Push to unionize tech industry makes advances | Hacker News Reader

Push to unionize tech industry makes advances

axios.com

36 pointspmoriarty15 comments

I've been at a company where I really wish there was worker representation on the board, something that isn't a thing in the U.S. even in companies with strong unions, but I very much like the concept. In the particular case where I was the board was appointed mostly by the CEO and didn't represent any kind of oversight or even the barest amount of engagement. There was no meaningful checks and balances, and no one to call executives on BS when they presented to the board.

Especially in the tech industry I think ICs are generally very invested in the overall success of the company. I honestly don't think corporate leadership is selected with any greater alignment than employees. They have a different perspective, which is sometimes good/correct/necessary. But they also are the ones who are most likely to drive a company into the ground.

Unions are a must, corporations have HR and policies to get their way, employees need to unionize to get some power back.

It’s always useful in these threads to mention some top anti-union talking points that get trotted out. There’s a podcast from Citations Needed that covers them and how they’re incorrect[0]

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

It will be harder for unions to destroy the domestic (US) tech industry than past industries, because of the low barriers to entry. You can force a factory to move to another country, but software development is open and distributed enough that it will remain viable in the face of any attempts to form unions.

How exactly would unions destroy anything? Outsourcing has nothing to do with unions.

I think the idea is there's a curve where the less business friendly the unions are willing to negotiate at, the more likely businesses outsource. And there's some point where so many of the businesses have outsourced everything we basically don't have the infrastructure for it any longer or hiring is scarce.

What specific examples are there of unions resulting in outsourced labor? This wreaks of the same talking points most anti-union propaganda consists of.

My phone company sent a bunch of call center jobs to the Philippines… it’s not really a talking point or anti-union to say that businesses will at least consider alternatives.

The original comment was talking about unions destroying things, so yes it was an anti-union talking point, the bias was clear.

The biggest thing this explanation would have to accommodate is that the decrease of union membership (in the US) coincides with an increase of outsourcing.

There are better explanations such as implications in trade and finance post Bretton-Woods and the neo-liberalism that followed that incentivized busting unions and outsourcing.

The first example that comes to mind is the textile industry starting in the northeast US where unions are strongest, then moving south where they still had some unions but were much weaker, and eventually going overseas. Could argue the same thing for the US steel industry but I don't know. Or you can also find plenty of companies keeping their legacy business with unions as they are but only expanding forward to places not so friendly to unions - e.g. Boeing opening its latest plant in South Carolina without a union unlike its original counterpart in Seattle. Of course there's already differences in labor costs regardless of unions and other factors at play.

I'm for unions in principle and I have family members that have certainly benefited from unions on the one hand but I've known plenty of people in private sector unions that feel like their union dues are only getting someone else richer while they're stuck in dead-end jobs just to make ends meet.

Some union contracts actually let the union veto the outsourcing of jobs.

In those cases unionizing prevents outsourcing.

Won't stop competitors from eating their lunch.

Actually…

Outsource has everything to do with unions.

Union power is limited due to globalization.

The future of labor will have to be one in which there is collective bargaining WITHOUT borders.

Because big tech will outsource to countries with weak or no unions to keep workers under their thumb.

Software engineers will never unionize as they are a privileged worker class.

HOWEVER…

The massive contracting force of call center employees, content moderators, data trainers and other peoples inside the AI Mechanical Turk at FAANG are todays warehouse factory workers.

As wealth inequality grows, this lower class tech worker will unionize if not outright revolt like we saw in China with Apple devise assemblers.

If your job can be outsourced will be outsourced, not because of unions, because of shareholders wanting more profits)

Share holders vote and make decisions, why wouldn't workers do the same?

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