About Tech Worker Unions Pt 2 – I Would Never Know [audio]
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I think in tech they would be better used to help us control what we are working on and the conditions in which we do it. For example, you could use your collective power to push for
- eliminating creepy tracking from the software you work on that execs wants to put in
- open sourcing more of your work
- eliminating addictive dark patterns
- requiring engineers’ sign-off on deadlines to avoid unrealistic ones foisted upon you
- working on projects that seem meaningful and useful for the world instead of what will make your investors the most money
and a million other things specific to your context
Yet I personally don't see the need for this tool in tech. The labor market has been red hot for years with demand exceeding supply and numerous options for each worker. Firms and their management seem exceedingly responsive (sometimes to a fault) with regard to addressing worker requests.
Sure there are still plenty of suboptimal tech employers and no firm is ever perfect for every worker. Yet worker choice seems to be sufficient to let tech workers find a firm that meets their requirements.
Some people are still choosing employers that many of us would reject, yet those workers are likely just prioritizing different things. Some people want to maximize their pay or progress more quickly in their career. Some people might even want to center work in their lives and seek a demanding employer. Whatever; to each their own.
Having your business choose projects based on what engineers think is neat rather than what the business needs seems like a profoundly terrible idea. If your employer's goals don't match the stuff you want to do, get a different job. You're not entitled to use Facebook compute (or whatever) to pursue your passion project. There is more than one company in the world.
- Allowing people to become unproductive and still get paid.
- Protecting sexual harassers.
- Blocking marginalized people from joining the company.
- Enriching union bosses.
- Propping up organized crime.
If you think “but that would never happen”, American unions have a long, long history of doing all those things.
They should be fighting for things like: paid overtime or paid oncall, ip rights for side projects, smoothing off the four year cliff, better parental leave (at least ät Amazon), more transparency in performance reviews, etc.
In effect tech workers control the means of production because computers are commodities and their knowledge is the means of production. Because if this their share of the putouts are enormous compared to most industries. It’s why besides massive checks we are granted RSUs to ISOs, generous time off and parental leave, free healthcare, etc.
The power tech workers have won’t change until there is a larger supply than there is demand. At that point your union is useless since scabs will be hired globally and there’s no picket line to cross.
Also, we can use our strength to build solidarity for the workers who aren't tech. From cafeteria staff to business to sales to security... We can use our bargaining position to improve conditions for every worker.
So now you’re describing a political movement/organization. This is like having commissars (or today a DEI Officer) present. I’m not concerned with that and am strictly concerned with access to the outputs and control of the means of production for myself.
I can vote to support codified workers rights, higher wages, etc. but I’m not interested in bringing other peoples political beliefs into our shared office space and culture. That crosses boundaries. Activism in the workplace needs to be eliminated as it’s cancer.
Ignoring your hyperbole, think about the benefits to you when the staff in your building, working to support you, are well cared for.
Ample sick time means cafe workers don't feel compelled to come in on days when they have a cold, decent wages ensure cleaning staff have the ability to commute easily, competitive sales commissions ensure you have the best sales staff and your profits rise, healthcare ensures there's less turnover for the roles who you rely on to keep things moving smoothly.
You don't have to buy into the argument that, "these are all people and should be treated well because they are people" if you don't want to. But there are rational, apolitical, self interested reasons to use your labor power to help others.
Americans don't have a history of bad unions, they have a history of unions being gradually eliminated (along with rising wages and improving working conditions), and are exposed to constant anti-union propaganda. 15% tops of the workforce is unionized, 98% of the people who complain about unions either have absolutely no experience of them, or their experience of them consists entirely of stories that their reactionary grandfather used to tell them about the lazy bum they couldn't fire.
Construction unions etc are hyper corrupt and reward tenure over effort. I can’t imagine what a union would do with Google money.
"Sorry, I can't merge this pull request, these config files are managed by the DevOps union and only they can review this code."
"I know the system is down and our customers are failing, but we don't work weekends."
"I can't give you a raise because you are maxed out for your 4 years of time put in here. Everyone with 4 years time gets paid exactly the same rate."
"Sorry you are getting laid off - these other (less skilled) people have more time here than you. We lay off based on seniority."
"I know we hired you to work in R&D, but are now being assigned to ads."
"We need to meet a completely arbitrary deadline so that I can increase my yearly bonus, so you are working this weekend. Isn't it great that programmers are exempt from overtime pay?"
"I can't give you a raise because our promotion matrix, developed without any worker input, says you do not meet the requirements. It is a completely objective system based on scores your managers have given you. No, you can not know how those scores are arrived at."
"Sorry you are getting laid off. Because a black box machine-learning algorithm chose you."
I also shudder to think of the painful position it would put the R&D team in if they had to bargain with a union every time they got a new transfer that doesn't work out: someone escalates to a manager and it gets communicated to the transfer as "hey buddy, we think it might be better if you spend some time working on ads" for the sake of saving everyone's feelings. Next thing you know, what should have been a polite reshuffling is a negotiation with a union rep...
For a specific example, people often notice that higher pay is going to more recent hires in spite of being less skilled. It is very clear that the current system is not "the most skilled get the most pay" but when unions are mentioned people immediately retreat to this assumption.
Different people in this community have different opinions. I think tech interviews are fine the way they are and I believe that my management chain is doing the right things for the company -- I think our promo process generally works OK, I'm not micromanaged, my oncall expectations are reasonable, there is no forced attrition, etc. If I didn't have faith in my management chain, I would leave (as I have done before).
> "I am a rockstar god."
I'm not saying that. I'm saying that the value you bring to your company should stand on its own two feet. I don't think my employer should give in to employee demands unless it is a net benefit for the business, because the company's success is my success (via stock appreciation). If my employer consistently makes the wrong call in either direction, then they'll fail, and that's OK -- if I think they're headed in the wrong direction, I can leave.
"Good business decision" is defined by whether or not it helps the company succeed in the long term. I want my employer to make good business decisions, always, even when it means making tradeoffs regarding employees.
"Sorry, we need long 24h oncall shifts to keep the service up. No, we won't pay you extra."
"Sorry, we are shutting down your team. No severance, by the way."
"No, we won't share the minutes for the meeting the managers had to discuss your promotion where we rejected you. Try again next time."
"I know that Bob is paid $50,000 more than you despite being at the same level and with less experience. No, we won't give you a raise."
Traditional unions and tech unions are pretty different indeed. But unions stand to be one possible tool to help remediate some of the problems unique to tech. For non-managers, this change can often be difficult to influence otherwise. Nothing says they have to mirror construction unions, anymore than management in tech has to mirror construction management
In addition to having a stronger voice around working conditions (which are pretty awful in some tech fields like game development), they also stand to help workers have a stronger guiding voice on decision making. There is valid critique against tech that too rarely does anyone ask if something should be done; not just if it can be done.
Speak for yourself. My partner is a horticulturist, a job which involves rather a lot of manual labour, and was one of the union reps for the Botanic Gardens at which he worked for a while.
And I still think unions are a very good idea.
Maybe this is a non-American view, and his counterpart unionized horticulturists in the US are all taking bribes on the side. But I can't see it. It feels like the problem is that construction unions - which, yep, got pretty notorious for corruption - are the only unions people know about, not the ones quietly working to fight for their members' rights.
Similarly, I have numerous members of my extended family who worked or still work in government Union roles. Most hate their union, due to the aforementioned petty politics, some have moved to private industry and become much happier, and notably the only one happy with their union is deeply involved in it.
When people say tech should unionize I wonder what is so appealing about being compensated less, having opportunities for internal progression gated by seniority, and giving your job an extra thick layer of social harassment and stress.
But then, I live in Canada, and we have some fairly decent basic employment rights and social supports.
At least inflation seems to be giving some impetus to take action, with BCGEU taking job action. Three years after COVID hit and only because every member, regardless of seniority and cushy position, is hit by the effects of inflation.
Also I've never actually been a member of the union but that does seem to have mattered in my career as by law every employee has to be treated the same if you are a union member or not here (Finland).
> Construction unions etc are hyper corrupt and reward tenure over effort.
There is no reason why the tech union has to be like that. The union is made out of its members so they pretty much decide its course.
Unions are a way for workers to have more bargaining power in their workplace. When one employee sits at a table with their boss, exactly one person is in charge, and exactly one person is at risk of being fired. When multiple workers stand together, they can withhold their valuable labor from their employer. The tables are much more even, and more fruitful bargaining process can take place.
That's just two parties haggling, classic market stuff.
At the very least I'd be curious to hear about a union (not guild or association) where the profession does not involve significant manual labor, where it makes more money per worker.
If this is the case why would anyone join? If this is not the case, where are the examples of such? There are plenty of examples of this outside of tech. For example in Chicago teachers in the union make more money than non-union teachers. Pretty easy to look up.
This only works if both:
- Wages are associated with business profits
- Business profits are the limiting factor for wages
Unions do their best work when the two above criteria are not met.
think of the pool of money that is profit to go to workers. when employers make more money, more nominal amounts (not percentage) go to the workers collectively.
you can look at the balance sheet of basically any company to show this.
to contrast, I know of a single tech union, Kickstarter. From publicly available information I see no evidence that workers are getting more money. In fact kickstarter employees seem to be paid less than general (especially for NYC, where they're based).
If profits increased and employees stayed the same then you’d have a point.
I work in a company where employees are distributed globally. Certain timezone and language coverage is needed. Guess what? The employees that live in low cost-of-living areas get paid less money for doing literally the same work. On one hand, it's nice that the company acknowledges rent/mortgages cost more in certain areas and that will eat into employees' paychecks, but on the other hand, it is painfully clear that the value I produce for my company is hardly related to my paycheck. My paycheck is determined by what similar workers in my field are being paid in my area. That's it.
All 3 are the same thing with different name (and much better PR departments)
For lawyers much more of them work for small law firms as average us law firm size is 3 people including the owner(s) vs something like auto unions where the employers very often have 100k+ workers. Also by definition all of them are experts at law so do not need one of the most important benefits that a modern union gives its members (lawyers).
Nah both are the same
Tech workers however do control the means of production since their knowledge is their own property. The computer they work on is a mere commodity and irrelevant to the means of production.
Because the means of production are owned by the worker, they demand an extremely large share of the outputs in the form of paychecks many standard deviations above average labor, first class healthcare, stock grants which has made hundreds of thousands of us wealthy, and other first class benefits.
What can a union do other than lay claim to your ownership of the means of production?! You control that and a union would love to get a piece.
I'll grant that working in tech often means more control and flexibility than other professions, and the pay is usually decent. But at the end of the day, tech workers are creating value for their bosses, and the bosses are the ones who benefit and tell the workers what to do. A unionized workforce would tip the balance a little more in favor of workers (and a worker-owned cooperative would flip the script entirely). A strong union ran by the rank-and-file would be awesome for tech workers.