[faitswulff]

Ironically you’re being downvoted by the same folks who would benefit from unions. American Twitter employees, for instance, would have done a lot better with European labor protections. European Twitter employees probably have a sizable comeuppance on the horizon.

[logicalmonster]

If the European standards are so good, where are all of the influential European tech companies?

To properly weigh all of the tradeoffs, you might consider asking if those Twitter jobs would even emerge in the European system and if there's a link between European labor standards and the lack of influential European tech companies. Europe is a large market that is filled with many capable and educated technology workers, yet almost always all of the tech companies we're ever talking about are American. Why is this?

[BigRedDog1669]

Good company to work for is not the same as big company everyone is talking about on hacker news. Those are two different things. Why should people optimize for computer nerd prestige? I might not care to work for Amazon, Microsoft, etc. Influential can be a bad thing if they are negatively influencing society.

[logicalmonster]

> Why should people optimize for computer nerd prestige?

The thing I'd like to focus on isn't nerd prestige, but good jobs, as the article was about inequality as nothing fixes social alienation and inequality more than lots of people having a good income and being part of society. These big tech companies, whatever major negatives they provide to the culture in many ways, at least employ a lot of people and give them a path to being part of that comfy middle class.

If the concern is inequality, then is a pile of great paying jobs with worse labor standards better than a few ok paying jobs with great labor standards? See where I'm going with that?

These are complex issues...I don't think I have all of the answers, but I just want to point out that there might be some tradeoffs to the good sounding things like unions and much better labor protections.

[faitswulff]

A simple answer is that being able to abuse workers allows businesses to move faster.

[bombolo]

> Why is this?

Because EU is a puppet of USA and doesn't have strong enough protections to stop USA companies to acquire every single startup that exists in EU.

Most of that amazing USA made software is not done in USA. For example some of that is made by me… a guy who has never been in USA.

[rejectfinite]

Spotify, Skype, Minecraft, Battlefield, Ericsson, SAAB

oh and the Linux kernel.

Is your brain broken?

[bombolo]

Saab makes mostly weapons. And yes some software here and there.

[formercoder]

I really don’t understand the push for white collar tech employees to be in unions. It’s my understanding that in most union jobs, compensation and benefits are strictly based on time in role, not performance. I try and excel in my role and others are less interested in doing so. I should be promoted faster and compensated higher.

[throw0101c]

> It’s my understanding that in most union jobs, compensation and benefits are strictly based on time in role, not performance.

That is one structure, and it probably was predominant in the past because unions were historically in factories where workers were more interchangeable and had set tasks at a production line station.

Another is more 'guild-like': Jane Smith who is Waitress #2, and Tom Cruise who plays Ethan Hunt in Mission Impossible, are both part of the same union/guild, but one is able to negotiate a much higher salary. But they have the same 'base' level of protection with regards to working conditions, pension, health care, etc.

Certainly Tom Cruise can go above and beyond those 'base' levels, but the union/guild simply provides a floor which everyone is entitled to.

There's no reason why a union contract could not negotiate things like working conditions, health/child care, pensions/retirement funds, etc, but leave salaries out of the collective agreement. Or perhaps have pay bands, with retention/performance bonuses that are out side of the scope of the agreement, and are 100% discretionary to the company: everyone gets a floor, but there's no ceiling.

[wpietri]

Unions can be what the workers want them to be. The industrial time-in-role thing can be a reasonable match to industrial industrial jobs. But collective bargaining can include performance-based pay. E.g., the union negotiates the overall base raise and the size of the performance-based raise pool, and then managers decide on raises and promotions. They can also help you resolve situations of individual managerial unfairness, something that HR is supposed to do but is very rarely effective at.

[jtolmar]

A union is a democratically-run tool. Every tech employee I talk to hates the idea of compensation being based purely on time in role, why would they democratically vote for that to be the rule?

[missedthecue]

Because not every rule is up for vote. Ex: Majority of Americans want weed federally legal. America is a democracy. Why is that not the law? It's not up for vote.

[klyrs]

There's two ways to unionize: roll your own, or UaaS. Rolling your own requires a lot of work, time in committee meetings, and has a risk that you'll overlook common issues or flub negotiations due to inexperience. But there's a lot of flexibility, and it can be done on the cheap. A lot of people pick the second option: a big union can send a rep, draft a contract, negotiate with your employer, etc., in exchange for the dues it pays its employees with.

[sambull]

Probably the people who have had a boss tell them they believe minimum performance for a salaried position was 70+ hours a week.

[thepasswordis]

Generally the people who are advocating for a union are doing it to level the playing field for themselves against you.

[bombolo]

Yes for example an immigrant that is under threat of being deported might want a more level playing field.

[ThrowawayR2]

Historically, unions in the United States have been strongly anti-immigrant because they were seen as competitors who lowered wages. Anyone who has been on HN long enough has seen the undercurrent of anti-H-1B sentiment whenever the topic comes up and a union would bring that nastiness and racism out to center stage.

No, no immigrants in tech are going to want to vote for a union because a lot of its members think immigrants are part of the playing field that needs to be "leveled".

[fallingknife]

It's not racism to oppose policies that lower my salary

[dantheman]

Unions are anti-immigrant.

[wpietri]

Do you have any current data on that? I think it was true of the "Reagan Democrat" variety of union worker in the 1980s, but I suspect it's an outdated stereotype now. For example, SEIU, one of America's largest unions, represents a lot of immigrants and is strongly pro-immigrant: https://www.seiu.org/justice-for-immigrants/

[missedthecue]

It's not really true any longer, but it was at one point. The head of the AFL-CIO admits here that unions were strongly anti immigration for decades. Only in the past few years have they changed their official opinion.

https://www.npr.org/2013/02/05/171175054/how-the-labor-movem...

[ThrowawayR2]

The only reason blue collar workers' unions changed their tune is because they were unable to stop the flow of illegal immigration. On the other hand, restricting H-1Bs and green cards is a battle that many think they can win.

[bombolo]

And companies are pro-exploitation-of-immigrants… and not very pro-immigrants.

[bombolo]

Nobody has any idea how to properly evaluate that. So they just pick the person who works the least and talks the most, using random jargon to seem smart.

[pxmpxm]

Ha, if anything Twitter's the paragon of a European tech company. Overstaffed, politicized and unable to make money, all while their top talent flees to competitors in sf bay area.

[Zeyka]

Exactly, and I'm not trying to devalue their beliefs, I'm just trying to understand how they can be against something that would benefit them.

[mhb]

Is it that hard to understand that someone might be in favor of something in principle, but object to its particular implementation? Or that someone could act against their own self-interest because of a belief in a broader principle? Maybe everyone's motivation isn't to blindly follow their own micro-self-interest.

[ohCh6zos]

Any time I hear the claim that people are against their best interests it does not quite make sense to me. My own observation leads me to believe that everyone is good at optimizing for their own priorities.

[bombolo]

They think "oh no my lazy coworkers might get a bigger bonus!" rather than realising that their boss is the former lazy coworker.

Basically the american idea that deserving people (aka myself) will magically prevail.

[Zeyka]

But that's the thing, meritocracy isn't a thing, and saying no to more protections (from unions or from pro-worker laws) just doesn't make sense. Granted there was some things I didn't know about how unions worked in the US, which I learned more about in this thread, but the same questions remain for pro worker and worker protection laws, why do Americans oppose them so much.

[danaris]

> meritocracy isn't a thing, and saying no to more protections (from unions or from pro-worker laws) just doesn't make sense

You know that, and I know that, but the right wing has been pushing anti-union, anti-worker, pro-corporate propaganda for several decades now. That propaganda also dovetails with the preexisting Protestant work ethic and labor theory of value that have been pretty solidly in the American consciousness since...well, basically before its founding as a country.

All that combined means that for people who aren't raised in a progressive, pro-union environment, and who don't encounter such an environment until their belief systems are fairly well-established, the default background noise is pretty much "Unions? Why would you need that, you pansy? Real Men are islands unto themselves, work hard, and are paid exactly what they're worth for that work. That's how you know the poor deserve to be poor!"

[yucky]

   > meritocracy isn't a thing

One of many examples I can give to disprove this as I'm sitting here watching Croatia & Morocco in the World Cup, is looking at some of the contracts some of these players get from their clubs. Wide disparity and definitely seems to be based on a meritocracy. Taken further, why are none of these fans in the stands, many of whom who also play for fun not equally compensated or even compensated at all? After all, they can kick a ball too.

So now that we've established that meritocracy is obviously a real thing, we have to ask what evidence you have that a meritocracy wouldn't exist in other fields, like programming for instance.

[bombolo]

> So now that we've established that meritocracy is obviously a real thing

We have? Because… a football match was played? What did it prove exactly?

[yucky]

Uh...no. Better players make more money (due to meritocracy). Do you think the better players should make the same as the worst players?

[ww-picard-do]

You are being very patronizing. Other people in this thread have given reasonable explanations for not liking unions.

You are free to disagree, of course, but being smug about it is rude.

[bombolo]

Like the one "office workers don't need unions because meritocracy"… if you think that's reasonable… I can only think of it as reasonable if you start from made up facts to reach the conclusion.

[ww-picard-do]

I never said that just like no one said "oh no my lazy coworkers might get a bigger bonus!". You seem to insist on mischaracterizing what people say. Why?

[bombolo]

> I try and excel in my role and others are less interested in doing so. I should be promoted faster and compensated higher.

I was referring to this comment.

[thepasswordis]

It won’t benefit them. Maybe you should try to understand their perspective from a place of you being ignorant of the subject and wrong about unions.

[throwaway6734]

But American tech companies would be even less likely to be created in the first place under European labor laws

[pjmlp]

Spotify, SAP, Skype, Unity, Sitecore, OutSystems, Bayer, Pfizer, Nokia, Ericson, Vodafone....

Managed just fine.

[throwaway6734]

Do you think tech companies are more likely to come out of Europe or the US?

[pjmlp]

Moving goal posts, but yeah, Europe lacks a SV with venture capitalists raining money on every crazy idea, with Tony Stark like feudal lords pushing their minions to sleep in office with promises of free drinks and pizza, hoping to capitalize on the startup being sold.

Thankfully.

[bartart]

I am curious, is putting up with the occasional self-obsessed ceo not worth it?

For example Tesla has a market value greater than every European carmaker combined, having gone from approximately 0 annual car deliveries to over a million in just a few years while revolutionizing electric travel. Or with space x developing reusable rockets that have utterly transformed the industry. These companies will contribute to economic dynamism and wealth creation for years and decades.

Macron said of American space companies, “Unfortunately they’re not European, but they took a bet”. Perhaps at a certain level you need people with lots of money who are willing to risk it

[mftrhu]

No. They keep whatever actual wealth they might end up creating - if and when they even manage that - and the only thing that trickles down from them is their ego.

I prefer not being subject to their whims.

[pjmlp]

Not for me, I have better things to do with my life.

[throwaway6734]

Not moving goalposts. Read my original post.

[pjmlp]

Examples were given, we enjoy our unions, thank you very much.

[AS37]

A bunch of those started 150+ years ago, when European unions essentially didn't exist.

[pjmlp]

Ok, lets remove those from my list.

Spotify, SAP, Skype, Unity, Sitecore, OutSystems, Vodafone, ...

[ChuckNorris89]

Even though it was founded in Denmark, Unity is a US HQ company now, and Vodafone is basally a body shop now mostly (what's their latest successful product?).

Plus, naming 6 random European tech companies doesn't prove anything. Every country has tech companies. How many exactly doesn't really matter in this comparison, what matters is revenues and market cap.

Consider that the US tech sector is worth significantly more than the tech sectors of EU + UK + Switzerland + Norway combined. It blows the entire EEA out of the water. To put it simply, the US hosts most of the largest tech companies by market cap and revenues.

If you take the top 50 tech companies in the world by market cap[1], the only European companies on the list are ASML, Booking, SAP, Schneider Electric and Dassault Systemes. 6 out of 50 for Europe, while the US has about 40 out of 50, while also claiming the highest six spots at the top.

Ouch! That's not even a competition. It's why American tech workers get paid so much. Not because they don't get government mandated PTO and sick leave, or can get fired more easily, or don't pay more taxes for unemployment and socialized healthcare, as is the common myth, but because the companies they work for are so obscenely rich compared to European ones and a lot more numerous.

/QED

[1] https://companiesmarketcap.com/tech/largest-tech-companies-b...

[pjmlp]

Well they need the money to make up for being left alone to care for themselves.

[missedthecue]

Why are European wages so low? Why aren't their unions extracting more meaningful pay? Why do the non-unionized US workers make so much more money?