[jdgoesmarching]

Yep. The strongest tool we have is not just discussing salaries, it’s organizing. There’s a reason why companies crack down so hard on the faintest whimper of unionizing.

Tech workers mistakenly believe that our temporarily status as the high value employees make us permanently safe from bad financial or workplace conditions. Ironically, it is at the height of our collective power when we have the most to gain from organizing and securing our livelihoods.

[jonp888]

Does a union negotiating system make sense in a individual contributor focused profession?

I am in a union in Germany and the main result is that I earn considerably less the market rate.

This is because there is a single pay grade for every Software Engineer in the company(excluding entry level). There are no performance bonuses. Unless I get promoted into management I can look forward to the union negotiating a slightly above inflation pay rise every so often until I reach retirement.

It's a lot to swap for the workplace protections that Software engineers mostly enjoy anyway.

[triceratops]

> Does a union negotiating system make sense in a individual contributor focused profession?

Is software engineering any more of an individual contributor focused profession than acting or professional soccer. All of those people are in unions. The highest performers in those fields can essentially name their price; their union membership doesn't hold them back in that regard. On the other hand, soccer players that pick up a bad injury and have their career cut short are somewhat taken care of. Not-very-successful actors still get health insurance, if they work a certain amount every year.

A union doesn't have to negotiate your salary. That's just how a lot of labor unions are set up in the US. A union could just negotiate a floor on wages, conditions, or benefits.

[jdgoesmarching]

I can’t speak to how unions operate in Germany because your labor laws and norms aren’t the same as ours. Just the concept of codetermination whether or not it works as advertised would baffle the average US worker.

Many of your labor protections don’t exist here unless unions agitate for them, and I won’t even broach healthcare. In the US, unionized workers make more on average than non-union workers (link below).

Without a union, you have zero bartering power other than the threat of leaving which is what I argue above to be a very temporary power. Even then, job hopping is nowhere close to an ideal solution for a variety of reasons that I think HN readers are smart enough to fill in.

https://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/union2.pdf

[jonp888]

True, I guess a lot of things I take for granted are only possible through union bargaining in the US.

[erik998]

its different in the US. They just set a floor...

[UncleMeat]

Just look at all of the conditions that people complain about, which could be resisted if we had collective action.

Support for remote work, resistance to hotdesking (or gasp, even demanding offices), making all on-call requirements non-mandatory, a union rep who can review PIPs to ensure that they aren't deliberately impossible, and more.