[lordxenu]

I always see comments like this, that states some data about unions and decreasing wages and rights, etc.

While I agree, I almost never see anyone going one step further and saying what can be done about it. "Call your representatives!" says many, but this is a mainly passive action that depends too much on faith in the incorruptibility of our representatives. We can continue to do this, but we need a more powerful and active direction.

With the tech bubble collapsing and people losing their jobs (especially with what's currently happening in Silicon Valley), I think maybe it is time for a dedicated union for both engineers (us) and other employees. That is, some kind of active effort designed to spearhead these principles. How can this happen? HN readers are smart; we can organize ourselves, can't we?

[marricks]

Since half the states have a "right to work" law that says no employee has to support a union financially[1] it's much harder to start a union, especially for a multistate endeavor. With social media one would think it'd be easier to form up, but that same media can be used to slander unions and quash them before they even form. There's a lot of well financed and experienced Anti Union advisers that can inform as to how best stop a union from forming and somehow an anti union mindset has seeped into popular opinion like seen above.

Honestly seems like it'd take another great recession with the focus put on employee rights for major changes to happen. Luckily with Obama leaving he is finally lending some helping hand to Unions by making companies disclose when the get advice from anti-union advisers [2]

[1] http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/02/23/right-to-work-laws_...

[2] http://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2016-03-24/business-back...

[lordxenu]

What's to stop Trump or Hilary from revoking these "union-friendly" when they come into office? They'll have 4 or 8 years to dismantle it again. I guess at that point maybe people will be really angry, but right now we have thousands of engineers and other startup employees that just got screwed over big time. What can be done to help them at this moment?

If targeting "right to work" is the first step, then perhaps we can organize something around abolishing that. If abolishing is too difficult, then perhaps modifying it so that "right to work" only applies to companies that have less than $1 million but have safeguards in place to ensure fair layoff packages, but companies with more than $1 million must allow unions. That way, small companies don't have to worry about unions and when they're big enough, they'll have the money and the lawyers to deal with it.

Waiting is a loser's game. With another recession, the government will do just enough to keep people content, but not go that extra length to solidify those protections. With changing seats of power over time (re-elections), there's no guarantee that the next set of people in power won't dismantle protections... causing the cycle to repeat... causing us to wait for another recession... and so forth.