[orochimaaru]

How would unionizing help stop a company from setting up an offshore subsidiary? It may prevent layoffs in the short term - but even with big3 auto manufacturers it hasn’t prevented a move in manufacturing to Mexico and Canada.

I think the solution here has to come from the federal government to explicitly increase sw development employment in the US. Just like we find ourselves in a bad place with scaling chip manufacturing, we will find ourselves hamstrung in sw dev.

I doubt unions can help here - except maybe pressure the government (and that too works mostly on democrats if at all).

[tharkun__]

Canada (close to Detroit) has always been part of the US auto manufacturing scene. In fact you could take what you write and replace the US with Canada and you have what people (and unions) in Canada are complaining about. Not sure what to replace Canada with in your text though. Maybe Mexico a second time?

[linuxftw]

Easy: The union can negotiate they don't have to train or work with anyone overseas (or non-union members generally).

[PeterisP]

The union can force an all-or-nothing decision, but some companies can and will easily choose "nothing" and keep only the overseas developers, not the local unionized ones.

[pleasantpeasant]

I think there would be too many programmers who would be proud to take the jobs of other programmers trying to unionize.

There are a lot of anti-unionists and Libertarian minded programmers in the US.

[linuxftw]

Libertarians aren't anti-union, they're anti-government enforced unions.

[sanp]

Unions are meaningless with collective bargaining enforced by the government.

[giantg2]

Then they just hire consultants for overseas training.

[acdha]

That would certainly make the union workers more attractive given the average consultant’s experience, teaching ability, and understanding of the business.