[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.