[oneeyedpigeon]

"here in the UK for example the Unions have a bad reputation for been difficult to work with and older people remember their role in the late 70's"

Of course, that depends on your political persuasion: a lot of us have sympathy for the union workers who were brutally crushed by Thatcher's government in the 80's. Speaking as a programmer who has been a union member in a previous job, I would be supportive of a programmer's union.

[noir_lord]

Without rehashing the old arguments Thatcher's destruction of the Unions would have been far harder to achieve had they not ground the entire economy to a halt frequently in the late 70's, I'm neither left or right wing in my politics (as much as possible since those labels are crude and inaccurate at best) but the blame is as much the Union's as Thatcher's in this instance.

I personally think that Union's on the whole are probably a good thing (something has to exist to balance the power of capital) but that the UK model was fundamentally broken (I actually like the German model.