[mpyne]

> proper career track for all you staff.

That forces concepts which are nearly orthogonal in these types of companies (duties performed vs. value-added) to be artificially commingled.

While you could theoretically say that you can fix this by inventing enough job positions to be able to give the most-qualified the best wages, what really would end up happening is that you'd have a unique job position for every person (or in other words, exactly what you'd have without the union).

As a practical example, consider placing your union idea in the context of the NBA. "NBA Point Guard: Paid $11MM". But Michael Jordan was worth far more than $11MM to the Bulls, while even in 2014 Jose Calderon is not quite worth that much to the Mavericks.

So what do you do, split point guard up into "MJ-tier Point Guard: $33MM" and "not-quite-average Point Guard: $6.7MM"? Of course not; you negotiate with each player individually.

[walshemj]

That is a straw man jobs in technology are not like professional sports or acting - having said that player unions and SAG/Equity do negotiate minimums so that not all the cash goes to the lucky few.

[corresation]

Piece of unsolicited advice - Stop declaring everything a strawman or propaganda. It does not strengthen your argument.

The situations we are talking about are actually more akin to professional athletes or sought after writers -- employers are actively seeking them out and recruiting them, at escalating wage levels, because they offer potential multiples of value to the company over "just any paper qualified candidate". Compare this to, for instance, auto-assembly or steel-working, where the difference in company value between resources is largely a wash.

We are specifically talking about the tech corridor right now. My home base is in the Toronto area but I seldom deal with Toronto area clients because the environment is dismal here: The pay is terrible, the product is terrible, and the mentality is of the "replaceable cog" variety, every project failing just enough until it's replaced by an innovative product made elsewhere. A union here might make sense because the situation already is pretty miserable. The same is true of the United Kingdom, to respond to another commentator. My comments about union specifically relate to the hyper-competitive, hyper-innovative and excellence seeking, silicon valley area.