10 ms·

Imo union-ism is an attitide and coupled with experience is effective. Just because you are salaried and "professional" does not mean you collectively do not h

Imo union-ism is an attitide and coupled with experience is effective. Just because you are salaried and "professional" does not mean you collectively do not have extreme clout. Whatever the hot issues are - say hours worked in a 7 day period - and the desire is to place limits (say 4 twelve hour days amd 1 eight hour day) having a union attitude means your bargained (agreed upon) rules are enforceable. And you carry a right to not work outside your agreed upon scope. The attitide comes in when you stop work after the last day. It's your right. People in unions (i am one) are the beneficiaries of years of compromise and abuse But it's fragile. All the union is is a sturdy frame which everyone stands on. Its sure footed. Otherwise workers - even professionals- have no true security, no true predictable work conditions. Iz is very unfortunate that union has become such a negative word. If a handful of people got together and simply stopped the management "abuse" i guarantee (!!!!) you you would be surprised how much power even engineer types can have

phil21 9y ago
Dunno. Maybe. All a union did for me in my younger years was have me work my ass off so older union members could sit around doing literally nothing. In fact as far as I could tell their jobs were effectively finding ways to do nothing, and then when they got too good at that finding ways to keep others from doing anything. I would not be paid nearly what I am today had I been stuck in my first union job. Even if I had stayed in the same field. Until unions can stop being basically safe havens for either the lazy, incompetent, or corrupt (what they've effectively become in the US) I want zero part of them. The two I were in in my teens and early 20's were enough for me. They were so bad I did not want to be morally associated with them in any way whatsoever. All I ever saw from them was protection for the worst kind of people, and the high performers were ran out of the company as soon as possible by all the other members. It sucks there isn't something else that can champion the rights and pay of the workers without simply serving the lowest common denominator. I'd actively join and support a "trade guild" where membership was predicated on competence and work ethic - and members actively policed to ensure they meet the standard. I'd also seek out employing such guilds when possible. Unfortunately that doesn't exist, and I tend to actively avoid union shops with a few notable exceptions. Typically when you say the word "union labor" to me that means it's going to be 4x the price, take 5x as long, and be done halfassed so we'll have to re-do half the work anyways.
- rm_-rf_slash 9y ago
  If you don’t mind revealing more about your past, I would be very interested in hearing more about the kind of work you were in, and the ways in which certain union members abused the system. Too much political commentary about unions these days is from pundits looking in from the outside, and there is too much paid anti-unionism to get an accurate description of unions’ actual shortcomings without it being washed out by vague exaggerations.
- majormajor 9y ago
  Sad secret is that you'll find pay-your-dues-ism, laziness, incompetence, and corruption everywhere. I've seen it at elite universities, government contractor engineering/research firms, startups, and larger tech companies, and none of those have been union positions. The more important thing is the freedom to leave a job that doesn't work for you. That's how I went from the shitty non-union jobs to (eventually) a lucky couple decent ones.
- fjsolwmv 9y ago
  A union is simply am government. It can be good or bad, but it's almost always better for almost everyone than the natural law of the jungle. The fact that almost every billion dollar company with decamillionaore CEOs is dead set against unions (not even willing to form a partnership agreement with a union), should prove how good they are for everyone who isn't a multimillionaire.
- SteveGerencser 9y ago
  My experience is quite similar, in two different unions. The first was in the Teamsters at a bottling plant and the second was some years later, on the other side of the country, in the Teacher's Union in California. I left both jobs because of the way they were run by the unions. In the first, it was 100% seniority-based with zero regards to effort or skill. The second I left for basically the same reason. Ability played very little part in pay or benefits. It was simply a time served deal. Anecdotally, a friend of mine was named shop steward at an automobile manufacturer. The next day he showed up at the airport, in the middle of a workday, in a brand new truck that he just took off the lot as a perk. When we asked why he was hanging out with us at the airport rather than at work, he smiled and said that all complaints went over his desk first, and he wasn't likely to let a complaint against him go past him. I know that unions played a massively important role in the past, but like all bureaucracies, as it aged and evolved, they became something far different.
stale2002 9y ago
"Otherwise workers - even professionals- have no true security, no true predictable work conditions." How do you shore this up the the fact that many of us engineers have pretty freaking awesome, high paying jobs? Things have seemed to work out great for those of us who are willing and able to negotiate well for ourselves. Thats the problem I have with unions. I do not for a single second want someone else to be negotiating for me. I can do that on my own, and I have done well for myself using my own negotiation power.
- bmelton 9y ago
  Every time there's an article about unionization (here, yes, but anywhere else too), there's someone in that article extolling the virtues of all unions, followed up by others denigrating the state of unions. As a younger man, I've been a member of unions that were good, and unions that were bad, and while I don't remotely proclaim myself to be an expert on them, but I am experienced enough to have observed what I believe are patterns. Ideally, unions aim to solve power imbalance between workers and employers, which it does by giving power to a presumably disadvantaged party. Where the employees are already in demand, or are highly skilled, what have you, employers already have to work hard to maintain the employee base it has because replacement employees are difficult to find. Where the employees are less skilled, or more easily replaceable, unions can be super effective at raising workplace standards and wage negotiations. That said, I'm wary of anyone who speaks in absolutes to either end. Some unions arrive at too much power, and can be self-defeating or exploitative. Some unions are corrupt. Some unions don't work very hard for their members. Some unions are horrible, and then turn it around, and vice versa. Unions can be effective at raising wage floors, but can also lower ceilings for workers who might be best off without them. The assertion that any given union is de facto good or bad seems flawed to me, as I've seen both sides of that particular coin, and like all eco-systems, work very well when a particular set of conditions are met and a particular balance is struck.
  - DrScump 9y ago
    "Where the employees are less skilled, or more easily replaceable, unions can be super effective at raising workplace standards and wage negotiations." The presence of a union can also make the difference in management resorting to close/offshore the operation altogether.
zjaffee 9y ago
My personal issue with unions is I've seen the way my family members work places have acted through the fact that collective bargaining has given them the ability to leverage things such as years served as a way to dictate many aspects of how the organization is run. Additionally, it is very hard to fire people, where people can coast for years and still continue to get raises and even promotions. Additionally, unions force costs to go up on many projects and revert any productivity gains that technology has provided. This prevents projects from getting done reducing the GDP impact of the larger industry even though certain people would likely get paid less. Yes, for labor jobs, unions are absolutely necessary, but from my perspective collective bargaining presents many failures when it comes to coordinating large projects across multiple union groups, in addition to demoralizing high performers as unions as of right now have not adopted well to any sort of up or out promotion structure.
- pfranz 9y ago
  > Additionally, unions force costs to go up on many projects and revert any productivity gains that technology has provided. Honestly, I think this is worth some honest discussion about the big picture. Many of the critiques against neoliberalism[1] is that all of the benefits of opening international trade and automation have gone to the rich. In 1930 John Keynes predicted 15 hour workweek for his grandchildren[2]. The average workweek in the U.S. is 47-49 hours[3]. This is in a world where dual incomes is common. I'm not advocating paying people to sit around all day, but I think it would be good to look at what we're trading work/life balance, job security, income, life expectancy, age of retirement, and the other things we give up for it. Personally, I still like the current world of iPhones and Amazon delivery, so it's not a clear argument in one direction, but it's not something I hear people talk about. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neoliberalism#Focus_on_economic_efficiency https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neoliberalism#Focus_on_economi... [2] http://www.businessinsider.com/john-keynes-predicted-15-hours-workweek-2015-8 http://www.businessinsider.com/john-keynes-predicted-15-hour... [3] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/on-leadership/wp/2014/09/02/the-average-work-week-is-now-47-hours/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/on-leadership/wp/2014/09...
  - jokola 9y ago
Aloha 9y ago
my attitude in general is that unions are something you earn - as a company, you either treat your employees fairly (and pay reasonably well), be transparent in management, and give non-management people a voice at the table of how the enterprise is run, or you earn a union, the LAT was a bastion of anti-unionism for years, but the Chandler family (who owned it) treated its folks (for the most part) quite well. I've experienced union and non-union workplaces - I'd have no problem working in either - in the end, if the company rewards loyalty, and longevity - you're going to have a good time all around - union or not.
jpollock 9y ago
Unions are a negative word because they (in my experience) provide negative experiences. My personal experiences: 1) When a co-op student, a female friend (also a co-op student) was assaulted (punched in the face) when she crossed a picket line to go to work - she wasn't in a union job so she _had_ to go to work. 2) At my first job, another friend related an experience where they beat their daily quota by 3-4x. They were taken aside and told it was amazing how much property damage happened in the parking lot, and perhaps they should slow down a bit. 3) An immediate relative was bullied at work. The union represented her until a point it became contentious. Then they ignored the issue hoping it would go away. 4) Another immediate member of my family had someone protected from repercussions after endangering 100+ people in a safety critical role because they were part of a union drive. Those experiences all happened in rapid succession in the 90s, it formed an opinion in my head of what a union is, and I didn't want anything to do with them.
- knieveltech 9y ago
  None of these anecdotes are union-specific. People are assholes and behave poorly at work in every industry regardless of how the labor force is organized.
skrebbel 9y ago
I only know American unions from stories (such as the ones in this thread, or the one where a Hollywood director got in trouble for using a towel to wipe some sweat off the face of an actor - that was someone else's job), but wow. Both American political parties are (from a socio-economic perspective) more right-wing than all mainstream parties in my country. Even the most right-wing party we have is pro (partly) subsidized health care, pro minimum wage, pro decent unemployment and disability benefits, etc etc. You could say my country is way more left wing than the US. But the unions! Wow USA unions appear to be little communist islands. I've never seen unions so extremely, maybe obscenely left wing than those in the USA. Again, this is just from stories so maybe I have it all wrong, but the unions appear to me like the last remaining instance of "all animals are equal, but some are more equal than others" in the Western world. If I'm not mistaken (and I might be), then I wonder whether maybe this is because US politics is so bizarrely (from a European perspective) right-wing. If you can actually die from hunger in your trailer home after a bad day at work, then extremely protective unions make a lot more sense than if you know you'll stay alive even if you lose an arm or your boss screws you over. Not sure whether there's a point I'm trying to make but I wonder what HN thinks about all this :-)
- linkregister 9y ago
  I think that you're not well-informed about the character of U.S. unions. Most are in the trades and manufacturing sectors. Members of those unions are typically right-wing and would be appalled at your characterization. The largest U.S. union, AFL/CIO is hardly leftist. It's interesting that you mention Communism. Historically, U.S. unions have been vehemently anti-communist after widespread suspicion of the U.S. Communist Party spread, due to developments (mass murder) in the Soviet Union and also due to its overt link with the Soviet international organization (Comintern). While public sector unions, ---particularly teachers unions and police--- can engage in what could be called leftist tactics and attitudes, your description doesn't fit private sector unions. Some private sector unions in the U.S. have a long history with corruption, particularly Mafia involvement with meat packers and longshoremen in New York, but that is an entirely different matter.
  - 9y ago
saas_co_de 9y ago
I am a Teamster and I have worked in union labor jobs, non union labor jobs, and professional jobs. One of the big misconceptions is that unions are just for workers. In my experience unions benefit the employers just as much as the workers by providing a formal process for raising and resolving grievances. This helps corporations by keeping things smooth and puts a check on low level management that benefits the organization over all. Unions also bring a lot of BS. They are another hierarchy with their own bosses, and rules, etc. But you will not find any more generous group of people then in a union. When there is a collection for someone who has a sick kid or some other tragic life event the amount of money that gets collected in a single meeting is surprising. I have never seen that kind of generosity in any professional setting. I have also seen unions vote repeatedly to take cuts in their own pay to help out their fellow members on the pension issue, even knowing that those people f--ked themselves up with their own stupid decisions, but the point of a union is that you take care of your own, and members are willing to take a very real and significant personal hit to do that. One of the best things about unions is fixed contracts and pay scales. Haggling over money used to be considered disgraceful and beneath the dignity of respectable people. Unions are old school so they still stick to that code and younger people would do well to learn from them on that. I don't really think that software engineers could benefit much from unionization. Seizing the means of production doesn't have much meaning when you are the means of production. People who already have all the power don't need a union. But understanding how unions work and the benefits that they provide for organizing labor, corporations, and society is definitely a good thing.
- losteverything 9y ago
  This is a great comment. Your point "dont really think that software engineers could benefit much from unionization" I disagree in one respect: hours and time of day worked. If rules exist that mean you dont work weekends or holidays or more than 50 hours in a week you as an engineer could simply cite rules amd say no. Rules could exist for who has to work those times...
  - hux_ 9y ago
    Software engineers haven't evolved enough to realize developers and engineering managers both are highly replacaleable cogs in a software factory. Until influential teams (Devs+Mgrs) that work well together learn the value of sticking together, software unions won't take off.
throwawaymanbot 9y ago
Statistically, Unions have (on paper at least) proven to be more stable and better for employees. Not to mention, its a natural counter weight to the Tycoon owner, who wants to behave like the Koch Brothers and Murdoch. A paper without a union, is not worth vesting my time in reading really. As no one has any vested interest in its credibility or upkeep. And if no one has any interest in that, then I don't either.

phil21 9y ago

Dunno. Maybe. All a union did for me in my younger years was have me work my ass off so older union members could sit around doing literally nothing. In fact as far as I could tell their jobs were effectively finding ways to do nothing, and then when they got too good at that finding ways to keep others from doing anything. I would not be paid nearly what I am today had I been stuck in my first union job. Even if I had stayed in the same field. Until unions can stop being basically safe havens for either the lazy, incompetent, or corrupt (what they've effectively become in the US) I want zero part of them. The two I were in in my teens and early 20's were enough for me. They were so bad I did not want to be morally associated with them in any way whatsoever. All I ever saw from them was protection for the worst kind of people, and the high performers were ran out of the company as soon as possible by all the other members. It sucks there isn't something else that can champion the rights and pay of the workers without simply serving the lowest common denominator. I'd actively join and support a "trade guild" where membership was predicated on competence and work ethic - and members actively policed to ensure they meet the standard. I'd also seek out employing such guilds when possible. Unfortunately that doesn't exist, and I tend to actively avoid union shops with a few notable exceptions. Typically when you say the word "union labor" to me that means it's going to be 4x the price, take 5x as long, and be done halfassed so we'll have to re-do half the work anyways.

rm_-rf_slash 9y ago
If you don’t mind revealing more about your past, I would be very interested in hearing more about the kind of work you were in, and the ways in which certain union members abused the system. Too much political commentary about unions these days is from pundits looking in from the outside, and there is too much paid anti-unionism to get an accurate description of unions’ actual shortcomings without it being washed out by vague exaggerations.
majormajor 9y ago
Sad secret is that you'll find pay-your-dues-ism, laziness, incompetence, and corruption everywhere. I've seen it at elite universities, government contractor engineering/research firms, startups, and larger tech companies, and none of those have been union positions. The more important thing is the freedom to leave a job that doesn't work for you. That's how I went from the shitty non-union jobs to (eventually) a lucky couple decent ones.
fjsolwmv 9y ago
A union is simply am government. It can be good or bad, but it's almost always better for almost everyone than the natural law of the jungle. The fact that almost every billion dollar company with decamillionaore CEOs is dead set against unions (not even willing to form a partnership agreement with a union), should prove how good they are for everyone who isn't a multimillionaire.
SteveGerencser 9y ago
My experience is quite similar, in two different unions. The first was in the Teamsters at a bottling plant and the second was some years later, on the other side of the country, in the Teacher's Union in California. I left both jobs because of the way they were run by the unions. In the first, it was 100% seniority-based with zero regards to effort or skill. The second I left for basically the same reason. Ability played very little part in pay or benefits. It was simply a time served deal. Anecdotally, a friend of mine was named shop steward at an automobile manufacturer. The next day he showed up at the airport, in the middle of a workday, in a brand new truck that he just took off the lot as a perk. When we asked why he was hanging out with us at the airport rather than at work, he smiled and said that all complaints went over his desk first, and he wasn't likely to let a complaint against him go past him. I know that unions played a massively important role in the past, but like all bureaucracies, as it aged and evolved, they became something far different.

stale2002 9y ago

"Otherwise workers - even professionals- have no true security, no true predictable work conditions." How do you shore this up the the fact that many of us engineers have pretty freaking awesome, high paying jobs? Things have seemed to work out great for those of us who are willing and able to negotiate well for ourselves. Thats the problem I have with unions. I do not for a single second want someone else to be negotiating for me. I can do that on my own, and I have done well for myself using my own negotiation power.

bmelton 9y ago
Every time there's an article about unionization (here, yes, but anywhere else too), there's someone in that article extolling the virtues of all unions, followed up by others denigrating the state of unions. As a younger man, I've been a member of unions that were good, and unions that were bad, and while I don't remotely proclaim myself to be an expert on them, but I am experienced enough to have observed what I believe are patterns. Ideally, unions aim to solve power imbalance between workers and employers, which it does by giving power to a presumably disadvantaged party. Where the employees are already in demand, or are highly skilled, what have you, employers already have to work hard to maintain the employee base it has because replacement employees are difficult to find. Where the employees are less skilled, or more easily replaceable, unions can be super effective at raising workplace standards and wage negotiations. That said, I'm wary of anyone who speaks in absolutes to either end. Some unions arrive at too much power, and can be self-defeating or exploitative. Some unions are corrupt. Some unions don't work very hard for their members. Some unions are horrible, and then turn it around, and vice versa. Unions can be effective at raising wage floors, but can also lower ceilings for workers who might be best off without them. The assertion that any given union is de facto good or bad seems flawed to me, as I've seen both sides of that particular coin, and like all eco-systems, work very well when a particular set of conditions are met and a particular balance is struck.
- DrScump 9y ago
  "Where the employees are less skilled, or more easily replaceable, unions can be super effective at raising workplace standards and wage negotiations." The presence of a union can also make the difference in management resorting to close/offshore the operation altogether.

zjaffee 9y ago

My personal issue with unions is I've seen the way my family members work places have acted through the fact that collective bargaining has given them the ability to leverage things such as years served as a way to dictate many aspects of how the organization is run. Additionally, it is very hard to fire people, where people can coast for years and still continue to get raises and even promotions. Additionally, unions force costs to go up on many projects and revert any productivity gains that technology has provided. This prevents projects from getting done reducing the GDP impact of the larger industry even though certain people would likely get paid less. Yes, for labor jobs, unions are absolutely necessary, but from my perspective collective bargaining presents many failures when it comes to coordinating large projects across multiple union groups, in addition to demoralizing high performers as unions as of right now have not adopted well to any sort of up or out promotion structure.

pfranz 9y ago
> Additionally, unions force costs to go up on many projects and revert any productivity gains that technology has provided. Honestly, I think this is worth some honest discussion about the big picture. Many of the critiques against neoliberalism[1] is that all of the benefits of opening international trade and automation have gone to the rich. In 1930 John Keynes predicted 15 hour workweek for his grandchildren[2]. The average workweek in the U.S. is 47-49 hours[3]. This is in a world where dual incomes is common. I'm not advocating paying people to sit around all day, but I think it would be good to look at what we're trading work/life balance, job security, income, life expectancy, age of retirement, and the other things we give up for it. Personally, I still like the current world of iPhones and Amazon delivery, so it's not a clear argument in one direction, but it's not something I hear people talk about. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neoliberalism#Focus_on_economic_efficiency https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neoliberalism#Focus_on_economi... [2] http://www.businessinsider.com/john-keynes-predicted-15-hours-workweek-2015-8 http://www.businessinsider.com/john-keynes-predicted-15-hour... [3] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/on-leadership/wp/2014/09/02/the-average-work-week-is-now-47-hours/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/on-leadership/wp/2014/09...
- jokola 9y ago

Aloha 9y ago

my attitude in general is that unions are something you earn - as a company, you either treat your employees fairly (and pay reasonably well), be transparent in management, and give non-management people a voice at the table of how the enterprise is run, or you earn a union, the LAT was a bastion of anti-unionism for years, but the Chandler family (who owned it) treated its folks (for the most part) quite well. I've experienced union and non-union workplaces - I'd have no problem working in either - in the end, if the company rewards loyalty, and longevity - you're going to have a good time all around - union or not.

jpollock 9y ago

Unions are a negative word because they (in my experience) provide negative experiences. My personal experiences: 1) When a co-op student, a female friend (also a co-op student) was assaulted (punched in the face) when she crossed a picket line to go to work - she wasn't in a union job so she _had_ to go to work. 2) At my first job, another friend related an experience where they beat their daily quota by 3-4x. They were taken aside and told it was amazing how much property damage happened in the parking lot, and perhaps they should slow down a bit. 3) An immediate relative was bullied at work. The union represented her until a point it became contentious. Then they ignored the issue hoping it would go away. 4) Another immediate member of my family had someone protected from repercussions after endangering 100+ people in a safety critical role because they were part of a union drive. Those experiences all happened in rapid succession in the 90s, it formed an opinion in my head of what a union is, and I didn't want anything to do with them.

knieveltech 9y ago
None of these anecdotes are union-specific. People are assholes and behave poorly at work in every industry regardless of how the labor force is organized.

skrebbel 9y ago

I only know American unions from stories (such as the ones in this thread, or the one where a Hollywood director got in trouble for using a towel to wipe some sweat off the face of an actor - that was someone else's job), but wow. Both American political parties are (from a socio-economic perspective) more right-wing than all mainstream parties in my country. Even the most right-wing party we have is pro (partly) subsidized health care, pro minimum wage, pro decent unemployment and disability benefits, etc etc. You could say my country is way more left wing than the US. But the unions! Wow USA unions appear to be little communist islands. I've never seen unions so extremely, maybe obscenely left wing than those in the USA. Again, this is just from stories so maybe I have it all wrong, but the unions appear to me like the last remaining instance of "all animals are equal, but some are more equal than others" in the Western world. If I'm not mistaken (and I might be), then I wonder whether maybe this is because US politics is so bizarrely (from a European perspective) right-wing. If you can actually die from hunger in your trailer home after a bad day at work, then extremely protective unions make a lot more sense than if you know you'll stay alive even if you lose an arm or your boss screws you over. Not sure whether there's a point I'm trying to make but I wonder what HN thinks about all this :-)

linkregister 9y ago
I think that you're not well-informed about the character of U.S. unions. Most are in the trades and manufacturing sectors. Members of those unions are typically right-wing and would be appalled at your characterization. The largest U.S. union, AFL/CIO is hardly leftist. It's interesting that you mention Communism. Historically, U.S. unions have been vehemently anti-communist after widespread suspicion of the U.S. Communist Party spread, due to developments (mass murder) in the Soviet Union and also due to its overt link with the Soviet international organization (Comintern). While public sector unions, ---particularly teachers unions and police--- can engage in what could be called leftist tactics and attitudes, your description doesn't fit private sector unions. Some private sector unions in the U.S. have a long history with corruption, particularly Mafia involvement with meat packers and longshoremen in New York, but that is an entirely different matter.
- 9y ago

saas_co_de 9y ago

I am a Teamster and I have worked in union labor jobs, non union labor jobs, and professional jobs. One of the big misconceptions is that unions are just for workers. In my experience unions benefit the employers just as much as the workers by providing a formal process for raising and resolving grievances. This helps corporations by keeping things smooth and puts a check on low level management that benefits the organization over all. Unions also bring a lot of BS. They are another hierarchy with their own bosses, and rules, etc. But you will not find any more generous group of people then in a union. When there is a collection for someone who has a sick kid or some other tragic life event the amount of money that gets collected in a single meeting is surprising. I have never seen that kind of generosity in any professional setting. I have also seen unions vote repeatedly to take cuts in their own pay to help out their fellow members on the pension issue, even knowing that those people f--ked themselves up with their own stupid decisions, but the point of a union is that you take care of your own, and members are willing to take a very real and significant personal hit to do that. One of the best things about unions is fixed contracts and pay scales. Haggling over money used to be considered disgraceful and beneath the dignity of respectable people. Unions are old school so they still stick to that code and younger people would do well to learn from them on that. I don't really think that software engineers could benefit much from unionization. Seizing the means of production doesn't have much meaning when you are the means of production. People who already have all the power don't need a union. But understanding how unions work and the benefits that they provide for organizing labor, corporations, and society is definitely a good thing.

losteverything 9y ago
This is a great comment. Your point "dont really think that software engineers could benefit much from unionization" I disagree in one respect: hours and time of day worked. If rules exist that mean you dont work weekends or holidays or more than 50 hours in a week you as an engineer could simply cite rules amd say no. Rules could exist for who has to work those times...
- hux_ 9y ago
  Software engineers haven't evolved enough to realize developers and engineering managers both are highly replacaleable cogs in a software factory. Until influential teams (Devs+Mgrs) that work well together learn the value of sticking together, software unions won't take off.

throwawaymanbot 9y ago

Statistically, Unions have (on paper at least) proven to be more stable and better for employees. Not to mention, its a natural counter weight to the Tycoon owner, who wants to behave like the Koch Brothers and Murdoch. A paper without a union, is not worth vesting my time in reading really. As no one has any vested interest in its credibility or upkeep. And if no one has any interest in that, then I don't either.