[binarybyte01]

This industry doesn't need a union, but it does need a professional association to protect and help engineers. Some things a professional association could do:

1) Provide legal muscle to individual engineers - If there's a legal dispute between a company and engineer, the company can just outspend on lawyers. It doesn't matter if the law says the engineer is right, the engineer can't fight a long legal battle. This will help with issues such as non-competes, off-hours IP ownership, startup stock/options disputes, etc. It also provides a place for engineers to report issues such as H1B visa abuse.

2) Politcal lobbying - The voice of engineers is not heard in the H1B debate. This association could lobby and make sure the interests of engineers are represented in the debate.

3) Accreditation - No more stupid technical interviews.

I want to emphasize, this is NOT a union. It does not do strikes, set salary, or any of the things associated with unions. The primary power of an association like this is pooling resources for litigation power and political lobbying that serves the interests of engineers, not companies.