Hacker News Reader

Comment by Ancalagon | Hacker News Reader

Would love to see an engineering union form from this

People are so anti-union but don't realize how much they could help with other problems:

1. Companies rampantly abusing the H1B system 2. Wild discrepancy in the skills and quality of software engineers 3. "top tier" companies acting as a cabal to reduce comp + benefits of employees. 4. Companies abusing the use of "contractors" to get around full time hiring.

I see so many people including on HN decrying the pay engineers get. Wait till you see how much money companies make off your labor.

Here’s a good recent podcast episode on countering some of the common anti union rhetoric that you might get in response[0].

It would be great to unionize tech workers to fight for an end to abusive practices like on-call, uncompensated overtime, abuse of foreign workers, unhealthy work environments, and poor wages (remember the vast majority of tech workers aren’t at FAANGS on the coasts).

0: https://citationsneeded.libsyn.com/episode-177-popular-anti-...

Heck no, as long as human minds are corruptible, unions will decimate the group they are designed to protect.

Human minds being corruptible, applied to management and shareholders, does a good job of explaining why unions are necessary in the first place.

My understanding of US history is that almost all meaningful worker protections were fought for and seized by labor unions. Things like the 40 hour work week, paid leave, overtime pay, etc.

What have they produced since 1940?

A bizarrely rightwing investment in the anti-Communist witch hunts, and a pretty enormous structural backlash in the form of the Taft-Hartley act?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com