Control access to the guild through credentials and other means. Provide mentorship and apprenticeship opportunities through the guild. Allow the guild to negotiate rates and working conditions with the industry.
If actors can do it, why can't we? If you want to level the playing field with tech CEOs, that's the way to do it.
Writer's guild of America
I wish I was joking but a union sounds like blue-collar work while a guild sounds like something cool from D&D and medieval fantasy.
As an analogy: socialism has many benefits. But the major downside is that it usually requires a roughly 6 hour daily commitment from every worker. I think that we subconsciously react to that loss of autonomy, and it comes out as projection. Like: taxes would be so high! We'd never be able to see a doctor! We'd be at risk of dictatorship! And various other distractions. When the truth is, most of us are so marginalized in the US that we can't see how our individual suffering might be alleviated if we focused on shared prosperity. So we make fun of any alternative.
I might suggest that a union could only fly if it transcended individual employers. So don't think Starbucks union, think service worker union. If one company does layoffs, the rest of the workers could pull the plug and all choose to move to another company for temporary reduced pay. Or by earning double income by participating in the union, workers would have enough capital to start a new company.
Anonymity would also be key. We should have the right to start and stop employment on our terms, picking up odd contracts here and there, without committing to any employer. The burden of managing that risk should fall on the union, not the individual.
We might also demand no distinction between remote and office work. Instead, we could work towards telepresence and delegating to robots, like with remote surgery. If that's possible, surely we can answer calls remotely.
A few links from searching for "union workers rights":
https://www.dol.gov/general/workcenter/unions-101
https://newsguild.org/union-member-rights-in-the-workplace/
https://www.dol.gov/agencies/olms/compliance-assistance/publ...
What else might be desirable in tech? Assuming that this will all be automated by the end of the decade, what other protections might be needed to safeguard our livelihoods? Even outside of unions, this should be forefront in our minds.
> Anonymity would also be key. We should have the right to start and stop employment on our terms, picking up odd contracts here and there, without committing to any employer.
> We might also demand no distinction between remote and office work.
Considerations like these are exactly what the guild can tackle on all our behalfs.