7 ms·

What's the benefit of being in a union for highly specialized tech workers that are very in demand?

adrr 7y ago
Maximizing the value of the demand.
pcwalton 7y ago
Same sort of benefits as, say, union electricians receive, who are also specialized workers who are very in demand in certain markets. Or, for that matter, doctors, who are frequently members of professional organizations that are unions in all but name.
Someone1234 7y ago
The same things as any other union? Improved working conditions (e.g. hours), protecting employees from abuses, and maintaining fair pay & benefits. Unions as only a working class institution is mostly a US historic artifact. Other countries have unions in highly specialized and in-demand industries too.
- dmix 7y ago
  What were the specific concerns of the Kickstarter employees though? Were they being worked extra hours or being abused by management? Or not getting proper market wages? This is quite a heavy hammer to a set of problems, so I'm curious how bad it really was. Were they firing people arbitrarily making it a positive thing that the company will now have to jump through hoops to reprimand or get rid of the worst non-productive workers? Or the countless other limitations now imposed on the company from making decisions which benefit the existence of the company itself (and the fact they can even hire/pay for these workers)? Will it make Kickstarter super cautious about hiring new people with their new extensive protections lowering the amount of people who would benefit from the success of various companies who have unions (and the taxation of these which benefits the wider community)? Turning them into mini-exclusive clubs of workers, while everyone else works p/t or on contract to avoid f/t hires?
  - sp332 7y ago
    There's a list on their website: https://kickstarterunited.org/ https://kickstarterunited.org/
- jamiequint 7y ago
  How are extremely in-demand tech workers not "maintaining fair pay & benefits"? Surely if they were not being paid "fairly" (not sure what that means anyways, if not market price) they could just leave, as there are plenty of tech jobs in NYC where Kickstarter is based.
  - Someone1234 7y ago
    You're misquoting. I was explaining a union's purpose, I didn't claim tech workers were underpaid. Plus "fairness" could also refer to inter-employee compensation at the same company (e.g. men and women). Additionally if the union expands beyond highly compensated tech' workers (e.g. Customer Service, QA, janitorial, etc) it could help them negotiate better pay and benefits.
    - jamiequint 7y ago
      Re: enforcing fairness, that argument is still asinine, if women were underpaid relative to men at the same company surely they could find many other companies willing to pay them a fair wage (and hopefully they would sue their former employer as well)
      - Jweb_Guru 7y ago
        It might behoove you to read a bit more about the well-documented nature of employment discrimination in the tech industry. Women are systematically underpaid and denied raises and promotions compared to men, which tends to make their cases weaker when going to a new company as well.
        jamiequint 7y ago
        It might behoove you to not make baseless assumptions about other people's knowledge.
        Jweb_Guru 7y ago
paxys 7y ago
The top earning actors and athletes in the country all have strong union representation, but for some reason it's software engineers who think "nah we are too well paid".
- tqi 7y ago
  Professional athletes in the US need unions because the leagues are granted a legal monopoly. AFAIK most European soccer professionals (where there is more options and competition between leagues) do not have player unions / Collective Bargaining Agreements.
  - lewilewilewi 7y ago
    You mean like the PFA [1] who are the oldest professional sportsmans union in the world? [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Professional_Footballers'_Association https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Professional_Footballers'_Asso...
    - tqi 7y ago
      Interesting - as I said I'm not too familiar with the EPL/other euro leagues. When I had tried to google Football unions I did find that PFA wiki, but couldn't tell if they actually are involved in collective bargaining with the leagues. As far as I could tell, no such agreement existed?
- commandlinefan 7y ago
  > for some reason it's software engineers Well, at the risk of getting all tinfoil hat conspiracy theory, I can’t help but wonder if the people posting these “you guys are too well paid to have any other concerns” types are really practicing software developers and not “startup founders”.
Pfhreak 7y ago
Advocating for better working conditions. For example (not saying that these are specific to Kickstarter, I don't know that culture, but they do occur elsewhere in tech): 1) Better IP restrictions. Working on open source, side projects, etc. 2) Better treatment around oncall. 3) Limiting hours (no expectations of 60+ hour weeks) 4) Transparency in hiring, promotion, and review processes 5) Transparency in company performance and benefits decisions 6) Better benefits, particularly things like parental leave, vacation, and health care 7) A greater slice of the value that workers provide 8) Representation at the board level, or at least a democratically elected representative to the C-level 9) A representative during disagreements with the company (e.g. making it harder to be singled out/fired just because) There are probably a bunch more, this is just what comes to mind off the top of my head.
- arrogantidiot 7y ago
  1) So adding no value to the company is the culture we want to encourage. Then salaries can go down as well. 3) The expectation finishes when you leave at 5pm every day. Don't worry, you won't get fired. 4) Which is none of employees business. ...
CPLX 7y ago
Many other specialized high demand workforces with intense disparities in skill and compensation between coworkers have done well with unions. Professional athletes, screenwriters, and actors are obvious reference points.
goatinaboat 7y ago
You should ask members of the AMA or the SAG or The Bar.
Mvandenbergh 7y ago
I think most Americans mostly have experience with blue collar unions, often ones that represent relatively unskilled labour. Consider though that even in the US, there are plenty of unions (or things which are effectively unions) which represent highly differentiated and skilled professions. Notably, directors, actors, and writers in American film and television are unionised. That does not mean that everyone is paid the same, nor that there is any concept as "seniority" (very rare in unions that represent highly skilled workers), nor that it is assumed that everyone has the same level of skill. While the AMA and ABA are not conventionally considered unions, they do effectively control entry into and regulation of their respective professions. (Medicine and Law). If brain surgeons benefit from being in a union, javascript developers probably do as well.
- papreclip 7y ago
  AMA and ABA are protectionist and "America-first", though. The tech unionization movement is full of people who favor open borders and the like
  - manfredo 7y ago
    > The tech unionization movement is full of people who favor open borders and the like In my experience, tech unionists fall into one of two camps: * The progressive camp, which is largely what you describe. Likes open border, diversity hiring and the like. * The protectionist camp. Wants to limit immigration, require CS degrees, and clamp down on H1B hires. The former seems to care more about influencing the politics of the company. The latter is more the traditional union stance, which is to increase the price of labor by restricting the supply.
  - Mvandenbergh 7y ago
    Tech is probably more like the film industry than law though, isn't it? Focused on global markets rather than focused on capturing as much as possible from the lucrative American market.
ughitsaaron 7y ago
Just off the top of my head: transparency in promotions and evaluations, greater pay equity, and just cause protections against arbitrary discipline and termination
fistfucker3000 7y ago
You can actually stop your company from doing shady or unethical things. This can mean holding a person in power accountable to sexual harassment, preventing your company from selling user data to a shady third party, demanding better working conditions for contractors at your company (think apple and foxconn).
astura 7y ago
There's many benefits but one big one that would apply to tech workers is benefits/working conditions guaranteed by a contract where you have a union negotiating those benefits on your behalf. For example, the vast majority of employers reserve the right to change benefits at any time, and they liberally do in a minor downturn. I've worked at places where an email was sent saying "as of tomorrow we will no longer match your 401(k)." That's it, one executive decided something, you just have to deal with it or quit. Another example is an email saying "this is the new PTO acquiral schedule." I lost a whole week of PTO that day, no apologies, just a "this is how it's going to be." If you're working under a union contract where the benefits are spelled out in the contract, they have to wait until the contract term runs out and then renegotiate another contract to change the benefits. Some tech companies are known to demand unpaid overtime without prior warning. A union contract may have a provision where you must be paid for overtime or overtime can't be mandatory, etc. Another example might be that allegations of misconduct must have a transparent investigation before adverse action is taken and the employee is entitled to be represented by the union during the investigation. If you've only worked in a bull market environment with a massive amount of free flowing VC money you might not appreciate those sorts of things. I've worked outside SV during the Great Recession, during that time jobs dried up and benefits were dropped like a bad date. I was laid off and had to relocate to get a new job. I'm not saying that a union would have prevented that, I'm just illustrating that jobs might not be so plentiful at some point in the future. Another thing is when a significant portion of a workforce is unionized then there is a tendency to improve the working conditions of non-union shops because they have to compete with unioned shops for employees. Professional athletes are some of the the most highly specialized, highly paid, and highly demanded employees and the vast majority of them at the highest level are unionized.
commandlinefan 7y ago
> very in demand Who, exactly, is highly in demand? There was a post on here last week from somebody who had gone on, I think, 40+ in-person interviews and hadn’t gotten a single offer. It’s well established that experience actually works against you in this profession; you can end up being too old long before you hit retirement age. Influential hiring authority Aline Lerner argues that people with Master’s degrees should be rejected in favor of those with just Bachelor’s degrees; education can work against you, too. There’s an unprecedented market for 30-year-old developers with specific education and experience; if you’re anybody else, you would have been better off getting a business degree. To paraphrase Bane, “Do you feel in demand”?
mempko 7y ago
Ask highly paid actors why they are in a union.
LarryDarrell 7y ago
Assuming this is true, now is the time to form a union. Not when they are no longer in high demand. There's a lot of hubris in the tech field that high salaries and a plethora of available jobs is the norm and will forever be that way. I anticipate a lot of "Why Tech Needs A Union" posts on HN during the next recession or when the current crop of 25-35 year olds reach their late 40's and all of a sudden have trouble finding stable work.
fogetti 7y ago
It didn't happen in the US but back during the 2009 global financial crisis Nokia let about 15000 employees go. Many of those were employed in Germany (I am not one of those though) and I heard they were pretty well protected by their union and up for a generous allowance when their time came to leave the company. If it were not for the union, the company would have let them go empty handed.

adrr 7y ago

Maximizing the value of the demand.

Same sort of benefits as, say, union electricians receive, who are also specialized workers who are very in demand in certain markets. Or, for that matter, doctors, who are frequently members of professional organizations that are unions in all but name.

Someone1234 7y ago

The same things as any other union? Improved working conditions (e.g. hours), protecting employees from abuses, and maintaining fair pay & benefits. Unions as only a working class institution is mostly a US historic artifact. Other countries have unions in highly specialized and in-demand industries too.

dmix 7y ago
What were the specific concerns of the Kickstarter employees though? Were they being worked extra hours or being abused by management? Or not getting proper market wages? This is quite a heavy hammer to a set of problems, so I'm curious how bad it really was. Were they firing people arbitrarily making it a positive thing that the company will now have to jump through hoops to reprimand or get rid of the worst non-productive workers? Or the countless other limitations now imposed on the company from making decisions which benefit the existence of the company itself (and the fact they can even hire/pay for these workers)? Will it make Kickstarter super cautious about hiring new people with their new extensive protections lowering the amount of people who would benefit from the success of various companies who have unions (and the taxation of these which benefits the wider community)? Turning them into mini-exclusive clubs of workers, while everyone else works p/t or on contract to avoid f/t hires?
- sp332 7y ago
  There's a list on their website: https://kickstarterunited.org/ https://kickstarterunited.org/
jamiequint 7y ago
How are extremely in-demand tech workers not "maintaining fair pay & benefits"? Surely if they were not being paid "fairly" (not sure what that means anyways, if not market price) they could just leave, as there are plenty of tech jobs in NYC where Kickstarter is based.
- Someone1234 7y ago
  You're misquoting. I was explaining a union's purpose, I didn't claim tech workers were underpaid. Plus "fairness" could also refer to inter-employee compensation at the same company (e.g. men and women). Additionally if the union expands beyond highly compensated tech' workers (e.g. Customer Service, QA, janitorial, etc) it could help them negotiate better pay and benefits.
  - jamiequint 7y ago
    Re: enforcing fairness, that argument is still asinine, if women were underpaid relative to men at the same company surely they could find many other companies willing to pay them a fair wage (and hopefully they would sue their former employer as well)
    - Jweb_Guru 7y ago
      It might behoove you to read a bit more about the well-documented nature of employment discrimination in the tech industry. Women are systematically underpaid and denied raises and promotions compared to men, which tends to make their cases weaker when going to a new company as well.
      - jamiequint 7y ago
        It might behoove you to not make baseless assumptions about other people's knowledge.
        Jweb_Guru 7y ago

paxys 7y ago

The top earning actors and athletes in the country all have strong union representation, but for some reason it's software engineers who think "nah we are too well paid".

tqi 7y ago
Professional athletes in the US need unions because the leagues are granted a legal monopoly. AFAIK most European soccer professionals (where there is more options and competition between leagues) do not have player unions / Collective Bargaining Agreements.
- lewilewilewi 7y ago
  You mean like the PFA [1] who are the oldest professional sportsmans union in the world? [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Professional_Footballers'_Association https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Professional_Footballers'_Asso...
  - tqi 7y ago
    Interesting - as I said I'm not too familiar with the EPL/other euro leagues. When I had tried to google Football unions I did find that PFA wiki, but couldn't tell if they actually are involved in collective bargaining with the leagues. As far as I could tell, no such agreement existed?
commandlinefan 7y ago
> for some reason it's software engineers Well, at the risk of getting all tinfoil hat conspiracy theory, I can’t help but wonder if the people posting these “you guys are too well paid to have any other concerns” types are really practicing software developers and not “startup founders”.

Pfhreak 7y ago

Advocating for better working conditions. For example (not saying that these are specific to Kickstarter, I don't know that culture, but they do occur elsewhere in tech): 1) Better IP restrictions. Working on open source, side projects, etc. 2) Better treatment around oncall. 3) Limiting hours (no expectations of 60+ hour weeks) 4) Transparency in hiring, promotion, and review processes 5) Transparency in company performance and benefits decisions 6) Better benefits, particularly things like parental leave, vacation, and health care 7) A greater slice of the value that workers provide 8) Representation at the board level, or at least a democratically elected representative to the C-level 9) A representative during disagreements with the company (e.g. making it harder to be singled out/fired just because) There are probably a bunch more, this is just what comes to mind off the top of my head.

arrogantidiot 7y ago
1) So adding no value to the company is the culture we want to encourage. Then salaries can go down as well. 3) The expectation finishes when you leave at 5pm every day. Don't worry, you won't get fired. 4) Which is none of employees business. ...

CPLX 7y ago

Many other specialized high demand workforces with intense disparities in skill and compensation between coworkers have done well with unions. Professional athletes, screenwriters, and actors are obvious reference points.

goatinaboat 7y ago

You should ask members of the AMA or the SAG or The Bar.

Mvandenbergh 7y ago

I think most Americans mostly have experience with blue collar unions, often ones that represent relatively unskilled labour. Consider though that even in the US, there are plenty of unions (or things which are effectively unions) which represent highly differentiated and skilled professions. Notably, directors, actors, and writers in American film and television are unionised. That does not mean that everyone is paid the same, nor that there is any concept as "seniority" (very rare in unions that represent highly skilled workers), nor that it is assumed that everyone has the same level of skill. While the AMA and ABA are not conventionally considered unions, they do effectively control entry into and regulation of their respective professions. (Medicine and Law). If brain surgeons benefit from being in a union, javascript developers probably do as well.

papreclip 7y ago
AMA and ABA are protectionist and "America-first", though. The tech unionization movement is full of people who favor open borders and the like
- manfredo 7y ago
  > The tech unionization movement is full of people who favor open borders and the like In my experience, tech unionists fall into one of two camps: * The progressive camp, which is largely what you describe. Likes open border, diversity hiring and the like. * The protectionist camp. Wants to limit immigration, require CS degrees, and clamp down on H1B hires. The former seems to care more about influencing the politics of the company. The latter is more the traditional union stance, which is to increase the price of labor by restricting the supply.
- Mvandenbergh 7y ago
  Tech is probably more like the film industry than law though, isn't it? Focused on global markets rather than focused on capturing as much as possible from the lucrative American market.

ughitsaaron 7y ago

Just off the top of my head: transparency in promotions and evaluations, greater pay equity, and just cause protections against arbitrary discipline and termination

fistfucker3000 7y ago

You can actually stop your company from doing shady or unethical things. This can mean holding a person in power accountable to sexual harassment, preventing your company from selling user data to a shady third party, demanding better working conditions for contractors at your company (think apple and foxconn).

astura 7y ago

There's many benefits but one big one that would apply to tech workers is benefits/working conditions guaranteed by a contract where you have a union negotiating those benefits on your behalf. For example, the vast majority of employers reserve the right to change benefits at any time, and they liberally do in a minor downturn. I've worked at places where an email was sent saying "as of tomorrow we will no longer match your 401(k)." That's it, one executive decided something, you just have to deal with it or quit. Another example is an email saying "this is the new PTO acquiral schedule." I lost a whole week of PTO that day, no apologies, just a "this is how it's going to be." If you're working under a union contract where the benefits are spelled out in the contract, they have to wait until the contract term runs out and then renegotiate another contract to change the benefits. Some tech companies are known to demand unpaid overtime without prior warning. A union contract may have a provision where you must be paid for overtime or overtime can't be mandatory, etc. Another example might be that allegations of misconduct must have a transparent investigation before adverse action is taken and the employee is entitled to be represented by the union during the investigation. If you've only worked in a bull market environment with a massive amount of free flowing VC money you might not appreciate those sorts of things. I've worked outside SV during the Great Recession, during that time jobs dried up and benefits were dropped like a bad date. I was laid off and had to relocate to get a new job. I'm not saying that a union would have prevented that, I'm just illustrating that jobs might not be so plentiful at some point in the future. Another thing is when a significant portion of a workforce is unionized then there is a tendency to improve the working conditions of non-union shops because they have to compete with unioned shops for employees. Professional athletes are some of the the most highly specialized, highly paid, and highly demanded employees and the vast majority of them at the highest level are unionized.

commandlinefan 7y ago

> very in demand Who, exactly, is highly in demand? There was a post on here last week from somebody who had gone on, I think, 40+ in-person interviews and hadn’t gotten a single offer. It’s well established that experience actually works against you in this profession; you can end up being too old long before you hit retirement age. Influential hiring authority Aline Lerner argues that people with Master’s degrees should be rejected in favor of those with just Bachelor’s degrees; education can work against you, too. There’s an unprecedented market for 30-year-old developers with specific education and experience; if you’re anybody else, you would have been better off getting a business degree. To paraphrase Bane, “Do you feel in demand”?

mempko 7y ago

Ask highly paid actors why they are in a union.

LarryDarrell 7y ago

Assuming this is true, now is the time to form a union. Not when they are no longer in high demand. There's a lot of hubris in the tech field that high salaries and a plethora of available jobs is the norm and will forever be that way. I anticipate a lot of "Why Tech Needs A Union" posts on HN during the next recession or when the current crop of 25-35 year olds reach their late 40's and all of a sudden have trouble finding stable work.

fogetti 7y ago

It didn't happen in the US but back during the 2009 global financial crisis Nokia let about 15000 employees go. Many of those were employed in Germany (I am not one of those though) and I heard they were pretty well protected by their union and up for a generous allowance when their time came to leave the company. If it were not for the union, the company would have let them go empty handed.