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Comment by glasss | Hacker News Reader

Great to see! I think unions should be the default for most situations.

I wonder why in America it doesn't happen in the tech sector for devs specifically (as there is Alphabet Workers Union), beyond the typical reasons of American anti union sentiment like corporatism, bootstrap mentality etc, despite which there are many unions in the US like UAW, police and teachers unions etc.

For tech, it's largely a different set of reasons, like high wages, no real grievances per se, and the ease of transferring to other companies, plus the work is all virtual so there is no reason why companies cannot outsource to another area where the union has no power, if the workers are just on their computers for work anyway. This latter reason is actually exactly why Netflix is investing heavily in South Korean productions.

Yea it is odd. Bc then tech workers get fired on mass just to get a little boost in stock price. And yet many don't think we need a union...

I don't think a union would prevent them getting fired though, much less getting outsourced to areas without unions.

The point of a union is not prevent layoffs and role reduction in force. It is to make sure that the company has done its absolute best to find another solution to the problem (that they're trying to solve with layoffs) and ensures that the company is accountable for all their decisions.

This just limits hiring in the first place as we see in European branches of (generally, American) tech companies. And regardless, what solutions can be found by the union?

It does not limit hiring in any way.

As for what solutions union provide - I have already explained. They exist to protect workers' interests. They do not exist to solve company's problems. That is the job of the company.

For hiring, I meant it in terms of a chilling effect in that companies will not hire as many people as they are much harder to fire.

You said "It is to make sure that the company has done its absolute best to find another solution to the problem," and I am asking, what solutions have unions "made sure" that the companies have done instead of layoffs? I am looking for concrete examples as I often hear this claim but I'm not sure what a union can do if the solution is layoffs, so my question is, what other solutions are there?

Then, I suggest that you educate yourself on how unions function and what they do. It's not my job to educate you. You can also ChatGPT this by the way.

I see, looks like you don't actually have any examples to give despite you yourself making such a claim, on a discussion forum and thread to discuss a topic, so lead with that next time, because that's all that the phrase "It's not my job to educate you" means.

Is that a serious question? Providing for education possibilities, legislating against noncompete agreements to hinder workers to start out on their own, challenging illegal decisions, the list goes on.

The claim was that the union would find solutions instead of a layoff so how would legislating help in that immediate case where a company wants to lay people off in the next quarter? I'm not asking about general things unions do, I'm challenging this specific claim the parent made.

I think some of it is that "union" has a different meaning in the US vs (eg) the EU. US unions are explicitly adversarial and tend to use the strategy (usually associated with capitalism!) of optimizing for short-term union benefit above all else, using brinkmanship and value-capturing tactics. EU unions, according to my weak understanding, are significantly more collaborative and more likely to be amenable to compromise if it contributes to the health of the corporations or institutions.

My naive view: in the US, unions are all about creating another set of assholes to counterbalance the existing assholes. In the EU, there's at least some thought towards "hey, maybe we shouldn't all be assholes?" (Or at least, not all of the time.)

That doesn't address your question of why it doesn't happen in the tech sector, but perhaps my anecdotal opinion is widespread enough to be added to your (already good) set of hypotheses?

It’s because the capitalist class has successfully persuaded the proletariat that they shouldn’t join a union. The US has been very successful at concentrating created wealth into a small number of people.

> beyond the typical reasons of American anti union sentiment like corporatism, bootstrap mentality etc, despite which there are many unions in the US like UAW, police and teachers unions etc.

As I said for tech workers it's a different set of reasons.

I think tech largely falls for the same anti-union propaganda as a great number of the rest of the USA. You'll see HN commenters in this article repeating much of this propaganda.

I'm not sure, this is a good way to dismiss anything one doesn't like as "propaganda," it doesn't really tell us much.

And they are in much of Europe! Sweden, Denmark, Finland, Norway, Austria, Belgium, Iceland, Italy, etc. Even France has over 80% coverage

I understand that Europe doesn't have many mandatory union arrangements.

In Canada, unions are often shop-wide with no mechanism to opt out, which makes them very sticky and allows them to grow predatory if they can maintain enough corruption or apathy. I'm led to believe that many US states have similar problems, but that's only based on how American unions are portrayed in news and fiction.

And what has that really bought them? The wages are laughable compared to the US where you'd THINK us non-unionized tech workers would be paid minimum wage. And the famous European healthcare and long vacations are more a function of the government than anything the unions have explicitly bargained for.

You mean to tell me unions can make a government actually responsive to its people? Gee wouldn't that be nice to have here

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