You're not looking very hard for counter examples.
Is the screen actors guild punishing Will Smith and rewarding struggling, untalented commercial actors?
Is the NBA player's association punishing LeBron and rewarding D league players?
Is there even such a thing a "superstar" plumber? I mean, I'm sure there are awful plumbers and amazing plumbers - but do how much can they scale, realistically?
The G League has its own union that isn't the NBPA.
SAG is a weird example. Hard to get in without doing union work. Hard to get union work without being in the union. Can't do non-union work after you're in. The structure reeks of being rigged to temper the rate of newcomers.
I'm not sure what your point is, but famous actors and sports-stars have little to do with labour unions. A labour union is all about fighting for the rights of the undifferentiated many, not the situation where there are named celebrities in a winner's zero-sum market.
When there is a pool of people waiting to take your job, and a company willing to lower working standards, you have little choice but to comply with company requests — unless you are part of a union that collectively acts in the interests of the workers.
For software developers there are forces against unionisation:
1. Global outsourcing. What's the point in unionisation if your job can be done by a motivated pool of workers overseas? A union has little bargaining power at the level of outsourcing complete business units. Or buyouts: I am in New Zealand and whole companies here are purchased by American companies.
2. Many software developers are not easily replaceable. It is difficult to replace a person who has specialist software skills or internal organizational knowledge.
3. There is no pool of easily identifiable talent.
4. Developers have to be dissatisfied with working conditions.
5. Developers have to have reached a ceiling (experienced). In a fast growing industry with technical churn, less experienced developers outnumber older developers? Hard to argue with new blood why unionisation is in their interests?
Edit: I did a quick search for "software developer" on https://seek.co.nz job board and about 1% of jobs were for USD140k+ and most of that 1% were not dev jobs. I know zero developers earning >= $200k. AFAIK pay in NZ for developers is significantly below the US. Opportunity there if you want trustworthy highly skilled remote workers that speak English. Main bummer is NZ is 16 hours ahead so 3PM EST is 7AM NZ time, and Friday in the US is Saturday in NZ https://www.worldtimeserver.com/time-zones/nzst-to-est/
> I'm not sure what your point is, but famous actors and sports-stars have little to do with labour unions.
There are a TON of actors in SAG (160,000). Sure, that's more than an order of magnitude smaller than the 4.4M SWEs in the US. But the idea that everyone in SAG is a "star" is absurd.
Similarly, deep bench players in the NBA - sure they are really good - but they are far from stars. And yet, most of them make substantially more money than overseas "stars". This is because of the players' union.
> A labour union is all about fighting for the rights of the undifferentiated many, not the situation where there are named celebrities in a winner's zero-sum market.
I think you missed my point entirely. SAG and the players' union are good for both stars and non-stars.
GP seemed to think that unions by definition are bad for stars. I was merely pointing out that there are examples of unions that are not bad for stars. It just so happens these unions are also examples of unions that are also not bad for non-stars.
> When there is a pool of people waiting to take your job, and a company willing to lower working standards, you have little choice but to comply with company requests — unless you are part of a union that collectively acts in the interests of the workers.
Google is not unionized, and there are a million people that would take my job for much lower pay - and a lot of them could probably end up doing my job after a substantially long learning period. Despite that, I have my job.
The same is true at Facebook, Apple, Amazon, and Microsoft (and many other companies). Theoretically, since these are global companies with large presences all over the world - this isn't (at least) entirely because I'm a US citizen.
I agree with your point for most other professions, though. And maybe this will be truer in the future for "FAANG". But, it's not really true now.
> Edit: I did a quick search for "software developer" on https://seek.co.nz job board and about 1% of jobs were for USD140k+ and most of that 1% were not dev jobs. I know zero developers earning >= $200k. AFAIK pay in NZ for developers is significantly below the US.
The majority of people working at "FAANG" in NZ should be >$200k - if for no other reason than because of RSU appreciation.
Not trying to be rude - but if you want to make more money - just read Cracking the Coding Interview cover to cover and get referrals at FAANG. You honestly might triple your salary. You can DM me on Reddit if you want more feedback / advice / referrals.
Unions do sometimes make it hard to get rid of bad workers... not sure that's the same as "rewarding" them though.
I can't think of examples of punishing good ones though. Union contracts frequently have defined procedures for requesting a merit pay increase with a mandatory review process, along with similar procedures for reclassification to a higher level position, also with more pay, when a person's scope of responsibilities shift over time to encompass more than the original job description indicated.
I'm not in a union any longer, but that happened to me when I was: I was very good a specific portion of my job and gradually took on more complicated aspects of it. I applied for reclassification. My workplace had a maximum of 21 days to review & reply to the request, which they granted, and I got a higher title & a nice 20% increase in pay.
Getting to keep your job when you don't deserve it is absolutely a reward.
As for punishing good workers... I've heard plenty of stories where someone was really good at their job and they just needed some small thing done that they couldn't get the right department to do, so they did it themselves. The union jumped all over them because it's contractually obligated that the other department perform that function.
It was absolutely in the way of the "good worker" and they needed it to be done to improve their morale and get work flowing well. But their only choices were suffer through it, or be sanctioned for fixing it themselves.
That depends on the reason for the separation of duties. Think of a unionized construction work where a few people specialize on heavy machinery. You aren't designated as such, but you happen to know how to drive a forklift and you need something moved. I'd be pretty pissed off at you for taking it upon yourself to do it because knowing how to operate a forklift isn't the same as knowing all of the safety protocols and idiosyncracies of operating heavy machinery at that specific site. You could put yourself or others at risk, or screw up the project. Or maybe the construction company pays certain insurance premiums for each designated operator and you just opened them up to bankruptcy if there was an accident.
Sometimes these barriers exist for a good reason. And sure, when you run into one it can be frustrating if it seems harmless-- even productive-- to break protocol. But it's not for each individual worker to determine which protocols they will follow and which ones they will break. That's a recipe for disaster that I have seen happen in & out of unions. The right path on that is to work to change protocol. I've done it plenty of times myself so that I could be more productive but also be in the loop on any special considerations I should be aware of, like not querying the production system directly during certain hours when it could be under high load.
That doesn't means there aren't any useless barriers, but it my experience a barrier is usually--initially-- put into place for a reasonable purpose, and people get frustrated because they don't know what the purpose was. Going cowboy isn't the solution though. Asking questions and finding out if the reasons still apply, and initiating change if they don't, that's the path forward. Sometimes it doesn't work, for stupid reasons, but stupid reasons aren't the sole domain of union beauracracy. They exist everywhere. I don't know if they're more prevalent in unions, but it doesn't make sense to look at unions as useless or bad when they simply share the same behavioral patterns as any other organization of sufficient size and complexity. I have seen unions that are completely dysfunctional, I have also seen businesses that are the same (and had the misfortune of working for one or two)
Is the screen actors guild punishing Will Smith and rewarding struggling, untalented commercial actors?
Is the NBA player's association punishing LeBron and rewarding D league players?
Is there even such a thing a "superstar" plumber? I mean, I'm sure there are awful plumbers and amazing plumbers - but do how much can they scale, realistically?