[lacey]

I haven’t had a large number of interactions with unions but I have seen some things that definitely turn me off of them, e.g. requiring two or three people from as many different unions to set up a booth at a conference because multiple skills are required and the unions negotiated with the venue to have each step done by union employees with those specific skills. So eg the people assembling the structure couldn’t plug in computers and the people who plugged in computers couldn’t assemble the booth structure.

What I have heard a couple times now from relatives of union members is that senior people who know union leadership sometimes end up on “disability”, meaning there is nothing wrong with them but they don’t work and get paid. They have doctors in the loop to certify the disability. I have no idea if this is actually widespread.

My own personal reluctance with joining a union is that I feel like I do pretty well negotiating for myself.

Having said that, perhaps a tech worker’s union could result in 30-hour four-day workweeks with reasonable minimum vacation, and that would be worthwhile if it became the industry norm.

[subway]

The rules certainly drive me up the wall. An event I attend annually in a conference hall has an ongoing joke about being sure you know which chairs in the venue are union chairs, and which aren't.

As an attendee, nobody minds if you move the non-union chair, but if you so much as move a union chair a few feet to join an adjacent table, expect to be reprimanded.

[JamesBarney]

I think a tech workers association similar to the AMA would be helpful. I think the best work it could do would be to push for standardized contracts around intellectual property(company doesn't own everything you touch even in your free time) and non-competes(for instance must be paid some % of salary while non-compete is enforced). And the second best work it could do would be to push for standardized on-call/overtime multipliers.

These things are harder to negotiate for than salary and would be healthy for the industry.

[chimeracoder]

> I think a tech workers association similar to the AMA would be helpful.

A voluntary organization that less than 25% of people in the industry are members of, and which doesn't seek recognition by the NLRB?

That's very different from a union.

[chillacy]

You can already achieve rest and vest at some of the big companies. I hear stories of 20 hour weeks if you’re good at managing perceptions. Salaries aren’t bad either.