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Comment by CSMastermind | Hacker News Reader

I worked at Dow Jones (owners of The Wall Street Journal) and was forced into the union there.

That particular union at the time at that company was nothing but a detriment to me and other software engineers. You paid dues and got nothing but lower wages in return. The union would also protect the jobs of under-performing employees which was just demoralizing. One of the things people would negotiate for was to be made nominally into managers with only 1 direct report so they could get out of the union and individually negotiate their pay packages outside of the union's agreement.

Now possibly part of the problem was that it was not a union for all software engineers but a general union for employees of many different jobs.

But the experience left me skeptical of unions in this profession. I think something like employees pooling their equity to get representation on the board or something like that might be more effective.

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> But the experience left me skeptical of unions in this profession. I think something like employees pooling their equity to get representation on the board or something like that might be more effective.

This wildly overstates the amount of equity that non-exec employees have at the vast majority of firms. It also ignores that fact that companies are able to issue different classes of stock with differing rights. Further, it overstates the possible influence of a single board member. The Dow Jones board has 14 members; I'm not sure that adding a 15th to represent employees would meaningfully change anything beyond the length of the board meetings.

>This wildly overstates the amount of equity that non-exec employees have at the vast majority of firms...

This is a shitty reply, but only because it's true and depressing.

What’s the alternative? How can an employee expect to get paid a salary and own the company?

Dow Jones has 8000 employees, if they each owned one thousandth of one percent of the company they could pool it all to represent 8%, which is pretty substantial. Maybe I misunderstood your question, but it's extremely common for a person to own equity in a company and earn a salary from that same company.

Is owning one thousandth of one percent even close to do-able for a median employee, at any company?

I get what I consider a generous RSU package from my employer, but I currently own 0.00000011 of, or (if my math doesn't fail me) 1/90,000th of a percent of the company. Truly a minuscule amount.

> What’s the alternative? How can an employee expect to get paid a salary and own the company?

The fact that this question is posed almost like it's an impossibility goes to show how much we've been subtly brainwashed into thinking it's unreasonable. For example, before the private-equity-in-healthcare boom that did nothing but siphon off profits to the Wall Street class, in Texas all doctors groups were physician-owned (I believe they must still be by law, but PE has largely gotten around the bulk of that). It's really a great environment when the people who do the work are also the owners. Most groups, like other professional organizations (e.g. lawyers), hire people on a partnership track, where they become owners after a number of years. There are also employee-owned companies, like Publix supermarkets.

He is probably thinking about venture capital backed firms or high risk ventures like movies or games, there it you can't have it be worker owned and workers getting paid since there is no revenue until later, worker pay comes from the owners pocket.

In a business with stable income it makes perfect sense though, like doctors or consulting firms.

> like doctors or consulting firms

Big difference between ownership of (private) medical, consulting, law firms is that the owners are usually required to purchase their stakes. The average employee at a firm may not have the desire or wherewithal to purchase a stake in their company. Notably, folks who buy in to consulting and/or law firms commonly take out loans to buy their (incredibly illiquid) stakes.

This is not a model for the typical employee.

I’ve wondered how that works. Quite a risk to take out such a loan! I’ve never had that level of confidence in my employer.

You have me there. Worked most my life in angel-backed startups or government-funded research, so it’s hard to conceive of a going concern! Everything in tech feels boom-or-bust.

How can a corporate officer expect to own (some of) the company and get paid a salary?

Here's an alternative: some portion of the board is employee representatives. Meaning, they are elected representatives of the employees, probably should be employees themselves.

And how can an employee expect this? By expecting it!

The employees would have to form some kind of self-governance group to get the board to make the change to require employee representation. Then, that group would have to decide who are the employee representatives to the board.

We call those groups "unions."

Sounds like the "codetermination" concept in Germany: for corporations over a certain size, the workers elect some significant fraction of the board of directors.

Unions are just groups of organized workers. How much did you invest in making the union democratic and effective for yourself and your peers? The onus is not entirely on you but you do bear some responsibility.

That said, I get where you are coming from. It's terrible when a peer gets elected to union office and decides to prioritize their relationship with management over their relationship with the people who elected them. And it's true, some unions in the U.S. have really degenerated after decades of hostility from employers and their political representatives in all branches of government (most notably, the judiciary and National Labor Relations Board).

But constructive solution is to get involved in the union, rather than waiting for someone else to bargain a contract that will benefit you. Attend a training, become a steward, volunteer to bargain, consider running for union office. The alternative is to live under the petty tyranny of employers, hopping from job to job in the hope that market conditions for your labor don't deteriorate.

If you're organizing a non-union employer, which I have done, you and your peers need to investigate how capable and committed to union democracy the officers are.

> The alternative is to live under the petty tyranny of employers, hopping from job to job

I generally understand your point but the reality a union pitch has to provide a better answer for is that job hopping works out pretty well. I went from $28/hr part time to $350k TC, base $200k+ over 5 years of job hops early career and remote LCOL.

For one, there’s not a lot of tyranny there and I don’t think a union would have brought me that comp. I know many other similar experiences from individuals who work this route too.

For two, I did it via an ethical but transactional relationship with my employers. Unions still work on an old school mentality that a fair long term relationship is worth locking in.

I’m aware the music might stop in eng comp at some point, and I’ve planned/risk managed for that too.

If all unions can offer tech jobs is banding together and rise up the median conditions for everyone, while as a solo operator I can lock in early retirement, that’s a hard sell.

For what it’s worth, I’m quite pro-union for jobs where it makes sense. But there is nothing in your argument that makes sense for a SWE hunting life-changing comp, which is quite doable still. Why put my family at risk to help everyone else go along to get along a bit better than the previous contract, if I can solve our lifetime financial future in a few years?

Yes, you are in a distinct but important group among software developers that would not be particularly well served by firm-specific union contracts. You should support these efforts because they certainly don't harm your prospects, and they pave the way for a hiring hall model.

Your situation is more like that of an established Hollywood actor or musician. And the collective bargaining model that makes sense for them - a hiring hall - would also make sense for your segment of the software sector (and startups). Many film/album productions are effectively run like startups, and it makes no sense to bargain a firm specific contract each time. Likewise with construction work, where the hiring hall model is widespread.

I’m not clear how I wouldn’t get my prospects harmed.

More union -> less ease of hiring and negotiating for solo operators, less companies that will hire journeyman vs union shops.

That tyranny of job hopping is available to everyone. I’m not special (having spent every day with my engineering skills haha) I just beefed up on negotiating and risk tolerance.

Also I cant imagine how a startup scales if unions get involved.

Or I guess another way - I do not understand your conclusion that a hiring hall (what is this…?) helps me at all.

* Edit, clarifying: the crux I don’t understand from union tech people is it’s not like we’re miners, stuck in the same valley in WV by a variety of conditions, so might as all band together and fight Duke Energy. Or actors, tied to a few cities for their industry with a significant “on-prem” requirement. In tech, a new job and a better opportunity is a Signal/Slack DM or a LinkedIn search away. Close down one laptop and ship it back, open another shipped by an employer -> new future. IMO this is how it works going forward and only more so as fully digitized companies continue. I don’t see how a union helps here, and doesn’t add friction to me surviving in that medium. I feel that if I bought into the union perspective that the relationship with an employer is one worth shaping and locking in, it’s missing the point of a hyper-transactional, individualist economy that’s only getting more so. That to me is supporting an approach based on a faulty core premise, which seems very risky, excluding any benefits from the job hopping thing.

> it’s missing the point of a hyper-transactional, individualist economy that’s only getting more so.

This runs counter to the fact that we have seen a massive increase in labor organization and union activity over the last 5 years so I would consider rethinking that perspective.

https://www.employmentlawworldview.com/recent-data-confirms-...

https://news.gallup.com/poll/510281/unions-strengthening.asp...

> it’s not like we’re miners, stuck in the same valley in WV by a variety of conditions, so might as all band together and fight Duke Energy.

Yes but your are subject to an increasingly consolidated group of employers that are all generally described as “near monopolies” by the stock market analysts themselves and as we saw with the credit tightening cycle startups only are a viable counterweight as an employer when credit is cheap. You are also increasingly subject to competing with people who live on and require far less money to live in the places they work outside of western developed nations. Any handwaving about “superior quality from the US” is just whistling past the graveyard as monopolistic corporations don’t have to care about quality. Anecdata: any post on HN complaining about a major corporations support — they don’t have to care about quality when they own the market.

https://www.openmarketsinstitute.org/learn/monopoly-by-the-n...

“The US economy is at least 50% more concentrated today than in 2005, they write.” https://www.axios.com/2022/05/26/new-paper-finds-monopolies-...

> Also I cant imagine how a startup scales if unions get involved.

And yet data to that effect has been collected and found no visible impact on small business: https://www.princeton.edu/~davidlee/wp/unionbf.pdf

An increase in labor activity correlates to the hyper-individualized, commoditized economy - as a reaction to it, yes.

Will it impact it? I don’t think so.

We are an information-product economy. The outcome of it is Product A/Business A can get swapped out by a few clicks from the user to Product B/Business B. And in the process the hyper-organized, powerful Union A can’t do anything about it. Yes, there are all sorts of economist side-channels you can get into on this topic, but suffice to say the user-choice and de-frictioning around that choice has never been so powerful, and unions are from an age and of an approach from before this happened. Maybe to your point, B2B software will get impacted by organized labor, ie where there are consequential vendor lock-ins. But from that angle - do I sign a vendor agreement with a union shop, and the likely delays and quirks on product features and support? I’m not sure I would. To my earlier point, the same dynamic benefits employees, why let a union slow that?

As long as the user has as strong a choice on dictating revenue as it does currently, I’m not sure what point you’re making? Labor is a reaction but on the supply side, and no impact on the demand side which is what I’m referring to as the driver.

To your second, you’re looking at a domestic employment market when the reality is an international one. I didn’t mention once my American-ness protects my income. But my global-ness and commitment to keeping that perspective, plus learning other (human) languages, does.

In large I feel your response missed the point I’m making.

You offer no data or citation to evidence your claims so I won’t bother attempting to refute your opinions.

> In large I feel your response missed the point I’m making.

Which is what? Beyond casting aspersions and making claims with no data the only point I see you making is: “I think I can do better by myself” which is an assertion laughably disproved by the basic history of labor organization.

I feel you missed the point when your argument failed to make cogent case as to why unions would actually hurt your job prospects beyond “a feeling.” Come back with some data and maybe you might actually have point that can be argued.

You linked a paper covering small businesses surveyed from 1983-1999 as a valid data point to explain the impact on of organized labor on the modern technology startup in 2023. I don’t think a lack of linked data is the issue in finding shared understanding on this topic.

Hey at least I offered sources and if you want to throw out ~20 years of data that is pretty damn recent on the premise that business today is so different from the 80s then that’s your no true Scotsman to deal with. Funnily enough some of the most successful business minds today came up in the 80s and 90s and in that culture of business so I think you’re fooling yourself if you think it’s so different today. Also I offered many sources to your total lack of, so being disingenuous about the amount of sources I offered in construction of my argument further leads my to believe you have nothing of actual substance to proffer either in fact or opinion.

> old school mentality that a fair long term relationship is worth locking in

Part of the secret sauce of silicon valley is CA doesn't allow non-competes, so there's a lot of employee churn. Too much or too little are both bad, but some churn spreads ideas across the industry, leveling up everyone's game.

I understand that some people want the stability of a lifer, but in innovative industries, this is a negative, and I'd rather see a better social safety net from the government to make people comfortable with taking risks and changing jobs.

This is an interesting perspective.

Same page, I specifically have not taken risks bc my PPO healthcare would drop out, I can jump for comp but there is a floor of safety I need to maintain. With a startup, you’re dropping comp and healthcare, which was a bridge too far.

> With a startup, you’re dropping comp and healthcare, which was a bridge too far.

Every startup I've worked for had a PPO option. (One didn't originally but then added a PPO as soon as they raised a Series A.)

Founding one is a bit different ballgame on that front.

It's a little surprising a Republican who supports universal health care (maybe there just aren't any) hasn't played it up as a pro-business policy.

> I generally understand your point but the reality a union pitch has to provide a better answer for is that job hopping works out pretty well. I went from $28/hr part time to $350k TC, base $200k+ over 5 years of job hops early career and remote LCOL.

Job hopping tends to work out great early in one's career, but most everyone will plateau. My very first job hop netted me a +33% increase, my next was +20%, but the increase always trends downward. I'm 20 years into my career now, and my last job hop was maybe +0.2%. It's no longer worth it to move.

Also, $350K TC in 5 years is astoundingly good, like almost unbelievably good. Congratulations but you must know that makes you an enormous outlier. I don't even make close to that after over 20 years and in a HCOL area.

Great feedback, and you raise a good point about plateauing.

To start on the anomalous experience aspect, I know a lot of people on the same path, largely it comes from in-demand tech skills with a talent gap - think SRE, security engineering vs slamming very crowded JS-based SWE roles, paired with the pre-IPO venture pay. If it’s series C+, you’ll get 18mo of stability, and then jump for comp. Most people I know not hitting this TC won’t go to these types of companies. Another key part is thinking on 3-5 yrs vs job to job. You can get into killer companies by layering where you go first and what you work on, vs shooting for that company in the first job app. If you’re not a tech talent who can hit the hard interviews immediately, this is a great path.

Re: planning/risk management on that, as specifically the pre-IPO pay part might change with the economy, my paths are:

- arbitrage LCOL and remote tech for as long as I can, but then hit the tech cities for roles where the seniority/comp makes it worth living there as you can still get ahead (as in, out of the “golden treadmill” range of great comp but it’s NYC and childcare is $3k/mo hypotheticals), plus my career positioning tees me up to take a shot at those roles.

- tech executive paths. If you have a modicum of social skills, people networking, and an eye for how the business makes revenue, this is in play and also pay continues to climb to astronomical levels.

- lifestyle management: there is no recurring fixed expensive in my life that a $70k/yr tech job won’t cover, and having this managed makes the above planning remotely possible.

Put all this together - life changing comp is in tech and 10 yrs playing it buys you a future to do just about anything you want after.

Only reason I bring all this up in detail vs letting blind leak into hacker news is I can’t see how a union helps that path and more so doesn’t actively hurt it. As I said somewhere else, believe me I’m not a generational tech talent. I had a non-tech career before this, had to retrain, all that. But perhaps that background helped me see how wild the opportunity in tech is? By the time you hit those 0.2% raises… you could be not working while the rest of the world descends into AI-enabled unemployment etc etc

> Job hopping tends to work out great early in one's career, but most everyone will plateau.

idk, i'm 47 and just had +30% offer drop in my lap 2 weeks ago via SMS from a former client. I'm not exceptional, just specialized with a decent professional network (friends scattered about). It can't be that rare to steadily progress up the pay scale throughout your career by changing jobs.

Why should they have to put in all the work to attempt (there is zero guarantee the union can be reformed and that trying to reform it will not result in retaliation) to make the union actually represent workers? Why is it their responsibility to fight both their employer and the union? Sure, it would be great if they could fix it, but there's no motivation to get so involved when you can sidestep the union like they mentioned and benefit more.

> Some unions in the U.S. have really degenerated after decades of hostility from employers and their political representatives in all branches of government (most notably, the judiciary and National Labor Relations Board).

Or things like a lot of peoples' only interaction with a union being "you can't do that yourself, pay our toll or else", "you can't get something you want, we're not working", or "we can't get rid of that bad employee" (not to mention public sector unions). To be fair, it's hard PR when "we got health insurance" doesn't matter to anyone outside the union, but a lot of unions have worked hard to have a poor public opinion. The big labor wins (we don't have to work in a coal mine 80 hours a week!) are taken for granted now.

>to fight both their employer and the union

Exactly my issue with Unions. Now you basically have two bosses. Unions are supposed to be on your side... and they are... until you don't agree with them. Reminds me of my time in college where it was all "we accept everyone and love diversity of thought" -- unless those thoughts were outside the window of "acceptable thoughts" and that window is not very big.

Unions are not just groups of organized workers they have extensive legal privileges, if they were just groups of people with no special legal rights people would object to them a lot less.

Those legal rights are gained from being organized workers. No business wants a union. Thats the point.

I vividly remember when the local baker's union got a supermarket baker unfired for serially urinating in the cake batter because they used video footage to fire him and filming union members at work was against the union contract.

my wife is a teacher, some of her coworkers get high in the parking lot before school. The teacher union is one of the most damaging unions in existence.

Public sector unions in general are not great. Police unions are probably much more damaging.

Prison workers is even worse - their incentive is to have more prisoners.

Yeah I grew up going to NYC's public schools which are famous for this shit: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reassignment_center

I've always disliked the monopolization aspect of unions. I think something like guilds would work much better where there are 5 or so that have to compete for employees. That way if the guild isn't working for you you can move to a different one or opt out all together.

I wish I could give this move upvotes.

Unions are labor monopolies, so there are a lot of missing positive incentives, while offering incentives for corruption. In the case of the UAW, it puts auto makers at a disadvantage because there's a single labor supplier they all buy from, so the supplier can play the automakers off each other. In the moment labor is currently having, you might argue that giving labor more power than business is good, but it's not; it's toxic to those businesses in the long term. You need balance between business and labor, and competing unions is a good way to solve this.

> Unions are labor monopolies, so there are a lot of missing positive incentives, while offering incentives for corruption

My employer has a monopoly on providing me with a paycheck, with tons of incentives for mistreatment and corruption.

I'm told that if I dislike this, I should go find another job, or start my own company. Perhaps that could be the solution for someone who doesn't like their current job's union..?

> My employer has a monopoly on providing me with a paycheck

Unless you're an astronaut or something, no, they don't. Go interview somewhere else. Go drive an uber. There are lots of other places to get a paycheck.

Anyone unhappy with their union could take that same advice.

Suppose you're an autoworker in Michigan who doesn't like the UAW. Is there another similar union you can join?

Go interview somewhere else. Go drive an uber. There are lots of other places to get a paycheck. :)

I don't get your argument. In this perspective, the union has the same problem that you accuse the company of having, but worse, because an autoworker has competition vying for his labor. GM, Ford, Stellantis, John Deere, Caterpillar, and all the other machinery manufacturers compete for his labor. But the union has no competition. In fact it's specifically exempt from anti-trust legislation.

I get to vote on union policy, I don't get a vote in whatever idiotic policy-of-the-quarter some director five reporting levels above me decides to push, for his own self-serving interests.

Those decisions are never data-driven, and are always some unholy amalgamation of industry-trend-chasing and some insane personal-politics-games that he's playing against his peers.

My choices with a union are 'change it or take it, or leave it', my choices without a union are 'take it or leave it'. Flawed democracy versus flawed autocracy.

This is neither here nor there. We are talking about monopolies. The fact that a given monopoly allows member voting does not change the fact that it's a monopoly, and carries with it all sorts of monopoly baggage, making it prone to corruption, mal-incentives, rent-seeking and other antisocial behaviour.

In some countries you can, but that assumes that your employer is willing to negotiate with the union instead. In Denmark how it normally works is that unions are specific for a given profession and a single union negotiate on behalf the employees in that profession, regardless of them being a member or not. If the majority of the employees where to go to another union, the employers could switch to negotiating with that union instead.

For some professions people just negotiate their own salary, that is true of software developers for instance. Nurses on the other hand have their salary negotiated by the nurses union. It really depends on the type of work and how uniform it is or how poorly the employers behave.

The US unions seems, from the outside, pretty immature and amateurishly run. They are to small, to narrow in focus, to expensive and poorly organization.

I agree, but the issue is that the union really gains a lot of strength from controlling most/all the workers. If there were 5 equally popular guilds, a disagreement with one means only 20% of your workers stop, which isn't as big a deal as all of them being forced to stop work.

The US unions are also plain weird. There shouldn't be a New York Times Tech Workers union, that makes zero sense. There needs to be a "software engineers union" or "Programmers Union", which covers employees from multiple companies. Part of the leverage a "normal" union would have is that if, say the New York Times, don't improve working conditions or act increasingly hostile, then the union can call on members in other similar companies to strike in order for their employer to put pressure on the New York Times.

The small hyper localized union are silly and I can't imagine that they work all that well. The membership cost is also insane, but I suspect that's because they are tiny. Ideally the members at a company the size of the New York Times could be on strike indefinitely, being supported by the members of thousands of other companies.

>There needs to be a "software engineers union" or "Programmers Union"

I honestly hate the idea of that. If you don't like Meta or Google, you don't have to work there. I know lots of people that don't like the "defense" industry because it contributes to building weapons, so they refuse to work at those companies.

What recourse does an employee/member have if the union publicly supports setting up (mock) guillotines?

https://files.illinoispolicy.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/...

What if you don't agree with their conduct or policies? You can't just go get another job if there's only one or two.

Same thing that happens if you don't agree with the democratic locality you live in. You participate in the process to get things changed.

I solved that problem by moving.

>You participate in the process to get things changed

Will a union compensate you participating? Having to fight against both your boss _and_ union sounds like a nightmare.

Then changing workplaces is equivalent to moving.

Ideally, your union is supposed to fight against your boss for you.

I can understand the reluctance to deal with another structure. But when you get to the day-to-day impact, aside from the legal protections and membership dues and so forth, how is dealing with a union any different from dealing with the ad hoc cliques or unofficial software guilds, employee groups, etc. that spring up in a workplace? Or just dealing with rival teams or orgs jockeying for influence and power? You want to escape politics at the workplace altogether, become a freelancer.

>Then changing workplaces is equivalent to moving.

For sure. And that's what you can do if you don't want to work for a company but have desired skills.

>Ideally, your union is supposed to fight against your boss for you.

For sure. So my question is why are so many unions on twitter advocating for every social cause under the sun and encouraging people to build guillotines? I realize this is an extreme example but its no secret that unions are very leftist and active.

>how is dealing with a union any different from dealing with the ad hoc cliques or unofficial software guilds, employee groups, etc. that spring up in a workplace?

If you don't like those things, you can work at another place. I know office culture is part of every business but every business has a different culture. You can work in software without ever touching a defense company. In a world where there's only one or two software unions, those structures would be inescapable.

You seem to be confusing social media chatter, not even necessarily from official union accounts or union spokespeople, with actual union activity and messaging.

> In a world where there's only one or two software unions, those structures would be inescapable.

The concept of unions in the U.S. tech industry is completely nascent and up in the air at this moment. If anything, the proliferation of "Google union", "NYT union", a Kickstarter United etc. seem to indicate that it is unlikely there will be only one or two software unions.

The idea that if (and it seems to be, as always, a very low-probability if) software unions do catch on, they will necessarily be identical to industrial unions of the past, seems fallacious to me. You would expect an industry that's all about innovation and experimentation to approach the problem of labor relations in a ways that's different from failed models of the past.

Is this not an official account, controlled by CTULocal1?

https://twitter.com/CTULocal1

The union's website links to the account:

https://www.ctulocal1.org/ (down at the bottom)

>with actual union activity and messaging

How am I supposed to know what is "actual activity and messaging?"

>You would expect an industry that's all about innovation and experimentation to approach the problem of labor relations in a ways that's different from failed models of the past.

That's fair. Intentions aren't consequences though. Some of the most well intentioned policies and regulations in Europe have the consequences of horrible tech salaries.

Where's the guillotine tweet? I can grant such imagery might be severe and perhaps distasteful to those of certain sensibilities, but I hardly find it any more extreme than say when unions have giant blow up "Scabby the Rat" balloon figures. And this is a public sector union, they are not straight up advocating for revolutionary class war for crying out loud.

> Intentions aren't consequences though. Some of the most well intentioned policies and regulations in Europe have the consequences of horrible tech salaries.

I just want to see some experimentation and innovation in an industry that has an avowed commitment to such values. If there are consequences, then we will at least have proven so empirically.

>Where's the guillotine tweet?

https://files.illinoispolicy.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/...

>And this is a public sector union, they are not straight up advocating for revolutionary class war for crying out loud

They say "we're terrified but completely in support of wherever this is going" when people set up a device used exclusively for beheading humans. Whatever it is, it is ridiculous and a prime example of how you'll have to fight a war on two fronts if you don't agree with the union.

>I just want to see some experimentation and innovation in an industry that has an avowed commitment to such values

Anyone is free to start a software co-op and or experiment with different methods. I could agree in theory, but in practice, experimentation isn't free. I have family from eastern Europe that are still recovering from the "experimentation" that went on in the USSR.

That tweet is very measured, mealy-mouthed millennial speak that's mildly approving. Social media account managers for activist groups have a tendency to amplify edginess, the heightening of passions is part of the job. But that sort of rhetoric is unlikely to be universal to all unions, and the point is if you don't like your union making such speak, you still have a voice to counteract it, just as you would if your company was engaged in a PR marketing campaign whose tenor you disagree with.

> I have family from eastern Europe that are still recovering from the "experimentation" that went on in the USSR.

We're talking about an industry that has been almost wholeheartedly scoffing at the idea of unions for decades. To suggest Kickstarter United is Finland Station is laughable.

Agreed that software co-ops are something that should be attempted more. In fact, the presence of FOSS projects, hacker collectives, and the like would suggest that programmer self-governance is already popular in this industry. There is a very bottom-up, autonomy-focused culture in many aspects of software. Even the idea of quitting your pointy-headed boss to build your own startup is arguably in the same spirit.

I'd go as far as saying that to attempt a software union is in the same spirit- as unionization has declined so much in the U.S. over past decades, let alone never been attempted in tech until recent years- it is an underdog, grassroots cause. Very far from the bureaucratic Kafka entity that anti-union critics like to invoke- this industry is so very far from such a leviathan!

And remember, it was a labor union that ended the USSR's grip on Poland, leading to sweeping changes across the Eastern Bloc...

>That's like very measured, mealy-mouthed millennial speak that's mildly approving

Ok, well, we've gone from;

"you're confused, that's not the actual messaging"

"they're only mildly approving of constructing a device to behead people they disagree with"

>you still have a voice to counteract it

I should not have to spend mental energy or time telling an (in your words) activist, edgy-millennial that encouraging people to build guillotines is not a good PR look and doesn't represent me.

>just as you would if your company was engaged in a PR marketing campaign whose tenor you disagree with

If you don't like your company you can leave. If there were only one or two unions for software devs, (like OP implies) then it would be inescapable.

I don't disagree with the idea of unions in principal. I just feel they would be detrimental to software. The only reason start ups get off the ground is because people put their blood, sweat and tears into it. What is there to motivate co-op founders to put their blood, sweat and tears into a new co-op?

> Ok, well, we've gone from;

Yes? The parameters of the discussion have shifted, so I am responding accordingly. This isn't a debate, let alone a sports game; there are no goalposts to shift, simply points to be addressed, not scored.

> I should not have to spend mental energy or time telling an (in your words) activist, edgy-millennial that encouraging people to build guillotines is not a good PR look and doesn't represent me.

I can understand it's an additional annoyance, and may be a dealbreaker in your book. I respect that. It is my position that it is a regrettable trifle and not all that different from when one's company PR, or even execs, make regrettable public statements. An overcomeable difficulty.

> If there were only one or two unions for software devs, (like OP implies) then it would be inescapable.

Sure, but it's such a different state of affairs from reality to seem positively absurd as a phantasm.

> What is there to motivate co-op founders to put their blood, sweat and tears into a new co-op?

I don't know, why don't you ask the founders of the Mondragon Corporation, or even the Arizmendi Bakery that bears the founder's name? Specific to software, what motivates those who start FOSS projects, or open hackerspaces or makerspaces, or create content for freeCodeCamp? Seems like there is precedence for autonomous, self-governing enterprises in tech, and I doubt that those behind them do not put in blood, sweat, and tears.

> I solved that problem by moving.

I guess that's one way to do it. I guess I optimistically believe we can do better than "Move to a dictator you like," either for town government or for employment.

>I guess that's one way to do it. I guess I optimistically believe we can do better than "Move to a dictator you like," either for town government or for employment.

In theory this is great. In practice, I realized there's just no way to compete with career politicians. I don't mean people like the Bushs or Clintons. I'm talking about spouses or people that can work 5-6 hours a day on local legislation when you are looking to just relax after your 9-5.

And I mean really, what can a old-school Republican (not me) do if they live in the Bay Area? Realistically the only way they can feel represented, for better or worse, is by moving. I don't think that's the worst thing in the world either.

> If you don't like Meta or Google, you don't have to work there.

What does that have to do with the unions? The unions negotiate with an industry as a whole, never individual companies, that makes no sense. So a programmers union would ensure that you have the same rights regardless of whether you work for Meta, Google or Carl's Discount Software.

> What recourse does an employee/member have if the union publicly supports setting up (mock) guillotines?

They vote in the next union election and vote out who ever approved of that idea. That's also how you change conduct and policies. The point of the union is collective bargaining, so there's bound to be something you don't like, but that's the cost of being a democracy. You're not forced to be a member to work in an industry, but at least parts of your benefits and minimum salary may be negotiated by the union regardless.

>What does that have to do with the unions?

If there is just one "software engineer" union, if you work in software, you have to be part of that union.

>So a programmers union would ensure that you have the same rights regardless of whether you work for Meta, Google or Carl's Discount Software.

Exactly. That's the blessing and curse of monopoly. What if you feel the union isn't doing a good job of representing you?

>They vote in the next union election and vote out who ever approved of that idea.

So you're at the mercy of the 51%?

>The point of the union is collective bargaining

If that is all the unions did, I wouldn't be as weary. The problem is they do far more than that.

>You're not forced to be a member to work in an industry, but at least parts of your benefits and minimum salary may be negotiated by the union regardless.

>You're not forced to be a member to work in an industry

Maybe in theory but in a world where there is only one software union for FAANG, that won't be the case.

> So you're at the mercy of the 51%?

I guess I'd rather have a vote over my compensation and working conditions rather than having to negotiate it or "vote with my feet". Different strokes for different folks. For what it's worth I'm against mandatory union participation, but would almost certainly participate if I had the option.

That's fair. My problem comes down to "choose between X and Y" when you may have option Z without a union middleman.

> Maybe in theory but in a world where there is only one software union for FAANG, that won't be the case.

Why would it? My wife works in a heavily unionized industry, but you're not forced to be a member, but your baseline benefits are negotiated by a union. You're free to negotiate directly better terms if you can, you just can't do worse. I do see your point, say you have some benefits that mostly favors people with children, which you'd happily give up for higher pay. That is a downside.

> So you're at the mercy of the 51%?

Welcome to democracy, unless you're in the US where you at the mercy of less that 50% of the population anyway. I was always taught that democracy is the rule of the majority, but with consideration for the minority. In a normal election it's not win takes all, say you elect 15 people to run the union, sure 51% could elect the exact same type of people, in normal elections that rarely happens. It happens with gerrymandering, but normally, you broadly get a reasonable representation of the members. That's not to say that there aren't a group of people that believe something entirely different, and yes, it sucks to be them. Saying that 2% or 5% should be able to get exactly what they want, even if that costs the remaining group what they want is really arguing against democracy and I'm not sure what you'd replace it with.

Still, you should always be free to leave a union that doesn't represent you, but that should prevent everyone else from benefiting. Maybe most agree with you and you start a new union.

>My wife works in a heavily unionized industry

Which industry?

>You're free to negotiate directly better terms if you can, you just can't do worse

Do you have sources for this? I'm not doubting you, its just I admit I'm not experienced with unions but from what I've gathered from friends/family, you have certain "steps" in salary/benefits. Are you negotiating with the union or with the company? Can you negotiate every year or only when you first start?

>Saying that 2% or 5% should be able to get exactly what they want

Well, IMO its not really about people getting exactly what they want, its about getting what is owed to each individual. I would love to be paid $1,000,000 to make CRUD apps all day but that's not possible (unless I owned the business or something). As it is now, when you take on a job you can negotiate salary and benefits. No use fighting over an orange when one person wants to eat it and the other wants the skin. I've negotiated tens of thousands of dollars in salary. Sometimes a business needs something done fast and has the money. Sometimes they have less money but can meet you on vacation/benefits. If a union establishes a higher floor, it will be at the expense of a ceiling, at least for software. I'm not saying unions are reason for the horribly low tech salaries in Europe... but the way employment there is handled is certainly a factor. Why take risks on people if you can't really get rid of them after you hire them?

>Welcome to democracy [...] I'm not sure what you'd replace it with

Right now, I can represent myself to my employer and I deal directly with my employer. A union would introduce a middleman that may or may not represent me well. Of course, a union would bring with it "leverage" of collective negotiation... but for me, that is not worth it to give up my ability to negotiate as an individual.

I do get your points though. Democracy is a pretty awful system but it is the "least-worst." I think direct representation to your employer is the "least-worst" for software engineering though.

There doesn't necessarily need to be just one. You can have a few that cover an industry that are bigger than an employee specific one while still having competition between unions. For example I work for the NHS and there are multiple unions I could join, all of which are consulted on pay deals.

Your description of how you think it should work is how it actually does work. The Times Tech Guild is not a union in and of itself. It's chapter of The NewsGuild of New York (representing news workers in New York), which is a local of The NewsGuild (representing news workers nationally), which is a member of Communication Workers of America (aka CWA, which represents communications workers nationally).

Or you can have a competitive market where you just take your skills to a different employer. You're essentially just describing making the union a middle man to what you could on your own if you have marketable skills.

Not to mention eventually unions fall to public pressure and "movements", there was a union thread a few weeks ago where I posted this article that stuck with me:

> Minneapolis Public Schools defends policy to prioritize retaining educators of color when determining layoffs

> Effective in the spring of 2023, the contract provision states that teachers who are members of "populations underrepresented among licensed teachers in the district" may be exempt from district-wide layoffs outside of seniority order, deviating from the traditional "last-in, first-out" system.

> The stipulation is a part of a recent collective bargaining agreement between the Minneapolis Federation of Teachers (MFT) and MPS, which concluded a weekslong teachers' strike in March.

https://abcnews.go.com/US/minneapolis-public-schools-defends...

If you end up on the wrong side of the movement because you aren't one of the "intersectional" people you could be let go. It's just jarring to me as someone who's mother is a public school teacher and is poor but isn't a woman of color. This union doesn't have all its members backs.

> Now possibly part of the problem was that it was not a union for all software engineers but a general union for employees of many different jobs.

That was the main problem. There is a reason that the writers and actors have separate unions -- because the have different needs. Heck, even the animation writers have a separate union from the live action writers because they have different needs.

I imagine a proper coders union would look a lot like the screenwriters union. Minimum pay and benefits, but without the job protections for underperforms that so many dislike about unions, and the ability for top performers to get incredible pay.

Sounds like unions should be exposed to market competition; the effects you describe is what happens in a monopoly.

This is interesting, but what would that look like?

I don’t know. Do unions themselves preclude the possibility of people being a member of more than one union?

A union is effectively a monopoly on labor supply. With all the same ramifications that a corporate monopoly has.

In some cases union labor can be circumvented (hiring non-union labor), but for some industries/businesses this is not possible on a short timeframe

> A union is effectively a monopoly on labor supply.

I can see how you could see it that way, but it’s actually the reverse. A union is actually a force capable of denying labor to an employer. Viewed in this way, there is nothing precluding another union to also withhold the same employees from working. Employees could, theoretically, be members of more than one union. Employers would then have to satisfy the requirements of all extant unions.

(I have no idea why this is being downvoted. I can only guess that people think I am implying something again.)

Theoretically if you have many unions competing for work, this would be the case.

Practically that's not how it tends to work in the US. In most cases there is one industry wide or company specific union, without competing alternatives.

In many industries in the US, joining a specific union is a condition of employment at a company that has a union contract.

It is a monopoly on labor, full stop.

Not all monopolies are intentionally bad, but they all exist with the same perverse incentives that can run counter to the goals of everyone involved.

Does that contract contain conditions forbidding employees from also joining other unions?

Which industries? If you’re gonna point to SAG then sure there are union gigs but that does not preclude one from becoming an actor and working in non union gigs. Perhaps you mean non right to work states?

Can you proffer any evidence/data to that effect? If it is a monopoly how can we have many non-unionized auto workers working for Tesla and Toyota?

Ford has auto plants in Michigan with effectively 100% union labor.

If Ford wants to invest in these plants or hire more people, they must hire them from the union. There is no competing, alternative union, or mechanism to hire non-union labor into this plant, thus making the UAW a local monopoly on labor supply for those plants.

Ford can offshore the manufacturing to bypass the union, yes, but not in the immediate term. It requires large capital investments and years of planning. But in the end it tends to be worth it monetarily for most manufacturing businesses to do this.

Which is why any job that involves a large amount manual labor that can be outsourced, tends to get outsourced. Lower cost of production is quite good for society, by the way. It's what enables goods and technology to be so cheap in real terms versus the past, when food consumption used to be a large percentage of a family's spending.

Eventually automation will replace the need for manual labor, thus outsourcing. Manufacturing plant location would be driven more by cost to transport inputs than cost of labor

You’re gonna have to cite some sources. I’ve been looking and can’t find a single piece of evidence to back up your claim of union only shops in Michigan. To the contrary Michigan was a right to work state until 2023:

“In 2012, Michigan enacted a right-to-work statute that prevented employees from being forced to join or financially support a labor union as a condition of employment” Which means they can’t force you to join the union.

Maybe you’re use of the word “effectively” is meant to carry the weight of this oversight — although that would imply that, since the workers were not forced to join the union they did so of their own volition? Which I’m sure is not the point you are trying to make.

Where’s the evidence of the claims?

This is widely known information and common knowledge about how most unions work in the US. UAW is just one example of many

I'm not here to teach you the basics about unions, I'm here to talk about the economic impact of them as it applies to many industries in the US.

If you feel I'm wrong, please disprove me. Otherwise, why comment at all?

I mean I just did. Your comment is just plain wrong in the face of the cited right to work law for Michigan. Any “requirements” would be this year alone due to the legality of the statute. It’s your turn to present something other than opinions posed as fact, blatant misinformation or in this response of yours an ad populum appeal that leads me to believe you have spent 0 time actually researching this. How do you square the right to work law in Michigan with your previous claim that Michigan ford shops are “all union” by requirement and not by the workers choice to unionize. How would that even be legal to force someone to join a union in right to work state? Hint: it isn't legal and therefore your claim is 100% provably wrong.

A corporate monopoly is a company that consists of people freely choosing to work together, yet it is still a monopoly. There is no mandate to join the company

A monopoly is not a monopoly due to it being enshrined or mandated by law, it is because it has market power far exceeding that of any current or future competitor. Because it is uneconomical to compete with them

A deeply embedded labor union, even if nominally optional to join, is still a monopoly on labor because there is no incentive for an individual auto-worker to break off from the union. They have 0 individual bargaining power unless they are part of the union.

Ford cannot go out and hire an entire set of "scabs" overnight to run their plants, because they lose too much collective domain knowledge and its too costly to do so.

This makes labor unions such as UAW directly comparable to what a corporate monopoly looks like. It is a direct and clear analogy. Right to work is irrelevant here.

Your entire counterpoint is based on misunderstanding the definition of a Monopoly. Anyway the semantics of what a "monopoly" is are subjective (is Apple or Google one?). This discussion is about "effective monopolies" and the economic impact when one body has enough market power that alternative options are not realistic, even if nominally available.

Sure you can move the goal posts, but just so we have a record of the actual history:

You proffered a point: “ If Ford wants to invest in these plants or hire more people, they must hire them from the union. There is no competing, alternative union, or mechanism to hire non-union labor into this plant, thus making the UAW a local monopoly on labor supply for those plants.”

Which I proved incorrect because it’s simply not the case nor could it have been based on Michigans own laws (up until this year that is). Michigan was a right to work state up until this year so yes Ford can and does hire non union which doesn’t even speak to its massive 3pp parts maker network which is largely not unionized and acts as another way to employ non union personnel. You can say Ford can’t hire scabs but they do as do others:

https://labornotes.org/2023/09/scabs-deployed-gm-parts-distr...

https://theintercept.com/2023/10/10/uaw-auto-strike-stellant...

You can also say they can’t hire non union workers and yet even in the US only many ford employees are not unionized: “ Ford has about 173,000 employees worldwide, about 86,000 in the U.S. Of the 86,000, about 57,000 are represented by the UAW. About 33% of Ford employees are UAW” https://www.barrons.com/articles/ford-stock-uaw-gm-stellanti...

I’m not responding to your other “points” because they lack any form of citation. I was interested to see if there were actually union requirements to get a Ford job in Michigan and from my research I can’t see that and your claims fail to speak to that question in an substantive way beyond you espousing your opinion. I never made a claim about unions being good or bad — you imply value judgements in your conclusions but those are your own and without citations they are as useful as a hole in the head. You can keep on making “logical” conclusions but they lack any substance because you can’t properly execute a coherent line of argument as you fail to support your previous claims even when given multiple opportunities to present a cogent case. I guess “everybody knows” though is enough for your purposes.

Also your definition of monopoly in this case fails to actually support your point. Here is an actual definition of a monopoly: https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/definition/monopoly

You miss the important “unique” qualifier to the product or services. UAW or any other union does not offer a unique product as labor is a fungible asset. In right to work states there is no singular unique provider of labor and therefore it is not a monopoly unless you can prove that one has to join a union to work at Ford which is not the case.

Aren't they already? In the countries I've lived in there can be several unions and they decide independently when to start and stop engaging in a negociation / strike / whatever.

They are not. As far as I know, you can't just fire striking union workers. Unions force companies to only hire union members, and freeze out everyone else. They also have the ability to hold a gun to the corporations head and say look, we're going to strike and destroy your business whether you like it or not, unless you meet our demands. The bullet in the gun is the government. That is absolutely not market forces. Quite simply unions could not exist without government backing.

> Unions force companies to only hire union members, and freeze out everyone else.

This is due to American laws not protecting workers from unions. This isn't the case in for example EU.

> Quite simply unions could not exist without government backing.

They can and they did exist without government backing. Union laws in most countries are to weaken unions since they are too strong otherwise, not to give them more power. For example unions forcing exclusivity is due to lack of laws protecting workers from unions.

Yea. Used to work in a warehouse and it was almost a competition to see who could do the least amount of work without getting fired. My manager was partaking in said competition and it lead to me losing my job because she was rarely around and basically caused our shift to become less profitable by encouraging everyone to slack off. This was all during college so not a huge blow but it was a "wtf" moment.

This is my experience of once being part of a union as well as with working with union folks. If it was that time of day, the thing would be left for the next day, unless you wanted to pay super extra to have someone else come in. Can I just have a non-union guy do this trivial thing? No, that's a humongous violation, no. You will have to wait till Monday, sorry!

That said in this case, I hope the NYT goes down. They deserve it. Go union, do your thing that you're so good at.

I think sketch happens in a lot of unions. My father in law was a concrete truck driver in CA. He used to give the union president gifts each year of about ~$1000 or more.

Did you engage with intra-union politics at all?

How were you forced into the union? Was it manipulation or did you literally have to join or face consequences?

In some States, if it's a union shop you have to be in the union. In others, you don't. (https://www.nber.org/digest/202208/impacts-right-work-laws-u...)

New York is highly unionized. I used to know a woman who set up trade shows there and would laugh that they required two different unions to move a desk with a computer on it that she herself could have moved if it were allowed.

That is not what I read from your link. Your link state that in some states every worker benefits from collective agreements (which are set by bargaining with the unions) regardless the workers are part of the union or not.

Despite being mostly pro union I would find it totally baffling that a worker would be forced into a union and I doubt the OP was.

Read the definition of right to work: "the term "right-to-work laws" refers to state laws that prohibit union security agreements between employers and labor unions which require employees who are not union members to contribute to the costs of union representation"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right-to-work_law

In EU this is already a thing, we see this is as a natural right to workers. In USA this is a hot topic, liberal states have unions forcing you to pay for membership even if you aren't a member.

I still don’t see any data for the case you state being proffered — just the ability (from your link) for union shops to charge dues to non union members who are getting the benefits of union negotiated pay & benefits. Barring any actual proof of this “forcing” happening in inclined to believe this is just exaggeration.

> Barring any actual proof of this “forcing” happening

They force non-union members to get the same benefits and pay the same union dues. What is hard to understand here? This is what unions in USA fight so hard to keep, they wouldn't fight for it if they didn't use it to force people.

For example, if you want to be an actor in California, you need to join SAG if you want to be in a union production. But if you join SAG you are no longer allowed to work in non-union productions, essentially creating two separate markets. Do you think this isn't happening? Many big actors hate this, but they are forced to join SAG anyway.

Here is how it works if you don't want to look it up yourself:

> Once this grace period expires, however, you become classified as a “must-join”. As the label implies, you now must join the union and pay the initiation fee if you wish to continue to work any SAG-AFTRA jobs going forward.

https://actingmagazine.com/2021/01/what-is-a-must-join/

Edit: And here is how right to work gives you a choice instead of the union being able to force you:

> There is usually more flexibility for must-join actors who reside in right-to-work states, since right-to-work states have laws that prohibit unions from requiring workers to join a union as a condition for employment. However, the largest acting markets in the United States, like Los Angeles and New York, are union states.

Conceded that sag has a pretty special case here in the “must join” of course, speaking from the free market view, you are more than welcome to work on non-union gigs of which there are plenty. No one is making you join a union just because you are in a profession + a place. There’s plenty of non-union gigs in Hollywood. I don’t see the harm in making people pay dues if they are getting the benefits of a union gig and this is not the same as “being forced” to join a union — you can go work in another state with right to work laws. This also seems like a pretty special case to SAG since we can see union and non union workers in auto plants: evidenced by the tier system that many auto manufacturers put in place. So not all unions have this same bargaining power.

Having to pay union dies and abiding by the union contract seems to me that you're forced to be in the union. Maybe your quibbling that although you have to pay the dues and abide by the union rules, you don't have to go to the union meetings?

>You paid dues and got nothing but lower wages in return.

What exactly did you want in return? The entire purpose is to be a collective with your co-workers. Do assertive, high performers need unionization? No, but that's not the point.

>The union would also protect the jobs of under-performing employees which was just demoralizing

If the "under-performers" are the people who don't work 50 hours a week and treat their job like a job, I'm all for them being "protected".

The fact that so few in Silicon Valley have the mentality that "keeping underperformers around means that when layoffs hit, they're first on the chopping block" implies to me that SV engineers are not as smart as they think they are.

What are you even on about? it’s super common in sv and tech in general

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