Yes. So much of this stuff is just credentialism and maintaining barriers to entry. A union will come with arbitrary requirements that some committee decided we

Yes. So much of this stuff is just credentialism and maintaining barriers to entry. A union will come with arbitrary requirements that some committee decided were must-haves before one was a bona fide programmer. This laundry list will include 5 years full-time practice in the language you personally most despise. Any attempt to argue that 5 years of experience in that language is non-essential will be met with scorn and mockery, and taken as proof that you are not a serious professional. Unions, professional societies, licensing bodies, etc., all function primarily to shore up the in group. These groups then live off of annual license fees, dues, and other types of lechery. This group grows more and more detached, sitting in an office worrying about the meta-scale instead of actually doing any real work. Eventually the union and licensing bosses consume massive quantities of the otherwise-productive value just for sitting there in the middle. By this point, their approval has been codified into major corporate contracts if not literally made legally prerequisite. Good luck extracting them at that point. Right-to-work at least keeps that apparatus somewhat in check. I knew a young woman aspiring to become a professional actor. She had spent years trying to earn her way into SAG, and had years left to go before she realistically had a shot of actually getting in. Unions are not charities. They exist to serve themselves and the people they decide to like, and no one else.