[kortilla]

To be clear, the question was explicitly asking what makes these port workers special to demand this. If it’s just, “we want more money and have the collective power to hold the port hostage”, that’s fine. It’s just not spelled out anywhere what the justification is

[dylan604]

That's the beauty of being in a union. You don't have to be special to have the job. Having the job is the thing that is special. Scabs are always possible for any job. Even the NFL had scabs.

[toomuchtodo]

This is a foreign concept to tech workers, who have been fed a religion that they are special. Surprise, you’re closer to a blue collar worker than a billionaire. Belief systems are rigid and die hard.

You too can organize for better pay and working arrangements collectively. Or, you can live and die by the at will arrangement and how lucky you are wrt comp. But don’t be sour when other people make better choices that empower themselves while you don’t.

[kortilla]

There is zero evidence that forming a tech union would be successful and result in more pay compared to non-union workers. The first thing to go when people unionize is RSU based comp, which makes up 50+% of income for high income tech workers.

Forming a union is an antagonistic action against a corporation. You’re literally forming a cartel controlling one of their critical supplies (labor). There better be significant upside to burn that goodwill because all comp changes going forward are going to be shitty tooth and nail negotiations for salary bumps and RSUs will be kept for management only.

People at the big tech companies are looking to make life altering money and that comes through RSU accumulation and appreciation. That means being aligned with shareholders, which is the opposite of a union. The only place you might have success drumming up support for unions are mid to low tier tech companies where people make a low 6 figure salary and next to no equity.

[kortilla]

Nobody disputed that. The entire point was that if this is just a strike without any particular grievances, the public won’t support it much.

[dylan604]

"To be clear, the question was explicitly asking what makes these port workers special to demand this."

And I answered. The employees are not special in and of themselves. They can be replaced. That's what a scab is. Who cares what the public supports. They are not involved in this. What's the public going to do to show their lack of support?

People supported the strikes from the Writer's Guild and the Actor's Guild. They didn't want AI automation to replace their jobs. This union doesn't want a similar bit of automation to replace theirs.

To me, unions are no longer the thing they were when they were first created. From a non-union person looking in (and based on my one personal experience of going through a union vote), the people in favor of unionizing were unwilling to adapt to new technologies and feared losing their jobs or doing something they didn't want. To them, the union was a way to just say no to change because some jobs will be at stake. Seems like that's what's going on here too.

[johnny22]

any group of workers should be able to do this.

[kortilla]

Sure, but they don’t deserve automatic support from the public for doing it. Unions striking and successfully driving up the cost of their labor can very easily be bad for consumers.

[johnny22]

workers are consumers too.