[nightski]

Honestly I've had plenty of influence at the various workplaces I've been a part of. If a company is so dysfunctional it doesn't even take what employees are saying into account then I'm not convinced a union would help. Do you have concrete examples of unions succeeding in software?

[elil17]

Why does it have to be software-specific? It's a new-ish field and American unions have been pretty disadvantaged over the last few decades due to an increasingly conservative judiciary and some nasty anti-union lawyers. But you can't just ignore that unions got us weekends, OSHA, and 8 hour days. Now there is enough wealth in society to support three day weekends, and people are ready to fight to distribute that wealth fairly. Why shouldn't they?

[nightski]

Because as far as I know traditionally unions have existed in jobs where humans are basically robots (manufacturing, etc...). These jobs can be dangerous and also each worker is very easily replaceable giving the employer a huge upper hand.

This is not the case in software at all. Skill levels can vary dramatically and the more experience you have with your company often the more valuable and harder to replace you become. Software developers are expensive, especially bad hires. This puts them in an advantageous position. In sum we are - In demand, scarce, hard (or at least expensive) to replace (skill & domain knowledge vary considerably). The exact opposite of what a union fixes.

[roguecoder]

That's a pretty new development, and not necessarily true. Screen writing is pretty obviously creative, collaborative work, and they've been represented by a professional guild since 1933.

I think it is more common for the umbrella union orgs to focus on industries either with high barriers to entry (like nursing) or huge employers, because they are going company-by-company & it's just more efficient. On the opposite end of the spectrum, trade unions are more likely to serve people who change jobs ever couple of years and where most of the learning happens on the job. They tend to be run by & for people actually in the profession and can cross company boundaries.

Trade guilds will do things like specify minimum wages, but most of their members end up paid more than that. They'll specify minimum safety standards, but also support people on specific job sites that want or need additional protection to make that particular job safe. It isn't the same kind of one-size-fits-all approach you may be used to from Detroit auto plants.

There are advantages for employers too: they know that people in the guild are held to certain professional standards, for example. When retirement programs or health care are managed through the guild, workers can take the benefits with them to their next job, and small employers don't get taken for a ride. And employers can benefit from the steady influx of newly-trained workers who have been taught up to the standards the trade feels are important to meet.

Just look at the people in this thread who think it is "drastic" to have a lawyer look at our employment contracts: we may have individual leverage, but we aren't necessarily able to use it to make our working conditions better, or even to ensure the software we build is reliable and safe.

[erlich]

What happens if a minimum wage is set but there are people prepared to work for less? Or under lesser conditions? And a company cannot hire as many people because they have to pay them more?

Isn’t it fairer to rely on the free market to set wages? There are shortages and surpluses in many industries that vary over time. Unions seem to just distort the market.

Reviewing employment contracts can be done by one’s own lawyer via legal insurance too. Why does this need to be collective? Why not pay a fee for services you use rather than union dues. A lot of the benefits you mention doesn’t need unionization.

[elil17]

A free market is only fair if there are many labor purchasers and sellers. But when employers hold power (they are a major employer and they control many jobs in an area, they control your recommendations, the switching cost of changing jobs is too high) they can use that power to deflate wages below their fair market value. Unions create a level playing field to workers to negotiate with companies.

[erlich]

Agree but tech is not like this. Especially with the rise of remote work. Unions can also hold down wages by reducing flexibility in conditions to suit different employees preferences.

[PuppyTailWags]

Didn't the kickstarter folks successfully unionize to ban monitoring software and no CoL downgrades in pay?