[cmrdporcupine]

Worker-coops would be great, but at a minimum I feel like we need, as a profession, a dues-funded professional association which can do things like:

Analyze and fight bad IP assignment, non-compete agreements, etc.

Hire lawyers to write alternative agreements that employees can suggest as a "standard" alternatives during negotiations.

Collect salary data for the profession across all regions and open it in a transparent un-biased way for members to use during negotiation.

Provide legal resources for people involved in mass layoffs. Analyze the severance packages and give advice.

Help connect people in our profession with good employer / position reviews. E.g. glassdoor without the bullshit, and for professional association members only.

And, yeah, staying on topic with this thread: analyze for age etc. discrimination and provide resources to deal with this.

(I would stop short of using the "u" word, and stop short of full collective bargaining and strike powers only because those are far more controversial.)

I lack the ability to organize such a thing, but would gladly pay a monthly fee into such an organization.

[avidphantasm]

But without the ability to withhold labor en masse, workers don’t have much leverage. I’m afraid some form of union with collective bargaining and the ability to coordinate strikes are unavoidable to achieve the laudable goals you lay out. Otherwise you are at the mercy of the good graces of employers, which employees may occasionally benefit from. However, when the rubber meets the road, the coercive law of competition will … coerce employers into favoring their own interests.

[cmrdporcupine]

This is all true except for the fact that our profession has the advantage of scarcity combined with high-demand, and therefore higher intrinsic bargaining power. At least for now.

[WalterBright]

If you are right, everybody would be at minimum wage.