[bonsai_spool]

Essentially, we need more unions - I'm not sure we have to invent new names for these things. These won't be your parents' unions, or the union boogeyman you may have seen on TV—the union can do exactly what you wish it to do.

I've been (unintentionally) part of two union drives in my own life and have seen friends in an unrelated field participate in a third. They make perfect sense in moments like our current one, where owners can hire dozens of attorneys to jeopardize your job while you of course are limited to whatever legal representation you've been saving up for.

[Hupriene]

My only experience with unions was as a low level employee while I was in high school. It consisted of certain employees trying to drum up willingness to unionize through a combination of unrealistic promises and threats of violence. The company I worked for at the time was in trouble and went out of business before the unionization effort came to a vote. I don't know how representative my experience was, but it definitely soured me on unions for a long time.

These days I definitely believe that something needs to take up the role of fighting for the rights of labor, but I remain skeptical that unions, at least as they exist in the US, are the right tool for the job.

[saghm]

> These days I definitely believe that something needs to take up the role of fighting for the rights of labor, but I remain skeptical that unions, at least as they exist in the US, are the right tool for the job.

What would you say are the highest salaried professions in the US outside of management/executive roles that would obviously not be a part of unions? I think most Americans would probably list athletes and actors close to the top (if not literally the first two), both of which famously have powerful unions.

The highest paid MLB player in the last year before the union in 1965 was $105,000, which after inflation maps to around $1,110,066.67 in 2026 USD, but the minimum salary for MLB players for the 2026 season is $780,000, and the highest individual salary is $61,875,000. If you think that the union isn't demonstrably an effective tool for having achieved huge increases in salaries for players across the board at both the highest and lowest skill levels, I'd argue the burden of proof is on you, because you'd be arguing against the obvious interpretation of the history in the decades following the establishment of the union.

At absolute best, I feel like you could argue that unions are a mixed bag and some of them do more harm than good, but it's not clear why that wouldn't be an equally compelling argument against pretty much every other type of organization in our economy. There are plenty of corporations that have inflicted absolutely massive amounts of harm to society (many at levels I'd argue no union has ever come anywhere close to), but I've yet to meet anyone who's expressed skepticism at the concept of unions to have similar opinions about the concept of corporations. It's hard not to feel like people just give disproportionate weight to anecdotes about unions than they do for other economic entities because of how effectively they've been painted as the boogeyman by anti-labor propaganda.

[kortilla]

> If you think that the union isn't demonstrably an effective tool for having achieved huge increases in salaries for players across the board at both the highest and lowest skill levels, I'd argue the burden of proof is on you, because you'd be arguing against the obvious interpretation of the history in the decades following the establishment of the union.

The burden is on anyone to make a claim in either direction because you don’t have a control. How do you know the salaries wouldn’t have increased just due to baseball popularity and demand for good players?

[bonsai_spool]

The salaries for top players would have increased, sure! But there’s no reason to think the minimums would have, and an obvious supporting point is that there have been several strikes that occurred during the contract negotiations

Also, we forget the price fixing scandal in big tech. Programmers should probably all be making over 1M+ (thorough there probably would be fewer jobs).

[saghm]

> How do you know the salaries wouldn’t have increased just due to baseball popularity and demand for good players?

For starters, baseball is not nearly as popular today as it has been in the past, but salaries have not decreased. But more fundamentally, we do have a demonstrative example of great outcomes for players with the union, whereas we don't have a counterfactual of what would play out. Since you're the one arguing that a different choice would have been better (or the same), it stands to reason that you should have to provide evidence, because in the absence of either side providing a compelling argument, the only data we have is "things sure worked out well for the players after they had a union".

[duped]

> both of which famously have powerful unions.

It depends. The NFLPA is famously powerless. Domonique Foxworth (former NFLPA President) has long argued it should decertify and reorganize as a trade association because it doesn't work like a traditional labor union.

[saghm]

I'll concede that my knowledge of the NFL is much more limited and I'm heavily relying on my knowledge of the MLB. That being said, it's hard not to read that as another data point of someone who was in charge of a union of many mult-millionaires who still thinks that some form of collective organization is more effective than individually negotiating.

[modo_mario]

In Belgium unions exist across industries except for the railway and I think army unions. So I being a programmer can be in the same union as a street sweep. There's also mutliple that compete with eachother (most of which with political alignments tho they tend to coopeerate and organise togheter in many scenarios) and fees are very low. They have additional functions too though which are more debated.

[esikich]

So, the company was in trouble and the adults understood that. They probably wanted to fight to make sure they didn't lose their 401ks or pension, or be able to hold onto some insurance so the c suite didn't gut the company and leave everyone high and dry. Sounds like you just generally didn't understand the situation, being a kid.

[Hupriene]

To be clear, those threats of violence were against me and my co-workers if we didn't vote to unionize.

[esikich]

Ok, well that is different.

[asdfasgasdgasdg]

> the union can do exactly what you wish it to do.

There is no such thing. A problem with a union is that everyone's going the same place, and you're not driving. Maybe that place is better than where you could get to on your own, or maybe not. But one thing that is definitely not true is that your union is going to do exactly what you want.

[bonsai_spool]

> There is no such thing.

There really is! I've been in three unions, every place I worked. The first and third one existed beforehand, while I helped start the second.

A union is a group of people—and like any group, your influence is what you make it to be.

[kortilla]

You were in charge of all of the union decisions in all 3? That’s good for you but not representative nor possible for everyone joining a union.

[bonsai_spool]

Not in charge, I didn’t say that. But I voted in all, while I did have a bigger role in the second one

[asdfasgasdgasdg]

Did the union do exactly what you wished it to do in all cases? I.e. your perspective carried every single vote? That is the claim I was disputing. For the vast majority of union workers, this will not be the case. Even if it was true for you, it's not true for most.

[bonsai_spool]

Well the things I voted for passed because we did a lot of community-building before votes.

The better question is whether, when management does something, is that thing always in my interest. Obviously that is not the case. The union helps when management's actions are counter to that of the majority of workers.

[9rx]

We need to invent new names for these things to disconnect them from the boogeymans.

For example, when we change "union" to "party" (as in political party) even those who claim to hate unions latch onto it as if it was the greatest thing ever conceived, despite being the exact same thing. Marketing matters.

[duped]

> the union boogeyman you may have seen on TV

Around me the union boogeymen are the police and teachers unions. Ultimately the issue is a professional political class decoupled from reality that extort local government.

However there are also the unions for artists (think actors, television writers, theater, etc) which do a very good job stabilizing pay and standards for safety without interfering with the flexibility of businesses to hire who they want or labor to work where they want to. Within reason.

[saghm]

I'll never understand why so many tech workers are so strongly against the idea of unions. I've yet to encounter a criticism that doesn't essentially stem from criticism of blue-collar unions, and regardless of whether I agree with those criticisms or not, almost none of them seem to be universally true of unions. People seem to be worried about either a small minority of vocal outliers driving the policy or collectivism of the masses somehow drowning out the desires of the elite few, but they never seem to address the obvious counterexamples in higher-paid work; the $780,000 minimum salary for MLB players doesn't seem to have stopped Shohei Ohtani from getting a contract making almost 90 times more than that per year, and Adam Sandler doesn't seem like he's struggling with his $48 million payout last year despite the union-negotiated guarantees for anyone getting a speaking role on screen existing for decades.

(I'n not usually on the "downvoting for disagreement is bad" train, but when the major point of my comment is that there never seems to be a strong counterargument to the line of thinking here, it's hard not to find it a bit ironic when someone doesn't care to elaborate on why they don't like what I said)

[9rx]

> I'll never understand why so many tech workers are so strongly against the idea of unions.

Tech attracts a lot of "undesirables", for want of a better word, and there is no great way to separate them from the quality people you'd actually want to have a union with. The MLB union works exceptionally well because the business naturally screens out anyone who isn't in the upper echelons of baseball society. Try advocating for a baseball union that includes the MLB down to every small town B-league team and you'd get the same pushback.

The trouble is that there is no MLB of tech. Anyone random yahoo who no more than the smallest amount of motivation to work in tech is pretty much guaranteed a place in it (at least that was the case up until recently). Even at companies that like to boast about only hiring the best end up with lots of the dregs all the same. The need for tech workers is larger than the number of quality people. When there is a social division then the desire to associate goes out the window.

[saghm]

I'm not sure I find that argument super compelling, since the union campaigns for software engineers (or more specifically game developers, since that seems to be where most of the recent examples are) do not seem to start out by organizing at the national level but usually at individual employers or even a specific office location. If we were drowning in software jobs the way you describe, why would anyone tolerate having such awful coworkers at their office instead of finding somewhere better? I don't think I've ever had a significant number of coworkers I'd describe in terms like "undesirables", "random yahoo", or "dregs", so I can't really relate to the idea that I find my colleagues so loathsome that I would be reluctant to associate with them; after all, that's what I'm already doing!

[9rx]

> If we were drowning in software jobs the way you describe, why would anyone tolerate having such awful coworkers at their office instead of finding somewhere better?

I am not sure I follow your thinking here. We would be (or at least would have been until recently; the market is much less clear now) drowning in software jobs if businesses were only willing to hire the "MLB superstars" of the tech world. We have never drowned in software jobs because businesses have been willing to hire warm bodies for where the "MLB superstars" weren't available. To be clear, I said "The need for tech workers is larger than the number of quality people", not "The need for tech workers is larger than the number of people".

> I would be reluctant to associate with them; after all, that's what I'm already doing!

You may work together, but would you want to start a business with them? That is what a union ultimately is, after all: A group of people who have come together to want to sell labor under an organization instead of individually.

The thing is that working together when you're not the stakeholder is quite easy because the stakeholder has to deal with the shit. Things get real when it is only you and your fellow brethren. That's not to say that it wouldn't work in your particular situation. There are going to be pockets where the stars have aligned. But no doubt you have already formed a union with your coworkers if you have the necessary mutual trust. I mean, why wouldn't you in such a case?

(If you are game but your coworkers are the ones who are reluctant, remember it is you who is the "yahoo")

[saghm]

> You may work together, but would you want to start a business with them? That is what a union ultimately is, after all: A group of people who have come together to want to sell labor under an organization instead of individually.

My livelihood already depends on their work, though, because they far outnumber me! (I've never worked at a company with two or fewer total people working for it). I'd argue that if you've signed a lease, mortgaged a house, or any number of any extremely mundane things that rely on "the people I work with won't literally cause me to be unable to receive income in the short- to medium-term future because of how recklessly incompetent they are", you're clearly pretty comfortable with the idea as well.

The question then becomes whether you think that the only reason they manage to not cause everything to crash and burn is because they have far less relative power to the people who sign the paychecks or if you think that maybe moving the needle a bit in the other direction wouldn't be catastrophic. Personally, my experience is that people in positions with more power are not obviously so much more competent than the ones below them that having my coworkers band together with me to be able to agree on what a reasonable set of things we should try to collectively strive for is a scary idea.

> The thing is that working together when you're not the stakeholder is quite easy because the stakeholder has to deal with the shit. Things get real when it is only you and your fellow brethren.

I'm incredulous that you think that the people who are currently the stakeholders care more about your circumstances if you're an employee than the ones who literally are in the same ones as you. If you seriously think "management might willingly do things that are worse for their current set of employees in order to make a bit more money" isn't something that employees should ever be concerned about, I have to wonder how much time you've actually spent as an employee outside of management.

(It's also pretty telling that you talk about "dealing with the shit" being something only in management; I guess the saying "shit rolls downhill" is easy to dismiss for people who have traditionally not been far from the peak)

> (If you are game but your coworkers are the ones who are reluctant, remember it is you who is the "yahoo")

If I accepted the premise that the waters hadn't be sufficiently poisoned by constant bombardment of messages like yours over the past century, then maybe this would be a less ridiculous axiom.

[9rx]

> The question then becomes whether you think that the only reason they manage to not cause everything to crash and burn is because they have far less relative power to the people who sign the paychecks

The question is how much do you trust your employer to weather storms. If a business is going to crash and burn if the people you work with move on to new roles at other companies then you're in a bad place trying to bet your life on that business. However, if you trust that the business stakeholders will keep things moving even as people come and go then the people you work with don't really matter.

Going into business with the people you work with is quite different. If they decide to back out of being business partners, everything falls on you and you alone. You have to trust yourself to not screw everything up when times get hard. And, well, if you had that trust in yourself and desire to deal with it you'd already be the business owner yourself. One becomes an employee exactly because they don't want to have to deal with all of those headaches. You need to have a great deal of trust when you are the owner that you don't need if someone else is the owner.

> I'm incredulous that you think that the people who are currently the stakeholders care more about your circumstances

They couldn't care less about your circumstances. They care about themselves, though, and if they let things run wild their business will fail. That would not be in their interest. In a union, you become the employer, so to speak. You have to put your time into ensuring that things don't run wild.

If you are surrounded by good people, like you and MLB players are, then you don't have to worry about things going wild so much. Good people can be reasonably trusted. But that is a privileged situation. Not everyone is nearly as fortunate as you are.

> If I accepted the premise that the waters hadn't be sufficiently poisoned by constant bombardment of messages like yours over the past century

I get that you have no idea what I'm talking about, as evidenced by the non-sequiturs you keep replying with, but how does a pro-union message poison the waters? Are you purposefully posting this nonsense in an effort to diminish unions?

[zdragnar]

You're comparing unions that cover short-term contracts (film production, MLB) with "blue-collar unions" that represent hourly or salaried long-term employment contracts.

Is it any surprise that people who work as salaried employees would presume a union at their workplace would be structured and behave more like a "blue collar" union than not?

[bonsai_spool]

> Is it any surprise that people who work as salaried employees would presume a union at their workplace would be structured and behave more like a "blue collar" union than not?

Yes, it is a surprise! Because we're talking about very educated technical workers.

It seems like top tech programmers are closer to pro athletes than factory floor workers from the perspective of their value to owners.

[saghm]

> It seems like top tech programmers are closer to pro athletes than factory floor workers from the perspective of their value to owners.

To me, the question is whether that will continue to remain the case in the absence of unions. It doesn't seem at all implausible to me that 50 years from now, tech programming might much more closely resemble factory work if there's no mechanism for pushing back against it.

[saghm]

MLB players routinely have contracts for multiple season, so I'm not sure what you're talking about here. How many salaried engineers in the US do you think have multi-year contracts compared to "at-will" employment?

Also, I'd argue that establishing a union when a profession has relatively high social standing and pay if it seems likely that things will get worse is exactly the mechanism for fighting back against that decline. It's a lot harder to get management to agree to your terms if you've already lost most of your influence.

[Jensson]

> the union can do exactly what you wish it to do.

ICE can also do "exactly what you wish it to do", so why do people complain about it so much and want it gone when it does what people want?

The answer is that even democratic institutions easily get corrupted and hard to deal with. US unions seem to be very prone to this for some reason, both union leaders and corporate lobbyists wants the unions to be corrupt so I don't see that changing either. Many people would gladly take a salary penalty if it lets them avoid yet another corrupt bureaucracy above them.

[bonsai_spool]

> ICE can also do "exactly what you wish it to do"

What?

Unless you are Congress, you can't create ICE at your workplace. You can, however, create a union.

[lstodd]

If stuff you want aligns with what ICE already does, then it does exactly what you wish it to do, no?

What is a union? It is another social structure, exactly same as corps are.

[7jjjjjjj]

A kingdom and a republic are also both structures, but I think there are some salient differences.

[hackthemack]

Agreed. The best time to form a union was 20 years ago (Especially because Tech Workers had leverage because they were in demand). The second best time to form a union is today.

[fragmede]

Call it an association or guild or something other than a union. Lawyers and doctor have unions but they don't call it that.

[shagie]

Those are setting the minimum qualifications for a licensed profession... but not the pay or working conditions for those professionals.

[bonsai_spool]

> Those are setting the minimum qualifications for a licensed profession...

They're not even doing that! In the US, these qualifications are matters of state law.

[bonsai_spool]

> Lawyers and doctor

Doctors definitely have unions!

You're thinking of the AMA which is a lobbying organization, totally different thing.

[SilverElfin]

I wouldn’t mind unions except they get involved in all sorts of political battles that I would get opted into. I would rather they focus on the barebones of negotiation for compensation instead of taking it over like it’s their personal nonprofit.

[nick__m]

It really depends on the union, mine concentrate on less hours for a salary that follow inflation, parental leaves and a gold plated drug insurance. I work 32.5 hours per week in the summer, have 24 days off, 2 personal days and 12 statutory holidays; that's 36 paid days off !

[wyager]

Every time I've ever seen a tech worker's union, it's always some sort of political experiment rather than legitimately advocating for the interests of the workers it nominally aims to represent. E.g. the Google AWU-CWA union just did a bunch of political stunt stuff, no salary negotiation or anything useful to the modal Google worker.

[shagie]

Partly because they couldn't because they didn't organize in a way that let them because... well... one could speculate.

> Alphabet Workers Union (AWU), also informally referred to as the Google Union, is an American trade union of workers employed at Alphabet Inc., Google's parent company, with a membership of over 800, in a company with 130,000 employees, not including temps, contractors, and vendors in the United States. It was announced on January 4, 2021, with an initial membership of over 400, after over a year of secret organizing, and the union includes all types of workers at Alphabet, including full-time, temporary, vendors and contractors of all job types.

It's trying to cover too many different groups with competing interests (FTE, temp, vendor, and contractor).

Hypothetical negotiations that would favor FTEs may disfavor vendor or contractor contracts. That inherent conflict of interest in the negotiations would mean they can't negotiate for any of them on those matters. Also, the less than 1% of the people belonging to the union would mean the union can't represent them in collective salary negotiations either.

Of the represented group (say if they only organized for FTE tech workers), they would then have needed 50% + 1 of the employees in that classification to vote to have a union. It is possible - https://kickstarterunited.org for example (and yes, they are having trouble - but they are negotiating on working conditions and pay).

---

Various "we should have a union" strings typically have been people wishing for one that is cross industry that they don't have to do anything. While industry wide union organization can exist (Kickstarter United is OPEIU - https://www.opeiu.org ) it is the local part that people forget... Kickstarter United is OPEIU local 153.

If people want a union, they need to organize at their company and get that 50% + 1 vote there.

When it is easier to switch jobs than it is to spend the several years to organize and negotiate a contract, the power of a union is diminished.

[fragmede]

Less open office and more conference rooms.

[vineyardmike]

Everything is political. Politics have been heavily intertwined with work forever. The history of unions is intertwined with literal government violence.

Negotiations for compensation is like the least life-impacting thing a union can do. Tech workers are well paid and capable of negotiating.

Things like work hours, quality of life, paid leaves, etc are important and can’t really be negotiated by the individual. Every labor victory from yesterday is the status quo but every future one is politics.

[tptacek]

OK, but that doesn't answer the concern of the person you're responding to. They're just not going to join. It's a common objection!

[vineyardmike]

Yes I suppose it doesn’t address the concern directly, and yes it’s common. I guess my point is that avoiding “politics” is a bad concern.

Why is compensation not included in “politics” when it’s very clearly a political topic? Because when people say “avoid politics” they usually mean it as a derogatory term for “all the disagreements that I dont personally care about” - and conveniently exclude the issues they care about from “politics”. Unions don’t work unless they get enough members, and getting enough support sometimes means supporting the “political issues” of other members. It’s a team, and everyone has to contribute… but of course everyone will be better off in the long run

[tptacek]

I understand what you're saying and where you're coming from, but you can't persuasively respond to an objection by saying the person is wrong to have the objection. This is a real problem in modern tech organizing: you don't all share the same politics. People are just going to not sign up.

It's very much like the problem product marketers have when they come up with a grand vision for how their product is supposed to work and then assume customers are going to be super into it. They are not! They just want a thing that solves their problems! They don't want or need to help you achieve your vision. You have to make your vision work for them, persuasively.

I'm not saying the (broad) project is doomed --- though I think you have an uphill climb in this market --- but I do think you're going to have to address this problem to achieve critical mass.

[murderfs]

> Because when people say “avoid politics” they usually mean it as a derogatory term for “all the disagreements that I dont personally care about” - and conveniently exclude the issues they care about from “politics”.

People use "politics" as shorthand for "things that are divisive issues that split your purported represented class". You're not going to get anyone to join your union if all you do is advocate for things that the vast majority of employees at best don't care about, or worse, disagree with.

[bluefirebrand]

The cool thing about a union is that you actually can have a say in what political battles they fight

You just can't do that if you only want to be a passive member

[SilverElfin]

I don’t want to waste time to fight battles within the union. This is exactly what I’m talking about. If it’s just a political nonprofit with forced donations, I’d rather see them banned than join one.

[bonsai_spool]

> I’d rather see them banned than join one.

The only group that will benefit from this position is that of the owners.

[TimorousBestie]

GP must be one of those temporarily not-owning owners.

[modo_mario]

Not really my thing here since i'm belgian and we have multiple cross industry unions competeting. However from what i hear about american unions it starts to sounds like an argument for acting and arguing against a union if it leans against your politics and you don't have enough influence whilst also not doing enough towards your wage/work conditions.

[swaits]

That’s not what this is. Nor do we need more of them.

[bonsai_spool]

Arguably, we do - at least the 8k people being fired at Meta and the 7k being told to drop everything and work on AI likely did need one.