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Comment by constantcrying | Hacker News Reader

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You know, there's a lot more to the working class than just manual labor. Anyone that depends on a wage to live is a worker, and we all share the same struggles.

The same struggles, like the quality of the office coffee machine? Bike subsidies from the employer too low?

No, things like: we obtain money by working rather than by pumping assets. We pay income tax rather than capital gains tax. Our employers are always asking for more while paying less. We do not individually have enough assets to make individual lobbying efforts EV positive, but our employers and the largest shareholders sure do. Politics is an expense for us but an investment for them -- unless we join together.

Structurally we are more similar than different, even if tech workers have had it good for the last while.

Things like unpaid overtime, health insurance being tied to employment, the ability to afford a house on what should be a reasonable income, protections from harassment/discrimination... unions have worked toward democratizing access to all of these things.

Do you also think the working class have no business complaining about the struggles of the truly poor? And the poor can’t complain about people literally starving?

You seem to be claiming that empathy is always “hollow” but I think this is at most a statement about you. Many people can be both well off and want to make things better for others. Not everyone, for sure, not enough maybe. But attacking people for showing empathy seems weird.

You make it sound like organizing you and your peers is just virtue signaling toward the plight of the working class.

It’s not virtue signaling. There are material gains that could be made by organizing. Layoff protection and the power to set company direction are two big ones that come to mind.

It’s okay to want to unionize for selfish reasons. In fact, I think it’s borderline propaganda to suggest the only reason a wealthy person would organize is because of their own class guilt.

Nothing sounds as made-up as people being mad at privileged workers being on the same team as all workers.

It sounds much better for them to be on the team of all workers rather than the other team, or to be out of the game entirely.

Unless you're part of the owner class, you're still working class.

But software developers are the working class. Anyone who derives their income from labor is.

Sometimes I worry that all the stories about unions helping to end the most extreme exploitation and fix deadly working conditions has made them unrelatable.

If you make a cushy salary and the biggest physical risk is carpal tunnel, you might think ”I dont have it THAT bad. It’d be greedy and disrespectful of the sacrifices that were made to use unions in my situation”

What made unions unrelatable for me was them obviously pushing the interest of factory workers over the interests of engineers. Thanks for trying to get my job outsourced I guess.

There's nothing stopping us from creating an engineers union. Each field should have their own organisation.

Yes there is. I hate unions and I hate union work and I love doing my job.

More likely software developers are, for the most part, middle class – deriving their income from a combination of labor and land/capital.

While software developers just starting out are apt to be working class, when you receive a comparatively high income for your labor it soon becomes hard to find things to do with it if you don't start investing in land/capital, so one in that position doesn't stay working class for long.

Sure. And that is why protesting looks so ridiculous. The oppressed working class, making six figures typing away in a well furnished office.

The top-end of the working class shares more with the low-end of the working class, than the top-end of the working class shares with the low-end of the upper class.

I have never been to a politician's dinner. I have never changed a law. If I were fired, which can be done at any time for no reason, I would have no source of income. Money is the weakest form of power, and a well-paid job is the weakest form of money.

the labor movement really needs to get beyond this stereotype that it is to lift all these hunched poor little downtrodden suppliants out of poverty. workers who have successfully organized are not pitiful schlubs, and their affluence is a testament to the success of their organizing, not its triviality. political interests of the labor class just are not the same as those of capital, and therefore its methods and aims should be different as well.

one thing that i've been repeating for years now is that if you want tech to organize, unions need to sell themselves differently.

unions in the past are portrayed as remove physical dangers, limiting to reasonable hours and fair wages. but tech workers already have that stuff, so they don't see an upside.

codetermination (getting workers on the board), four day work weeks, full-time remote, sabbaticals, open source support, rethinking startup equity, ... there's all sorts of things we could be pushing for that would make our jobs better that we could to push for if we worked together.

great list. another thing to add, credentialing so we can stop the leetcode gating at the interview stage.

> making six figures typing away in a well furnished office

I don't know about you but I don't make anything even remotely close to six figures...

The average US software dev does.

We are what is called the labor aristocracy in socialist discourse: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Labor_aristocracy

It is still labor and we are still exploited - most the revenue we generate goes to capitalist interests, not us, the laborers, which are the creators of all revenue.

It's just that we have it comparatively good and so are less inclined to seek out systemic change - a less favorable reading would be that we are bought off to split us off from the rest of the proletariat.

Uhm, my revenue goes to the shareholders of my company. Among those shareholders are me, my colleagues and the state.

Most of the shareholders are random rich people that have never lifted a finger in their life, yet get to enjoy the fruits of your labor.

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