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Comment by ljf | Hacker News Reader

While they cannot stop something like that (a Union never gets to control the business), they can at least negotiate good terms for the departing employees, and help ensure everything is in order.

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> a Union never gets to control the business

This varies. e.g. Sweden: if there are over 25 employees, the union gets a seat in the board.

https://bolagsverket.se/en/foretag/aktiebolag/startaaktiebol...

A seat at the board is great, but that won't stop a company making major changes like those described.

Have you ever heard about someone who was laid off from a major tech company complain about the severance amount? My n=1 experience at BigTech is that I got $40K severance after 3 years (and anecdotally had 3 offers within two weeks of looking in 2023. But I realize the market is worse now than then)

And that severance was from Amazon.

FAANG maybe not, but there are heaps of horror stories from plenty of other big and medium tech players.

And I bet you a paycheck that those developers are making at least twice the median local wage and definitely more then they would make in Europe. Why weren’t they saving money? My first goal out of college back in 1996 was to build up savings and this was in 1996 when I was working as a computer operator making $33K in Atlanta.

Fast forward to 2020, I used all of my RSUs/signing bonus to rebuild savings, pay off debt and when Amazon started Amazoning, I had 9 months worth of savings in the bank. But people are being laid off from BigTech after working there for decade having an existential crisis. I’m thinking WTF have they been doing with their money.

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