Developer/IT Unions

[t_sawyer]

The AI craze, layoffs, and current job market should be a wake-up call for all of us. Companies HATE how much they pay us and how much leverage we’ve had all these years.

I believe the AI craze will slow and companies will realize they still need us. When we have leverage again, we should really form unions. Im not optimistic that we will but we should.

[Datahenge]

I've thought a lot about this over the years, but especially in the past 12 months.

The solution greatly depends on where you live.

I live in the United States. The problem here is that, legally, we only have "enterprise bargaining" — the union represents workers at a specific employer. So there could be a Tech Union that can represent Google workers, Amazon workers, or Microsoft workers. That's all covered by the National Labor Relations Act.

But there cannot exist a universal union to protect tech workers in general. That's "sectoral bargaining" (where one agreement covers an entire industry). There are approximately 5 European nations where that exists strongly for IT/technology.

USA tech folks could certainly form some kind of organization that tries to be influential. But it wouldn't have any legal rights. It couldn't negotiate with employers, couldn't implement strikes, represent employees at court, that sort of thing.

Just one more reason why I'm frequently jealous of European workers.