[Apocryphon]

Certainly, there’s a lot of old entrenched unions who have come to rest on their past laurels and are now mired in bureaucracy and self-satisfaction.

One would easily imagine a software engineering union to be the complete opposite of that, as such a union would be completely new and hungry.

[walshemj]

Well from experience in the UK M&P (managerial and professional union) unions you right.

They are not into old school craft union practices.

[xmprt]

But a union will eventually slowly devolve into that example as more and more rules and restrictions are added. Unions have so many benefits but I feel like any time a union dictates how the work is supposed to be done I hate it. That's why I'm super conflicted. It feel like I'd lose a lot of flexibility afforded to me if I joined a union and had to start playing by their rules.

At the same time, I think software engineering is in a position where a lot of employees have the power to switch companies and have more control over how the work is done than other types of jobs. I can see people leaving jobs in mass or starting a union quickly if industry conditions ever get worse.

[Apocryphon]

You can say the same about any other human organization, though- a corporation, a government, a religious hierarchy. A nonprofit foundation. An open source project. What makes unions any more susceptibility to corruption or the problems of bureaucracy?

> I can see people leaving jobs in mass or starting a union quickly if industry conditions ever get worse.

There's some signs of that happening at some companies. Certainly it's a high time for video games tech companies to push for it, against the bad conditions unique to that industry.

[ineedasername]

a union dictates how the work is supposed to be done

I'm not quite sure what you mean by that. How do unions dictate the way you perform your duties?

[tharkun__]

For example, the union could have negotiated rules around an appropriate duration of working hours as well as the start and end times of such. E.g. unionized employees shall not have to work "after hours". Working hours are 9-5. Anything outside of that is paid at 1.5x. Employees can't work from home so as not to infringe on 'family life'.

And suddenly the union has made me very uninterested in performing my duties at that company at all. I want to be able to work with flexible hours. I don't care to be compensated at 1.5x just because I start at 8:30 and leave at 4 one day, then do 9:30 to 5:30 another etc. I want to work from home every day of the week and I'll manage the separation of family life and work just fine, thank you very much but instead of being stuck in transit hours each way and effectively spending at least 11 hours for work related stuff (actual work plus travel, coz you know, union rules prohibit me working from the train, coz it's not in the office and it's not 9 yet), while WFH means I get up at 8:58 and in a meeting at 9:00 and that's great!

Real life example btw. from where some friends work, not theoretical. While I am flexible to take the kids to school, summercamp etc. at the required hours and just work as soon as I come home and made coffee, they gotta plan everything around their commute and timing it so that they don't come in too much earlier than 9 (wasting their time) and not get cited for clocking in too late, e.g. coz there was traffic.

[ineedasername]

And suddenly the union has made me very uninterested in performing my duties at that company at all. I want to be able to work with flexible hours

I was in a union for a little bit, and there was a set process for this. You simply requested & justified a modified schedule, and so long as your boss signed off that it wouldn't negatively impact operations, it was all fine. Not all unions may do this though.

[tharkun__]

Absolutely agreed that unionized doesn't mean only bad things. That's not what my parent asked about though.

My dad was at a sort of unionized place. The core business wasn't Software but they spun their own IT needs out into an IT service company that became quite large on its own too. This was in Germany though. The actual union negotiated with the core business and for their employees. There's also another system in Germany that's a little separate from unions (which also exist) called roughly translated the "workers council".

The core business for example (manufacturers union) had a 35 hour week. The IT company had an agreement of "what the union contract says but with these modifications e.g. +5 hours." (and some other stuff) the unionization was great for a junior as it guaranteed a minimum pay scale for example with set minimum raises after x time etc. You had to track your time (clocking in and out was provided but not mandatory) and weren't allowed to do too many hours etc. But things were still flexible. Come and go when you want to within reason. And that was already like that in the 1980s. Obviously no WFH at that time :)

When the union renegotiated to 37.5 hours that suddenly meant all IT company personnel had to work 42.5. But the workers council and the company were on good terms and workers were told not to worry, the official stuff will take a week or two to hammer out and put in writing but keep working your 40 hours. The intent was the 40 hours and the +5 was just how it was written down. A technicality.

So yeah it can also be good.

[ineedasername]

Pretty much agreed, I just think the same types of good & bad things happen without unions, just on an individual or departmental scale. It's more visible with unions because it happens all at once and on a larger scale, but I'm not convinced that the overall magnitude is that different.

As an example of the individual/departmental level where there was no union involved: I was embedded within a large, mostly customer-facing area. A scheduling change came down that said everyone had to work late hours twice a week on a rotation, for two six-week periods each year when there was increased demand. I don't work with customers, there was no need for me to modify my schedule. I ran things up the chain and a few days later there was a minor policy change that basically said "everyone except him".

[Igelau]

And it will never ever go astray.

[Apocryphon]

It would certainly have a lower chance to, in the sense that it will have been founded in a time period after past generations' unions have gone astray, and so has the benefit of historical experience to work with and to improve, to innovate upon. Certainly tech is an industry that believes better futures are capable of being built, rather than expecting everything to always be the same level of mediocrity.

[pietrovismara]

What a generic and low effort comment. It could apply to pretty much any human organization. Not bringing much to the discussion, really.