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Comment by whyenot | Hacker News Reader

Like most state employees, I am in a union and while there are MANY things I do not like about my union, from its high dues, to its constant forays into politics, to the supine pose it takes to contract negotiations, there is one thing that it does very well, and that is stands up against BS like this in a very meaningful way. Tech workers need a union or some union-like organization that stands up for basic worker rights.

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It won’t happen, the last few generations have been brainwashed and have forgotten the past history of when people united together to give us the rights we have today which haven’t been added to since the 90s (the family leave act - which doesn’t even pay you it just keeps from losing a job)

There’s a reason they keep us fighting each other over race, culture wars, and other bs, because they know united our country would look so much different and they wouldn’t be able to make as much money

My union is excellent but we are the exception to the rules. Our contracts always net better pay and retirement benefits. Sometimes I’m in disbelief what they sometimes get on paper. It wasn’t always like that but the protection unions bring are a huge benefit. Like them or hate them this would be something that would be a line item in a contract with protections.

In my EU country the national tech(IT) union is useless because they are simply toothless. Unions of teachers, airport, road, rail, etc workers are strong and always get what they want regardless of economic performance, because they can grind the country to a halt by simply not showing up to work for a day, but tech workers are under constant pressure of outsourcing and offshoring due to the globally distributed nature of work, so the unions never manage to negotiate anything against employers because they just have no leverage, when their workload can be taken over by someone from another country if they go on strike.

The local company union/workers council (Betriebsraat) si also equally toothless and didn't do much at the mass layoffs.

Unions are only as powerful as their impact to the comfort of the citizens and to the votes of the politicians.

>so the unions never manage to negotiate anything against >employers because they just have no leverage, when their >workload can be taken over by someone from another country if >they go on strike.

Are there mitigation policies in place in your org in case your union decides to take a sabbatical? What would happen if you all called in sick? It seems there'd be more economical damage than teachers or ATC not showing up for their shift, because commerce/transactions. Spirit Airlines in the states just shut down, but everyone just yawned, "oh, so sorry too bad". If your employer does have that plan B, then why are you still employed? Won't they want your union to strike and off with your heads?

I never got my head around the unions. They start idealistic but end up as corrupt as the source of their angst as they mature and it's a constant push/pull and the civilians' bank accounts suffer regardless. I am not saying "give in". So, close the borders, physical or digital?

Just musing, apologies for the ramble.

>What would happen if you all called in sick?

Probably a government lawsuit on the employees to investigate the suspicious mass sick leave, and on the doctors who issues the sick leave notices.

And during discovery they would uncover the written paper trail employees used to organize the mass sick leave and then they'd get sued for sabotage and have to pay damages to the employer.

>It seems there'd be more economical damage than teachers or ATC not showing up for their shift, because commerce/transactions

That wouldn't fly over here, since that would be considered intentional sabotage which is not legally allowed by law here, and heavily punished with fines or jail time. The only legal outlet for labor protests is conversations and negotiations through unions, which are toothless and more for show, to give the workers the impression that their opinion matters and they're not under the boot of government and corporations.

Austria isn't as friendly to labor uprising as modern US due to the very strict laws and legal system that restrict what workers are allowed to do against their employers, there's no "jury of your peers" to let you off the hook if you damage your employer's business in protest. Everything is done for "stability" including defanging labor powers.

Probably going to get downvoted for this, but..

Unfortunately too many tech workers think they're special little snowflakes and deserve the highest pay possible and think that unions will interfere with that. Because if you aren't getting the highest pay or the highest job title, you just aren't good enough and why should I be associated with those that aren't good enough? You will never get tech workers to come together for the common good. It's always about only what's best for me. The amount of greedy self-centeredness and backstabbing I've seen in this industry across multiple companies is unreal.

> The amount of greedy self-centeredness and backstabbing I've seen in this industry across multiple companies is unreal.

And this just keeps happening over and over? Interesting.

There's nothing interesting about that. Just depressing.

Maybe it says something about the kind of places they work

Stuff like that should be regulated at a much higher level than unions.

Unions are historically how that kind of policy becomes policy.

Forays into politics? Isn’t a union inherently political?

It shouldn't be. Of course I think sometimes it has to be. But it is supposed to represent the employees in a collective bargaining agreement. That is it. You could argue they should be involved with some politics around labor laws.

This is all literally politics.

The reason you'd need to form a collective bargaining agreement comes down to politics surrounding labor laws. Hell, your ability to form unions in the first place comes down to rights granted to you by the government.

Can you see that spending money on charities vs spending that money on collective bargaining could be both under the category of "politics" but not equivalent in their form of "political action"?

The point is that if you talk about unionization, you're talking about politics, because unions don't exist in countries where the politicians made them illegal.

Sure, but this conversation was about a union that already exists, so that hurdle has been cleared. There are still politics, but now they are different, they are the politics of "please spend the money I give you on X not Y."

I wouldn't call running a vegetable shop "politics", even though politics clearly affects the environment you operate in (tax rates, bylaws, heck some weird dystopian place could ban vegetable shops entirely!).

Of course running a vegetable shop is political. Politics is the question of who gets what. There have been countless societies across history, and still exist many, where the political formations meant the very concepts of “shop”, “business”, or even “employment” per se were foreign.

No. I am not paying $1,000s in dues for them to spend it on a rally to "End Child Poverty" (to use an example currently in my inbox; and it's a good cause, just not a good use of my dues). My union exists to represent and protect me and my coworkers. Nothing more, nothing less. ...at least thats the way in should be, IMO.

>My union exists to represent and protect me and my coworkers. Nothing more, nothing less. ...at least thats the way in should be, IMO.

This is a political issue. Your rights as a worker only make sense within a countries political apparatus.

No it isn't. It's a collective negotiation between workers and their employer.

With rules created and enforced by a legislative body called a…

Which are only upheld through political structures ...

That's it, the union: every union for themselves, no cause no solidarity, just cold hard mercenary cause of money for you! That's the true spirit of labor, I'm sure.

How about the career of the bosses of that union? You are not paying to advance them to the next step but suppo3End Child Poverty is probably well received by the people that will support them in their next job.

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