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by Cyph0n 16 days ago
No, that is not a “complex” position at all. On the contrary, it’s a fairly simple position where you take no strong stance but still want to claim the positive aspects from each side.

Are unions universally good? No, because humans are in the loop, and humans can do bad things.

Does that change the fact that the concept of a union is one of the greatest innovations in all of human history? No.

Can unions today help disparate human workers collectively improve their working conditions? Yes, because this is what unions were designed for, and I think is the key outcome the Rockstar folks are betting on.

For a recent example, read up on the Samsung union bargaining for company wide bonuses in the wake of the huge profits made off the surge in demand for memory.

1 comments

The Samsung deal is exactly what I'm talking about. It is not all entirely good. Everyone at Samsung not working in chips got screwed. And those lucky few union members used their power to extract an unfair amount of money from the company. This will cause the company to lean towards other avenues in the future, potentially harming everyone else.

Why are those people getting a huge check? Not because they worked harder. Because AI came along and made their product more valuable.

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/05/27/world/asia/samsung-ai-pro...

> But a smaller union associated with workers in the consumer electronics division — which boycotted the negotiations and whose 15,000 members were excluded from the vote — accused the lead union of neglecting their interests, and decried the deal as “discriminatory.” Under the agreement, workers in the consumer electronics division are expected to get payouts that are a fraction of those of their semiconductor division peers.

And how exactly is this situation worse than the unfair allocation of salaries and bonuses in companies today? Even within the same company, people can get paid more based on the org/division they work in (e.g. core AI teams), or even based on their (team or individual) perceived value to higher ups.

At least with the Samsung union, the decision is being made bottom up vs. top down.

> And those lucky few union members used their power to extract an unfair amount of money from the company.

Why is it an unfair amount, though? Who gets to decide what compensation is fair and what isn't?