[anm89]

Sure it's your legal right to form a union, go for it if you want. More power to you if you win.

Fortunately workers in tech are almost unanimously smart enough to understand this isn't in their interest and reject unions.

Also understand you are playing power politics so if you are going to play make sure you can win. These people at instacart didn't: https://www.theverge.com/2021/1/21/22242676/instacart-firing...

[toomuchtodo]

> Fortunately workers in tech are almost unanimously smart enough to understand this isn't in their interest and reject unions

https://www.npr.org/2021/01/08/954710407/at-google-hundreds-... ("Google Workers Speak Out About Why They Formed A Union: 'To Protect Ourselves'")

https://www.wired.com/story/how-kickstarter-employees-formed... ("How Kickstarter Employees Formed a Union")

https://techcrunch.com/2021/03/02/following-unionization-gli... ("Following unionization, Glitch signs collective bargaining agreement ")

I admit there's still much work to be done with regards to tech organizing.

[throwaway3699]

The "Google union" is a complete joke BTW. It's made up of half a dozen low-level employees that have no bargaining power at all. Half the company hasn't even heard of it (true story).

[anm89]

Yeah. That's the whole list...

Want to compile the 1000 page document that would be all the places who haven't unionized?

[toomuchtodo]

That's unnecessary. I'm simply demonstrating that unionization has occurred in businesses far larger and with arguably more difficult organizing environments than Basecamp (with a total of ~60 employees). 800 Google workers thought it important enough to join their union.

[sokoloff]

800 out of 135000 is 6 tenths of 1%.

A Basecamp union organizer who was the only one to decide to join their own creation of a Basecamp Workers Union would already be 3 times as successful as the Google union on a per-capita basis.

[toomuchtodo]

I can only chuckle at the raw math, as if that’s the valuable datapoint. It seems impossible until it’s done.

It took decades for America to ruin the idea of unions, they’re not coming back overnight.

[sokoloff]

A union derives its bargaining power from the amount of monopoly it has on the labor supply. (I don't say that as a bad thing; I mean it just as a factual thing.)

Tech industry turnover is around 13% per year, or 0.25% per week. The Google union could all quit at once and it would be like that week's turnover number was slightly higher than normal.

Google has more employees out sick on any given day than they have union members.

[anm89]

Imagine making this ridiculous argument for anything else.

Yeah, maybe only .005% of Americans are flat earthers but I chuckle at the math! You just havent given it enough time for us to be proven right!

[anm89]

I'll stick to calling 1000s to 3 "nearly unanimous"

[threatofrain]

Yes, the Lou Bloom / Game of Thrones perspective exists and has a basis in our world. When you play with power, you win or you die.

But I don't believe that's why American gays have been experiencing more and more support. It is not persuasion by equity, but simply by asking people what kind of future they want to live in. Gay life also also improved among EU peers for the same reasons.

Politics is the negotiation of power, and yet strangely, gay people have been able to achieve wins at the negotiating table simply by asking, often without leverage. Sometimes people will listen to your story and simply agree.