[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?

[bonsai_spool]

> In a union, you become the employer, so to speak. You have to put your time into ensuring that things don't run wild.

Not really! You can hire for this role—your union can hire an attorney, an accountant, an HR professional, whatever you collectively decide with your peers.

However, without a union, you have no way to reliably access information that would reveal whether things are 'running wild'.

[9rx]

> Not really! You can hire for this role—your union can hire an attorney, an accountant, an HR professional

Your solution to avoid becoming an employer is to... employ people? Oh boy.

[bonsai_spool]

> Your solution to avoid becoming an employer is to... employ people? Oh boy.

Being in a union is not being an employer, anymore than calling a plumber is becoming a contractor.

And, even were that true, are you happy to accept your paycheck until every week until the severance pink slip lands on your desk? That is the alternative confronting knowledge workers today.