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Pay is all about power. Nurses individually have little power (as they are replaceable), which is why unionising is good for them as the union gives them collective power.

Software engineers are an interesting case; some have a great deal of domain-specific knowledge, giving them leverage over their employers. Many less so, and so a union could help. AI might change this equation too.

> Nurses individually have little power (as they are replaceable)

Replaceable with what, exactly? The local ER is now having to close in the evening because they can't find sufficient nursing staff to keep it operating.

At least locally the experience is that hospital admin has gone delulu by thinking they can replace hiring unionized nursing staff with much more expensive travel nurses

When I was at a small IT consulting shop ~15 years ago, this is roughly how it worked. We'd get paid 24x7 for a week on-call at minimum wage + 1.5x normal wage for any hours we had to log in.

In most of the country, California unions have largely negotiated for .5x pay while on call making it quite popular.

Had this very same payment scheme as an SRE on call in Europe almost a decade ago.