16 ms·

I never understand employees who don't want to unionize. It just shows what a sorry state the labor movement is in.

lettergram 8y ago
There is very little incentive for someone in the tech industry to unionize. Well paid, safe environment, adjustable hours, often free food and unlimited vacation(s). Why should I go through the extra effort, financial loss, etc. Typically to help support engineers less productive than I to keep their jobs? No thanks.
- tenaciousDaniel 8y ago
  afaik, the game industry is kind of an oddity. I don't fully understand it, but from what I hear, game devs are overworked and underpaid.
  - giggles_giggles 8y ago
    I've heard a number of horror stories about the game dev industry that would be unheard of in the larger tech community. I've always thought this was because there was a less restricted labor supply among game developers. I knew a LOT of guys in University who got into CS because they "wanted to make games." That increases competition for the available positions, which creates unfavorable conditions for the labor pool and an easily exploitable market for employers who know there's always another eager kid lining up to "make games."
    - tenaciousDaniel 8y ago
      Yep. Weird that it doesn't restrict the labor pool though. I would love to work in games. But I'm not putting in 80 hour weeks for 75K a year. No thank you.
    - NorthOf33rd 8y ago
      And this is almost certainly coming to the rest of the industry- there is currently another front page article about the difficulty of getting into classes/programs because they are so full. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18987996 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18987996
      - tenaciousDaniel 8y ago
        It definitely hasn't hit the industry yet. I've been trying to recruit mid-level to senior devs throughout the last year - in NYC of all places - and I've had very little luck. We have an amazing in-house recruiter and nearly everyone is thoroughly unqualified. Although, we just took on an intern who absolutely kicks ass, and runs circles around people who've been doing it for 10 years. That kid makes me nervous lol.
  - gh02t 8y ago
    > I don't fully understand it It's at least partially because it's so many programmers' "dream job." So many people get into programming because of their interest in games, then take jobs in the industry. They then are willing to tolerate/justify worse working conditions because they are doing something they are passionate about and the company culture has evolved to exploit that.
  - benjohnson 8y ago
    I'm generally anti-union, but the game developers are treated so poorly that I completely understand. Theory: Because people like developing games, the industry has gotten used to overworking workers and replacing them with fresh meat once they burn out. There's more than enough replacements eager to work on games.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
- lenticular 8y ago
  "Adjustable hours" is not true everywhere, and being expected to work large amounts of unpaid overtime is extraordinarily common in this industry. There's many with companies with forced arbitration clauses for disputes and other unfair practices. Unions provide a great deal of protection against these abuses for pretty insignificant union dues. Workers have more power now due to the red-hot tech job market. This will not be true forever.
  - NorthOf33rd 8y ago
    I like to think of unions a little bit like getting a vaccination. You may not need it now, or ever, and when it actually works for you, you may not be aware of it. It's a low cost way of protecting yourself from injury and loss. And, there's a bunch of people out there that are really really convinced they are terrible for you.
    - Apocryphon 8y ago
      Or health insurance.
    - docker_up 8y ago
      I'm completely okay with underperforming software engineers getting fired. I don't want some system that I'm paying for with my union dues helping them maintain a job that they don't deserve. On the other hand, I've never seen a deserving and talented software engineer out of a job for very long. And if you're talented you will get paid much much more than average. The only software engineers that want or need a union are the ones that need artificial barriers to keep them employed.
  - ascar 8y ago
    > Unions provide a great deal of protection against these abuses for pretty insignificant union dues. These dues can be very significant if you factor in the pay you lose as an above average employee, when you can no longer negotiate your own salary. Unions are not a good thing for everyone in a highly competitive market with big differences in employee performance.
- devoply 8y ago
  > Well paid Maybe. Ask all those immigrant workers. > unlimited vacation(s). lol. rhetorical b/s.
- chasing 8y ago
  You're very fortunate. But I'll note that even engineers who are less productive than you deserve stability and some level of control over their work lives. So maybe consider it part of your moral imperative as a "winner" in the current economic environment to make sure other people can taste the benefits you enjoy -- even if you have deemed them "less productive."
  - ChrisLomont 8y ago
    >engineers who are less productive than you deserve stability At whose cost? Do developers even less productive than that next tier deserve stability? Does the worst employee deserve stability? All those protections have a cost borne by someone.
    - chasing 8y ago
      > At whose cost? Do developers even less productive than that next tier deserve stability? Does the worst employee deserve stability? Yes. They don't deserve the best jobs at the fanciest companies, of course, but every single human being alive deserves stability. That's the baseline. If we as a civilization cannot provide that, then we need to keep working at it.
      - Jach 8y ago
        Fine, cook up a basic income scheme that won't fall apart then, but keep them out of the engineering disciplines if they can't perform above a minimum level. We can agree that we should strive for universal stability, but not universal stability in any arbitrary field of "work".
      - fuzz4lyfe 8y ago
        > very single human being alive deserves stability If that is your goal, software developers in western nations should be the least of your worries.
      - ummonk 8y ago
        They deserve stability sure, but not the right to have that stability while insisting on working in an industry they're unproductive in.
- kevindqc 8y ago
  It's a bit different in the gaming industry, no? ie: https://ea-spouse.livejournal.com/274.html https://ea-spouse.livejournal.com/274.html
- hesdeadjim 8y ago
  Game development is not the tech industry. I'm an engineer and in general if I want to work in the game industry I will end up taking a salary that is significantly less than I would if I joined any non-game tech company. Case in point, I've worked with someone at a game company that compared to the rest of the industry treats its employees very well. He was making at most $110k a year as a lead senior engineer (not including bonuses). He left the game industry and joined a well known soon-to-IPO startup as a senior engineer. He is now making $175k base with additional bonuses and stock options. I'm not complaining, but trust me, the game industry is a different beast. It's much worse if you aren't an engineer -- artists, designers and QA are often treated as disposable.
- otikik 8y ago
  I can see how someone working on tech might think that. But game dev is kind of a big exception inside tech. I recommend you do some googling about working conditions, salaries, stability etc.
- pjmlp 8y ago
  Sure there is, thanks to the union I can go home at 18h no matter what and refuse to work on weekends unless there is some incentive to do so.
utternerd 8y ago
I can negotiate my own salary, hours, and working conditions. I don't need someone to do it for me, and I certainly do not want to be forced into such an arrangement. Just because it's something you personally find advantageous doesn't mean others feel the same way, and no one should ever be forced into it.
- lenticular 8y ago
  >I can negotiate my own salary, hours, and working conditions. You can, and the company can choose to not hire you. There is a huge power imbalance between employers and employees. Right now, this is muted because the job market is so tight. This will not be true forever. > Just because it's something you personally find advantageous doesn't mean others feel the same way, and no one should ever be forced into it. As a society, we make decisions against the will of individuals for a greater good all the time.
  - icelancer 8y ago
    > As a society, we make decisions against the will of individuals for a greater good all the time. Of course we do. Doesn't make it a good idea all the time.
  - ohmygodness 8y ago
    As a society, we're torturing and witch hunting for greater good all the time! -Medieval Inquisitor
    - lenticular 8y ago
      That's a really odd comparison to make. Let's stick to facts and not bizarre strawmen.
      - scrumbledober 8y ago
        it's honestly hard to get away from strawmen when the "for the greater good" argument is brought out against individual determinism.
wernercd 8y ago
Why not unionize? Unions don't represent me. Unions represent... the union. The labor movement is in a sorry state because unions live longer than their useful period. There are spots where unions remain useful... but those are few and far between.
- lenticular 8y ago
  I'm not sure where to begin with this, since your perspective is contrary to all economic evidence. Have you been aware that real wages have not been rising with productivity since the 70's? Inequality has also risen massively. You may be in a comfortable position in your job, but a very large proportion employed people in the US are not financially secure. Folks forget now, but the existence of a large middle class in the US is due to reforms pushed by the labor movement in the first half of the 20th century.
  - indigochill 8y ago
    Honestly not trying to make an argument for/against unions (my own stance is I'd be totally fine with fully voluntary unions), but in isolation this comment doesn't seem to contradict the above comment's point about unions having outlived their usefulness. On one hand, it's great the labor movement pushed for reforms in the first half of the 20th century. But we're in the first half of the 21st century now and as you point out, real wages haven't kept up with productivity and lots of people are financially insecure. So has the labor movement been slacking for the past ~50 years? Of course, there's a whole lot more to financial insecurity than labor compensation, but you seem to be arguing for unions being one part of the answer to that. But we have unions, so where's the disconnect?
  - sintaxi 8y ago
    > Folks forget now, but the existence of a large middle class in the US is due to reforms pushed by the labor movement in the first half of the 20th century. Exactly the opposite. Unions started forming after WW2 which is when the middle class began its decline.
    - 8y ago
LitFan 8y ago
Some insight as to why someone may be anti union: My union has done nothing perceptible during the course of my employment, outside of protecting employees who are under performing. My union dues cost 1% of my salary, and my perception is that they're taking that money and spending it on protecting bad employees. I have friends who are higher up in unions at other workplaces, as well as friends who are involved with labor law. The impression all around is that my union and its representatives are "not good". Unions don't automatically make working conditions better. They need to have good people working in the union to achieve that.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- lenticular 8y ago
  >Unions don't automatically make working conditions better. They need to have good people working in the union to achieve that. True. Unfortunately, many unions are incredibly milquetoast. However, even in such cases the union can still function as sort of an insurance policy against future severe abuses. Folks can also engage with their union: they will listen to workers.
  - icelancer 8y ago
    > Folks can also engage with their union: they will listen to workers. Uh, the same group dynamics that cause cliques to form and higher powers within bureaucracies also can happen in unions. This happens regularly, and I've been a part of one, where regular workers were not listened to but the upper "management" of the union (can't use that word though) controlled the fates of everyone below. You needed regular workers to rebel against the union to even get representation against management. All the while they collect dues. Plenty of unions are good. But acting like all of them are, or why you can't understand why everyone wouldn't want to unionize, is really naive.
    - lenticular 8y ago
      Workers are ultimately in control of their union. If the union is doing a bad job, workers can fix it. It just requires coordination and will.
stevecalifornia 8y ago
The only people I know who are in a union hate the union. It effectively only seems to keep people in jobs that are terrible employees and would otherwise be fired. I know the intention of a union is much more noble, but effectively this is the only outcome they have seen a union enable.
- ken 8y ago
  Everyone hates their government, but that's no reason to want to disband the government. It's a means of representation. Everyone will gripe that it doesn't represent them perfectly, which is true, but it's still better than not having representation at all. Every person I know in a union talks trash about their union like they talk trash about their family. The union will annoy them on a daily basis -- and then they'll remind you that it's all between friends, and everything is far better than back before they had representation.
  - thereisnospork 8y ago
    > Everyone hates their government, but that's no reason to want to disband the government. It's not a reason to add another bureaucracy on top of the existing one we all hate either. I've been represented by a union and their representation was wholly disadvantageous to me to a significant monetary amount as a result of their 'screw the new guy' policies and priorities. To wit, things would have been far better for me without them.
icelancer 8y ago
> I never understand employees who don't want to unionize. It just shows what a sorry state the labor movement is in. You need to be a part of a terrible union to understand why people would think that way. It's pretty simple once you've been in one that siphons off dues and does very little to combat management, of which there are many groups that will do this.
- Hupriene 8y ago
  Or have been exposed to union related violence and intimidation. When someone says "Join a union" I hear "Sign up to get sucker punched in the bathroom" if somebody suspects you aren't going to fall in line. I know that's probably uncommon, but formative experiences are formative.
moorhosj 8y ago
The same people will then lament the shrinking of the middle class and corporate greed.
igravious 8y ago
Something along these lines wandered through my nonce t'other night. There appears to be a fairly direct inverse correlation between labo(u)r union rates and economic equality. Has anywhere democratic ever experimented with mandatory unionization? The socialist in me thinks that would be a neat idea – the anti-authoritarian in me not so much. In relation to tech jobs, as I understand it union sign-up rates are quite low and that may be a function of the pretty decent wages the median tech worker makes. On the other hand I was listening to the news today and in my country they are experimenting with the idea of turning certain tech roles into trades and they say that the large tech companies might go for it. Not everyone is suited to 3rd-level ed. at the age of 18 and some learners are way more practical than theoretical oriented. If you could learn on the job and earn small wages while you're at it rather than racking up massive student loan debt that'd be super. Even better if you joined a tech union right out of the gate.
diminoten 8y ago
The platonic ideal of a union makes sense, however the practical realities are rarely so perfect.
- munificent 8y ago
  This is equally true of employer/employee relationships.
  - gdix 8y ago
    Which is why we allow for the free and voluntary severing of those relationships by either party.
    - Apocryphon 8y ago
      Which has asymmetrical effects. Ask why all of those miserable people working in the video gaming industry don't just quit? The "just go find another job" refrain is a tired one.
      - gdix 8y ago
        Yeah I agree, why? Must not be that bad if they keep taking these miserable jobs. They can literally do anything else but they choose to stay.
        Apocryphon 8y ago
        Ah, the standard “people in miserable jobs can always just leave” canard.
        gdix 8y ago
        Is it a canard or a refrain. I'm confused. Also simply stating the thing someone says and saying it's a canard will convince no one. Person 1: makes argument Person 2: "Ugh this canard again?!" Person 1: Uh yes. Nice talking to you.
ummonk 8y ago
RSUs / stock options align incentives with the company. If half your compensation is from stock (and you have tons of it unvested), sure you want good pay, good work conditions, etc., but you also want the company to grow its profits and not be dragged down by unproductive employees.
grok2 8y ago
Currently in programming/software jobs in the tech industry, salaries and perks are good and there is relative freedom in how you spend your time on the job doing the job (atleast in all the jobs I've been in -- all in the US). Unionizing will impact all of those -- ultimately whatever the benefits, unions will be seen as creating an us-vs-them environment where the default view is management fighting the employees (it doesn't have to be that way, but I feel that will be the end result at some point). The end result of that will be that employees will be more constrained in their freedom/salaries to whatever is negotiated by the union. Just a personal view-point. I don't have direct union experience other that what I read about. Teachers union/nurses union/workers union typically going on strike every few years to get a cost-of-living increase in wages. Unions of tradespeople seem to be better though, but it still seems like salaries are constrained in those areas.
- vkou 8y ago
  Management is already fighting employees. The difference is, management bargains collectively, and employees do not. For anyone who thinks that they have a strong bargaining position, or enjoy great perks: Try asking for an escape from the open-office-floor-plan-hell, by getting your own office. You'll quickly see exactly how valued your special snowflake concerns are to the company.
  - grok2 8y ago
    That, I see as a bad example of needing a union for depending on what the company is preferring the open-office floor-plan for. I think it makes sense for a company to optimize on real-estate costs to run a viable business. After-all they aren't forcing you to work there. I see unions as a way to protect employees from being unfairly taken advantage of (long hours without commensurate benefits and choice on your part, dangerous working conditions, bad salaries/wages). A bad office design is a bad office design and you need to convince your company that it's not in their best interests by other means or work elsewhere. Using a union to deal with all this will only end up in causing bad-blood all around. For certain things legislation is better -- you can blame the "government" boogeyman instead of being pissed with each other.
- 8y ago
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
Jach 8y ago
I never understand employees who do want to unionize. Ok that's not entirely true, I get that unions can help guide a one-shot prisoner's dilemma to cooperate-cooperate. But those are increasingly rare in a broad economy. My main objection is that I don't want to be part of a group that claims to "represent me", if I want a representative I'll appoint one myself. My secondary objection is that I don't want to be entangled in a legal structure where people far away can determine that because of such-and-such the union is going on strike and I'm not allowed to perform my job even if I want to. My third objection is for software related fields specifically, that a union will raise the barrier to entry, which so far has been kept incredibly low for the betterment of many people who came up from lower-middle class or lower and has allowed the field to expand to meet supply and across a pretty distributed set of locations.
- zjaffee 8y ago
  The later is done in virtually every other high paying blue and white collar field, from construction work to all sorts of professional services. It benefits no one but the employers to not have such constraints.
  - Jach 8y ago
    What unionized industry lets you work and make profit from a bedroom without any higher approval, oaths, or credentialing?
    - leothecool 8y ago
      One example is the musicians union.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
tracker1 8y ago
Because it'd be better to legislate that full time employees (even management) be granted a paid full day off for each 5 hours over 40 worked in a single week. That can either be paid out at the end of the pay period or accrued for later use. If a company has "unlimited" vacation, those days of overtime must be paid out by the end of the next pay period. As much as I prefer not to have government involved in much of anything, it's far simpler and far easier to legislate than to attempt to unionize. Unions tend to under-serve their average and above average members and is often not worth it. In the end, most would be happy to be compensated for personal expense and mandated overtime.
- eugeniub 8y ago
  The idea that the American government will step up and legislate these protections is a hopeful one, but not even remotely realistic. It's a much better use of the time of game developers to unionize now, demand better working conditions now, and strike now.
  - tracker1 8y ago
    Convincing even a majority of the gaming developers alone to do so to a point where those companies will agree to accept a union is unlikely. Especially across international and even interstate boundaries. There are some states (I live in one), where you cannot be required to join a union as a term of employment. The biggest issue is generally a side effect of compensation. If the level of compensation after 40 hours exceeds the benefit to the company (reduced time to completion) they will pay or not. When it's effectively free, they will push. When less than half are willing, you won't get movement to/from a union. There are also already lots of laws regarding payment to non-management, blue collar mostly hourly emloyees. Programmers are an exception, more so if salaried. There could probably be enough support to reduce the exceptions so programmers and IT in general are covered.
plainOldText 8y ago
Because although initially conceived to serve its members’ interests, a union will later fail to deliver an that promise. Any sufficiently complex system will over time inevitably develop goals of its own, unrelated to the system’s announced goals.
docker_up 8y ago
I had a job in another industry that was unionized. All it was was a way to skim some money from a large group of people and have a handful of people profit magnificently. It did nothing to help me. Since becoming a software developer, my life has been great and I have never needed a union's help. My TC is well over $400,000/year and after everything I've seen in my previous industry, I never would have reached that with a union.

There is very little incentive for someone in the tech industry to unionize. Well paid, safe environment, adjustable hours, often free food and unlimited vacation(s). Why should I go through the extra effort, financial loss, etc. Typically to help support engineers less productive than I to keep their jobs? No thanks.

tenaciousDaniel 8y ago
afaik, the game industry is kind of an oddity. I don't fully understand it, but from what I hear, game devs are overworked and underpaid.
- giggles_giggles 8y ago
  I've heard a number of horror stories about the game dev industry that would be unheard of in the larger tech community. I've always thought this was because there was a less restricted labor supply among game developers. I knew a LOT of guys in University who got into CS because they "wanted to make games." That increases competition for the available positions, which creates unfavorable conditions for the labor pool and an easily exploitable market for employers who know there's always another eager kid lining up to "make games."
  - tenaciousDaniel 8y ago
    Yep. Weird that it doesn't restrict the labor pool though. I would love to work in games. But I'm not putting in 80 hour weeks for 75K a year. No thank you.
  - NorthOf33rd 8y ago
    And this is almost certainly coming to the rest of the industry- there is currently another front page article about the difficulty of getting into classes/programs because they are so full. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18987996 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18987996
    - tenaciousDaniel 8y ago
      It definitely hasn't hit the industry yet. I've been trying to recruit mid-level to senior devs throughout the last year - in NYC of all places - and I've had very little luck. We have an amazing in-house recruiter and nearly everyone is thoroughly unqualified. Although, we just took on an intern who absolutely kicks ass, and runs circles around people who've been doing it for 10 years. That kid makes me nervous lol.
- gh02t 8y ago
  > I don't fully understand it It's at least partially because it's so many programmers' "dream job." So many people get into programming because of their interest in games, then take jobs in the industry. They then are willing to tolerate/justify worse working conditions because they are doing something they are passionate about and the company culture has evolved to exploit that.
- benjohnson 8y ago
  I'm generally anti-union, but the game developers are treated so poorly that I completely understand. Theory: Because people like developing games, the industry has gotten used to overworking workers and replacing them with fresh meat once they burn out. There's more than enough replacements eager to work on games.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
lenticular 8y ago
"Adjustable hours" is not true everywhere, and being expected to work large amounts of unpaid overtime is extraordinarily common in this industry. There's many with companies with forced arbitration clauses for disputes and other unfair practices. Unions provide a great deal of protection against these abuses for pretty insignificant union dues. Workers have more power now due to the red-hot tech job market. This will not be true forever.
- NorthOf33rd 8y ago
  I like to think of unions a little bit like getting a vaccination. You may not need it now, or ever, and when it actually works for you, you may not be aware of it. It's a low cost way of protecting yourself from injury and loss. And, there's a bunch of people out there that are really really convinced they are terrible for you.
  - Apocryphon 8y ago
    Or health insurance.
  - docker_up 8y ago
    I'm completely okay with underperforming software engineers getting fired. I don't want some system that I'm paying for with my union dues helping them maintain a job that they don't deserve. On the other hand, I've never seen a deserving and talented software engineer out of a job for very long. And if you're talented you will get paid much much more than average. The only software engineers that want or need a union are the ones that need artificial barriers to keep them employed.
- ascar 8y ago
  > Unions provide a great deal of protection against these abuses for pretty insignificant union dues. These dues can be very significant if you factor in the pay you lose as an above average employee, when you can no longer negotiate your own salary. Unions are not a good thing for everyone in a highly competitive market with big differences in employee performance.
devoply 8y ago
> Well paid Maybe. Ask all those immigrant workers. > unlimited vacation(s). lol. rhetorical b/s.
chasing 8y ago
You're very fortunate. But I'll note that even engineers who are less productive than you deserve stability and some level of control over their work lives. So maybe consider it part of your moral imperative as a "winner" in the current economic environment to make sure other people can taste the benefits you enjoy -- even if you have deemed them "less productive."
- ChrisLomont 8y ago
  >engineers who are less productive than you deserve stability At whose cost? Do developers even less productive than that next tier deserve stability? Does the worst employee deserve stability? All those protections have a cost borne by someone.
  - chasing 8y ago
    > At whose cost? Do developers even less productive than that next tier deserve stability? Does the worst employee deserve stability? Yes. They don't deserve the best jobs at the fanciest companies, of course, but every single human being alive deserves stability. That's the baseline. If we as a civilization cannot provide that, then we need to keep working at it.
    - Jach 8y ago
      Fine, cook up a basic income scheme that won't fall apart then, but keep them out of the engineering disciplines if they can't perform above a minimum level. We can agree that we should strive for universal stability, but not universal stability in any arbitrary field of "work".
    - fuzz4lyfe 8y ago
      > very single human being alive deserves stability If that is your goal, software developers in western nations should be the least of your worries.
    - ummonk 8y ago
      They deserve stability sure, but not the right to have that stability while insisting on working in an industry they're unproductive in.
kevindqc 8y ago
It's a bit different in the gaming industry, no? ie: https://ea-spouse.livejournal.com/274.html https://ea-spouse.livejournal.com/274.html
hesdeadjim 8y ago
Game development is not the tech industry. I'm an engineer and in general if I want to work in the game industry I will end up taking a salary that is significantly less than I would if I joined any non-game tech company. Case in point, I've worked with someone at a game company that compared to the rest of the industry treats its employees very well. He was making at most $110k a year as a lead senior engineer (not including bonuses). He left the game industry and joined a well known soon-to-IPO startup as a senior engineer. He is now making $175k base with additional bonuses and stock options. I'm not complaining, but trust me, the game industry is a different beast. It's much worse if you aren't an engineer -- artists, designers and QA are often treated as disposable.
otikik 8y ago
I can see how someone working on tech might think that. But game dev is kind of a big exception inside tech. I recommend you do some googling about working conditions, salaries, stability etc.
pjmlp 8y ago
Sure there is, thanks to the union I can go home at 18h no matter what and refuse to work on weekends unless there is some incentive to do so.

utternerd 8y ago

I can negotiate my own salary, hours, and working conditions. I don't need someone to do it for me, and I certainly do not want to be forced into such an arrangement. Just because it's something you personally find advantageous doesn't mean others feel the same way, and no one should ever be forced into it.

lenticular 8y ago
>I can negotiate my own salary, hours, and working conditions. You can, and the company can choose to not hire you. There is a huge power imbalance between employers and employees. Right now, this is muted because the job market is so tight. This will not be true forever. > Just because it's something you personally find advantageous doesn't mean others feel the same way, and no one should ever be forced into it. As a society, we make decisions against the will of individuals for a greater good all the time.
- icelancer 8y ago
  > As a society, we make decisions against the will of individuals for a greater good all the time. Of course we do. Doesn't make it a good idea all the time.
- ohmygodness 8y ago
  As a society, we're torturing and witch hunting for greater good all the time! -Medieval Inquisitor
  - lenticular 8y ago
    That's a really odd comparison to make. Let's stick to facts and not bizarre strawmen.
    - scrumbledober 8y ago
      it's honestly hard to get away from strawmen when the "for the greater good" argument is brought out against individual determinism.

wernercd 8y ago

Why not unionize? Unions don't represent me. Unions represent... the union. The labor movement is in a sorry state because unions live longer than their useful period. There are spots where unions remain useful... but those are few and far between.

lenticular 8y ago
I'm not sure where to begin with this, since your perspective is contrary to all economic evidence. Have you been aware that real wages have not been rising with productivity since the 70's? Inequality has also risen massively. You may be in a comfortable position in your job, but a very large proportion employed people in the US are not financially secure. Folks forget now, but the existence of a large middle class in the US is due to reforms pushed by the labor movement in the first half of the 20th century.
- indigochill 8y ago
  Honestly not trying to make an argument for/against unions (my own stance is I'd be totally fine with fully voluntary unions), but in isolation this comment doesn't seem to contradict the above comment's point about unions having outlived their usefulness. On one hand, it's great the labor movement pushed for reforms in the first half of the 20th century. But we're in the first half of the 21st century now and as you point out, real wages haven't kept up with productivity and lots of people are financially insecure. So has the labor movement been slacking for the past ~50 years? Of course, there's a whole lot more to financial insecurity than labor compensation, but you seem to be arguing for unions being one part of the answer to that. But we have unions, so where's the disconnect?
- sintaxi 8y ago
  > Folks forget now, but the existence of a large middle class in the US is due to reforms pushed by the labor movement in the first half of the 20th century. Exactly the opposite. Unions started forming after WW2 which is when the middle class began its decline.
  - 8y ago

LitFan 8y ago

Some insight as to why someone may be anti union: My union has done nothing perceptible during the course of my employment, outside of protecting employees who are under performing. My union dues cost 1% of my salary, and my perception is that they're taking that money and spending it on protecting bad employees. I have friends who are higher up in unions at other workplaces, as well as friends who are involved with labor law. The impression all around is that my union and its representatives are "not good". Unions don't automatically make working conditions better. They need to have good people working in the union to achieve that.

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
lenticular 8y ago
>Unions don't automatically make working conditions better. They need to have good people working in the union to achieve that. True. Unfortunately, many unions are incredibly milquetoast. However, even in such cases the union can still function as sort of an insurance policy against future severe abuses. Folks can also engage with their union: they will listen to workers.
- icelancer 8y ago
  > Folks can also engage with their union: they will listen to workers. Uh, the same group dynamics that cause cliques to form and higher powers within bureaucracies also can happen in unions. This happens regularly, and I've been a part of one, where regular workers were not listened to but the upper "management" of the union (can't use that word though) controlled the fates of everyone below. You needed regular workers to rebel against the union to even get representation against management. All the while they collect dues. Plenty of unions are good. But acting like all of them are, or why you can't understand why everyone wouldn't want to unionize, is really naive.
  - lenticular 8y ago
    Workers are ultimately in control of their union. If the union is doing a bad job, workers can fix it. It just requires coordination and will.

stevecalifornia 8y ago

The only people I know who are in a union hate the union. It effectively only seems to keep people in jobs that are terrible employees and would otherwise be fired. I know the intention of a union is much more noble, but effectively this is the only outcome they have seen a union enable.

ken 8y ago
Everyone hates their government, but that's no reason to want to disband the government. It's a means of representation. Everyone will gripe that it doesn't represent them perfectly, which is true, but it's still better than not having representation at all. Every person I know in a union talks trash about their union like they talk trash about their family. The union will annoy them on a daily basis -- and then they'll remind you that it's all between friends, and everything is far better than back before they had representation.
- thereisnospork 8y ago
  > Everyone hates their government, but that's no reason to want to disband the government. It's not a reason to add another bureaucracy on top of the existing one we all hate either. I've been represented by a union and their representation was wholly disadvantageous to me to a significant monetary amount as a result of their 'screw the new guy' policies and priorities. To wit, things would have been far better for me without them.

icelancer 8y ago

> I never understand employees who don't want to unionize. It just shows what a sorry state the labor movement is in. You need to be a part of a terrible union to understand why people would think that way. It's pretty simple once you've been in one that siphons off dues and does very little to combat management, of which there are many groups that will do this.

Hupriene 8y ago
Or have been exposed to union related violence and intimidation. When someone says "Join a union" I hear "Sign up to get sucker punched in the bathroom" if somebody suspects you aren't going to fall in line. I know that's probably uncommon, but formative experiences are formative.

moorhosj 8y ago

The same people will then lament the shrinking of the middle class and corporate greed.

igravious 8y ago

Something along these lines wandered through my nonce t'other night. There appears to be a fairly direct inverse correlation between labo(u)r union rates and economic equality. Has anywhere democratic ever experimented with mandatory unionization? The socialist in me thinks that would be a neat idea – the anti-authoritarian in me not so much. In relation to tech jobs, as I understand it union sign-up rates are quite low and that may be a function of the pretty decent wages the median tech worker makes. On the other hand I was listening to the news today and in my country they are experimenting with the idea of turning certain tech roles into trades and they say that the large tech companies might go for it. Not everyone is suited to 3rd-level ed. at the age of 18 and some learners are way more practical than theoretical oriented. If you could learn on the job and earn small wages while you're at it rather than racking up massive student loan debt that'd be super. Even better if you joined a tech union right out of the gate.

diminoten 8y ago

The platonic ideal of a union makes sense, however the practical realities are rarely so perfect.

munificent 8y ago
This is equally true of employer/employee relationships.
- gdix 8y ago
  Which is why we allow for the free and voluntary severing of those relationships by either party.
  - Apocryphon 8y ago
    Which has asymmetrical effects. Ask why all of those miserable people working in the video gaming industry don't just quit? The "just go find another job" refrain is a tired one.
    - gdix 8y ago
      Yeah I agree, why? Must not be that bad if they keep taking these miserable jobs. They can literally do anything else but they choose to stay.
      - Apocryphon 8y ago
        Ah, the standard “people in miserable jobs can always just leave” canard.
        gdix 8y ago
        Is it a canard or a refrain. I'm confused. Also simply stating the thing someone says and saying it's a canard will convince no one. Person 1: makes argument Person 2: "Ugh this canard again?!" Person 1: Uh yes. Nice talking to you.

ummonk 8y ago

RSUs / stock options align incentives with the company. If half your compensation is from stock (and you have tons of it unvested), sure you want good pay, good work conditions, etc., but you also want the company to grow its profits and not be dragged down by unproductive employees.

grok2 8y ago

Currently in programming/software jobs in the tech industry, salaries and perks are good and there is relative freedom in how you spend your time on the job doing the job (atleast in all the jobs I've been in -- all in the US). Unionizing will impact all of those -- ultimately whatever the benefits, unions will be seen as creating an us-vs-them environment where the default view is management fighting the employees (it doesn't have to be that way, but I feel that will be the end result at some point). The end result of that will be that employees will be more constrained in their freedom/salaries to whatever is negotiated by the union. Just a personal view-point. I don't have direct union experience other that what I read about. Teachers union/nurses union/workers union typically going on strike every few years to get a cost-of-living increase in wages. Unions of tradespeople seem to be better though, but it still seems like salaries are constrained in those areas.

vkou 8y ago
Management is already fighting employees. The difference is, management bargains collectively, and employees do not. For anyone who thinks that they have a strong bargaining position, or enjoy great perks: Try asking for an escape from the open-office-floor-plan-hell, by getting your own office. You'll quickly see exactly how valued your special snowflake concerns are to the company.
- grok2 8y ago
  That, I see as a bad example of needing a union for depending on what the company is preferring the open-office floor-plan for. I think it makes sense for a company to optimize on real-estate costs to run a viable business. After-all they aren't forcing you to work there. I see unions as a way to protect employees from being unfairly taken advantage of (long hours without commensurate benefits and choice on your part, dangerous working conditions, bad salaries/wages). A bad office design is a bad office design and you need to convince your company that it's not in their best interests by other means or work elsewhere. Using a union to deal with all this will only end up in causing bad-blood all around. For certain things legislation is better -- you can blame the "government" boogeyman instead of being pissed with each other.
8y ago

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

Jach 8y ago

I never understand employees who do want to unionize. Ok that's not entirely true, I get that unions can help guide a one-shot prisoner's dilemma to cooperate-cooperate. But those are increasingly rare in a broad economy. My main objection is that I don't want to be part of a group that claims to "represent me", if I want a representative I'll appoint one myself. My secondary objection is that I don't want to be entangled in a legal structure where people far away can determine that because of such-and-such the union is going on strike and I'm not allowed to perform my job even if I want to. My third objection is for software related fields specifically, that a union will raise the barrier to entry, which so far has been kept incredibly low for the betterment of many people who came up from lower-middle class or lower and has allowed the field to expand to meet supply and across a pretty distributed set of locations.

zjaffee 8y ago
The later is done in virtually every other high paying blue and white collar field, from construction work to all sorts of professional services. It benefits no one but the employers to not have such constraints.
- Jach 8y ago
  What unionized industry lets you work and make profit from a bedroom without any higher approval, oaths, or credentialing?
  - leothecool 8y ago
    One example is the musicians union.

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

tracker1 8y ago

Because it'd be better to legislate that full time employees (even management) be granted a paid full day off for each 5 hours over 40 worked in a single week. That can either be paid out at the end of the pay period or accrued for later use. If a company has "unlimited" vacation, those days of overtime must be paid out by the end of the next pay period. As much as I prefer not to have government involved in much of anything, it's far simpler and far easier to legislate than to attempt to unionize. Unions tend to under-serve their average and above average members and is often not worth it. In the end, most would be happy to be compensated for personal expense and mandated overtime.

eugeniub 8y ago
The idea that the American government will step up and legislate these protections is a hopeful one, but not even remotely realistic. It's a much better use of the time of game developers to unionize now, demand better working conditions now, and strike now.
- tracker1 8y ago
  Convincing even a majority of the gaming developers alone to do so to a point where those companies will agree to accept a union is unlikely. Especially across international and even interstate boundaries. There are some states (I live in one), where you cannot be required to join a union as a term of employment. The biggest issue is generally a side effect of compensation. If the level of compensation after 40 hours exceeds the benefit to the company (reduced time to completion) they will pay or not. When it's effectively free, they will push. When less than half are willing, you won't get movement to/from a union. There are also already lots of laws regarding payment to non-management, blue collar mostly hourly emloyees. Programmers are an exception, more so if salaried. There could probably be enough support to reduce the exceptions so programmers and IT in general are covered.

plainOldText 8y ago

Because although initially conceived to serve its members’ interests, a union will later fail to deliver an that promise. Any sufficiently complex system will over time inevitably develop goals of its own, unrelated to the system’s announced goals.

docker_up 8y ago

I had a job in another industry that was unionized. All it was was a way to skim some money from a large group of people and have a handful of people profit magnificently. It did nothing to help me. Since becoming a software developer, my life has been great and I have never needed a union's help. My TC is well over $400,000/year and after everything I've seen in my previous industry, I never would have reached that with a union.