Comment by crbnw00ts | Hacker News Reader

Comment by crbnw00ts | Hacker News Reader

This seems like a really big deal. If Silicon Valley companies are colluding to suppress programmer salaries, perhaps it is time for programmers to team up to fight back, using a union or a guild.

Now, before the usual tropes about the software industry's meritocracy and rugged individualism lead everyone to laugh at the idea of a labor movement for software engineers, let's all just take a moment and have a look at what happened to the Hollywood visual effects industry. It is one of the very few parts of the movie production process that is not unionized. Because of this lack of protection, studio execs openly brag about putting them out of business as a normal part of making movies (see the quote "If I don’t put a visual effects shop out of business (on my movie), I’m not doing my job." in the first link below):

http://www.variety.com/article/VR1117965871.html

http://www.npr.org/2013/03/19/174703202/visual-effects-firms...

http://www.visualeffectssociety.com/node/2425

Something similar could quite easily happen to the software industry. Now is a perfect time to start a labor movement, as the settlement and pending class action suit clearly show the need for such a thing.

EDIT: Just to be clear, the reason for the comparison with the VFX industry is that it is a solid example of a bunch of technocrats who had a chance to unionize but didn't, and now they are being ground into the dust. The exact same thing could easily happen to the typical Silicon Valley programmer. This case with Apple, Intel, Google, and Adobe shows that they are already trying.

Two of the top VFX companies, Pixar and Lucasfilm, were part of this same collusion with Apple, Google etc but they settled for $20 million in July. One of the problems that workers face in the VFX industry is that the studios operate globally and unions don't so studios can just shift work overseas. Intellectual property isn't subject to import taxes which would affect tech companies the same way. Which is ultimately the same problem that tech workers would face if they tried to unionise.

Isn't one of the reasons to unionise to have the option of bigger political influence, e.g. trying to force import taxes on the products of their industry?

There is a project underway to try and declare countervailing duties on VFX work done overseas. But you have to have a US based firm to request them from the Dept of Commerce and whichever VFX company does that will probably never get another studio contract again.

Movies these days are just bits, most of the time any work done overseas is just transferred back to LA over the internet. The same with software, any company can hire programmers overseas and just import the source code (git clone) and how is any govt supposed to tax that?

http://vfxsoldier.wordpress.com/2013/07/11/legal-recommendat...

> ... and whichever VFX company does that will probably never get another studio contract again.

The whole point of an union* is to give the participants the option to fight against such problems they couldn't solve alone, because "together we are strong" - "so, you don't give me an contract, because I did use my rights? Congratulations, you are now part of the unions black list, i.e. no more work from our industry for your studio. Good luck making your films without VFX."

> The same with software, any company can hire programmers overseas and just import the source code (git clone) and how is any govt supposed to tax that?

How do we manage to check copyright violations? Yeah, badly, I know. But that is just a variant of this problem, so it is solvable, but not easy. For movies, it is easy: Force the companies to declare exactly where which part of a movie was produced and tax accordingly.

* Note: I have no idea if an union would really be a good idea. The unions I know of are .. less than perfect. This is all just "in theory it would be ..."

That is the advantage of a Union which can lobby for the industry as a whole - the employers can say to the studios sorry Mr Jackson Its not us its the Unions.

Some times Unions and Employers act together for everyones interest eg Broad band rollout in the UK (prospect and CWU) and the the new nuclear build (prospect) are two I am familiar with.

"any company can hire programmers overseas and just import the source code (git clone) and how is any govt supposed to tax that?"

In South America many countries tax imported professional services (including the outsourcing of source code development) - the way they monitor those types of activities is by tracking all outgoing payments from the country - if you can't pay your service provider, you can't get the service provided.

Therefore the government forces you to report what services you are importing in order to pay for them, and in doing so makes them taxable.

Bitcoin?

Interesting to see this idea as the top rated comment here on HN. I wrote a post about a year ago about a similar concept (for different reasons - Twitter API limits, Apple rejections), and most of the HN crowd disagreed back then. http://www.techfounder.net/2012/08/30/developers-vs-bigcorp/

it is probably the saturday crowd.

But just using some companys api is not the same as having a employee /employer realsionship.

What is the Union issue here? If your product is freeloading on the back of another well you should make sure you have more than one source of income.

This is like complaining that Google has moved into my area and is eating my lunch for example flight or hotel bookings

NPR article (and many articles you did not link) mentions the real problem - foreign tax subsidies steal contracts from the American VFX firms. How are unions going to help here?

The American VFX firms, being squeezed between unions and foreign competition suddenly will start winning contracts that they could not get because their costs were too high even without union?

Notice the quote you mentioned is not about putting some artist out of job, it's putting an entire shop out of business. How is a union going to prevent this?

In my dilettante view (I work in games and we rely on VFX even more than films) - if American VFX shops had unionized staff there had not been any American VFX shops by now.

I don't understand how unionizing would fix the underlying problem with the VFX industry. Union employees working for a small shop that universal studios can sink by reneging on contracts or delaying payment are just as doomed as non-union employees working for a small shop that universal studios doesn't want to pay in full.

Because once you do that to one union shop, no union shop will work with you. To make it work, you need to have a critical mass on-board.

These days, critical mass means having the entire world on-board. I just don't see that happening.

Do you have an example of this happening in other industries? I am skeptical. That, and the dynamics of the market (more suppliers than demand, lots of kids who want in, easy outsourcing) make it hard to maintain a cartel.

It happens in the movie business! The screenwriters, the actors, all have their guilds. No studio would dare to take on Equity.

You're right! I'd totally forgotten about the screenwriters' successful strike.

Their situations are still pretty different though, and any new union action always has the looming hammer of the federal government threatening to shut it down.

I firmly believe that, in knowledge industries like software and VFX, unions can do more harm than good. It's better to have options like moving to another company or country (like I just did) or even easily starting your own company than fighting for keeping the status quo.

Isn't killing jobs through automation a good thing?

Uh, it has nothing to do with automation. It has to do with illegal collusion on salaries. Wrong thread?

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