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Comment by tsimionescu | Hacker News Reader

Organized labor exists to allow workers to use their collective power to negotiate with the company. This power can be used to negotiate anything. For example, it's entirely possible for a union to negotiate for personal offices instead of open spaces, for TDD, for proper Agile instead of Scrum, or anything else its members care about.

Programmer culture is full of complaints about what management is forcing on the organization. Unions are the only realistic solution for those things. There's no reason programmer unions would have to be exactly like auto worker unions or actor unions.

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> it's entirely possible for a union to negotiate for personal offices instead of open spaces, for TDD, for proper Agile instead of Scrum, or anything else its members care about.

And this is why you can’t move your own table or plug in a power strip at tradeshows. The unions have a detailed contract about who does what when.

Imagine the work rules around scrum and agile, created by a committee of passionate union organizers negotiating with hostile managers. And imagine there is nothing you can do about them but hope your views prevail at the next union election.

And that’s why a protective gear/net is mandatory (not talking about US) for construction workers here where I live, and the employer cannot cut costs there or let one “brave” worker to go without those protections.

If you think your views won’t prevail in Union election, wait until you see how employers treat your expense generating views.

> Imagine the work rules around scrum and agile, created by a committee of passionate union organizers negotiating with hostile managers. And imagine there is nothing you can do about them but hope your views prevail at the next union election.

Imagine the work rules around scrum and agile, created by a committee of passionate managers negotiating with no one. And imagine there is nothing you can do about them but hope quit.

No unions in my software job yet I'm also not allowed do heavy lifting or to relocate equipment like monitors. The insurance company also insists on such things, not just unions

I used to work tradeshows for General Motors. Many of those rules are requirements by fire marshals. Those requirements were paid for by dead bodies and burned buildings. Auto shows are a lot safer since all the batteries are disconnected and fuel tanks emptied.

Examples: cars on deck short out due to salt water spray:

https://imgur.com/rn1zEEt

Long video with examples of car carrier ships catching fire:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y8ewh8zdGkc

> And this is why you can’t move your own table or plug in a power strip at tradeshows. The unions have a detailed contract about who does what when

I think that's probably over simplification, tradeshows have things like planning for fires, keeping escape routes clear, making sure power supply isn't over taxed. Maybe you can blame the unions for protecting their members because someone had to say they set up everything in compliance, and if you come along and change something, and disaster happens, prob the guy who set things up will get blamed.

>And this is why you can’t move your own table or plug in a power strip at tradeshows. The unions have a detailed contract about who does what when.

Aside from safety reasons others have mentioned, these rules could also be meant to prevent replacement with other staff. For example, if a union negotiated a better salary & benefits deal for maintenance workers, the company couldn't fire one and then ask other employees to "Help out maintenance some of the day, because they're short-staffed."

You don't seem to understand how unions work. They insert extra layers of management in between the workers (developers) and the management. They create a go-between where all negotiations must be done with the union rather than managers interacting directly with developers. This slows down development and would actively make the lives of developers worse by having to deal with a bunch of things they don't want to rather than just being able to live life in peace and code.

As a software engineer/developer if I ever see coworkers trying to unionize I promise to try to work against them and prevent any such activities from continuing. It'd ruin the company I work at and would force me to have to leave for a new job.

This extra layer of management is the price to pay for a little representation within the workplace. It is deeply imperfect, sure, and I wish companies were workplace democracies instead of relying on external organisations, but its infinitively better than no representation at all.

Besides, negociations being done through unions rather than directly with managers is a feature, not a bug, because it reequilibrate power dynamics. It's harder to underpay someone when there is a salary grid known to everybody.

This is just a caricature of what labor unions are. It's as if I was saying that company hierarchies are useless because they introduce a level of management and workers would be better off if they could negotiate directly with the CEO or even the shareholders!

Companies are unions of shareholders, getting together to achieve more than what they could do if they were alone. Labor unions works on exactly the same principle. Please have a look at labor history and see what unions where able to do for workers.

Are labor unions perfect with no corruption, no mismanagement, no abuse. Of course not, it's a human organization. Just like companies, governments, municipalities or any other group or people. But it's by participating, keeping informed and holding the people in charge accountable that you work it out. Realizing this is part of growing up.

I don't think I'd join or support a software union even though I think unions are a good idea in general. Software engineering is one of the few careers where the market has actually forced a decent balance between labor and management.

Realistically, unionized software engineers would make hilariously less money than FAANG people are making right now. At least, that's what I'd assume from looking at how things work in Europe.

(a) There aren't really any developer unions in Europe (maybe someone will correct me but I think I'm right).

(b) There must be a name for the fallacy of examining the top 10% and using it to claim a policy would be bad for everybody.

That's true, but this is a site for the top 10% of programmers

That's an incredible feed line. I honestly don't know where to start.

All right, to steel-man your argument: Honestly, I think even your lowest-brow code camp copy-paste monkey is in a pretty good spot nowadays in the USA. It's easy to make a six figure income just churning out CRUD apps for 40 hours a week. Any company that won't pay up gets disrupted into oblivion by ones that will. (Or it just clunks along forever with a bunch of underpaid workers churning out low quality crap, like what we see from government/hospital systems. Either way, everything's fine.)

What do you want out of a software union?

(Keeping in mind that we can comfortably afford and demand basically any perk you can imagine.)

It's you who don't understand how unions work - you don't choose your managers. You choose your union reps. Your managers are strictly interested in the good of the business, at any cost to you (structurally - individual managers may care about their employees, but that is a weakness in the organization) - the union represents your interests, at least to the extent that a democratic process can achieve that.

The union is there to equalize this relationship. Developers have to deal with a bunch of things they don't want other than live life in peace and code either way. With a union, they have some say in what that something is. Without a union, it's entirely up to the shareholders and pointy haired managers.

Now, if you're in a position where you are 100% critical to the business, than sure, the union may actually reduce your personal negotiation power. But the vast majority of programmers have more or less 0 negotiating power without a union. They take what is offered or leave, regardless of how much they enjoy their work or co-workers.

> you don't choose your managers. You choose your union reps.

Which are managers.

> your managers are strictly interested in the good of the business,

And said extra managers are strictly interested in the good of the union.

> Which are managers.

Managers are typically excluded from being members of a worker's union. Also, the role of a union rep is very different from the role of a manager.

> And said extra managers are strictly interested in the good of the union.

Since they are democratically elected, they are interested in the good of their constituents. If you don't think your union rep has your best interests at heart, you can choose another one at the next election. If you don't like your manager, you can quit.

> they are interested in the good of their constituents.

Supposedly that's the case for politicians as well, and we all know how well that works out.

Also I think you misunderstood my previous comment. I was referring to the union people as "managers" in quotes. As they're create an extra layer of go-between between us and the managers.

> This slows down development and would actively make the lives of developers worse by having to deal with a bunch of things they don't want to rather than just being able to live life in peace and code.

All professions have a union of some sort that police both the members and the employers - lawyers, doctors ...

It works for them, why wouldn't it work for developers? Are developers not as professional as lawyers and doctors?

> All professions have a union of some sort that police both the members and the employers - lawyers, doctors ...

Given that developers often get paid more than doctors already. There's nothing to gain there.

Doctors, lawyers, and engineers are generally treated with much more respect than engineers.

> All professions have a union of some sort that police both the members and the employers - lawyers, doctors ...

No, they don't. Professional societies aren't unions. They don't police anything, governments do; the societies only provide input to the rulesmaking process for the profession. They also have no power to represent their members in employment-related matters like a union. They do provide some union-like services to their members, but it's the fringe stuff like continuing education to maintain licenses.

Also, these exist for software engineers (ACM and IEEE), but the industry (at least the Valley-centric part) largely ignores them as membership organizations and resist any attempt to produce professional regulations similar to what those other professions have.

This is utter nonsense and just shows you've never worked in a unionized workplace. You're basically repeating talking points from 1950s propaganda.

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