The "good time" to discussion unionization would have been about 10 years ago when employees had much more leverage.
But I quite vividly remember any mention of that here on HN back then was responded to with "I'm paid great and can easily change jobs why would I want a union?" (with many engineers only thinking of factory worker unions as a model and forgetting that very highly paid and in demand actors also belong to a union).
You negotiate when you're in a position of strength, not while your value is rapidly falling through your fingers.
With AI and a growing population of ex-corporate workers desperate for work breaking up attempts to unionize would be easier than ever.
Nah, HR, Receptionists, Secretaries etc. and other fluff need to be fired or their division be optimized. Tech and engineering companies need to be lean and focused with less layers.
Similar are situations where employees of a labor union are themselves unionized - under a different union - because they feel ill-paid and ill-treated by the union which employs them.
> About 90% of Uber’s software engineers are using AI in their work, Khosrowshahi said, while about 30% are “power users” of AI tools, completely rethinking the architecture of the company. [1]
Sounds like a bad idea. Adopt the future or get out of the way. This is dock workers all over again. Massive amounts of automation could be had but instead we have dock unions that only serve to increase costs.
But I quite vividly remember any mention of that here on HN back then was responded to with "I'm paid great and can easily change jobs why would I want a union?" (with many engineers only thinking of factory worker unions as a model and forgetting that very highly paid and in demand actors also belong to a union).
You negotiate when you're in a position of strength, not while your value is rapidly falling through your fingers.
With AI and a growing population of ex-corporate workers desperate for work breaking up attempts to unionize would be easier than ever.