7 ms·

Working in a union would be terrible. Can you imagine having to deal with seniority rules?

ryanworl 9y ago
A union is whatever the members want it to be. Just because traditional unions operate a certain way does not mean a union for tech workers has to operate the same way.
- umanwizard 9y ago
  How would a union help me at all?
  - eli 9y ago
    Is there anything you want from your employer that they don't already give you? If a lot of your fellow employees agree, it would be more powerful for you all to ask as a collective group rather than you to ask as a single employee.
  - AndrewDucker 9y ago
    Legal support if your company does something unpleasant to you. Pushing for better conditions/pay for you as part of improving them for everyone where you work.
  - ryanworl 9y ago
    I don't know if a union would help you specifically because I don't know who you are or who you work for. But in general, a union could negotiate the development practices you and your co-workers want. As an example, if you and your co-workers wanted one week per quarter devoted solely to paying back technical debt, your union could demand it. There is no reason why a union has to do anything in particular at all if you don't want it to. I'm not trying to tell you to join a union or not, just saying that a union as a legal structure does not require any of the tactics or goals as 20th century manufacturing or public sector unions.
    - stale2002 9y ago
      "There is no reason why a union has to do anything in particular at all if you don't want it to." Yes there it. If a union takes over the workforce of your company, now you have to follow the union rules. If unions were just opt in, them yes you'd be right. But unions are NOT opt in for many states. One you are a union shop, you are screwed if you disagree with the union.
      - Frondo 9y ago
        A union is also a democratically-run organization, so if you disagree with it, you have some recourse. A workplace is not democratically run, so if you disagree with it, you are also screwed, only this time you have no recourse.
        stale2002 9y ago
        I'd rather only get screwed by 1 group than have the possibility of being screwed by 2 groups. Voting and democracy doesn't help anything. I am just 1 vote. I'd rather have things negotiated between me, and only me and the other party.
        s73ver_ 9y ago
        So between you, and the entirety of the company.
        closeparen 9y ago
        You can leave a workplace you don't like for one of its competitors. If your profession has unionized and you don't like the union rules, you need to find another profession.
      - s73ver_ 9y ago
        "Yes there it. If a union takes over the workforce of your company, now you have to follow the union rules." Yes. Which they, as the union, would decide on.
  - tptacek 9y ago
    One way to look at Hacker News is as a part-time ranked inventory of labor grievances for tech workers. Open offices. Draconian IP clauses. Opportunities for developers to become founders. Work-life balance. Remote work. People get hung up on this because most developers feel like their profession is well-compensated. And, they are. But so are doctors and lawyers, who also belong to professional associations. There's much more to bargain for than just wages.
    - TheCowboy 9y ago
      Adding another couple that are popular: better hiring and interviewing practices that don't over-burden applicants. Eliminating the number of rounds, better transparency about the overall hiring process, avoiding tests that are completely irrelevant to job performance. Better transparency regarding salary offerings, and a framework for individual negotiation that doesn't disadvantage certain groups. There are plenty of things a professional organization could excel at that don't require full-blown unionization.
    - euroclydon 9y ago
      Doctors are miserable from the micromanagement and metrics these days.
  - s73ver_ 9y ago
    Legal backing if, say, you worked for Equifax, and refused to certify that their systems were secure, and they wanted to terminate you to shut you up.
- ryandvm 9y ago
  All unions, nay all power structures, naturally evolve to serve the interests of the _current_ members. Because of this, seniority-based benefits and insulating bad apples from termination are traits that almost always show up in every union through convergent evolution.
  - tptacek 9y ago
    Your comment creates the impression that without unions, developers wouldn't have to deal with "power structures". But to a pretty good first approximation every technology firm in the industry is a "power structure" --- a rigid and overt one, at that --- run by financiers and owners. So it's hard to see what rank-and-file professionals would have to lose from exercising their own market power, at least in your analysis.
    - danielvf 9y ago
      And add a union to the current situation, and now you have two power structures over you, not one.
      - tptacek 9y ago
        Yes, and you'll be a constituent of one of them, which is the argument for organizing.
        apsec112 9y ago
        Being a constituent doesn't necessarily mean anything. Eg., Eric Garner was a constituent of New York City. NYC is democratically governed, and he had an equal right to vote. It didn't help him very much.
        detcader 9y ago
        Being a constituent of X (in this context) means means X is expected to advocate for you. Thus Eric Garner wasn't a constituent of NYC, he was a constituent of his representatives, who may or may not have done a good job advocating for the safety of those interviewed or detained by the police. I don't see how constituency doesn't help here, because now we can hold reps responsible for advocating for better protection, whereas if no representative power structures existed in the US, what happened to Garner would happen all the time and we would still belong to Great Britain
- chimeracoder 9y ago
  > Just because traditional unions operate a certain way does not mean a union for tech workers has to operate the same way. Unions have all converged on operating the same way because the NLRA is very rigid, and over the decades, they've found a stable way of operating. Other operating structures have been tried over the last century, and all have failed except the current one. If anybody believes that a tech union under the NLRA would break this trend, especially while presumably still being affiliated with other traditional unions, then the burden would be on them to explain why the forces that drive other unions would somehow not apply to tech.
  - s73ver_ 9y ago
    The Screen Actor's Guild doesn't work that way.
    - chimeracoder 9y ago
      > The Screen Actor's Guild doesn't work that way. SAG-AFTRA has been specially exempted from key provisions in labor law.
      - s73ver_ 9y ago
        You're gonna need to provide evidence.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
kerkeslager 9y ago
No. But I can imagine a union without seniority rules.
s73ver_ 9y ago
A lot of places already have these, but informally. Also, why on earth do you think we'd have to? If no one wants them, why would we have them?

A union is whatever the members want it to be. Just because traditional unions operate a certain way does not mean a union for tech workers has to operate the same way.

umanwizard 9y ago
How would a union help me at all?
- eli 9y ago
  Is there anything you want from your employer that they don't already give you? If a lot of your fellow employees agree, it would be more powerful for you all to ask as a collective group rather than you to ask as a single employee.
- AndrewDucker 9y ago
  Legal support if your company does something unpleasant to you. Pushing for better conditions/pay for you as part of improving them for everyone where you work.
- ryanworl 9y ago
  I don't know if a union would help you specifically because I don't know who you are or who you work for. But in general, a union could negotiate the development practices you and your co-workers want. As an example, if you and your co-workers wanted one week per quarter devoted solely to paying back technical debt, your union could demand it. There is no reason why a union has to do anything in particular at all if you don't want it to. I'm not trying to tell you to join a union or not, just saying that a union as a legal structure does not require any of the tactics or goals as 20th century manufacturing or public sector unions.
  - stale2002 9y ago
    "There is no reason why a union has to do anything in particular at all if you don't want it to." Yes there it. If a union takes over the workforce of your company, now you have to follow the union rules. If unions were just opt in, them yes you'd be right. But unions are NOT opt in for many states. One you are a union shop, you are screwed if you disagree with the union.
    - Frondo 9y ago
      A union is also a democratically-run organization, so if you disagree with it, you have some recourse. A workplace is not democratically run, so if you disagree with it, you are also screwed, only this time you have no recourse.
      - stale2002 9y ago
        I'd rather only get screwed by 1 group than have the possibility of being screwed by 2 groups. Voting and democracy doesn't help anything. I am just 1 vote. I'd rather have things negotiated between me, and only me and the other party.
        s73ver_ 9y ago
        So between you, and the entirety of the company.
      - closeparen 9y ago
        You can leave a workplace you don't like for one of its competitors. If your profession has unionized and you don't like the union rules, you need to find another profession.
    - s73ver_ 9y ago
      "Yes there it. If a union takes over the workforce of your company, now you have to follow the union rules." Yes. Which they, as the union, would decide on.
- tptacek 9y ago
  One way to look at Hacker News is as a part-time ranked inventory of labor grievances for tech workers. Open offices. Draconian IP clauses. Opportunities for developers to become founders. Work-life balance. Remote work. People get hung up on this because most developers feel like their profession is well-compensated. And, they are. But so are doctors and lawyers, who also belong to professional associations. There's much more to bargain for than just wages.
  - TheCowboy 9y ago
    Adding another couple that are popular: better hiring and interviewing practices that don't over-burden applicants. Eliminating the number of rounds, better transparency about the overall hiring process, avoiding tests that are completely irrelevant to job performance. Better transparency regarding salary offerings, and a framework for individual negotiation that doesn't disadvantage certain groups. There are plenty of things a professional organization could excel at that don't require full-blown unionization.
  - euroclydon 9y ago
    Doctors are miserable from the micromanagement and metrics these days.
- s73ver_ 9y ago
  Legal backing if, say, you worked for Equifax, and refused to certify that their systems were secure, and they wanted to terminate you to shut you up.
ryandvm 9y ago
All unions, nay all power structures, naturally evolve to serve the interests of the _current_ members. Because of this, seniority-based benefits and insulating bad apples from termination are traits that almost always show up in every union through convergent evolution.
- tptacek 9y ago
  Your comment creates the impression that without unions, developers wouldn't have to deal with "power structures". But to a pretty good first approximation every technology firm in the industry is a "power structure" --- a rigid and overt one, at that --- run by financiers and owners. So it's hard to see what rank-and-file professionals would have to lose from exercising their own market power, at least in your analysis.
  - danielvf 9y ago
    And add a union to the current situation, and now you have two power structures over you, not one.
    - tptacek 9y ago
      Yes, and you'll be a constituent of one of them, which is the argument for organizing.
      - apsec112 9y ago
        Being a constituent doesn't necessarily mean anything. Eg., Eric Garner was a constituent of New York City. NYC is democratically governed, and he had an equal right to vote. It didn't help him very much.
        detcader 9y ago
        Being a constituent of X (in this context) means means X is expected to advocate for you. Thus Eric Garner wasn't a constituent of NYC, he was a constituent of his representatives, who may or may not have done a good job advocating for the safety of those interviewed or detained by the police. I don't see how constituency doesn't help here, because now we can hold reps responsible for advocating for better protection, whereas if no representative power structures existed in the US, what happened to Garner would happen all the time and we would still belong to Great Britain
chimeracoder 9y ago
> Just because traditional unions operate a certain way does not mean a union for tech workers has to operate the same way. Unions have all converged on operating the same way because the NLRA is very rigid, and over the decades, they've found a stable way of operating. Other operating structures have been tried over the last century, and all have failed except the current one. If anybody believes that a tech union under the NLRA would break this trend, especially while presumably still being affiliated with other traditional unions, then the burden would be on them to explain why the forces that drive other unions would somehow not apply to tech.
- s73ver_ 9y ago
  The Screen Actor's Guild doesn't work that way.
  - chimeracoder 9y ago
    > The Screen Actor's Guild doesn't work that way. SAG-AFTRA has been specially exempted from key provisions in labor law.
    - s73ver_ 9y ago
      You're gonna need to provide evidence.

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

kerkeslager 9y ago

No. But I can imagine a union without seniority rules.

s73ver_ 9y ago

A lot of places already have these, but informally. Also, why on earth do you think we'd have to? If no one wants them, why would we have them?