Given the state of the market and how corporations are treating their human capital nowadays do you think an union for software developers is a viable thing?
I mean, we/they are still getting treated better than majority of other people.
I'm not convinced unions would make things better. Teachers and nurses(not an exhaustive list, just the first things that came to mind) have unions and are still criminally underpaid compared to the value they provide to society.
A SW union would probably normalize the salary range to bring the floor up and the ceiling down. And reward seniority/time served compared instead of performance reviews, like other unionized jobs.
In general a union contract isn't going to end up with terms that the members don't want, because members are doing the bargaining and (in the CWA at least) have to ratify the contract by a majority vote. The same is true for other unions organizing software occupations, like OPEIU Local 1010.
We are aiming for automatic cost of living increases within job grades - to avoid the need to job hob endlessly - and objective performance reviews between grades.
It's been a lot of work to get i right, but I think where we'll land will produce a much more objective promotions process than any other I've participated in. Other CWA unions with software developers have taken a similar approach. Our contract will be publicly available when it's concluded.
I just think that right now, even in the current market, I have equal power in the employment relationship. Maybe I'm delusional and I'll be begging to join your union in a few years.
> more objective promotions process than any other I've participated in.
I cannot even begin to imagine what something like that would look like. If you base it off _any_ metric, it will be optimized and gamed. That's what engineers do. If it's not based on some quantifiable metric, I don't see how it can be in a contract.
Performance evaluations are definitely flawed, but I can't imagine a better solution. Hopefully your contract will be public and I can be enlightened. Make sure you submit it to HN when/if it does go public!
How does that work if I enjoy job hopping? If I get burned out at one workplace, would I have to start all over at the bottom of seniority at another?
Under all CWA contracts covering devs that I'm aware of, the employer gets to determine which grade a pay step the employee starts at when they are hired. Bargaining around your starting grade and step would be purely individual.
In the future, I would personally like to see the union operate a hiring hall that allows developers to go through one standardized certification processes. If they pass, they would then be eligible for placement with unionized employers for a certain period of time (e.g. two years). For those devs/qa/designers/etc. who prefer jumping from project to project, the hall system would eliminate the hassle of interviewing constantly. For employers, they would effectively be outsourcing a large part of recruitment to the union. Developing such a certification process, and getting a critical mass of software workers and employers on board would be a huge lift, though.
Some construction and merchant marine unions, back in the day, even had systems in place that allowed groups of coworkers to "ship out" as a group to employers when possible. I've hopped between jobs with groups of coworkers before, and it's great to arrive on a project and have rapport with your peers on day one.
Are you looking at fine-grained grades where the COLA would adjust the pay bad for the grade, but you’d also expect fairly regular grade promotion with good performance? With my (unionized, public sector) employer, COLAs that adjust pay bands are not automatic but are negotiated in each contract, but with satisfactory performance there is an automatic 5% annual increase within the band for your class until you top out.
What if you feel you should be paid more but your peers don't? Are you able to negotiate your individual contract?
I know lots of teachers and nurses. When they don't have collective bargaining power and a union at their backs, they are only treated worse.
Flamingly controversial opinion over here, but I don't think either are criminally underpaid. Both professions make well above median income. Teachers especially considering they only work ~180 days a year and get a pension. It is probably the region I live in, but I don't know any teachers who are doing poorly in life.
You can argue teachers are important to society, but given how opposed some unions have been to education innovation (like Common Core or Direct Instruction) I think an argument could be made that unions help teachers, but not necessarily improve the quality of teaching.
Do you not see any value in having some protection for the workers? Layoffs is a classic example. Unless your survival depends on it you don't punish the workers for bad decisions.
I do not have any specific grievances I feel need addressed. So the idea of a union as a "nice to have" feels like an unnecessary risk. It's very easy that the union takes my dues and fights for causes I have no interest in, or even puts my job at risk.
So I am personally wary, but I can see where particular industries where workers are more exploited (videogames, for example) it's an easier personal trade-off to make.
I'd be curious to hear what your concerns are about specific unions with software workers (e.g. CWA, OPEIU). If you object to the work we're doing, you could always form a fully independent union for your workplace alone. The system was designed for workers to form unions with minimal assistance from a lawyer.
It was always a good idea. As this recession deepens, I expect many more software workers to recognize that without organization, they are vulnerable to economic instability and executive caprice.
I am currently a member of Digital Media United[1] and active in helping other tech workers organize as part of CODE-CWA. My email address is in my profile, don't hesitate to get in touch if you are ready to start organizing.
1: https://twitter.com/webuildnpr 2: https://twitter.com/CODE_CWA
The economics literature in the 1960's and 70's proved that employees will be largely unable to capture the benefit of increased productivity due to excess coordination costs relative to owners -- even when unions try to address those costs. The intractibility of the problem, ironically, stems from laws protecting the free enterprise of the employee, which increase coordination costs. No one wants to lose those freedoms.
So there's no more reason to believe unions will work now than to believe that more hardware will always fix scaling issues.
The actual solution has been outsourcing - for the outsourcing firm (OF). At scale they have negotiating leverage, particularly over time as a company becomes dependent on them. That has lead to a huge shift in wage benefits from the US to India and China et. al in IT. It works so long at the OF employee has no better alternative, but it's still the OF owner who gets the lion's share of the benefit (witness India's richest men).
Everyone plays this game, some better than others. Apple is fully outsourced for manufacturing, but their iPhone production line take ~1400 workers, while Android's take ~100. So Apple is much "nicer" in this world, but operates within its constraints. Businesses who ignore these constraints don't survive and don't get funded.
To get power, you have to own something - tangible or IP - that someone else will pay a lot for. That's the only solution. MBA's and JD's exist only to make sure that when you do, you don't give it away -- or they take it from you.
Be careful not to confuse cause and effect. Labor and social democratic parties were able to pass sectoral bargaining laws because unions had already achieved organizing density in strategic sectors, and business interests preferred to channel unrest into the courts and labor boards.
The difference in salaries for high-skilled labor has been diverging for decades and in a lot of cases result in 2x-3x less than you could get in North America.
If that is why you want to join a union, you will be disappointed.
Anyway, I'm quite sure that that's not the purpose of a union. The purpose of a union is to represent workers interest in order to make sure that workers have fair working conditions. Although in some cases (e.g. police unions in some nations) it has drifted quite far away form that rather simple purpose.
Of course, this could be referring to many things, but tech layoffs are currently making headlines.
Honestly, looking back, my comment reads as a non sequitur, so I apologize for the confusion.
There are no industry standard tools or procedures for the role. Every job description is unique. There are no education requirements. There is no licensing body. There is no boundary for what constitutes software development and what doesn't. A group which ~every knowledge worker in the world can be part of is effectively useless.
But im in a proportionally smaller site that does unrelated business and has different concerns and gets completely ignored because our population is too small, so as a result our concerns and success is completely irrelevant at contract time.
In my infrequent idle time im trying to figure out what it would take to eject the union from just my location. It may be advantageous to the company to keep it here though, it suppresses our wages, so that complicates things.
Workers at companies slashing their headcounts may wish they had a union.
How have you tried to become involved? Did you stand for election to the bargaining committee? Have you spoken to those who did?
The factors that make unionization particularly difficult are first the demographics of developers. The tendency for SW developers to be white, wealthy, and male set a prior political disinclination toward unionization that makes unionization more challenging. Education, tending to be higher, doesn't make up for these other factors.
Secondly, SW developers tend to attract a disproportionate number of self-ascribed libertarian types[1] - the sort who tend to see social relations reified as contracts. As such, a conceptualization of class and class relations aren't a part of their mental model of work.
As I said, I see these tendencies make unionization more challenging, however, there are sectors where demographics and culture may make exceptions. In more exploitative roles, QA and Ops may have greater potential, and sectors like gamedev the ability to commodify workers may ultimately make unionization easier to realize.
Looking toward the long term, projects like Women in STEM, or the myriad others that seek demographic equity in STEM could shift tech population in ways that make unionization a possibility. Sectors that are boarderline now, could find themselves more open to unionization in the future. I'm a bit hesitant to even add this because it's speculative and easy to find counter examples, especially in personal accounts. I'm strictly speaking about aggregate groups at the business org level which is conveniently appropriate to unionization organization and voting. Maybe you dissent, or are in an industry or field which dissents, but a specific counter example to broad trends does not an argument dispel.
1. I'm not placing a truth value of their self-ascription claims and I really don't want to discuss anything more than how this disposition affects their behavior.
Anyone is free to pursue a career in software.