazy and never got in trouble for it.

The heirs receiving dividends from the New York Times company slack off to the extent of never working a day in their life, yet receiving massive amounts of money from those doing the work and creating the wealth at the New York Times company.

The union works so that the workers creating the wealth send less of it to these lazy, slacking "job creator" parasites.

For roughly $45/share you can too: https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/NYT

Notice that employees can also buy shares. Ownership and employment don't have to be disjoint.

Technical unions are a good way for people who are better at politics to make a living off of people who are better at programming. Personally I'd rather keep my money for myself.

How this plays out for small companies? Is it a TLDR for this?

For a publication that always pushes for unions it seems a bit strange they are late adopters. Dont like your own food?

The company as a whole is not a late adopter. I forget but I know all the journalists are in a union already and there’s a long history of unions on printing presses.

Problem is, unions are actually counter productive to any industry. They reduce available work and further incentivize off-shoring of jobs.

In the post WW2 period, the UK and German manufacturing industries lagged behind the US in both wages and productivity, largely due to the former being unionized and latter not.

You mean the good old times when the US military just shot at people trying to unionize?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Blair_Mountain

No, he said post ww2 which is after 1921.

Um.

So how's that working out for those manufacturing industries nowadays, hmm?

Well, since they’ve been increasingly unionized, they moved places like Texas (Tesla, SpaceX etc) and China.

Take the medical industry, for example - they can’t exactly go on strike, yet they are the highest paying industry in most countries. Which goes to show that unions aren’t necessary to be paid a high wage (also Singapore, unions are illegal, yet they have higher average wages than most developed nations).

In my country of Australia, garbage collectors earn $120,000, which is around $80,000USD. Yet just recently, they went on strike, refusing to collect the garbage. This is despite earning far more than the average person. Or train drivers - they are paid even higher, yet they also go on strike. This is not fighting for basic health and safety rights of Cockney chimney sweeps - this is blackmailing their employer for more money for nothing, for already privilege and highly paid staff in a competitive industry. Which ultimately leads to higher costs for consumers, less competitive industry, and more general inefficiency.

> Well, since they’ve been increasingly unionized, they moved places like Texas (Tesla, SpaceX etc) and China.

And yet Germany with some of the strongest unions in the world is a manufacturing powerhouse, and plenty of ununionized countries have very weak manufacturing. So something else must be going on.

> Take the medical industry, for example - they can’t exactly go on strike, yet they are the highest paying industry in most countries. Which goes to show that unions aren’t necessary.

Friedman famously described the AMA as the strongest union in the country, so that's the opposite of showing unions aren't necessary.

The AMA is an incredibly successful union. It is exactly the sign of how bad unions can be for society while being good for some of their members.

Thousands of people have died because of the AMA. Perhaps even hundreds of thousands through the artificial medical professional shortage they began.

Fortunately, America is moving away from MDs to NPs to scale medicine. The nation will treat unions as damage and route around them.

Not really true.

For industries where you need x human labor to do x amount of defined work, unions definitely help employees. Companies have an incentive to extract as much labor while keeping wages the same or lowering, leveraging peoples need for a job. Also for a lot of positions in those industries, the pay is low enough to put significant friction for employees into doing things like switching jobs, especially when employees start getting specialized and becoming limited to a certain industry, where all the companies are incentivized to do the same thing.

However, for industries where you want to select for the best and brightest to advance tech, unions are a bad thing, because they effectively remove the capability of the companies to do this.

You could make an argument that both of those cases should be governed by a common principle, and that technology development is generally better for society, so unions are generally a bad thing, but that is a pretty complex issue.

I would like to respond to you in depth, but I think a better option would be to recommend a good book on the subject. “Economics in one lesson” by H Hazlitt. First published in 1945, it explains, in clear terms, economic fallacies which existed at that time, and I’m sorry to say are still prevalent to this day, and possibly even more so. He explains the concepts better than I ever could. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economics_in_One_Lesson

Haven’t those same companies just picked up and moved to a none union shop?

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