Ethan Hunt play by Tom Cruise and Waitress #2 played by Jane Doe aren't very homogeneous with regards to pay and fame, but they're both part of SAG.
EDIT: another commented mentioned that NBA players are also unionized. I think there is a second element to it, which has to do with how monopolized the employer market is.
not only would the collective provide benefits to the individual workers, but it would serve as an (optional) form of licensure/credentialing that ensures each member has a baseline level of competence. it could make hiring so much easier if you could skip the fizzbuzz screening rounds by pulling from a pool of vetted talent.
As a union member (not SAG-AFTRA), I find this curious. SAG-AFTRA is a Union. They have a cool name but, like many other groups with Guild in their name, they are recognized by the NLRB as a Union. There's no special classification for Guild, at least in America.
When you look at Wikipedia's list of largest unions in the US, only 2 of the top 10 have Union in their name, but that doesn't mean the other 8 aren't actually Unions. Or that the ones with Brotherhood in their name don't allow women, or any other silly extrapolation one wants to concoct. It's just a name.
We're not in the 13th century any more. There is no longer any functional difference between Guild and Union. Of the alleged benefits of Guilds enumerated in HN threads (vetting and certification of members, continuing education, ability to be paid above scale, etc), literally every single one is already offered by unions today. And if you thought of a new one that wasn't, you could bring it up at your next union meeting and vote on it.
It's frustrating to read discussions of unions by online commenters who have never been union members or paid dues, never read a union contract, never attended a union meeting or voted with their coworkers, never worked similar jobs in both union and non-union workplaces. It's like a bunch of people who have never lived in a free society arguing over whether they should form a Democracy or a Republic, by picking countries with these words in their names, and selecting attributes of those countries they do or don't want to emulate. That's not how it works.
But what does Tom Cruise get out of it? He certainly does not need a union to get his wage, pension and benefits.
Is this a solidarity with other, less known actors? Prestige? Something else?
[0] https://www.sagaftra.org/membership-benefits/member-benefits
Also, their output is relatively easy to measure and stand arise.
This is not true for programmers, making standard pay increase for programmers less useful as a target. What would be measured? Hours in office? Commits? Lines of code?
1. Heterogeneity/homogeneity of labour.
2. Tight/lose labour market.
I think Argument 1 is the weaker argument. There's a lot of fungibility between software roles. However, there's a higher learning cost. Moving to a new software company requires a few months before someone is close to full productivity. This in contrast between a painter moving from a Ford supplier to a GM supplier will likely close to full productivity within a few weeks. The cost (to the employer) is lower to rehire someone.
Argument 2 is the stronger argument, but may not be forever. In a tight labour market, I see very little need for unions. If the marginal worker can (and will) leave their position for a better position (pay, benefits, culture, etc), I see little need for unions. However, if the labour market for software engineers shifts in favor of businesses, this will change rapidly.
The wealthy class makes multiples of your salary in passive income and their marginal tax rate is lower. You work and fork over 40%. They do nothing and pay 15% or less.
You put your retirement money into a 401k. They put their retirement money into a “charitable foundation”.
You draw down from your retirement money. They take a loan against it.
What’s the difference between a billionaire and a meat packing worker? Billions of dollars.
What’s the difference between a billionaire and a faang engineer? Also billions of dollars.
My point is simply that if you are 1 of 50,000 in a meat processing plant, you do not really have any way of competing with your fellow workers. You might try to work harder and faster, but then you end up raising the bar for all, and you now have to maintain the new pace. And once the rest catch up with your pace, the pay for all will be lowered again.
In tech, every job is slightly different, and there is a real opportunity to meaningful differentiate yourself from the rest and compete in a much more dynamic job market.
Also, who are the ones hurting currently? The juniors or the seniors? Seniors are mostly doing fine. Juniors are the ones hurting. And juniors would have an even harder time, if you transitioned to a unionized system, because entry requirements would be raised significantly to account for the fact that you cannot fire people so easily.