Seriously, why people in tech are opposed to unions?
In Europe, unions and Betriebsrat (works committee) are the norm. Why not in the US?
At the company of a friend of mine, the white collar employees do charity events for the blue colar ones and while the blue colar ones participate on labour day events, the white collar ones are too cool to be with them.
But when the actual non-workers(the true elite) feel like they can make more money by laying off some white collar workers, the cool white collars go through the exact same process as the blue collar ones they chipped in for.
Also, these are not even high earning white collars, they just happen to work in a pleasant environment. Many blue collar workers make more money in comparison to white them and are closer to the non-workers since they can actually do highly paid short term contract work.
There's a strong cognitive dissonance going on among white collar workers, having trouble to process the signals on if they are the cool elite or the working class. In Europe, this is not as strong because of the unions and regulations pushing all workers to earn more less the same and the work environments are safe and clean. In places outside of EU there can be workers which are 10x or 100x beter off than those at the bottom because the top can be higher but usually the bottom is also much lower and this gets the better off ones very confused.
In the us, the way laws are written, unions are a political entity and basically from inception are in bed with the government. This creates a mismatch of incentives as the union is motivated to operate politically and this is reflected internally because that's how power is derived externally and thus internally. This creates a lot of odd things like the local foreman who manages the house is doing so because he has been around for 20 years or because he is friends with the guy who has been around for 20 years or because he bought in with millions to be that guy not because they are the right people for the job.
Because of these legal protections and structures unions don't have to compete against other unions and they don't have to compete for the workers membership either. For example the IATSE gets a cut of your work if you work in the industry because that's legally mandated even if you aren't a member. This encourages unions to become bloated, and self serving and it's not immediately clear their value add. Just like elsewhere in society top down structures begin to appear where a few people at the top of the union get most of the pie.
Workers are hesitate to involve themselves with unions here because they are yielding agency to a political machine in a fairly permanent way.
Don't forget some of the cons and headlines around unions here either. Some of the unions using violence, like the teamsters, here to gain power. Teachers unions trying to keep bloated headcounts in empty (by half) schools in Chicago nearly bankrupting the city. Police unions protecting their members despite obvious misconduct. Lots of police/fireman/city unions keep garenteeing investment return rates that aren't in line with the market that eventually bankrupt the city.
If the legal freedom and incentives were there people would do it, but this system is by design.
I am a soft engineer but have remained a iatse card holder.
Also unions in the US have quite often rewarded seniority over skill and effort, making them less attractive to high performers.
Early on in tech I outperformed all those I started with, and was able to make significantly more as a result. My friends in union jobs (electrician, auto plant workers, ..) did not get any such opportunity to shine, and they even had to strike (i.e., no pay) when the local shops decided they should. They're not allowed to work outside jobs, they have a terrible time starting new shops, since the existing union power brokers like the control over their employment.
I looked into moving to the UK, and saw how few startups in the EU become big, how hard it is in most countries there to make new businesses compared to the US, and decided against it. The EU is ~450M people, the US is ~330M. Now look at how few companies in the EU become worth 1B compared to the US. That low ratio also applies to smaller (and larger) companies.
Increased benefits to workers for one facet of employment is not free. Laws adding costs per employee to an employer are not simply paid out of magic money.
>Now look at how few companies in the EU become worth 1B compared to the US. That low ratio also applies to smaller (and larger) companies.
Money is power/control, and not having a concentration of wealth is a good thing for society. Granted many of the ultra wealthy also support giving away their wealth - but (IMHO) the Benevolent dictator model for social change is indicative of a failure of government. I think there is wastage of allocated capital both when its done by elected officials and also with the ultra wealthy.
The US has higher income for median, for the poor. for those in poverty, for every decile, by a decent margin.
For example, US median income is around 46k. Germany is a reasonable first world country, yet median income is 33k (all in PPP dollars). This is huge. Most of the first world has similarly low income, at every level.
If your argument against income is that some people make a lot, so instead make everyone poorer, I find that a weak argument. It is a common outcome of poorly designed policies that those focusing on the rich or poor but with a bad understanding of history and econ end up making. I'd rather policymakers learn econ and history and learn that things like rent control, or various forms of taxes, have consequences that often hurt those they claim to want to help.
Here's some metrics for various ways to measure https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disposable_household_and_per_c...
OECD has tons more.
> I think there is wastage of allocated capital both when its done by elected officials and also with the ultra wealthy.
You think the average person would allocate capital better than those that understand investment and growth, and are willing to risk their own resources? There's a reason govt funds vastly underperform general markets - those with less to lose (i.e., those playing with other's money) likely fare worse at allocation than those that have more skin in the game. I know that most workers I tend to hang out with have a terrible understanding of how econ/macro/finance or even starting and funding businesses works.
Also those countries that tend strongly into socialism instead of capitalism have not done as well as those with strong capitalist bases (i.e., all first world countries - where people can own the means of production and operate for their own profit). If capital were allocated so much better in the places you seem to want, where is the evidence that it works? There's 200+ countries; if it worked, you'd think it would be winning somewhere....
How did what I say in any way relate with making everyone poorer? You're just assuming what my position is, and also assuming the outcome based on what happened in other random countries, in a completely different setting.
I'm against concentrations of power because the government should not have a competitor when it comes to power. We elect the government, and in a functioning democracy the government's policies are decided on by voters. This in effect ensures only the people get to decide who govern them. There should never be another entity which can out compete a government when it comes to power and influence.
>I'd rather policymakers learn econ and history and learn that things like rent control, or various forms of taxes, have consequences that often hurt those they claim to want to help.
Its a common talking point, but in reality that is just an opinion masquerading as fact. It presumes everything in economics is an inarguable fact. It is not. Humans have been successfully governing themselves under various systems of governance. Anyway, that itself is a 4 hour debate, so I'll just leave it at that. If you want the final word you have it, I won't argue with it ;)
Spoken like someone ignorant of history and econ. Rent control is such a screw up, over and over, that it's a basic part of econ 101, yet politicians and everyday people want and obtain it again and again, each time to the same outcome - less housing and less affordable housing.
Care to point out where rent control has been a smashing success, and compare that to places it has been a dismal failure? This is not opinion - this is fact. Or simply read some survey papers - google has plenty.
A good tax example is something like the Swedish Financial Transaction Tax [1], which was a major screw up, yet has been tried in around 15 countries, all with similar screw ups, yet is popular (see Bernie Sanders version from ~2020 for example). There are ample academic papers detailing all of these.
Also fact. Go ahead and explain how the Swiss tax was a success.
People ignorant of history and econ, and most importantly how econ works, continually repeat stupid ideas. Maybe this time magic will work because they believe it?
You are a prime example of this problem with your claim. Yes, there is some play in econ, but it's no where near something one can just wish away, yet people ignorant of it try.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swedish_financial_transaction_...
The ideology in this thread is only willfull ignorance - showing someone something easy to grasp, yet they refuse to believe it.
You illustrate my point precisely. Mass (and often willful) ignorance leads humanity to make bad decisions.
> I said I won't argue with you
Yet you continue to reply after you already said you won't.....
IMO, more likely to affect startup company success in becoming big:
- One common language, one culture, one currency across the US (sure, differences between states in culture but not as diverse as in Europe). This is gradually converging via the EU, but the US has a couple of centuries headstart...
- VC funding concentration in California (think about how many of those "US" companies are from California); VC investors in US are global names if you work in the industry, in EU they are regional names.
- Generalising a bit here, but from my experience, I find work/life balance generally considered more important in EU compared to US. In the US, work is given a higher priority and if your boss asks you to stay late/work on a weekend, many colleagues in the US would do it, European colleagues would put e.g. family first instead.
- Side note; work/life balance point can be reflected in terms of national culture, e.g. "The American Dream"
And definitely Sweden. Many (most?) of my software engineer colleagues are members of either the engineering-specific "Sveriges Ingenjörer" or generic white-collar "Unionen" union.
I am in Germany and I never heard of any union for Devs, not even large firms having any specific ones for Devs. My colleagues frequently discuss about unionizing but there are huge pay disparity hence most often it is hard to get everyone on board sadly.
Most unions are intended for craftsmen, minijobs, public transports and such. There are some small employers covered by famous IG Metall tariff but that is not the norm. I know that likes of Airbus has some kind of union that covers most of the departments and hence pays insane salary but that is something I heard from friends of people who work there, so I can’t assure accuracy.
There might be unions but that is not the norm except some dinosaurs.
Even 40% makes a huge difference, though.
And the union deals on insurances, mortgage etc. saves me much more money each year than the union fee.
I'd say the union was one of the main reasons why we didn't have mass layoffs when the company was in a hard spot. Instead more acceptable options like part-time and voluntary resignation with exit packages were negotiated and still met similar cost saving goals.
In small shops you probably won't have a union but they don't tend to hire&fire like the big multinationals.
Another is that during layoffs, unions may force the company to lay off people based on seniority instead of competency.
If you compare salaries for developers between Germany and the US, I think this point becomes blatantly clear.
There is no way to get a clear picture if unions limit innovation or whatever.
Besides - the US is clearly losing its reputation for tech competence.
Between some of the world's crappiest broadband (unevenly distributed again), NASA Moon missions failing to reach the Moon, Boeing blowing their own doors off, and Google's search enshitification and inability to understand what a stable product line is - among others - the US really isn't the powerhouse of progress it thinks it is.
Absolutely. I said in high growth phases, it may be beneficial for employees to not organize. Once an industry stabilizes, that may change. The German model has certainly been working much better for automotive and other established industries.
But even developers who have not been able to get into FAANG positions, US developer salaries are still higher than German ones, as far as I can tell. And for the ones that did get into FAANG, the difference is vast, even for entry level.
Obviously, Japan, China and Korea come from quite different circumstances to Europe and the US in a multitude of ways.
I know I would.
All that then leads to cities without no-go areas, where kids can play outside alone.
While of course downsides are that I don't have an as big house and no big backyard.
And in particular, if you have a senior position at a FAANG company, you make enough money to put away significant savings for a rainy day, you get access to healthcare that is typically more modern than what is available in Europe, and you don't need to expose yourself to those inner cities unless you want to.
And talking about no-go-zones. They're starting to pop up in Europe now, too, there are plenty of them in Sweden. I wouldn't put all the blame for them on capitalism. Rather, such phenomena seem to be more associated with cases of ethnic or social minorities that feel alienated by society.
German infrastructure is crumbling too. I wouldn't hold it up as some shining beacon.
> and I get better protection from being fired in the spot
Yes, that's the difference in attitudes people are talking about. It's the safety of keeping what you have versus the drive to reach for better. Societies' outcomes reflect that. More diversity in outcomes in the US, but also better in the median.
To be fair, the median household in the US doesn't have that much more disposable income if taking healthcare and child care costs into account, especially if they're simultaneously expected to save up a 1-2 year buffer and maybe more if they want a comfortable retirement.
But for the top 20%, which includes many tech workers, the difference is larger.
[1] https://happiness-report.s3.amazonaws.com/2023/WHR+23.pdf
As a funny BTW, the country used in this thread as a direct comparison, Germany, is indistinguishable from the US in this table.
A social support network was one of the highest ranked, much higher than GDP per capita (the wealth of a nation, which can be used as a proxy for personal income if you have a Gini index to weight it against).
Finland comes out well ahead even if you weight it against Gini, and Finnish developers aren't earning more than US folks by a country mile.
Those US products are in common use in Europe, too, with the same effects. It's not illegal to create the kind of products Google and Facebook sell from Europe.
The main difference is not the relationships between companies and consumers, but rather the relationship between the companies, workers and the government.
> gig workers
I remember reading a book about this when in high school (in the 80s, though the book was quite a bit older), written by and from the perspective of the unions, where they argued that the during phases of growth, unions DID hold salaries back, but (according to themselves) this was more than made up for during recessions.
In the 19th century, the factory workers had a "gig economy" too, where they would often have to work on a day-by-day basis, and would show up at the gates of the factory every morning hoping to have work that day. If there were not enough workers, they could ask for very good salaries, but if there was a surplus it led to collapsing wages AND a high risk of no income at all, ie even worse than the Uber model.
This is precisely why many companies are trying to make regular dev roles as interchangeable as possible. By minimizing the dependency on individuals, they make their own bargaining position much stronger.
And when you stop being an employee that is valued for your individual contributions, and become an easily replicable "resource", it may very well be in your best interest to unionize.
However, there are externalities connected to unions, as they DO tend to stifle innovation, lowering all boats.
If worker well-being is a high priority, but a country ALSO wants a dynamic economy, one may want to look to Denmark, where most of the "safety net" responsibilities are moved from the employers to the government.
That requires a taxation level a bit higher than in Germany, but may be part of the reason why wages are significantly higher, and only exceeded by special cases like the US, Switzerland and Norway.
Also stuff like being bereft of energy resources (compared to American oil/gas/solar), having fucking Russia to the East, the cost of rebuilding after WW2, having lots of languages and cultures (limiting effective market size)...
https://www.axios.com/2022/11/07/more-physicians-join-unions
This thread is about labor unions, which negotiate salaries. Sports people are almost universally not in this category - they usually have an agent to negotiate their individual salary.
If you're talking the SAG for actors and the like, median actor income is $46k, one of the lowest paid professions. That works out to $23/hr for fulltime work. You can get that at McDonalds in many places.
Try again.
Your claim about SAG is also wrong; SAG has plenty of pay caps too. For example, here [2] is one explained on their own site. They've always had them and likely always will. There's plenty more.
Unions extract higher pay by making a monopoly on labor (and US antitrust law had to carve out a special monopoly exception for them). This monopoly obtains higher wages for those in the union at the cost of those prevented from working by the union and by increased prices to the surrounding economy. These are all standard econ results.
[1] https://www.heritage.org/jobs-and-labor/commentary/should-un...
[2] https://www.sagaftra.org/important-notice-regarding-2022-com...
Thanks for more evidence of how unions "improve" outcomes.
https://www.physiciansweekly.com/how-do-us-physician-salarie...
The same could be said for most professions in the UK. They're paid less than their US counterparts, but it's an excellent example of how you can't always measure quality of life in $ and £.
My job as a software engineer pays considerably less in the UK than my US counterparts, so why haven't I moved there?
Interesting. That's the default by law here in Sweden, but can be negotiated with the union -- usually in exchange for better severance compensation.
Covid and remote work shift changed a bit, though. Salaries in the EU tech grown dramatically.
The media has very successfully demonized unions, and many skilled workers believe the company line that unions drive down average wages, make it impossible to fire useless people, charge heavy membership fees, etc.
Actors and other have "Guilds", lawyers have a "Bar"...
(sure the other two you mentioned have unions but...)
Just name it like something you'd find from DnD.
And even if they had a good union, I fail to see how it would have prevented this.
Germany doesn't really have tech unions and for sure they don't dominate the tech scene. France, neither, Eastern Europe (all of them), don't, Southern Europe, not that I know of.
Salaries are still low.
I don't think they are. I think salaries in the US are astronomical, and it boggles the mind how in California a 22 year old React nerd can command a salary five times higher than, say, a teacher.
It's all a matter of perspective. From my perspective, if you can sit on your sofa, build a website, and pull in €80k, you're doing just fine.
Where do you put the sofa? For locals who inherited and apartment somewhere in Stockholm or Berlin, or have been living in rent-controlled apartment for 20 years, sure, 50k after-tax is fine-ish. What about expats who didn't inherit a 500k Euro apartment from their late grandma?
It has a developed IT job market, and as a senior software developer you'd likely be spending ~20% of your salary on rent.
Europe is more than just the few most expensive cities.
UTAW and CWU specifically are unions for tech workers in the UK. At big companies especially, like BT, a sizable proportion of the workforce is unionised.
American dev salaries are the exception. It's the rest of the world where they're not outstanding.
Not saying this is a better outcome for anyone specifically, but surely it's compelling?
SWEs are used to being in a good negotiation position and not in need for collective bargain.
My employer has a works council, but no union representation. That council is mostly occupied with dealing with compensation (provisions, product assignments, ...) of sales people, who make the largest group, thus most votes. SWE needs aren't seen.
I can give you a real-world example. Our company (Italy) office was relocated, and unions entered negotiations to obtain three days of remote work for the entire personnel. However, I and others refused to sign the agreement because, with more negotiation power, our target was full remote work. However, in doing so, we were undermining the union positions, which made them unhappy. Fortunately, things ended well; all personnel got the three days, and a few other people were granted full remote work.
The problem with unions is that if you are a top performer it's harder to get promoted, if you're crap it's harder to get rid of you.
Overall it's great for non productive people who can pay a little and coast, great for everyone else. I can understand unions for low paid jobs the should be done by machines (eg. factory workers) but it doesn't make sense for knowledge work where performance has huge impact.
Oh and they want money to do that.
The way to go would have been to communicate to your prospective boss that he needs to create a position in a higher compensation tier, or a position outside the union contract. If they want you badly enough, both are possibilities. Especially position outside the union contract are very common once you're a senior/principal engineer.
If it's only a small bump you want (not an entire compensation tier), telling your prospective boss that he needs to take your CV and convince HR that this means you have 15 years of relevant experience will also work - this will get you a high compensation level within your tier.
US restarted hiring quickly after the layoffs, but EU has still a hiring freeze in several FAANGS.
I personally have no interest in joining a union. I don't think companies are my friend but I also know that it is bad to become complacent which I find a lot of lifers at big companies can become. I am not suggesting you need to be working 90 hour weeks but I do think a lot of individuals, including engineers, fall into the trap of doing one thing well and nothing else and stick into a single role for such a time that they lose plasticity. The employee - employer relationship is not a war against each other but a market balance, I need to be adding incremental value and the employer needs to be recognizing it and we are left to negotiate the terms.
How many large tech. companies has Europe produced ?
Why would (or even: could) anyone start/build a cutting-edge tech. company in Europe given the hell that labor laws are over there ?
Labor laws in Europe are a giant hindrance to economic growth.
People in most European countries have made a political choice: safety and stagnation over wealth and growth.
That's their choice, fine, they're free to do as they please in their own house.
But when you make a choice, you can't ignore the consequences of these choices.
That's why "not in the US":
Different political choices, betting on growth, agility, innovation, running fast, and yes -- ooooh, what a terrible thing -- taking risks, and among others that employment may come and go because the world is not a static place.
Many tech companies started in Europe, got successful then moved to US because they could not longer find big enough investors in Europe.
Google only did layoffs very recently so I don't see how be able to fire people at will helped them grow.
And why would you say, aren't there any large investors?
If the labor market conditions were good (and taxes, and work ethics, and ... the list is very long), the investors would come, even from far away, believe me.
Money can move around the world very fast these days.
Yeah things have changed. It may be time for Software Engineers to unionize.
There's also a huge disparity between the SWE salaries and the rest of the society in Poland, I can imagine fears that unionization overall would flatten out those differences.
Another factor is that in places where we have unions (leftover fields still highly tied to the government, e.g. teachers) they tend to not function very well in practice (not enough employee advocacy, unhealthy level of union politics affecting people's outcomes in the workplace etc.).
Lastly, we're still pretty fresh to the whole capitalism game as a country, so we're scared of anything that resembles a step backwards.
We are stuck in a self-reinforcing feedback loop where unions represent a very small portion of the employees therefore most employees avoid being associated with unions because it makes you look like an activist.
As an American I don’t really use that many cutting edge tools from Europe on a daily basis. Maybe my Miele vac.
On the other hand almost everyone in the world uses something made by American corporations.
Keep in mind Europe exports more to the world market than America does (and more of them are goods versus services). Like yeah, if you live in the US you probably use more American-made tools - that is not true for the rest of the world.
Just looking around my kitchen now - my knives are made in Germany; my coffee grinder in Norway; my toaster in the UK. Then it's mostly made in China (air fryer, microwave, kettle, pressure cooker). The coffee roaster I have packed away is made in South Korea; the 3D printer on the kitchen table is made in Czechia.
I don't think I own a single kitchen tool or appliance made in the US.
EDIT: Actually, yeah I've got an Aeropress made in the US.