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Getting involved in only narrowly technical issues won't do. What if your boss asks you to build a database to help the government track Muslims/illegal immigr

Getting involved in only narrowly technical issues won't do. What if your boss asks you to build a database to help the government track Muslims/illegal immigrants etc and you're uncomfortable with that? If you supported the FSF, that might improve your chances of being able to build the database using free software. Whereas if you unionized, that might improve your chances of being able to refuse to build the database in the first place. And what if you're uncomfortable with much of the revenue you generate for your company going to the idle shareholders rather than your fellow workers? Unionizing can help there too. Imagine if software companies were owned by workers themselves. That could be a reality if more of us unionized.

Bartweiss 9y ago
The implication being that the existing organizations don't worry about these things? The EFF's focus is 'technical' only in the sense that it's restricted to topics which involve some kind of electronics. They've been campaigning against digital surveillance and mass profiling since before most politicians have been aware the issue mattered. (The FSF isn't especially relevant here, but neither is the Sierra Club; you simply picked an issue they don't work on.) It's true that the EFF won't save your job if you refuse to build a tracking database, but frankly I'm a bit confused what you think unions would do here. Unionization has a great track record on labor rights, but that looks more like "only spending 40 hours per week building the database". Union status isn't usually relevant to employees outright refusing assignments because of their conscience. And the EFFs focus here makes sense; as long as someone is willing to build the database (say, the sort of people who write malware for the government), opposing the plan overall is more important than opposing some specific contracting deal for it. The move to revenue is a non sequitur which kind of looks like your real reason for focusing on unions, but I'm still not exactly sold. Software companies already distribute stock more than other companies, and have salaries as an unusually high portion of overall costs. Meanwhile, "worker owned" and "unionized" are fundamentally different things, and I see no evidence that one leads to the other. Unionization usually happens as a response to not owning the company, and having no way to become owners. Software companies are vastly more likely to be some form of worker-owned (e.g. startup, co-op, stock-granting employer) than most business, which has historically been one reason they don't unionize.
tomjen3 9y ago
Yeah unionizing can help: instead of making problems solvable with technology, in which compared to the average person we all excel, we can replace them with social interactions, where we will be eaten alive: and rather than have the ability to work in a different environment if we don't like our current one, we will be forced to work union rules whether we like them or not. Somehow I also don't think that union will be political neutral, so I won't be building the muslim database, but I will be building the "who has a gun license" database.
- fletom 9y ago
  Are you equating a firearm registration system with a fascist database of a minority religion?
  - tomjen3 9y ago
    Both will be used to deprive people of their rights.
- dragonwriter 9y ago
  I think you have really deeply bought into stereotypes of unions that, to the extent any of them are applicable, are only applicable to a subset of unions uncertain fields and only because of the market conditions in those fields. And, on top of that, fail to recognize that some problems are inherently social, and ignoring that and failing to address them as such doesn't make them solvable by other means, it makes them nonsolvable.

Bartweiss 9y ago

The implication being that the existing organizations don't worry about these things? The EFF's focus is 'technical' only in the sense that it's restricted to topics which involve some kind of electronics. They've been campaigning against digital surveillance and mass profiling since before most politicians have been aware the issue mattered. (The FSF isn't especially relevant here, but neither is the Sierra Club; you simply picked an issue they don't work on.) It's true that the EFF won't save your job if you refuse to build a tracking database, but frankly I'm a bit confused what you think unions would do here. Unionization has a great track record on labor rights, but that looks more like "only spending 40 hours per week building the database". Union status isn't usually relevant to employees outright refusing assignments because of their conscience. And the EFFs focus here makes sense; as long as someone is willing to build the database (say, the sort of people who write malware for the government), opposing the plan overall is more important than opposing some specific contracting deal for it. The move to revenue is a non sequitur which kind of looks like your real reason for focusing on unions, but I'm still not exactly sold. Software companies already distribute stock more than other companies, and have salaries as an unusually high portion of overall costs. Meanwhile, "worker owned" and "unionized" are fundamentally different things, and I see no evidence that one leads to the other. Unionization usually happens as a response to not owning the company, and having no way to become owners. Software companies are vastly more likely to be some form of worker-owned (e.g. startup, co-op, stock-granting employer) than most business, which has historically been one reason they don't unionize.

tomjen3 9y ago

Yeah unionizing can help: instead of making problems solvable with technology, in which compared to the average person we all excel, we can replace them with social interactions, where we will be eaten alive: and rather than have the ability to work in a different environment if we don't like our current one, we will be forced to work union rules whether we like them or not. Somehow I also don't think that union will be political neutral, so I won't be building the muslim database, but I will be building the "who has a gun license" database.

fletom 9y ago
Are you equating a firearm registration system with a fascist database of a minority religion?
- tomjen3 9y ago
  Both will be used to deprive people of their rights.
dragonwriter 9y ago
I think you have really deeply bought into stereotypes of unions that, to the extent any of them are applicable, are only applicable to a subset of unions uncertain fields and only because of the market conditions in those fields. And, on top of that, fail to recognize that some problems are inherently social, and ignoring that and failing to address them as such doesn't make them solvable by other means, it makes them nonsolvable.