[civilian]

My main objection to unions is that, once they're in a company, employees lose the right to negotiate their own compensation. I want to be able to skip my union dues and deal directly with the company. OR I want to be able to make a union of my own, especially for a functional or values-based subset of coworkers, and have us negotiate separately.

This is not just a tech-unions-related complaint, this is a critique of unions as a whole. But yeah.

I think that tech workers are in a special place because we have a lot of disposable income. I've gotten over my college-era "can't pay for anything" attitude, and I'm willing to pay for content that could be gotten for free. Entertainment was the first one, but now I'm also supporting some people on patreon and donating to causes. We don't need a union to drive that-- we can just remind tech workers that if we all donate a little, we can make big changes.

[Barrin92]

>My main objection to unions is that, once they're in a company, employees lose the right to negotiate their own compensation. I want to be able to skip my union dues and deal directly with the company. OR I want to be able to make a union of my own, especially for a functional or values-based subset of coworkers, and have us negotiate separately.

Bargaining collectively is the whole point of creating a union in the first place. This special snowflake mentality that permeates the tech sector and the myopic individualism is a giant problem.

[bitcrusher]

Contrarily, the special snowflake and myopic individualism is what MADE the tech industry. The hubris to say, "I see a better way" or "I can do it better than that person" is how we got here. In point of fact, this entire thing is basically another form of "snowflake individualism".

I am starting to think the giant problem in tech is really attitudes which are dismissive of our differences and our experiences. Tropes about "tech-bros" and "millennials" are rooted in the very same biases that they're railing against.

It's just another face of tribalism.

[stale2002]

The moment someone removes my individual right to negotiate is the moment I hand in my resignation and go work somewhere that I do have that right.

I will NOT have my coworkers voting on what is "fair" for me to be payed, based on BS metrics like "seniority".

If unions were so great, then how come I make more money than any other union based engineering position?

I have done just fine negotiating my salary on my own, thank you very much.

[bigtimeidiot]

>I have done just fine negotiating my salary on my own, thank you very much.

And many, many other people haven't. Those people will unionize and won't care a lick to see you go.

[stale2002]

Awesome. They can do that, and I will work for the multitude of companies and startups out there that will not unionize.

You can't unionize every startup in the world, and non unionized employees will be able to demand a premium.

Other people are free to burden themselves with union rules, and I will be free to accept the higher salary that I can command because my competition is hindered.

It is a competitive advantage to not be burdened by union rules.

[oddlyaromatic]

It's people like this commenter who need to be won over if a union would have any chance in tech. But I don't know how to do it. At my first ever job everybody at the company was an automatic member of a union (it was a grocery store in my home town). I knew that when I took a paid break, or a vacation, or got time and a half for night work, I was benefiting from industrial action taken by those who went before me. I remember being a kid and seeing my aunt and her coworkers picketing over a pay dispute. I made better money because it was not just me negotiating on my own, other people went without pay to force the company to do better. It was and remains a successful chain. Currently I support people with disabilities who work in similar jobs and are protected by the "burden" of union rules.

I wonder if tech contains too many people who think they are too smart to get screwed to gain critical mass for a union. Maybe everybody thinks they have a competitive advantage... What's weird is that this is also how the employers like it. So is everybody winning, or does one side just think they are? I have never before heard the complaint that unions reduce wages. Maybe I'm missing something because employers should be all for that!

[ThrustVectoring]

There's a difference between what's best for the group and what's best for individual members of the group. This conflict comes up over and over again, as it arises from straightforward principles from game theory.

If everyone bargains collectively, overall compensation goes up as companies have much worse alternatives to negotiated agreement. However, these companies are generally very willing to bribe people into breaking solidarity, and so it's often personally lucrative to be the scab crossing picket lines.

[stale2002]

Winning me over is easy.

Give me a better deal.

If the union job pays 50% more then I will take it. I'd have to be stupid not to.

But don't expect my loyalty to the union. As soon as it become a better deal to do something else, I am going to do that thing.

I don't care about solidarity, or "crossing the picket line" or whatever. I will take the best deal that is offered to me.

[eli_gottlieb]

>You can't unionize every startup in the world, and non unionized employees will be able to demand a premium.

Empirically, this is completely untrue. Union workers have higher compensation than nonunion workers overall.

>It is a competitive advantage to not be burdened by union rules.

Doesn't look like that to me. Unions don't just have advantages in terms of salaries; they have the advantage of helping to grease the wheels between companies, between jobs for the unemployed, and between skillsets. Unions are an important source of job-training for an ever-changing field like tech.

Why pay for a web-programming bootcamp if your union dues entitle you to one?

[Apocryphon]

You seem to be operating from a world where there unionization in tech even exists, and making assumptions that tech unions behave exactly the same as they have in different industries.

[maxxxxx]

In Germany you can negotiate your pay within the union payscale. You can ask the employer to move you up a level. There is nothing stopping them from doing that. Once you have reached the top you are "Ausser Tarif" and can negotiate your salary .

The union mainly defines a bottom level salary and also gives a defined path upwards. For most people this is a nice system for a long career.

[alphonsegaston]

You can create a union to reflect whatever values (e.g. negotiating compensation) you see fit. Don't believe the narratives proffered by anti-union forces for their own benefit. Actors are all in unions and employ an entire sub-class of workers (agents) to negotiate compensation for them.

[stale2002]

Cool. How about we base this union on the values of not forcing people to join it?

I'd be OK with that. Please keep these efforts focused on voluntary interactions.

[AndrewKemendo]

A union can't force you to join it so in that regard it's completely voluntary.

It does however pressure companies to only hire union workers, or pressure the government to give preference to union workers. That's the whole point of a union, to check and co-opt the monopoly/oligopolic power of corporations and the government and giving it to the collective workers.

You might philosophically disagree with that approach and think that a more anarchic market is better, but a union is not a violent coercive group.

[aanm1988]

because then it has no power.

That's the whole point. Individuals have no power. You can fool yourself into thinking that extra 20k a year you managed to get is power.

[stale2002]

You guys do your own thing and I'll do mine.

We'll see who comes out on top with the better job.

The power that I have is the ability to up and leave and go somewhere else that offers me a better deal.

And I will absolutely use my power of leaving if a group every tries to force me to join a union.

[aanm1988]

No you won't. You can get bored at lunch and just not come back if you want.

[stale2002]

Things have worked out quite well for me.

The same cannot be said for those trying to force everyone in tech to join a union. Every month I see some hacker new medium post about it, and they never go anywhere.

[AndrewKemendo]

Well the whole idea of trade associations and unions has it's roots in anarchic-socialism. The idea being that collective bargaining lifts the floor for the worker.

The idea here is that the person at the top with outsized bargaining power is voluntarily relinquishing it to the person at the bottom in order to increase general welfare.

If you don't believe in that, then that's great, but that's kind of the direction everyone seems to be headed.

[xapata]

Even that "top" person might gain bargaining power by being part of a collective.

[bosie]

> employees lose the right to negotiate their own compensation.

I have never heard of that. Why would that be?

[matt4077]

In some US states, unions are allowed to agree on so-called "union security" rules in their negotiations with employers. These require all employees covered by the union's agreements to be members.

Other, so-called "right-to-work" states have outlawed the practice.

The clauses make sense for the union and their members because you cannot restrict the benefits of union representation to only members. That creates "free-rider" problems. The opposite argument is about freedoms of contract and association.

I'm unsure if you are typically allowed to make your own agreements with the employer when there's union representation. That's probably defined in negotiation, and whatever has traditionally been agreed upon for steelworkers etc. may not be the best model for tech workers.

[chimeracoder]

> I'm unsure if you are typically allowed to make your own agreements with the employer when there's union representation.

No, in closed shop contracts, this is expressly prohibited. Violating this and negotiating with your employer directly could be considered grounds for termination of union membership (ie, termination of employment). The employer would also face consequences as well.

> whatever has traditionally been agreed upon for steelworkers etc. may not be the best model for tech workers.

That's true - unfortunately, the NLRA (the law which regulates union operations) is very rigid, and it does not provide different stipulations for different industries.

There's a reason that virtually all NLRA-regulated unions in each state enact the same corporate policies for membership, the same contract structures, etc. - those are the ones which turn out to provide a stable (in the literal sense) balance of power under the laws.

It's very unlikely that an NLRA-regulated union in the tech industry would operate differently, in the long run, from the NLRA-regulated unions in every other industry.

[nichj]

At my last job(not tech), our wages were negotiated with the union at a much lower rate than our competitors and owed dues. We had no control because the union was "representing" us and we could take it or quit.

[GauntletWizard]

Yes. Mandatory unions (And be careful about how you define that, because many would claim they're not while still requiring their pound of flesh[1]) are signified by their monopoly on labor.

By maintaining a chokehold on who can supply a vital resource (labor) to businesses, Unions have a history of strangling their patrons - See Detroit. From a distributed systems perspective, Unions represent a single point of failure.

I'm entirely in favor of groups banding together to request, nee, demand, rights, pay increases, healthcare. Once they start having 'management' tiers of their own, they're no longer representing you - They're a corporation you work for, contracting to your nominal employer. Just being clearer about it doesn't work - Microsoft hires an army of 'contractors' who are abused in precisely the same way. Nor does having multiple competing pseudo-unions - There's dozens of headhunters to go through to work for microsoft, but they all compete on 'price' and drive wages down[2].

[1]http://www.nrtw.org/required-join-pay-teacher/ - "educators cannot be required to do more than pay a union fee (typically called an "agency fee") that equals their share of what the union can prove is its costs of collective bargaining, contract administration, and grievance adjustment" - Which is to say, you don't have to join the union, they just get to negotiate for you, take a cut of your pay, and be the intermediary that represents you - While you've proved your disloyalty to them by not choosing to 'join' them, so they have no actual incentive to do so. See also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friedrichs_v._California_Teach...

[2] The lightly fictionalized https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microserfs, which still rings very true more than 20 years later.

[pseudalopex]

US jurisprudence requires unions to represent non-members whether they want to or not. I don't like agency fees, but they're a response to a free-rider problem.

Yes, a union is pretty much a corporation that supplies labor. The biggest difference is how they're governed. Nobody bats an eye if a supplier negotiates an exclusive contract.

[GauntletWizard]

Agreed. I think exclusive supplier contracts are pretty dumb, too - At least without clauses for 'Price match or get out'. And the solution to the former should be (and I'll admit this is a stretch) to fix that problem, or better yet: simply to make your union's services so attractive and obviously a public good that the significant majority want to be sure it sticks around. Yes, the free rider problem is universal - Unions cause it as much as suffer from it (ever heard of unions suffering from deadweight because of seniority rules? No, nobody else ever has either :P)

[pseudalopex]

Whatever you or I think about exclusive supplier contracts, is there a single state that forbids them except for unions?

Seniority rules are something unions negotiate for. Contracting firms stick warm bodies on projects all the time. That's between the supplier and the customer, not imposed by the federal government.

I agree it would be better to fix that, but as you said, it's a stretch. Good luck getting Republicans or Democrats to go for it.

[chimeracoder]

> US jurisprudence requires unions to represent non-members whether they want to or not. I don't like agency fees, but they're a response to a free-rider problem.

They get around that by structuring all of the benefits in the employment contracts to cover only their members, and by negotiating exclusive employment contracts with employers (so that there are no non-members).

Put another way, 94% of people who are represented by an NLRB-governed union never had the opportunity to vote for or against union membership in the first place. Most of those are employed by employers with exclusive contracts ("closed shop"), and because the union itself is not required to stand for reelection (its representatives are, but the union basically guaranteed permanent representation[0]), it means that free-riders are a non-issue.

[0] The process of decertifying or deauthorizing a union is very strictly regulated and unions have very broad leeway in preventing it, so it almost never happens except in cases of criminal misconduct and the like.

[pseudalopex]

The National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation considers anything but "open shop" to be "forced unionism" and lists 28 states as free from that scourge.[1] No exclusive contracts, no agency fees.

[1] http://www.nrtw.org/right-to-work-states

[carlosdp]

Because they would need to join the union and the union negotiates compensation for everyone, that's one of the main purposes of a union.

[stale2002]

And that's exactly why I will never join a union. As soon as that happens at any job I have, I will hand in my resignation the next day.

I can negotiate very well on my own, as opposed to being stuck into seniority "levels", thank you very much.

[aanm1988]

Plenty of unions and associations don't do this. A reasonable method for this would be for a union to negotiate per level salary bands, and yearly merit increases.

Within the band the company pays whatever they think you are worth.

[Shivetya]

The worst aspect isn't just the right to negotiate your own compensation but doing better work has no reward. Get any decent size shop and your going to have that one person if not two that everyone just carries.

then there is that asshole who becomes shop steward and well, you best hope you agree with them.

Yeah i am a bit jaded but no thanks. Let alone like it will matter because outsourcing will just become the standard means by which many companies will operate in a 24x7 world where talent to do IT can be anywhere. unlike your local plant our jobs can be done about from anywhere in the world. If you can work your job from home so can someone else

[geofft]

> Get any decent size shop and your going to have that one person if not two that everyone just carries.

> then there is that asshole who becomes shop steward and well, you best hope you agree with them.

But that happens in tech already! And usually that one person is friends with the boss, or a long-term employee who did good work once and is now coasting, or is really good at this one skill that the company doesn't particularly need any more and not at the current stuff, or is a 10x engineer because they spend their time dragging down nine coworkers, or whatever.

If anything, a union gives workers more ability to push back against that: I'm not going to call out the one guy the boss likes for being a jerk dragging down the business, because I know they'll find some way to get back. But if my coworkers contractually have my back, I'll be much more inclined to.

[sverige]

It seems apparent that you have never worked in a (traditional) union shop. Management still has power, union bosses have power, but union members end up with two bosses instead of one. Your coworkers aren't going to be able to help you vote out the shop steward who sucks because that is going to be the only name on the ballot.

But carry on with your starry-eyed idealism.

[aanm1988]

> My main objection to unions is that, once they're in a company, employees lose the right to negotiate their own compensation

So don't have the union do that.

Have the union worry about coming down on places that fire members for refusing to work 60 hours a week, want you to train your replacement, force shitty unpaid oncall schedules, etc...

[chimeracoder]

> So don't have the union do that

Unfortunately, it's an all-or-nothing deal. The NLRA is a very rigid law, and once a union has been sanctioned as the exclusive representative of a bargaining unit, they have the authority to do that.

It's next to impossible to either decertify or deauthorize a union once it forms, so you not only have to trust the current leadership, but all future leadership that may get elected, to focus only on the things you list and not focus on negotiating your compensation for you.