Ask HN: Would You Unionize for WFH?

[CaffeineLD50]

WFH has proven to be both popular and workable but no union effort has made it their one issue.

Unionizing involves a high likelihood of being (illegally) fired for exercising your legal right.

Would you risk being fired for the right to use collective bargaining for one benefit alone: the ability to WFH one/some/most/all days of the week?

I, for one, would unionize for it. What say ye, you HN readers?

Yay or nay?

[lbhdc]

No, I was a member of, and worked with a number of unions in heavy industry. After that experience I would never join or work with another union.

[CaffeineLD50]

Unions can be quite useless. No strike clauses can make them basically a paid extension of management.

I'm not suggesting that this would be an existing union.

It might be a wholly new single issue union.

But I hear ya. I've been in useless unions

[dragonwriter]

> No strike clauses can make them basically a paid extension of management.

No strike clauses (almost invariably paired with no lockout clauses, and invariably also tied to the term of the broader contract) do not make unions basically a paid extension of management.

[CaffeineLD50]

I beg to differ

[DigitalSea]

Yay.

WFH autonomy isn’t trivial, it’s about reclaiming control of your time, environment, and productivity. If collective action focuses narrowly yet powerfully on securing that benefit, the leverage is clear. Companies resisting WFH often rely on isolated dissent; collective solidarity flips that script. Risky? Sure. But meaningful rights rarely arrive quietly. Worth the fight.

[CaffeineLD50]

It's a game changer no doubt but unionizing is powerful AND risky.

The benefit must be compelling enough and/or the would be unionizers have to be risk tolerant (i.e. willing to be illegally fired ).

[dragonwriter]

> WFH has proven to be both popular and workable but no union effort has made it their one issue.

Well, yeah, real unions tend to have more than one issue, because real workplaces tend to have more than one working condition, pay, etc., issue of concern. But it certainly has been a major issue for some unions, e.g., SEIU Local 1000, the largest union covering California state workers, which bargained for WFH terms in the current labor contract and has filed a unfair labor practice charge over the Governor's recent attempt to unilaterally change WFH conditions with a 4-day-per-week RTO order.

[s1artibartfast]

>Well, yeah, real unions tend to have more than one issue.

They also have other issues. My friends municipal power and water union actually fought management to remove WFH. It is composed of line workers and computer workers, with line workers being the majority. The line workers essentially thought it was unfair that computer/office workers could WFH while their work was in person, and bargained remove it from company policy.

IMO, a lot of problems arise from the way US union law is structured to favor entire workplaces or workforces. This leads to contested unionization votes to create the union, and once you have them, it creates monopoly effects and lots of internal politics.

[baggy_trough]

I would run screaming in the other direction.

[Shawnecy]

Yes and for other reasons as well.

[CaffeineLD50]

No. The other reasons have failed.

Those other reasons will only muddy the waters.

Its WFH or go home...

Once unionized everything is on the table but without a union it's just words.

[uncomplexity_]

fucking nay man

you have to learn to negotiate in 1 on 1s instead of taking your bad laundry in the public.

it ends up looking like group think and in that setup your value is dragged down to the average of everyone in it.

[solardev]

I don't think an industry wide tech union would work. There are way too many people who think of themselves as unicorns (and some may very well be) and don't care about what happens to the rest of us. No one would hire from the union if the other 50% or more of devs are ununionized and would happily take your job. Especially in this economy, when nobody can get hired to begin with.

We are approaching the era when many of us are beginning to train our own AI replacements. If there's a union at all, it probably ought to focus on job security as a first consideration. WFH is moot when nobody would hire you to begin with. A union can't magically change the industry economics.

WFH only happened because labor had so much power during the pandemic. Capital clawed it all back as soon as it could. If you want more labor power and specifically WFH, another pandemic is likely to be more effective than trying to loosely unionize a tiny subset of tech workers.

You can also unionize a single company or team/division etc., which might have a better chance. But don't expect the NLRB under Trump to fight for you the way it did under Democrats. Right now you have the entirety of government, Wall Street, the tech industry, and Elon Musk personally against WFH. It's an uphill fight.

[CaffeineLD50]

You are correct down to the last point.

That's not what this poll is about.

Would you do it doesn't need to think about all the possible ways it can fail.

Would you drive a car can be analyzed as a self financing life threatening suicidal act .

Most of us choose to drive for the benefit (s) anyway

[solardev]

I don't think the two are separate concerns, though. Part of the "unionize or not" question is weighing the costs and benefits, and whether the union is likely to succeed is a huge part of that question.

In a unionization attempt for a single department or company, I might have an idea of how likely it is my coworkers would support this union, and thereby be able to weigh the likely benefits vs the risks if it were to fail.

In something like SAG-AFTRA, union actors are the default, and the union has agreements that encompass many companies. Joining that union is a no-brainer since it's pretty much all gain and no risk. It'd be weird not to join.

In an industry like video games, though, I don't think cross-company unions are common, and they tend to be limited to specific departments of specific companies. If I were in such a department, sure, I'd join.

But tech-wide? Nothing like that exists. If you tried to start one, you'd have to convince one or more major tech companies to sign on (and they won't), and there would still be millions of ununionized devs. Thus, becoming a member of that union would get you no benefits but mark you as less hirable. You would then, as an individual, bear all the stigma of being unionized without any of the benefits that usually come with it. Why would anyone do that, especially early on? It becomes a chicken-and-egg problem.

So I DO think that's what this poll is about... unless this hypothetical union has a pathway to power and some clear plan about how it's going to sign up enough members and companies together at the negotiation table, it is not really any different than signing a petition. Probably worse, in that a petition rarely has major risk, where as a failed unionization effort could (legally or not) cost you a job or promotion, etc.

[CaffeineLD50]

Dozens of news articles report remote workers are quitting instead of RTO and or would quit if forced to do so.

The "practical merits" of unionizing don't matter if you're gonna quit anyway: go for it. It'll probably lose but fuck it, you're gonna quit anyway.

You've got nothing but the chains of the office to lose.

[paulcole]

No. I don’t particularly enjoy remote work personally.

[CaffeineLD50]

Fair enough. I find it to be lonely and without adaptive management it can be alienating from your peers.

I'm more of a hybrid flexible few days of WFH kinda guy myself