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Unions have historically tended to reward seniority over merit. Tech workers should work to solve that if they organize. I think a lot of problems caused by un

Unions have historically tended to reward seniority over merit. Tech workers should work to solve that if they organize. I think a lot of problems caused by unions trace back to that. Unions should come back to help recreate the middle class.

CydeWeys 7y ago
It's not clear to me why tech unions would do this. People keep bringing this up, but there's no reason tech unions would ever have to be structured in this particular manner. Given that, I don't find it a compelling argument against unionization in our sector. Most importantly, of all the people who are working on organizing the tech sector, to my knowledge none of them are trying to implement tenure-based seniority or pay scales.
- killface 7y ago
  Every developer thinks their salary will be dragged down to "the average" -- aka they think they're all above-average. Libertarianism was the cancer of our generation.
- shados 7y ago
  There's no reason they have to be structured this way, but unions usually work through voting, and the tech sector has a LOT of pretty shitty people coasting, and they'll get a vote that's worth the same as anyone else's. They'll vote to protect their coasting.
- wvenable 7y ago
  > It's not clear to me why tech unions would do this. As soon as you have a union, you have 2 groups. People are who are in the union and people who are not. Tenure-based seniority obviously benefits people who are in the union to the determent of those not yet part of the union. It's probably a solvable problem but I think it's pretty obvious why most unions end up with seniority-based policies; It's the natural consequence of a democratic organization.
catalogia 7y ago
I think, at least traditionally, unions have tended to reward seniority over merit because seniority is something that can be tracked with relative objectivity, while merit is something a bit slippery to nail down. Of course the business owner has strong opinions on what constitutes employee merit. To the business owner, the merit of an employee is largely a proxy for whatever is profitable for the business. That's fine for the business, but if the union uses that same metric as merit, they'd become little more than a proxy for the intention of the business owners. For a union to be merit-based rather than seniority-based, they'd need to find a measure of merit that was in the interest of the workers, not the business.
- pas 7y ago
  The job of the union is to take the business interests and then keeping that as a constraint, maximizing labor's share of income. This usually directly means having the right people in the right places, to do an effective job, so there's not much time wasted. (Which is their time.) And so on. Unions shouldn't try to keep everyone on board, they should simply counteract shareholder pressure to keep labor costs down. Of course, the union should help members to retrain and then should help those members to find their place where they can contribute value. Of course, the union can and should represent the political values of its members.

CydeWeys 7y ago

It's not clear to me why tech unions would do this. People keep bringing this up, but there's no reason tech unions would ever have to be structured in this particular manner. Given that, I don't find it a compelling argument against unionization in our sector. Most importantly, of all the people who are working on organizing the tech sector, to my knowledge none of them are trying to implement tenure-based seniority or pay scales.

killface 7y ago
Every developer thinks their salary will be dragged down to "the average" -- aka they think they're all above-average. Libertarianism was the cancer of our generation.
shados 7y ago
There's no reason they have to be structured this way, but unions usually work through voting, and the tech sector has a LOT of pretty shitty people coasting, and they'll get a vote that's worth the same as anyone else's. They'll vote to protect their coasting.
wvenable 7y ago
> It's not clear to me why tech unions would do this. As soon as you have a union, you have 2 groups. People are who are in the union and people who are not. Tenure-based seniority obviously benefits people who are in the union to the determent of those not yet part of the union. It's probably a solvable problem but I think it's pretty obvious why most unions end up with seniority-based policies; It's the natural consequence of a democratic organization.

catalogia 7y ago

I think, at least traditionally, unions have tended to reward seniority over merit because seniority is something that can be tracked with relative objectivity, while merit is something a bit slippery to nail down. Of course the business owner has strong opinions on what constitutes employee merit. To the business owner, the merit of an employee is largely a proxy for whatever is profitable for the business. That's fine for the business, but if the union uses that same metric as merit, they'd become little more than a proxy for the intention of the business owners. For a union to be merit-based rather than seniority-based, they'd need to find a measure of merit that was in the interest of the workers, not the business.

pas 7y ago
The job of the union is to take the business interests and then keeping that as a constraint, maximizing labor's share of income. This usually directly means having the right people in the right places, to do an effective job, so there's not much time wasted. (Which is their time.) And so on. Unions shouldn't try to keep everyone on board, they should simply counteract shareholder pressure to keep labor costs down. Of course, the union should help members to retrain and then should help those members to find their place where they can contribute value. Of course, the union can and should represent the political values of its members.