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I actually worked as a production electrician & lighting designer for a couple years, and I can say from my experience that IATSE is a cancer on the industry. I wouldn't join or support a union for computer technologists. My main concern for the tech industry is that a union is fundamentally exclusionary. It's survival depends on preventing competition- any other activity it undertakes is only to serve that goal, or to justify it. Unions prevent competition by demanding exclusivity in a company's labor supply, they prevent competition from new entrants by being outright hostile to young tradespeople (in most trade unions, it's basically impossible to join without sponsorship form an existing member), and they prevent competition among members by fixing wages, suppressing the earning potential of the most valuable employees. Once a union has succeeded in restraining trade, it can extract monopoly rents from the flow of labor. At best, this looks like an ever-growing university-style administration that exists to justify its own existence. Unions can never exist to create net value, only to capture it, and that by necessity means that value is destroyed by their existence. They're antithetical to the principles of fairness, openness and inclusiveness that we claim to value. Moreover, why would we even want a union, on an individual level? We (American citizens with a BSCS or similar) each already hold a golden ticket directly to the gentry class. We are, by pure luck of nationality, already privileged beneficiaries of the American coastal tech boom cities, of American currency and political dominance of the past seven decades, and of our restrictive immigration policies that artificially inflate wages for computer professionals across the country above their global equilibrium price. A CS graduate today can reasonably expect to be a millionaire by midlife, if they choose to save accordingly. And if you don't like having to work late sometimes, you have the option to take a job that doesn't require it. If you don't want to live the Senior SRE lifestyle, you don't have to. |