[nrook]

When workers don't negotiate together, it's trivial for employers to reset compensation expectations like this.

If you work for a company like Amazon, and you don't want to be laid off, the only thing you can do to move the needle is join a union. (You can also be a top performer, but it's not clear how big of a difference that makes; top performers with big salaries make big targets for layoffs as well.)

[screye]

At the end of the day, a union is merely one of the ropes that workers can tug at to maintain leverage.

Doctors don't use unions. They instead artificially limit supply by erecting massive barriers to enter their workforce. This keeps them in demand. Software contrasts this with an open-door policy. On top of that, all white-collar labor jobs barring software involve serious licensing requirements as further gatekeeping.

Lawyers maintain leverage by making sure the it's Lawyers all the way up. No MBAs, people-persons or bean-counters controlling their profession. This means that the workers control important intangibles like customer relationships & hidden information ...both of which make you irreplaceable. Software instead pushes technical people from the stable-and-monetarily-rewarding positions by making the management-track entirely distinct from the working professional (IC). At the same time we obsess over building tools and systems that make everyone replaceable and automate ourselves away.

Immigration is another form of leverage. Tech being majority immigrants, means that they lose all leverage in what they can ask for when the ultimate guillotine is held over their heads. Do tech workers vote as a block on matters of immigration to improve their leverage ? No.

Work culture & pressure to conform can also be a type of leverage. If someone likes being well groomed, then professions that expect you to spend those 30 minutes getting perfectly ready are not cumbersome, it is leisure. Afterwork drinking ensures a good social life, but also ensures that everyone leaves work together at 5. It excludes, yes. But if you fit into that clique, then the conforming is effortless and the leverage comes for free. Consulting & finance are some examples of such businesses.

Tech isn't the only broken business. Restaurants & game design are broken for similar reasons.

Unions have their place, but a nation-wide tech worker union is a logistical impossibility. All too often, other levers are over-looked. Tech has made its bed : "learn to code. be a college drop out. get PMs to do the boring work and let them be promoted faster. I will let a glorified secretary be my manager. we will never put my community's 'legal' immigration priorities over those of the greater social issues I 'facilitating illegal immigration' my tribe asks me to commit to....and so on. No we have to lie in it.

[siva7]

> Doctors don't use unions. They instead artificially limit supply by erecting massive barriers to enter their workforce.

That's not true. Not sure about US but in many european countries doctors are organised in strong unions. There is otherwise no artificial supply limit initiated by doctors or hospitals.

[aauchter]

In the US, while the AMA is technically a trade group and lobbying organization, it's goals/methods are similar to those of a union. It's often referred to as the Doctor's Union.

[slt2021]

One can argue that on the day when USA becomes actively hostile to immigration -> it will start losing tech dominance.

Continued immigration in the USA is vital to maintain business as usual, for one basic reason: It is too damn expensive for US Gov to give great education for everyone. Starting from daycare to college - if you sum up cost of raising a kid in private daycares/preK/schools/colleges it will be > $1M.

Account for probability 1/100 of a kid being gifted/talented in certain area like IT, and you are looking at spending $100M to get one gifted specialist. Just one!

It is much cheaper to cherry pick and import foreign talent and give them education at top tier places like Ivy leage/MIT/etc.

[screye]

To be clear, I am not against the H1B. I am on an H1B myself.

I am opposed to the vagueness around everything having to do with legal immigration. If you want to import the top talent of the world permanently, then make it easy for them to get a Green Card and regain leverage. Let them start startups, let them spend longer durations between jobs so they can figure out that one brilliant idea.

Lots of people exploit the H1b brute-forcing every single grey-area loophole to get here. Many aren't even well-educated. On the other hand, the MIT/Ivy League straight shooters follow the rules and find themselves locked out of any future in this country. Other 1st world nations have fewer immigrants, but the process is transparent, cleaner and has well defined boundaries.

Yes, import the top talent of the world. But the H1b does more to kneecap them than enable them.

[tekknik]

> raising a kid in private daycares/preK/schools/colleges

The gov doesn’t pay for private education, they provide infrastructure for a free, public education instead. Some cities give vouchers if parents choose public over private but it does not pay the entire tuition.

The actual cost to educate a kid using public infrastructure is average $15.5k/year/student, which brings the total cost per pupil to $186k. Given there’s about 50 million school age children in the US, that puts total cost at $775 billion a year, or a total of $9.3 trillion.

We can easily afford it.

[myko]

> will never put my community's 'legal' immigration priorities over those of the greater social issues I 'facilitating illegal immigration' my tribe asks me to commit to

I wasn't really sure what this is getting at. H1Bs?

[screye]

The H1b is the blunt all-purpose-tool of the era, but having more specific policy objectives is more productive.

The murkiness of the current H1b allows anxiety which companies can exploit.

A dual-intent, 5-50 yr green card wait-times, lottery system with underdefined qualification criteria has to be seen as a terribly drafted visa. Replacing with it clearer messaging and more predictable rules (predictable doesn't mean looser) would return a lot of leverage to tech workers. The weird rules of the H1B mean that every I know has violated some under-enforced parts of their H1B at some point. Every once in a while it gets enforced, and someone's life gets uprooted. The 2 month deportation timeline is joke, when it takes 3 months to catch up on leetcode.

The visa doesn't even have to be more permissible. Just a more sensible & clear.

[tekknik]

The lottery is a control on the influx of immigrants, which countries use to keep immigration controllable.

Reading over the rules (it’s not clear what you mean by “rules”) they all seem clear to me. What examples do you have of unclear or nonsensical rules?

[screye]

> keep immigration controllable

And a lottery is the best way to do it ? Points based systems, merit based systems or even seniority based systems make a lot more sense. How is complete and utter randomness (lottery) the best answer ?

> unclear or nonsensical rules

    You have to find a new job with 2 months or leave the country

Tech recruiters take 1 month to get back for screening, and the full loop can take a good 2 months start to finish. Add months of leetcode prep and weeks of negotiation, and it practically makes it impossible to get your own job back if you ever have to switch jobs.

    Spousal work visas can take 6 years from start date in ideal circumstances.

Even the best companies take 1 year to start applying for your perm. The application process to enter the waiting queue takes 3 years. After entering the queue (i140), you have to wait 1 year to apply for spousal work and 1 more year to get that approval. This whole time you cannot switch companies or cities or even move to another track eg: SWE -> Manager/PM/DS, because you will need to redo multiple steps in the process.

    Greencard queues are now 25-100 years long for certain countries.

Indians, Chinese and Mexicans are effectively banned from ever becoming American citizens legally. All while the US does zero diligence when it comes to asylum seekers and illegal immigration at the border. Remember, the goal is to keep immigration controllable !

    Going back to school in the US is technically illegal.

An H1b is a dual intent (immigration possible). The student visa (F1) is a non-immigrant visa. I know cases where students were denied F1 because they decided to go back for a PhD after being on an H1B.

    Can't have any secondary income.

Want to moonlight as a musician ? Nope. Want to sell an app? Nope. Want to start a startup ? Nope. Hilariously, people do all 3 through illegal means which the US Govt. enforces just randomly enough that the rule followers feel eternally suffocated, and those who choose to accept that breaking-rules is inevitable, live in constant moderate-fear of tomorrow being the day the US govt. will raid your house.

I'd go into all the irritating bits of the H1b if I had hours, but the H1b can effectively be summarized with this video - https://youtu.be/mKc32jQIY0w?t=88

[tekknik]

> And a lottery is the best way to do it ? Points based systems, merit based systems or even seniority based systems make a lot more sense. How is complete and utter randomness (lottery) the best answer ?

Because you’re building a system in which you have preference over others. While we need high tech workers, it’s unfair to only invite them first.

> You have to find a new job with 2 months or leave the country

You are here on a work visa. While I do think it should be a bit longer, rationally if you got a visa to work for a specific company then your visa should be invalidate at the end of that employment. The visa was granted because the company said they needed a particular skill set and they couldn’t find it in the US. This doesn’t mean once that job has ended that this skill set is still required in the US.

> Spousal work visas can take 6 years from start date in ideal circumstances.

This does sound odd, but is in line with how slow the US gov is in my experience. I remember for my wife's citizenship we were looking at around 6 years for them to simply process the paperwork and perform an interview.

> Greencard queues are now 25-100 years long for certain countries.

This one is very understandable. Given green card applications have been skyrocketing since the 2000s, and only ~1mil are granted per year. Then you have people like me who have priority, who as a citizen request their wives green cards (and ultimately citizenship), which takes another slot away.

Securing the US border is something I'd also like to see done, but that's a highly politicized discussion that's off topic here.

> Going back to school in the US is technically illegal.

Well as a student you are not providing much / any value to the US, at least not yet. I can see why they keep these separate, as on an F1 you are here using our schools and our educators, our research, and could potentially take that back home. Meaning we see no value. An H1B does not give you the permission to use any of that, and again is only because a company could not find the talent within the US. An H1B can be more viewed as the US exploiting you for gain, whereas an F1 can be more viewed as you exploiting the US for gain.

> Can't have any secondary income.

An H1B was granted, again, because that person had a skill that was not able to be found within the US. Many people think H1B visas are granted to anybody and everybody that's smart that wants to live here. If you're a webdev from another country, and we have webdevs sitting on the bench, you should not get an H1B visa and should have any existing one revoked. It is a US first policy.

[ahzhou]

> Doctors don't use unions. They instead artificially limit supply by erecting massive barriers to enter their workforce. This keeps them in demand. Software contrasts this with an open-door policy. On top of that, all white-collar labor jobs barring software involve serious licensing requirements as further gatekeeping. Some doctors do, however, collectively negotiate with hospital administration. The payment / profit sharing schemes can be very different depending on the hospital and what a particular group wanted.

You can get totally socialized profits at one place and totally performance-based at another.

[whiplash451]

The comparison with doctors is irrelevant because there is a fixed amount of conditions to fix (and hence a fixed demand for doctors) hence the capping, while there is no such thing for software engineers.

If there was a sudden influx of 5000 doctors, we’d end up with 5000 doctors seating idle.

I doubt the same would happen with 5000 engineers.

[myroon5]

There are large countries with more than twice as many doctors per capita as America:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_and_dependen...

Hundreds of thousands more doctors could work in America without any sitting idle

[vineyardmike]

> If there was a sudden influx of 5000 doctors, we’d end up with 5000 doctors seating idle.

I think we'd actually see an uptick in the amount of americas getting treated for their conditions. And a decrease in the number of doctors that work over 60hrs a week. But maybe not, there are a lot of Americans that need help.

[slt2021]

unions are inefficient, because they promote mediocrity (regression to the mean) in terms of talent - and union bosses wield abnormal influence.

[bhouston]

> unions are inefficient, because they promote mediocrity (regression to the mean) in terms of talent - and union bosses wield abnormal influence

They do stifle the ability for ultra-rich CEOs from becoming even more ultra rich at the expense of their workers.

[slt2021]

how exactly? looking at american unions I dont see a single effective at "stifling CEOs from becoming rich".

american automakers produce one of the low quality cars, and heavy lobbying from lawmakers is the only thing that keeps them afloat.

[Loughla]

I really want to break your argument down, so you can maybe see how it doesn't really argue in any sort of way for what you think it does, and doesn't really make sense. I'm not trying to be hateful, but I really think you might benefit from seeing this from an outside perspective.

Argument: I do not see a single [union] effective at "Stifling CEO's from becoming rich".

1st Proof: American Automakers produce low quality cars.

2nd Proof: The only thing keeping them in business is lobbying from American Lawmakers.

Your proof has nothing to do with your argument. At all. They're not related. They're also very subjective and impossible to actually prove. They're not proof; they're opinion.

A more effective argument would be:

Proof: The largest Union employers are x, y, z, and their CEO's make $x, $y, $z.

[slt2021]

you are right, but the argument itself is flawed in the first place.

CEOs are not the rich class, they are elite but they are employees. Plenty of CEOs get fired for doing bad job, or get softly pushed out.

Argument that labor union keep CEOs from getting rich is absurd because CEOs are part of labor force.

it is shareholders who get rich by squeezing profit, so I dont get why bring up CEOs. A CEO maybe get paid $10 mln a year. But shareholders get dividends/buybacks in order of hundreds of mils/blns

My argument was that labor unions lead to piss poor quality due to mediocrity (example: US automakers).

the japanese automakers have factories in the US and produce much higher quality cars without labor unions. How come???

[dragonwriter]

> CEOs are not the rich class, they are elite but they are employees.

While this is sometimes true, the executive status class overlaps significantly with the haut bourgeois economic class (and most of the rest of the executive status class is in the petit bourgeois economic class; there are probably working class “CEOs” somewhere, but they are very much not the norm), and very typically they are specifically significant holders of capital in the firm of which they are CEOs. CEOS are not just employees, and their relationship to either the firms they control or the economy more generally are not very much like those of regular employees.

[AntoPaz]

Interestingly many engineers in the German car industry (often seen as high quality), e.g. at Audi or BMW and other large non-automotive enterprises like Siemens work under IG Metall union contracts and the companies do rather well.

[xtracto]

Mexico has some strong unions, one of them is the SINDICATO NACIONAL DE TRABAJADORES DE LA INDUSTRIA. AUTOMOTRIZ (auto maker/manufactring union). Still, there are lots of cars manufactured in Mexico which are of quite high quality[1]:

    Audi Q5
    BMW Serie 3
    BMW Serie 2 coupé
    Honda HR-V
    Hyundai Accent
    Infiniti QX50
    Infiniti QX55
    Jeep Compass
    KIA Rio
    KIA Forte
    Mazda CX-30
    Mazda2
    Mazda3
    Mercedes-Benz GLB
    Nissan Kicks
    Nissan Versa
    Nissan NP300
    Nissan Sentra
    Nissan March
    Nissan NV 200 Cargo
    Toyota Tacoma
    VW Tiguan
    VW Taos
    VW Jetta

There is indeed a stigma that American cars (Ford, GM, Chevrolet) are trash, but I think that has more to do with a company policy, more than with Unions and manufacturing employees.

[1] https://www.motorpasion.com.mx/industria/autos-produccion-me...

[slt2021]

with all due respect to Mexican workers - in Mexico most OEMs do mostly assembly of ready made parts.

Engines, tranny, suspension parts are manufactured in US/Europe/Japan and simply shipped to Mexico for assembly due to NAFTA favorable trade agreement and cheaper labor for simple assembly

[bhouston]

> how exactly? looking at american unions I dont see a single effective at "stifling CEOs from becoming rich".

You removed a major conditional.

I do not care if the CEOs become rich, the dream of getting rich via business success is why capitalism works, what I care about is if they do it by underpaying their employees because of a power differential.

[nerdponx]

They also stifle the aspirational libertarian Ayn Rand wealth fantasy that American culture is built on.

[monknomo]

Does the screen actors guild promote mediocrity? Does the national basket ball players association promote mediocrity?

There are a lot of ways to do a union, you don't have to set one up exactly like a detroit auto factory

[slt2021]

Two examples you mentioned heavily gatekeep profession and limit supply of labor to the market.

Do you want Tech labor union to gatekeep profession?

IT is already merit based and is good because there is no gatekeeping, just spin up your own website and start making money if you are that good.

As an IT professional I simply dont understand why I need labor union to dictate rules to me, when I can negotiate on behalf of myself perfectly fine.

If company decodes to lay me off - well it is company’s loss and fault - I will simply go work elsewhere or freelance, while company will struggle retaining skilled engineers

[gamblor956]

That is a gross misunderstanding of how the SAG and NBA Players Union work.

They do not gatekeep. They provide contractual minimum pay and benefits for their members, and that's it. Members are free to negotiate for higher pay, and many do. (In the NBA, the cap is imposed by the owners, not the union. There is no cap in Hollywood.)

Hollywood productions and NBA teams are free to negotiate with and hire non-members, with the caveat that such individuals may become members of the appropriate union upon the signing of the contract and that contract must then adhere to the union minimums.

In both cases, union membership is automatic upon certain events. For SAG, this means appearing in one or more SAG-governed productions (depending on the level of the role, i.e., lead vs supporting vs background). For NBA players, this means getting signed to an NBA team.

[monknomo]

you also don't have to set your union up exactly like SAG, either. My point is that the members of a union get to choose whether they are propping up mediocrity, gatekeeping or something else.

Maybe interviewing or freelancing lead generation is a hassle - your local IUP (International Union of Programmers) could help sling jobs your way like a pipefitter union.

Maybe you want something different? I bet we could find a model of some union doing that; the world is big

[slt2021]

We live in times of reddit/blind/social media - IT workers can already pseudo-unionize ehile staying under the radar.

We dont need formal union, but informal one - through information dissemination over Internet and absolutely voluntary participation and knowledge sharing - this is fine for me.

This is how we get leetcode practice, interview prep, job hopping, quiet quitting, overemployed, and other “best practices” to get edge over employers

[hot_gril]

They don't get to choose. The only way to get above-market pay is to keep potential employees out who would otherwise be offering better price:performance. That's the goal of a union, but they'll represent it in different ways, sometimes less obvious than others.

[monknomo]

A union is made out of its members, a union's goals generally match what the majority of dues paying members want. There is no platonic union waiting in the wings. There are just groups of employees that could all work together to get things the mutually want.

[unethical_ban]

One additional benefit of unions is coordinating strikes for the purposes of change, which is why we have many of the benefits taken for granted today as well as showing the importance of undervalued roles in society. And protesting retirement age hikes in France.

[nikau]

Step 1 seems to use any branding other than union (association or guild doesn't have the negative connotations)

[pera]

Well I for one thank unions for the weekends and 40-hour work week (in addition to many other great things we now give for granted).

[nerdponx]

Mediocrity for all is better than exceptional outcomes for me and shit for everyone else.

[slt2021]

do you like communism, where everyone gets equal outcome? (true equity)

Like in Cuba, Russia/Soviet Union, DPRK, or Campuchia during Pol Pot's time?

[nerdponx]

I knew someone was going to say this. There are a lot of things wrong with this line of thinking, but the simplest rebuttal is that there is a lot of room between "workers should organize for greater market power to prevent abuse by employers" and "we have abolished the State and everyone gets exactly the same outcome in all situations, and also we have executed half the population". To deny that is to argue in bad faith and/or deep ignorance.

[slt2021]

I am from Soviet Union (which had strong state) and witnessed labor unions - who did nothing of value absolutely. so no, not buying this argument at all.

"workers should organize for greater market power to prevent abuse by employers" - tech engineers dont need it - because if you dont like it - you can simply leave to another employer. market forces will find equilibrium, labor union is only an obstacle in reaching market equilibrium.

it is telling that people who escaped communist countries never want to see any sign of communism in their life. Because communism doesnt work, never worked, and will never work

[PuppyTailWags]

I think Hollywood is doing great. I also think Football players are doing pretty well for themselves. Maybe tech can work like that instead?

[nerdponx]

> tech engineers dont need it - because if you dont like it you can simply leave to another employer.

This is my whole point. This is only true for some, and it's not distributed according to merit. People get mistreated all the time at both tech and non-tech companies, even in career fields that are traditionally high-paying and high-mobility. The only way to stop that in a way that also promotes a relatively free labor market is for workers to self-organize, and for the government to legally protect their right to do so.

I understand your concerns about communism. Nobody in their right mind is proposing that we bring communism to the USA. The fortunate workers who have market power uniting to support for their fellows who lack market power is not itself communism, nor does it lead to communism. American labor unions are not communism, and never will be.

The USA once developed a strong tradition and culture of organized labor that brought us out of the brutality of the 19th century Industrial Revolution. There were plenty of smaller socialist and even anarchist groups at the time, but in general most people were not that radical, and no group anything resembling the Bolsheviks ever gained popular support in the USA.

Ironically however, communism indirectly enabled big business to crush that tradition of organized labor, because the Red Scare of the early 20th century allowed them to label pro-labor policy as socialist or communist and therefore anti-American and anti-freedom.

If anything, the kinds of labor unions that people join the USA are a uniquely capitalist institution, being dedicated specifically to the purpose of balancing asymmetric market power.

[jltsiren]

The USSR did not have real labor unions. It had organizations that pretended to be unions while being part of the state apparatus. Actual unions would have been the worst kind of enemy for the Communist Party: independent organizations that hold the same ideological position as the party while representing the interests of labor against it. The party could not tolerate such challeges to its legitimacy.

In a market economy, successful unions are powerful interest groups. They tend to have more influence on political parties than the other way around. Much like big businesses, but on a different subset of politicians.

[gamblor956]

it is telling that people who escaped communist countries never want to see any sign of communism in their life. Because communism doesnt work, never worked, and will never work

Oddly enough, I don't see too many former communists movie to Somalia or Ethiopia or Afghanistan. Former communists seem to favor the EU and the US, where we have heavily socialized large aspects of our public life (health care, etc.)

[lbrito]

Great argument.

Do you like capitalism, where everyone gets unequal outcome? Like in Liberia, South Sudan or Chad?

[throw93]

You are wrong, communism was never about equality of outcome, it was more about equality of opportunity. This is part of red scare propaganda. Also US had a lot to do with Cuba and Pol Pot if you study history.

[dh2022]

You obviously did not live under communist propaganda. Communism was 100% about the equality of outcome - everyone was equal and was supposed to get his/her equal share. I lived 15 years in Romania under communism, 8 of these years under daily propaganda at school so I know this first hand.

[throw93]

The question was whether communism meant equal outcome and the answer is No. I’m not gonna defend Romania, Soviet Russia or any other old regimes on how they implemented communism.

The context here is about unions. Democracy at work is important and unions are the best way to achieve it in a capitalist nation.

[slt2021]

How come people who never lived under commie regime claim to know more about communism than the people who actually lived under commie regimes?

Did you obtain you theoretical knowledge of what actual communism is - purely from Lenin's books? Have you tried to reconcile communism theory to communism in practice?

[defrost]

As I recall Lenin didn't think actual communism was obtainable without a long period of enforced socialism .. so the regime under Lenin was never actual communism (at least according to Lenin) and not especially socialist other than in name by Lenin.

In any case it segued into Stalinism .. and all of these were oppressive authoritarian top down rule.

People that think of post revolution Russia as a good example of communism are the kind of people that think of the USofA as a good example of capitalism.

[throw93]

"people who never lived under commie regime" - I get to hear this so often. We live in under a capitalist regime where 1% of the people own the rest of the population. Basic human needs like healthcare and shelter are paywalled by big corporations. Do you sincerely think wasting your life to make those 1% even more richer is somehow better than communism?

Btw, I didn't even claim that communism is the best way forward, you just assumed it. I would rather advocate for socialism which has better chances to succeed in US. Still, the moment we wave off 10k from student loans people start shouting "communism". Those same people got millions of dollars in PPP loans, still fired their employees and saw nothing wrong with it.

The main context here was about unions and people still cry "communism" whenever they hear the word union. I have seen immense benefits of unions from past generation and feel sad that they are not as prevalent today. "United we bargain, divided we beg" is the whole point of unions and still people choose to beg because "big bad communism". This propaganda has been enforced on us so much by govt that we forget what's good for us and that makes me sad.

[gbrindisi]

In what way is this communism?

[slt2021]

everybody gets same results regardless of input, merit, or effort

[alexandre_m]

Everybody at the bottom of the state pyramid. The elites at the top get everything.

[barneygale]

So like rich kids with generational wealth under capitalism? Sign me up!

[camdat]

And how is that communism?

[cmh89]

Can you explain how unions promote mediocrity? I'm in a union and I get promotions frequently

[nerdponx]

In general, it's a tired decades-old anti-labor talking point.

However there are many cases where it's hard to fire underperfoming unionized employees. And there's always the possibility of the union playing a kind of long game with management where they are willing to trade away the possibility of rewarding standout individuals in order to preserve the baseline.

[cmh89]

I've never seen a union contract that didn't have a clear path to firing someone. I've worked in a union and in HR labor relations. My experience is that 'hard to fire' stories usually boil down managers not understanding the union contract, not enforcing the union contract until its too late, or wanting to enforce the union contract differently based on the employee.

[acdha]

Ditto. 100% of the times I’ve seen that happen, the problem was created by bad management and often perpetuated because then they don’t want to have to explain why it wasn’t dealt with earlier.

[red-iron-pine]

wait until you hear about how inefficient executives are killer.

there is a bell-curve for leadership, and it's pretty damn clear after centuries of mercantilism and capitalism that they're not smarter than you are. it's a cartel, and the bellcurve applies to them just as much as it applies to your SWE I's straight out of college.

[slt2021]

executives exist regardless of union exists or not, execs are hired by shareholders and employees have no vote into this

[nerdponx]

Why shouldn't employees also be shareholders with a collectively nontrivial voting stake?

[yunohn]

Sadly, even companies like Google that are famous for doling out equity to employees, chose to segregate their stock classes and give employees non-voting shares.

[slt2021]

if they have $$$money$$$$ they are welcome to purchase on open market, as many shares as they would like.

problem is most retail investors never even vote for annual shareholder meetings and never bother to read proxy statements and shareholders' meeting agenda.

[nerdponx]

I said collectively. Workers don't get paid enough individually to buy relevant ownership shares (or even any shares). This is literally the point of collective action.

[aaomidi]

Source on this claim?

[toast0]

> If you work for a company like Amazon, and you don't want to be laid off, the only thing you can do to move the needle is join a union.

If you don't like how one party can make changes to your job without your meaningful input, you should throw in so two parties can make changes to your job without your meaningful input? Also, you should be sure to pay some part of your wages to the second party, even if you don't like what they're up to.

[pnt12]

That's a very one sided opinion: more complexity is necessarily bad, no matter anything else.

I'm not particularly pr-union but I'd argue for another dimension: to the company, you're an employee, but to the union you're a customer.

If too many people dislike an union, it can dissolve. If too many people dislike a company, things aren't as simple, because they depend on their wages (and in the USA: insurance) to live.

[toast0]

> That's a very one sided opinion: more complexity is necessarily bad, no matter anything else.

I think that's a fair summary of my worldview. I don't like unnecessary complexity in most of my life, and adding an intermediary to an important relationship needs to get over a high hurdle for me to consider it's necessary.

Maybe if there's an example of software development under a union shop that you can point at and say this particular Union improved working conditions for people like me in this particular way, I can say hmmm, maybe that's worth the added complexity. But most of what I've seen from unions is that they add a significant chance of not being able to work because of disagreements between the union and the employer or solidarity in disagreements between other unions and other employers; as well as most often salary rules that are based on time at the job rather than quality of work. Quality of work is hard to measure, but I've been generally happy with the results of that measurement.

Maybe the model of talent unions rather than blue-collar unions is a more appropriate model, but I'm not sure how that works. Do I need to give union dues and hire an agent, too?

[harimau777]

What's your alternative?

[toast0]

In the tech industry? Do your best to find a company you can stand working for. If you can't, find a way to work for yourself.

You may not be able to work on the same problems when you work for yourself, or at a company you can stand working for. But there are lots of things you can do in tech as a company of one. This is in contrast to a lot of industries; you can't meaningfully mine for minerals, or build cars or even car parts as a company of one; although there certainly are artisanal car builders, and small auto repair shops.

[esalman]

I hardly think FAANG workers make good union members. One is about maximizing personal net worth, other is about making sacrifices for common good.