We are all in this together
craiglockwood.co.uk
craiglockwood.co.uk
That's not to say that they are always all sunshine and lollipops, but I guess it's too difficult for some people to accept that unions can actually also be a positive thing too.
Sorry, but collective bargaining is a real need, even if wages are high.
As programmers, we should have:
* readily available legal support when faced with non-paying clients.
* recourse against clients and employers who use reputation threats to justify
nonpayment or bad behavior (i.e. "if you don't accept our unfunded scope creep,
we'll call other clients.")
* (for employees) representation when in trouble with management. The right to
have a representative *in the room* (mostly, because if you negotiate on your
own behalf, you're at risk of getting emotional and saying something
stupid) when dealing with management or HR.
* defense against negative references and back-channel reference checks in
general.
* transparency in compensation.
* negotiation of terms that are embarrassing for an individual to
formally address, such as severance, health accommodations
and workplace privacy.
Let's say that you find out that an ex-boss from 4 years ago is bad-mouthing you and costing you gigs. If you hire a nasty fucker like me, I can make him shut the fuck up. I'd find a plausible health problem, either one you have and don't mind sharing, or one that would work. Then I'd ask you to communicate to him that you had disclosed that health problem during your employment, his error if he forgot, and that negative communication about you or your performance will be judged discriminatory, so it's best not to say anything at all. Then I'd call that reference for you, about a month later, getting everything on tape and if he was still giving you problems, I'd refer you to a lawyer (but, unlike a union, I can't afford to pay for that). Chances are, you wouldn't know how to handle that. Most people don't. A competent union will.
I don't want to regulate compensation. If you're good enough that people will pay $500 per hour for your services, that's great. Nor do I want the seniority-driven culture of traditional labor unions that leads to mediocrity. What I want is a system that allows programmers to bargain collectively for their interests. Not one that regulates compensation, protects truly bad employees, or imposes seniority policies that lead to entrenched mediocrity. We should have a formal structure that allows us to look out for our interests without the risks of going alone.
Let's say you're given an offer letter, but it has a binding arbitration clause (meaning that you can't sue). Arbitration is rigged against employees, because the company pays the arbitrator, and it never sees daylight, so the company doesn't fear the PR risks of discovery. This means you can't expect a severance. Ok, you say, I'm not planning on getting fired. Well, no shit; who is? But it also means the company can treat people poorly because the cost (to it) of a morale problem is lower; it can fire without considering severance costs. That affects you, even if you're a high performer. Without binding arbitration, an underperformer costs then 3 months of severance or a morale-killing "PIP", so they have an incentive to keep you from getting bored. Or, you might just get unlucky and get fired over something not your fault, but with binding arbitration, you're fucked. It's unfair, ridiculous, and wrong. However, if you push on this issue (i.e. fighting over a term that, while ludicrous, only matters if you're fired or leave on very bad terms) management will see you as either a troublemaker or someone likely to underperform.
One company asked me to sign a waiver legally releasing them, and all parties called, over results of a reference check, including back-channel references (i.e. references I didn't provide). That's a ridiculous concession. A competent union or professional organization would nuke that from orbit. But as an individual, pushing back against it made it sound like I had something to hide, and while it didn't cost me the offer, I was told that my negotiation of that term "was discussed" as a possible red flag. (I ended up declining their offer. Shitty legal processes are a red flag for me.) I shouldn't have to go out individually (and be a "troublemaker") to get onerous terms like that stricken.
A union is basically an insurance policy. You pay your dues so that, if you're ever unfairly treated at work and need someone to get your back, you have that. This keeps management honest and is generally to the benefit of both sides.
I would negotiate that term out of the contract. If they won't negotiate, I decline.
> I shouldn't have to go out individually to get onerous terms like that stricken.
Why not? I'm happy to negotiate my own contracts, but if you are not then you should hire an agent to negotiate for you.
History has shown us that unions almost never perform the way you describe. They introduce overhead and confrontation into the contract negotiation process, turning a cooperative relationship into a confrontational one. In the long run, they rarely benefit either party, let alone both.
No thank you.
Even if they accept your change (and, often, they will) you've now identified yourself as a "PITA". Before you've done your first day of work, you've had to negotiate terms of termination. That's unfair to you. You shouldn't have to talk about you getting fired to get binding arbitration struck. It shouldn't be on the table in the first place. It's an utter abuse of the original arbitration laws.
I'm happy to negotiate my own contracts, but if you are not then you should hire an agent to negotiate for you.
Let's say that you're an employee. Things are going well, but there's a change of management and, for political reasons, you're served with a PIP and it's pretty obvious that the outcome (you fail) has been decided. Is management going to let you call an external agent into the office, right then and there, to help you in the process? Almost certainly not. You'll be fired, and they'll try to argue that you committed "insubordination" by placing the call, or even that your sharing of information with an external party (such as an agent or lawyer) constitutes a "leak", making the termination "for cause". You might be able to beat them in the courts, but it'll rarely be worth it. They'll perjure themselves all over the place and fuck up your reputation, even if you win.
That's where you need, on paper, the right to have an agent or representative present when you deal with management or HR. They can go 2-on-1 against you (manager plus HR rep) so you should have the right to make it 2-on-2.
They introduce overhead and confrontation into the contract negotiation process, turning a cooperative relationship into a confrontational one.
The world is a complicated place, and often confrontational. Besides, the other side has its collective bargaining infrastructure in place. HR is their agent, and corporations are just collective bargaining for rich, powerful people. Fights aren't good, but I'd rather it be a fight than a beating in which I lose.
Add to this the fact that there are a zillion clueless 20-year-old engineers in the Valley who think they're going to be VC-darling CEOs in five years, and cashed-out billionaires in ten, and you get a culture of clueless and foolish self-reliance.
I don't want something as corrupt as the pilot's union, or as mediocrity-protecting as the teacher's union. I do think that programmers need some protection given the volatility of this economy, and the increasing importance of reputation (which requires having full-time professionals to manage it).
To me, the biggest negative of a union is that it risks commoditization of labor. (But, for some hope, see: professional organizations and the unions for screen actors and writers.) However, since we're already being commoditized (JIRA, Scrum, closed allocation) we really have nothing to lose in most shops.
While those organizations are good for the profession, they are bad for the country as a whole. The AMA expends much effort on making the barriers to entry in the medical profession as high as possible. This artificially restricts the supply of doctors and makes healthcare more expensive overall.
The same happens with bar associations. How much money is wasted, how many people are driven into debt, because bar associations require a useless law degree to enter the profession? (as opposed to allowing lawyers to self-study and pass the bar on their own)
"I don't want something as corrupt as the pilot's union, or as mediocrity-protecting as the teacher's union."
The question is - how would one create a union that would avoid falling into these traps eventually? How can we be sure the union will not end up protecting incompetence and erecting artificial barriers to entry into the profession?
Do you think it's always going to be like this? I see this sentiment everywhere on HN: "everything's going well, therefore it's always going to be like this!"
I'm not saying it's falling apart, but do you think business-owners like paying developers as much as they do?
Absolutely.
Whenever I see an anti-union sentiment from people in tech I have to wonder how many have actually participated in one versus second-hand impressions drawn from stories about autoworkers or dealings with carrier technicians?
I've been a due-paying union member and even dabbled as a shop steward. I've also been a contractor and employee for public and private sector.
I can draw on my time in the union (and out, for that matter) to match stories of sickening apathy and mediocrity with anyone, but I've also witnessed the good that can come of it.
The key is balance and bad things happen whenever the scale tips too far in either direction. As I said here the other day [0], the rank and file of tech seem largely content with allowing that balance to continue slip.
Why does there seem to be no such thing as a Software Developers union in the UK, and why are so many people against having a union for those that work on the web?
I've been in union factories where guys literally sleep at their machines after they've hit their quota. I've watched inferior employees linger at jobs for years simply because making a case for firing them is more trouble than it's worth.
People in our industry tend to be self-reliant autodidacts. I suspect this is because the information technology landscape changes so rapidly that the traits are required to be successful. A lot of us therefore appreciate the meritocracy of tech. We like the fact that better skills mean higher pay, regardless of seniority. The last thing we want is to have "tenured" engineers that don't contribute and can't be fired.
- How bad the situation was with the unions in the UK in the 1970s
- How good the situation is in Germany where unions there have a lot of power and seem to use it constructively
e.g. I just found this Forbes article: "How Germany Builds Twice As Many Cars As The U.S. While Paying Its Workers Twice As Much":
http://www.forbes.com/sites/frederickallen/2011/12/21/german...
What happens when your self-reliance fails you?
> meritocracy of tech
This is a pleasant lie we tell ourselves. Even open source (which is 100% unpaid labor) is not meritocratic. Witness how quickly employers clamor for credentials.
> We like the fact that better skills mean higher pay, regardless of seniority
This is only half true. You generally don't get a massive raise by being a much better developer. You do get to the developer salary ceiling faster than others, of course. But the fact that there is a ceiling (despite the immense value a good dev can generate) is troubling. Casting aspersions about experience (in the guise of seniority) is also troubling.
Perhaps the primary reason there's no collective action for developers is that a substantial number of developers are still in their twenties, and lack the perspective + career experience to realize what it could do for them. They're still mentally invincible, striving for the next big thing, and they don't want anyone's help.
Actually, work on major projects is typically paid labour. For example, if you look at the Qt project, only about 10% of contributions come from individuals. Most of the other 90% of contributions come from people with employers paying for the work.
This is particularly important for public sector unions where there's often a highly sympathetic third party involved and the union needs to avoid losing public support. Consider the case of a teacher accused of abusing a student – if the union says “we want the legal process to be followed completely and fairly" that will be remembered very differently than “our member is being railroaded by hostile management” if the evidence shows that they did in fact commit the crime.
Lawyers are a special case — they do have something of a bad reputation because of this but most adults understand that this is how the system is supposed to work and don't assume that, say, a criminal defense lawyer personally approves of murder. Unions haven't managed to establish that distinction, in part because a lot of well-monied interests have made a priority of portraying every individual incident as representative of all union members.
Correct. I don't agree with that perception as an inerrant truth, but that is the perception.
A lot of us therefore appreciate the meritocracy of tech.
No such thing. If you believe tech is a meritocracy, then I have 5,000 Clinkle shares to sell you.
We like the fact that better skills mean higher pay, regardless of seniority.
What about the Screen Actors Guild? Or the Writers Guild? They've managed to keep top performers well-paid and the quality of work more than acceptable.
The last thing we want is to have "tenured" engineers that don't contribute and can't be fired.
You don't need a union for that. In business, they're usually called "architects".
One of the arguments I've always made in the basic income debate is that, even if it creates a parasite class at the bottom of society, it's still better than the current arrangement, wherein the need to work (without fair representation) presses wages down and favors capital immensely and creates a class of parasites at the top of society.
Analogously, I'd rather have an arrangement that protects engineers against management and might generate a few checked-out, lazy, useless engineers who are paid to do nothing, than have the current arrangement in which there is no protection and the parasites (instead of passively drawing a salary but not bothering anyone) actively interfere with us and our work, by virtue of often being more politically powerful.
- compliance costs and higher barrier to entry which skew the game away from small startups and freelancers and towards large companies with sizable legal departments,
- higher incentives for lobbying since there is more to gain from it in highly regulated environment,
- reduced predictability of business environment due to the danger of unanticipated regulatory changes,
- costs imposed by enforcement due to increased number of hours spent filling forms, undergoing inspections and arguing your case in the courts.
Note that I'm not arguing any political point here, just answered a simple question.
Personally I thought it was a reasonable question, even if I can't actually think of any upsides to regulation in this area, so I upvoted you.
It's sad that the 70's/80's miners strikes and such have divided the country in this way. It was before my time, but looking at the history, I look at the behaviour of certain unions from back then and agree with why they had to be reined in (even if I don't necessarily agree with the how). But on the other hand, it's turned the political landscape into a false dichotomy of Pro-union/Anti-union, whereas really it's a mixed bag depending on which union you are talking about.
I'd love to be pro-IT union whilst also anti-RMT (eg. London Underground...), but it's not possible in the current political climate.
These styles of community have purposefully enabled collaboration for thousands of years, EDIT: and lifted their members up along the way.
I think what they have in common is that their members share a common vision for the future of Humanity, trust each other to help fulfill it, and regularly meet face to face.
A possible vision that could unite web workers today is Engelbart's revelation of the need for tools to solve complex problems.
It's not a community unless there's also accountability; which entails clear standards of behavior and being held to them. In a professional context, this would be a minimum bar of skills, along with resources for continuing your training.
If you want to do the former, just go ahead and do so. If they're sent personally it will mean more than if they've come from an organisation whose remit is to send cards and flowers.
If you want to provide meaningful financial assistance, IMO that's a good and noble socialist goal, but involves a really large amount of work and politics. It would be great if you could make it work though.
It's the starting point of something that could look a lot like the medieval guild system (something that I've often thought might work pretty well for programmers).
As long as it's voluntary of course.
I doubt that many programmers would agree to 7 years of service under a master either ;).
One of the reasons why calling it a Guild rather than a Union is that Union has a lot of negative connotations in a lot of countries (here in the UK for example the Unions have a bad reputation for been difficult to work with and older people remember their role in the late 70's).
Also Union has connotations of "Union Shop" which is definitely something that a lot of people regard as negative.
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I'm thinking more of an organisation that exists to protect programmers, represent our interests publicly, has internal standards and recommendations as par for the course, I doubt the old master/apprentice relationship would translate or for that matter the journeymen systems.
Here in the UK we have the British Computer Society which (theoretically) does something similar but in practice I'm not really sure that they actually do (and as an aside the two people I did know who had paid to join I wouldn't have employed to sweep up).
I'm not sure how well it would work out though since it strikes me as something with a high degree of cat herding built in :).
Of course, that depends on your political persuasion: a lot of us have sympathy for the union workers who were brutally crushed by Thatcher's government in the 80's. Speaking as a programmer who has been a union member in a previous job, I would be supportive of a programmer's union.
I personally think that Union's on the whole are probably a good thing (something has to exist to balance the power of capital) but that the UK model was fundamentally broken (I actually like the German model.
Is this a cultural thing? Because for me (west coast of Canada, in my 30's), the only connotation that comes with the term "Guild" is a historical protectionist organization that ensures only those in the Guild are allowed to practice that craft, membership is non-voluntary. It carries a connotation of extreme corruption as well.
Am I just not exposed to the modern usage of the term?
[0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compagnons_du_Tour_de_France
A number of its users and associated "shops" have worked very hard to outline, start, and work on a suite of enabling software for this idea.
OP et al, if you are interested in pursuing this, I humbly suggest you reach out to those people.
Drupal's roots are in __social__ software, because it has long been unique in its multi-user capabilities; thus it drew people who were apt to work together.
[0] http://aaronwinborn.com/blogs/aaron/bylaws-open-drupal-guild... [1] https://groups.drupal.org/guilds
I'm not a big Drupal fan (as a product I find it had a lot of downsides though I've read that 7 and 8 have fixed many of those).