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1. Why do tech workers need a union? If you want to improve your workplace, you have additional leverage to fight for changes if you're in a union. There's oft

1. Why do tech workers need a union? If you want to improve your workplace, you have additional leverage to fight for changes if you're in a union. There's often very little you can do alone. This might be things like pay, or it might be something else entirely. 2. But aren't tech workers elite coddled rich kids who are lucky to make what they receive? I mean, no. But even if so, high pay doesn't stop athletes from joining a union. Folks who run these companies are even more elite than the person who codes. Why not negotiate for a better workplace? Why be a weak negotiator? Isn't that especially important to do when you have flexibility to go somewhere else? 3. Why don't they just leave their job? Some issues are systemic across an industry. Additionally, some people like to improve their jobs rather than just leave. People are wired differently. Creating lasting change at a company can be rewarding. Some also care about the mission of the company they work for.

duxup 7y ago
Athletic unions are generally there because the top leagues are monolithic, there aren't other places to go with similar compensation. It's sort of a different playing field.
- onlyrealcuzzo 7y ago
  Okay, so you have 2 options to make dollar money as an engineer: Google & Facebook. Apple, Microsoft, and Amazon pay well, but 10-20% less for the same level. There's a handful of others that will pay about 20-40% less. The average startup is paying 40-70% less. And, sure, you'll always run into some startup that's paying one or two engineers a million dollars. Stephon Marbury made more money when he left the NBA to play in China. Doesn't mean the average player can or does. Anyone making league average in the NBA could play in Europe or China for 40-70% less. Not sure what the difference is...
  - duxup 7y ago
    I don't think those options are the only ones and I think your numbers are dramatically far off for everything.
    - chillacy 7y ago
      Those aren't the only options anymore, Netflix is for instance famous for compensating very well, and large startups can be competitive too. https://www.levels.fyi/ https://www.levels.fyi/
- epicureanideal 7y ago
  In tech the monolithic nature arises differently. The Top Companies pay X, and that sets the ceiling for most people's wages. The difficulty of getting into Top Companies means that most other companies know they can pay somewhat less than that. Although it's claimed there's a talent shortage and in theory that would cause engineers to be able to negotiate for large salaries, most businesses just don't think that deeply about it. You can't negotiate with someone who just doesn't care that the math works out in their favor. Many managers in my experience have anchor points on salaries that they just will not go beyond regardless of the quality of the candidate. The salary spread for junior to super-super-senior developer is only about 50% (100k-150k or 120k-200k), whereas the productivity difference may commonly be much greater. Lastly, there is de facto price fixing. Human Resources Departments do "salary surveys" of what all the other companies are paying and then try to pay their employees around the same amount. Even though this isn't official "collusion", the effect is the same. And if 1 or 2 small companies buck the trend, it doesn't change the overall market.
  - deleted 7y ago
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scarface74 7y ago
Athletes need unions because sports organizations are a legal monopoly. All of the employees - the owners - set rules in concert. When you graduate from college, you decide what company you want to apply for. You don’t have to participate in a draft where different employers have already decided the order they are going to make you an offer. Also all sports team share some of their revenue streams.
pimmen 7y ago
A comment on #2 would also be that you should organize and enshrine your rights when you have the power, not when you're weak. Developers are powerful now, can possibly become weak later.
carapace 7y ago
> 1. Why do tech workers need a union? I don't know if a union is the answer, but tech workers aren't immune to management hi-jinks: "Apple and Google's wage-fixing cartel involved dozens more companies, over one million employees" https://pando.com/2014/03/22/revealed-apple-and-googles-wage-fixing-cartel-involved-dozens-more-companies-over-one-million-employees/ https://pando.com/2014/03/22/revealed-apple-and-googles-wage...
- save_ferris 7y ago
  It’s not just wage-fixing, tech companies wield an absurd amount of power in other aspects of people’s lives. I was once let go due for “performance” reasons that involved major company politics behind the scenes. I’d just gotten my annual review from my boss emailed to my work email about a week before my termination, which showed stellar performance across the board. When I looked into filing for unemployment, I discovered that I needed to dispute the reason for my dismissal since I was let go for cause, which required me to submit evidence. Who doesn’t have access to work emails? Fired people don’t. My employment agreement stipulated that the employer maintained all rights to my emails, so I was completely SOL.
  - Frondo 7y ago
    Leave money negotiations off the table, and you could have a union establish a single consistent process for firing practices that'd protect someone like James Damore from being arbitrarily fired. I don't agree with what Damore had to say, but that shouldn't matter! I would absolutely support a union-backed fair process for evaluating his or anyone's continued employment, whatever controversial things they write about. "Union stops arbitrary firing of controversial high-performer Damore" would bring a tear to my eye, no matter who it is.
    - throwGuardian 7y ago
      The most likely outcome is the election of a far-left socialist/communist to the helm, because everyone else will be bullied out of power with accusations of "racism". Once the unions become this way, do you really believe the communist-far-left types care for freedom of speech of an employee whose views they disagree with? Part of me is extremely happy with this trend, because silicon valley tech types tend to shill for extreme socialist political positions that are in stark contrast with their status quo(these people take home $500K, live in multi-million dollar homes, work for offshore-tax dodging capitalist giants like Google, Appl, etc. but somehow their politics is socialist.)
linuxftw 7y ago
The number 1 reason to form a union in the tech world is so a company can't pull a Disney. Replace all your full time workers with imported 'contractors' and force you to train them. Getting rid of the 'contractor' loop hole in tech will be better for everyone.
- hinkley 7y ago
  I'm interested in someone setting minimum quality requirements for code, and I've no faith in my government to do that well. No, I said that wrong. I have every faith in my government screwing that up spectacularly. From what I understand from other industries, the safety guidelines are often, at least initially, heavily informed by the professional bodies of those industries. Later on watchdog groups start to propose more stringent rules. We haven't really discussed any of this stuff very concretely and we'd have to start somewhere (other than legislation please).
- scarface74 7y ago
  You really aren’t aware of all the union factories that picked up and moved their entire operations to another country to avoid unions? As far as the contract “loophole”. Every time I’ve worked as a contractor, my net income including taking into account the loss of benefits was hire than I made as an FTE.
- xur17 7y ago
  > The number 1 reason to form a union in the tech world is so a company can't pull a Disney. Replace all your full time workers with imported 'contractors' and force you to train them. How do they force you to train your replacement? There are plenty of jobs in tech right now, you could (and should) just walk out the door if something like that occurs.
  - heavyset_go 7y ago
    Some people have bills to pay and mouths to feed, and don't want their kids going without health insurance for potentially months between jobs. The individual market for health insurance is terrible and COBRA is another expensive liability for someone without a job.
mdonahoe 7y ago
"Athletes unionize" is one of the better arguments I've heard for why devs should. I'm curious to learn more about the origins of the players' union.
- baron816 7y ago
  I disagree. Professional sports leagues are both monopolies and monopsonies (meaning they’re the only ones hiring those specialized athletes). So the market dynamics are very different from that of tech. If you’re a NFL linebacker, you don’t really have an option to switch leagues if you’re unhappy with how it’s run. If you’re a software engineer, you can switch companies very easily.
  - swang 7y ago
    what if apple, google, intel, adobe, pixar, lucasfilms all conspire to suppress your wages? great you can switch to another company that doesn't pay you your worth. https://www.latimes.com/business/technology/la-fi-tn-tech-jobs-settlement-20150903-story.html https://www.latimes.com/business/technology/la-fi-tn-tech-jo...
    - baron816 7y ago
      It’s already illegal for them to do that. The solution to collusion by firms is not collusion by workers.
      - 8note 7y ago
        what's the worst thing that happens to a big business by breaking the law? paying a small fine?
  - elicash 7y ago
    I brought up professional sports unions in the context of having a highly competitive group of workers who make large salaries, and that a union can still be useful in that environment as far as negotiations. That professional sports are monopolies and monopsonies isn't particularly relevant to this point. The fact that tech workers can find a job elsewhere is even more motiviation to unionize because you have even more bargaining power and there are smaller risks.
yibg 7y ago
Just in terms of salary isn’t an union somewhat contradictory to the engineering ethos of meritocracy? I mean we’d like to think that the good ideas win and impact and outcome matters. We hold up the 10x engineers and those that make an outsized contribution to the industry / company / product right? Shouldn’t they get higher compensation compared to the rest of the work force? How do we square that with collective bargaining that has set salaries and annual increases?
- commandlinefan 7y ago
  Actors are unionized (or “guildized”, which is basically the same thing), but their pay varies wildly and seems to be more or less relative to their objective value.
  - yibg 7y ago
    That’s a good example. I don’t know much about it, what benefits does the union in this case provide that isn’t achievable without one?
    - wolco 7y ago
      Before the actors union stars were made by a studio and forced to work for that studio for long hours and little pay. If you spoke up you were out. Lucy Ball was smart enough to start her own studio only to see it get sold a few years later. If they didn't have a union movies would look different. Maybe better for the customer because you get to see your favorite star in 10x more movies.
    - wongarsu 7y ago
      Two examples of actor union rules that come to mind are employers paying for journey to location of its more than a couple of miles, and the (very strict) rules about filming nude scenes (only essential people on set, people standing by with bathrobes etc)
    - omegaworks 7y ago
      Actors don't die on set any more, so that's nice. From the SAG-AFTRA site: "SAG-AFTRA members are entitled to a variety of benefits, including contracts/collective bargaining, eligibility for the SAG-AFTRA Health Plan, SAG-Producers Pension Plan, the AFTRA Retirement Fund, the iActor online casting database, and much more." https://www.sagaftra.org/membership-benefits/member-benefits https://www.sagaftra.org/membership-benefits/member-benefits
totaldude87 7y ago
I think the tech people/artists working on gaming industry , Uber's male chauvinistic culture and the problems associated with that can be a typical examples of "why tech needs to unionize". So far , the medium.com has been the "systematic problems reporting tool" for tech and that just generates the views and small changes.. In the past decade, i hate to see that the word "unionizing" in itself has become a bad word to hear for anyone from Management.
- MiroF 7y ago
  I doubt the word "unionizing" was ever something management wanted to hear
- whatshisface 7y ago
  >Uber's male chauvinistic culture and the problems associated with that can be a typical examples of "why tech needs to unionize" Why wouldn't the same employees that are setting Uber's culture set the union culture? The union is a collective bargaining unit that acts on behalf of the workers, not the most moral and upstanding workers, or the most progressive workers, or the workers that represent you personally.
  - falcolas 7y ago
    From the public version of the story, a vast majority of the issues seemed to stem from management, not necessarily the workforce. A union would help all workers have a voice (and a union lawyer can be used to identify and validate early on that there is a problem to be solved).
  - ken 7y ago
    Sexist/racist people don’t show up to union meetings and volunteer for union committees to push sexist/racist policies. It’s not like national politics where it’s a prestigious and high paying job, and corporations are throwing a ton of money behind candidates. Also, unions are usually not employer-specific. No matter how many jerks you have at one company, they can’t overpower all the voting members at all the other companies.
notyourday 7y ago
> But even if so, high pay doesn't stop athletes from joining a union. Most of athletes aren't high paid. You don't hear about them and the high-paid athletes via players unions do everything possible to prevent newcomers from joining their ranks -- that's why there are deadlines when the teams must bring the number of people on a team down to a certain number. Most of SAG/AFTRA members only dream of a principal role again after using the exceptions while collecting tips slinging drinks in bars or carrying plates in restaurants. If you are making over 100-250k while working in tech unions will push your compensation down. The companies won't be negotiating with you about your special deal when the union shows up in your shop.
- triceratops 7y ago
  > Most of SAG/AFTRA members only dream of a principal role again after using the exceptions while collecting tips slinging drinks in bars or carrying plates in restaurants. And yet, they get healthcare through the union. Minimum rates for when they do find work. Residuals to get them through lean years.
  - notyourday 7y ago
    > And yet, they get healthcare through the union. If they meet eligibility requirements. Most don't. > Minimum rates for when they do find work. Those rates are terrible. One cannot support oneself on it. SAG day rate is ~$335. SAG week rate is ~$1166. That's 2020. > Residuals to get them through lean years. You are thinking of people who "made it" -- managed to land a long term gig on one of syndicated TV shows. Those are equivalents of $550k/year Staff Engineers. Source: Dated two. Used exceptions to do SAG/AFTRA show arriving at the must join status.
    - triceratops 7y ago
      > If they meet eligibility requirements. Most don't. You have to earn $15k/year to qualify for the lowest tier health plan. At the minimum rate you quoted, that's about 12 weeks of work. That doesn't seem unreasonable - hard to call yourself a professional actor yet if you can't book 12 weeks of work. Dues are only $220/year, so it's not like you're giving a ton of money to the union while you wait for a break. > Sag week rate is ~$1166. That's 2020 That's still better money than waiting tables. About 2x California minimum wage. > You are thinking of people who "made it" -- managed to land a long term gig on one of syndicated TV shows Maybe I'm understanding this wrong, but it seems like anyone who is a "principal performer" is eligible for residuals. Even guest stars that speak one or 2 lines in a single episode of a long-running show will get something. I don't know the sums involved - maybe it's grocery money, for someone with that small of a part. But do you think a one-line performer would have gotten that negotiating by themselves? They'd be told to take a hike.
ChuckMcM 7y ago
Tech workers could have effectively used the leverage associated with unionization since at least 1984 during the semiconductor recession. Considering that the revenue per employee number is at an all time high, and the amount of money the company spends on the employee's working environment[1] is at record lows pretty much explains why this is going to be effective now when it wasn't before. There is also the issue of the "big" tech companies piling up cash rather than compensating their employees. So giving a voice to that choice could be interesting as well. [1] Most people I've had the discussion with will argue that "free food" and "bus service" is way more than employees in the 90's got. However on a per-employee basis, the typical professional employee (engineer) had 150 square feet of office space that was unshared, in an open plan office that is typically less than 18 square feet and can be a small as 9 square feet. 100 square feet in a class A office building is $1000/month for $10/sq ft. Food and bus service per employee totals to much less than that. The key is that with a union, the employee has a voice in whether they get compensated in office space or in free snacks.
- jacquesm 7y ago
  Food and bus service are also simply ways to control the amount of time an employee spends on premises.
- kerkeslager 7y ago
  Also, frankly, fsk free snacks. Pay me the money you were going to spend on snacks, and I'll choose whether to spend it on snacks or not. And since the money spent on free snacks was probably about $20/week, it won't be a significant consideration in any of my decisions. Bus service might be more significant in some places, but every place I've ever lived had that subsidized by the government, and long commutes are a toxic thing in themselves.
  - TylerE 7y ago
    They are buying more than the snacks. They are buying you time, since you never need to make office grocery runs to stock your desk. Might not be a huge deal, but elimination of chores really is a perk.
DoubleGlazing 7y ago
> 1. Why do tech workers need a union? In my experience the normal dynamics of employer-employee relationships are broken in the tech sector. In most cases where employees have a grief with an employer it's usually due to a lack of something, be it wages, safety, job security etc. In the tech sector that doesn't apply. Wages are good, normal health and safety issues are non-existent and you have no problem finding a job if you need one - if you have the skills. The problem is that the environment can be very, very toxic. My experience has been of employers offering me a big salary, but then expecting me to work very long hours. Couple this with an obsession with being the first to market and rushing to get the product out of the door and you end up with an unpleasant and stressful work environment. There are health and safety issues, but they don't manifest in broken bones or bruises, but in stress, anxiety and nervous breakdowns. And you can't opt-out. I've asked to have my contract changed so that the overtime clause has limits applied to it in exchange for a salary reduction - in three attempts every employer has said no. It's like overtime is expected as a normal thing and that you can't complain because your salary is so good. But of course if you are putting in just an extra hour each day and you are contracted for a 37.5 hour week, you are actually reducing your salary by around 13%. And if you are perceived as a troublemaker by your employer for standing up for yourself you;ll find that news gets around other employers faster than you'd expect. Its that broken dynamic, combined with a lack of ethics that means tech employees need to unionize in order to reign in bad employers.
- abledon 7y ago
  Reduced salary of 13% —- that 8 week vacation, 37.5 hr hard cutoff gov job is looking not too shabby (to run a bunch of fun side projects alongside )
llcoolv 7y ago
Well. You can have all the free market leverage on the world, but without a union you cannot participate in regulatory capture and these days it is all that matters :)
austincheney 7y ago
> Some issues are systemic across an industry. The biggest problems I have with this industry most developers don't want fixed. So unless a union offers something like a certification, licensing, or credentialing program for its members, like the security industry does, I don't see a union solving the software industry problems most frustrating to me. A license or certification is valuable because it provides a common platform of competencies that raises the value of the union members in the workforce, requires documented continuing education, and ensures a common criteria of best practices that reinforces the business value of the union to business entities.
- kerkeslager 7y ago
  Developers don't want this because 1) at least in the US, our educational system is prohibitively costly, and your solution proposes putting the cost of that on developers, including not having time off for education, and 2) that's mostly a problem for employers, not developers--I'm quite capable of working with poorly-qualified and poorly-skilled developers and my work looks better by comparison. You're proposing that developers pay to solve their employers' problem. I don't think you'd find many developers who object to their employers paying for education and giving them time off to pursue that education.
  - austincheney 7y ago
    > You're proposing that developers pay to solve their employers' problem. Education is completely orthogonal to licensing or certification. If education is your primary basis of qualification then you are at best a beginner. I am proposing that developers pay to justify higher wages and cut through subjective hiring bullshit as part of their union dues they would pay for anyways to be a member of said union. When have you ever seen software candidate selection be at least partially objective? The rest of your points don't make any sense. You don't need any education to be a developer. For example, I am completely self taught. I have also worked with some incredibly talented developers who have no college at all. How do you, objectively speaking, determine if that makes somebody less or more qualified? You don't, because there isn't any objective measure by which to rate qualification. Without some value added quality like licensing why would I ever pay union wages when I could simply jump ship and go work somewhere else? Every time I have changed employers my wages have gone up by 10% or more. I also suspect the developers who are most strongly opposed to licensing or certification are those who have never completed a certification in any field.
chasd00 7y ago
if you want to unionize go ahead, i'm not though. I believe a lot of tech works would prefer not to be union and have to deal with all the BS plus dues. I can negotiate on my own pretty well so knock yourself out but i won't be signing up.
- herbstein 7y ago
  > I can negotiate on my own pretty well No, you can't. A union can collectively say "no programming will be done on behalf of the company if you don't give us what we want". You can't do that.
  - paxys 7y ago
    Well the union has no incentive to do that individually on your behalf.
yumraj 7y ago
> 1. Why do tech workers need a union? 1. Fight ageism (every 20 year old today will grow up someday) 2. Fight open office layout (my opinion, may not be shared by everyone) 3. Fight for equal pay, discriminations of various sorts 4. Fight for reasonable share in success and against the massive differential between CxO and others' pay 5. Resist outsourcing where it makes sense ....... the list goes on ....
- sokoloff 7y ago
  Many of the most talented or hardest working engineers might rationally be opposed to equal pay measures.
  - claudeganon 7y ago
    Lobbying for equal pay protections isn’t independent of evaluations of merit. It’s about correcting demonstrable systemic bias against a protected class, e.g. if all women were being paid less then men in the same roles, with same experience, merit evaluations etc.
  - yumraj 7y ago
    Equal pay referred to between equally qualified men, women and other genders. Not clear why a talented and hard working person of one gender would be opposed that a similar person of another gender get same pay? It did not refer to people making unequal contributions.
    - manfredo 7y ago
      > Equal pay referred to between equally qualified men, women and other genders. Not clear why a talented and hard working person of one gender would be opposed that a similar person of another gender get same pay? Because there might not be an even distribution of people with certain skills. For instance, some point to the disproportionately large number of Asians in higher paying roles, and demand a form of equalization. The issue is not that people don't believe in equality, it's that people don't have the same view of what is equal. In particular, some view equality in terms of equality of outcomes while others view it in terms of equality of opportunity.
brianwawok 7y ago
A union also tends to mean that you get paid for the # of years you worked your job, not how good you are. This is a good thing for the bottom 50% of workers, and a bad thing for the top 50% of workers. Does this union do anything to address that? Is pay still fully merit based?
- Apocryphon 7y ago
  Why do unions have to have seniority rules? Certainly next-gen unions can pursue a different model.
  - deleted 7y ago
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  - brianwawok 7y ago
    Unions do not like members being graded. I do not run a union, so I am not sure why that is. May be worth asking some of them.
- gamblor956 7y ago
  This is completely false. Union wage agreements are based on what union members want. For blue-collar unions, this usually means seniority-based scales. For white-collar unions, this usually means experience-based scales (which differs from seniority because it's not job-specific; any job in the field counts). For talent-based unions like SAG or NFLPA, this means minimum scales with no cap on maximum potential earnings.
  - brianwawok 7y ago
    Do you know people in a union like SAG or the other entertainment type unions? It seems super not awesome for a lot of people. I know people working their way through the lower tiers. You often get a choice of <work on non-union production for $15 an hour, or work on union production for minimum union pay (which is < $15 an hour), and earn your hours needed to eventually become part of the union>. If you make it all the way through that dance INTO the union, it can help you coast and get a steady paycheck. And yes, it is a fact that lower tiers of people are abused in the US. But I would rather deal with that with universal healthcare, vs promoting unions to argue for better health benefits. You are technically correct in that unions can be any agreement that the founders. Sure. However I see a union for programmers looking a lot more like a union for autoworkers than a union for actors. What country has a successful union for computer programmers? Are the top 10% of performers better compensated than the top 10% of developers in the US? As far as I can tell, developers in the US have the best compensation of anywhere on earth. I can't imagine why I would ever want to join a programmer union.
Aunche 7y ago
Those may be the stated reasons for a union, but for some reason, in tech, workers just want a union because they want to inject their political views into their company: > But in 2018, a heated disagreement broke out between employees and management about whether to leave a project called “Always Punch Nazis” on the platform, according to reporting in Slate. When Breitbart said the project violated Kickstarter’s terms of service by inciting violence, management initially planned to remove the project, but then reversed its decision after protest from employees. > Following the controversy, employees announced their intentions to unionize
- Aunche 7y ago
  The Kickstarter campaign was worse than I thought: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/282505033/always-punch-nazis/description https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/282505033/always-punch-... The back cover (near the bottom of the page) clarifies that "Nazi" includes everyone who is alt-right. It describes itself as "satirical," but you can say that about anything blatantly offensive.
- GaryNumanVevo 7y ago
  And? the workers are the ones producing the platform, not the CEO or board members. It's well within their purview to inject politics if they communally agree upon it.
  - Aunche 7y ago
    My point it has nothing to do with traditional motivations for unionizing that everyone is discussing. Also, workers definitely have nothing to do with deciding whether whether some content is appropriate. It has nothing to do with workplace conditions or collective bargaining. They aren't the ones who lose money when Republicans drop Kickstarter.
    - GaryNumanVevo 7y ago
      I ask again, and? Unionization is collective action by a group of workers. It will provide them the ability to negotiate future issues (i.e. not wanting to host Nazi kickstarters). Of course they have everything to lose if kickstarter loses money, the first people laid off aren't CEOs. No workers = No Kickstarter. That's it.
stale2002 7y ago
> Why not negotiate for a better workplace? Well, that depends on what the union is negotiating for. I can think of many things that a union might democraticly negotiate for that I would strong oppose. Things such as putting of barriers to entry, like requiring a degree, or keeping our bootcampers, might be "beneficial" to the union members, but would be an absolute deal breaker to me. The moment a union tried to pull up the ladder, and do something like that, is the moment that I attempt to sabotage everything that they do, regardless of the union democratically negotiating to screw over new developers.
nhumrich 7y ago
> some issues are systemic I would unionize just to get rid of open offices, for example
lopmotr 7y ago
It's not clear that these are really tech workers who voted for it. Half of Kickstarter's employees are designers/coders and the other half work with the community [1]. Since one of the unionization organizers worked on Trust and Safety, I wonder if that's also how the vote was split. [1] https://www.kickstarter.com/team https://www.kickstarter.com/team
meerita 7y ago
In my opinion, unions are just a way to destroy property. If you want really improve your life, gather people and leave the company, start a business, the same business, why not and put all the improvements there. But unionize is plainly silly.
ryanmercer 7y ago
>I mean, no. But even if so, high pay doesn't stop athletes from joining a union. I think athletes are more in unions because when the NFLPA was formed most of them had to go get real jobs to support themselves combined with the fact that sports like American Football have a history of causing life-changing injuries including pretty severe TBIs. The wiki entry for the NFLPA even points this out >The new association's initial agenda also included a league-wide minimum salary, plus a per diem when teams were on the road, a requirement that uniforms and equipment be paid for and maintained at the clubs' expense, and continued payment of salaries when players were injured Even then they didn't get that great of a deal >Rather than face another lawsuit, the owners agreed to a league minimum salary of $5,000, $50 for each exhibition game played, and medical and hospital coverage Inflation adjusted from 1956 that's a minimum salary of $47,421.14. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Football_League_Pl https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Football_League_Pl ayers_Association So there was a very real reason for that specific union to form and once a union forms, it's pretty unlikely to go away. Trying to compare that to office workers needing a union doesn't really translate. I'm not saying office workers need, or don't need, a union. I'm simply saying I don't think this is a fair comparison. I've never been part of a union and can't really speak to the benefits and downsides of them.
wirrbel 7y ago
You may think you can do without a union if business is good and management OK. When shit hits the fan, that is when you'll learn that you need them. I work in a German unionized company and I think unions can be quite well-aligned with workers and business interest. IIRC certain aspects of US law make unions be the way they are in the US on purpose to lower their acceptance among employees. For example work councils which are commonly established in unionized companies aren't allowed in the US iirc, they can be a nice alternative from going all in into unionizing, a democratic representation of all employees.

duxup 7y ago

Athletic unions are generally there because the top leagues are monolithic, there aren't other places to go with similar compensation. It's sort of a different playing field.

onlyrealcuzzo 7y ago
Okay, so you have 2 options to make dollar money as an engineer: Google & Facebook. Apple, Microsoft, and Amazon pay well, but 10-20% less for the same level. There's a handful of others that will pay about 20-40% less. The average startup is paying 40-70% less. And, sure, you'll always run into some startup that's paying one or two engineers a million dollars. Stephon Marbury made more money when he left the NBA to play in China. Doesn't mean the average player can or does. Anyone making league average in the NBA could play in Europe or China for 40-70% less. Not sure what the difference is...
- duxup 7y ago
  I don't think those options are the only ones and I think your numbers are dramatically far off for everything.
  - chillacy 7y ago
    Those aren't the only options anymore, Netflix is for instance famous for compensating very well, and large startups can be competitive too. https://www.levels.fyi/ https://www.levels.fyi/
epicureanideal 7y ago
In tech the monolithic nature arises differently. The Top Companies pay X, and that sets the ceiling for most people's wages. The difficulty of getting into Top Companies means that most other companies know they can pay somewhat less than that. Although it's claimed there's a talent shortage and in theory that would cause engineers to be able to negotiate for large salaries, most businesses just don't think that deeply about it. You can't negotiate with someone who just doesn't care that the math works out in their favor. Many managers in my experience have anchor points on salaries that they just will not go beyond regardless of the quality of the candidate. The salary spread for junior to super-super-senior developer is only about 50% (100k-150k or 120k-200k), whereas the productivity difference may commonly be much greater. Lastly, there is de facto price fixing. Human Resources Departments do "salary surveys" of what all the other companies are paying and then try to pay their employees around the same amount. Even though this isn't official "collusion", the effect is the same. And if 1 or 2 small companies buck the trend, it doesn't change the overall market.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]

scarface74 7y ago

Athletes need unions because sports organizations are a legal monopoly. All of the employees - the owners - set rules in concert. When you graduate from college, you decide what company you want to apply for. You don’t have to participate in a draft where different employers have already decided the order they are going to make you an offer. Also all sports team share some of their revenue streams.

pimmen 7y ago

A comment on #2 would also be that you should organize and enshrine your rights when you have the power, not when you're weak. Developers are powerful now, can possibly become weak later.

carapace 7y ago

> 1. Why do tech workers need a union? I don't know if a union is the answer, but tech workers aren't immune to management hi-jinks: "Apple and Google's wage-fixing cartel involved dozens more companies, over one million employees" https://pando.com/2014/03/22/revealed-apple-and-googles-wage-fixing-cartel-involved-dozens-more-companies-over-one-million-employees/ https://pando.com/2014/03/22/revealed-apple-and-googles-wage...

save_ferris 7y ago
It’s not just wage-fixing, tech companies wield an absurd amount of power in other aspects of people’s lives. I was once let go due for “performance” reasons that involved major company politics behind the scenes. I’d just gotten my annual review from my boss emailed to my work email about a week before my termination, which showed stellar performance across the board. When I looked into filing for unemployment, I discovered that I needed to dispute the reason for my dismissal since I was let go for cause, which required me to submit evidence. Who doesn’t have access to work emails? Fired people don’t. My employment agreement stipulated that the employer maintained all rights to my emails, so I was completely SOL.
- Frondo 7y ago
  Leave money negotiations off the table, and you could have a union establish a single consistent process for firing practices that'd protect someone like James Damore from being arbitrarily fired. I don't agree with what Damore had to say, but that shouldn't matter! I would absolutely support a union-backed fair process for evaluating his or anyone's continued employment, whatever controversial things they write about. "Union stops arbitrary firing of controversial high-performer Damore" would bring a tear to my eye, no matter who it is.
  - throwGuardian 7y ago
    The most likely outcome is the election of a far-left socialist/communist to the helm, because everyone else will be bullied out of power with accusations of "racism". Once the unions become this way, do you really believe the communist-far-left types care for freedom of speech of an employee whose views they disagree with? Part of me is extremely happy with this trend, because silicon valley tech types tend to shill for extreme socialist political positions that are in stark contrast with their status quo(these people take home $500K, live in multi-million dollar homes, work for offshore-tax dodging capitalist giants like Google, Appl, etc. but somehow their politics is socialist.)

linuxftw 7y ago

The number 1 reason to form a union in the tech world is so a company can't pull a Disney. Replace all your full time workers with imported 'contractors' and force you to train them. Getting rid of the 'contractor' loop hole in tech will be better for everyone.

hinkley 7y ago
I'm interested in someone setting minimum quality requirements for code, and I've no faith in my government to do that well. No, I said that wrong. I have every faith in my government screwing that up spectacularly. From what I understand from other industries, the safety guidelines are often, at least initially, heavily informed by the professional bodies of those industries. Later on watchdog groups start to propose more stringent rules. We haven't really discussed any of this stuff very concretely and we'd have to start somewhere (other than legislation please).
scarface74 7y ago
You really aren’t aware of all the union factories that picked up and moved their entire operations to another country to avoid unions? As far as the contract “loophole”. Every time I’ve worked as a contractor, my net income including taking into account the loss of benefits was hire than I made as an FTE.
xur17 7y ago
> The number 1 reason to form a union in the tech world is so a company can't pull a Disney. Replace all your full time workers with imported 'contractors' and force you to train them. How do they force you to train your replacement? There are plenty of jobs in tech right now, you could (and should) just walk out the door if something like that occurs.
- heavyset_go 7y ago
  Some people have bills to pay and mouths to feed, and don't want their kids going without health insurance for potentially months between jobs. The individual market for health insurance is terrible and COBRA is another expensive liability for someone without a job.

mdonahoe 7y ago

"Athletes unionize" is one of the better arguments I've heard for why devs should. I'm curious to learn more about the origins of the players' union.

baron816 7y ago
I disagree. Professional sports leagues are both monopolies and monopsonies (meaning they’re the only ones hiring those specialized athletes). So the market dynamics are very different from that of tech. If you’re a NFL linebacker, you don’t really have an option to switch leagues if you’re unhappy with how it’s run. If you’re a software engineer, you can switch companies very easily.
- swang 7y ago
  what if apple, google, intel, adobe, pixar, lucasfilms all conspire to suppress your wages? great you can switch to another company that doesn't pay you your worth. https://www.latimes.com/business/technology/la-fi-tn-tech-jobs-settlement-20150903-story.html https://www.latimes.com/business/technology/la-fi-tn-tech-jo...
  - baron816 7y ago
    It’s already illegal for them to do that. The solution to collusion by firms is not collusion by workers.
    - 8note 7y ago
      what's the worst thing that happens to a big business by breaking the law? paying a small fine?
- elicash 7y ago
  I brought up professional sports unions in the context of having a highly competitive group of workers who make large salaries, and that a union can still be useful in that environment as far as negotiations. That professional sports are monopolies and monopsonies isn't particularly relevant to this point. The fact that tech workers can find a job elsewhere is even more motiviation to unionize because you have even more bargaining power and there are smaller risks.

yibg 7y ago

Just in terms of salary isn’t an union somewhat contradictory to the engineering ethos of meritocracy? I mean we’d like to think that the good ideas win and impact and outcome matters. We hold up the 10x engineers and those that make an outsized contribution to the industry / company / product right? Shouldn’t they get higher compensation compared to the rest of the work force? How do we square that with collective bargaining that has set salaries and annual increases?

commandlinefan 7y ago
Actors are unionized (or “guildized”, which is basically the same thing), but their pay varies wildly and seems to be more or less relative to their objective value.
- yibg 7y ago
  That’s a good example. I don’t know much about it, what benefits does the union in this case provide that isn’t achievable without one?
  - wolco 7y ago
    Before the actors union stars were made by a studio and forced to work for that studio for long hours and little pay. If you spoke up you were out. Lucy Ball was smart enough to start her own studio only to see it get sold a few years later. If they didn't have a union movies would look different. Maybe better for the customer because you get to see your favorite star in 10x more movies.
  - wongarsu 7y ago
    Two examples of actor union rules that come to mind are employers paying for journey to location of its more than a couple of miles, and the (very strict) rules about filming nude scenes (only essential people on set, people standing by with bathrobes etc)
  - omegaworks 7y ago
    Actors don't die on set any more, so that's nice. From the SAG-AFTRA site: "SAG-AFTRA members are entitled to a variety of benefits, including contracts/collective bargaining, eligibility for the SAG-AFTRA Health Plan, SAG-Producers Pension Plan, the AFTRA Retirement Fund, the iActor online casting database, and much more." https://www.sagaftra.org/membership-benefits/member-benefits https://www.sagaftra.org/membership-benefits/member-benefits

totaldude87 7y ago

I think the tech people/artists working on gaming industry , Uber's male chauvinistic culture and the problems associated with that can be a typical examples of "why tech needs to unionize". So far , the medium.com has been the "systematic problems reporting tool" for tech and that just generates the views and small changes.. In the past decade, i hate to see that the word "unionizing" in itself has become a bad word to hear for anyone from Management.

MiroF 7y ago
I doubt the word "unionizing" was ever something management wanted to hear
whatshisface 7y ago
>Uber's male chauvinistic culture and the problems associated with that can be a typical examples of "why tech needs to unionize" Why wouldn't the same employees that are setting Uber's culture set the union culture? The union is a collective bargaining unit that acts on behalf of the workers, not the most moral and upstanding workers, or the most progressive workers, or the workers that represent you personally.
- falcolas 7y ago
  From the public version of the story, a vast majority of the issues seemed to stem from management, not necessarily the workforce. A union would help all workers have a voice (and a union lawyer can be used to identify and validate early on that there is a problem to be solved).
- ken 7y ago
  Sexist/racist people don’t show up to union meetings and volunteer for union committees to push sexist/racist policies. It’s not like national politics where it’s a prestigious and high paying job, and corporations are throwing a ton of money behind candidates. Also, unions are usually not employer-specific. No matter how many jerks you have at one company, they can’t overpower all the voting members at all the other companies.

notyourday 7y ago

> But even if so, high pay doesn't stop athletes from joining a union. Most of athletes aren't high paid. You don't hear about them and the high-paid athletes via players unions do everything possible to prevent newcomers from joining their ranks -- that's why there are deadlines when the teams must bring the number of people on a team down to a certain number. Most of SAG/AFTRA members only dream of a principal role again after using the exceptions while collecting tips slinging drinks in bars or carrying plates in restaurants. If you are making over 100-250k while working in tech unions will push your compensation down. The companies won't be negotiating with you about your special deal when the union shows up in your shop.

triceratops 7y ago
> Most of SAG/AFTRA members only dream of a principal role again after using the exceptions while collecting tips slinging drinks in bars or carrying plates in restaurants. And yet, they get healthcare through the union. Minimum rates for when they do find work. Residuals to get them through lean years.
- notyourday 7y ago
  > And yet, they get healthcare through the union. If they meet eligibility requirements. Most don't. > Minimum rates for when they do find work. Those rates are terrible. One cannot support oneself on it. SAG day rate is ~$335. SAG week rate is ~$1166. That's 2020. > Residuals to get them through lean years. You are thinking of people who "made it" -- managed to land a long term gig on one of syndicated TV shows. Those are equivalents of $550k/year Staff Engineers. Source: Dated two. Used exceptions to do SAG/AFTRA show arriving at the must join status.
  - triceratops 7y ago
    > If they meet eligibility requirements. Most don't. You have to earn $15k/year to qualify for the lowest tier health plan. At the minimum rate you quoted, that's about 12 weeks of work. That doesn't seem unreasonable - hard to call yourself a professional actor yet if you can't book 12 weeks of work. Dues are only $220/year, so it's not like you're giving a ton of money to the union while you wait for a break. > Sag week rate is ~$1166. That's 2020 That's still better money than waiting tables. About 2x California minimum wage. > You are thinking of people who "made it" -- managed to land a long term gig on one of syndicated TV shows Maybe I'm understanding this wrong, but it seems like anyone who is a "principal performer" is eligible for residuals. Even guest stars that speak one or 2 lines in a single episode of a long-running show will get something. I don't know the sums involved - maybe it's grocery money, for someone with that small of a part. But do you think a one-line performer would have gotten that negotiating by themselves? They'd be told to take a hike.

ChuckMcM 7y ago

Tech workers could have effectively used the leverage associated with unionization since at least 1984 during the semiconductor recession. Considering that the revenue per employee number is at an all time high, and the amount of money the company spends on the employee's working environment[1] is at record lows pretty much explains why this is going to be effective now when it wasn't before. There is also the issue of the "big" tech companies piling up cash rather than compensating their employees. So giving a voice to that choice could be interesting as well. [1] Most people I've had the discussion with will argue that "free food" and "bus service" is way more than employees in the 90's got. However on a per-employee basis, the typical professional employee (engineer) had 150 square feet of office space that was unshared, in an open plan office that is typically less than 18 square feet and can be a small as 9 square feet. 100 square feet in a class A office building is $1000/month for $10/sq ft. Food and bus service per employee totals to much less than that. The key is that with a union, the employee has a voice in whether they get compensated in office space or in free snacks.

jacquesm 7y ago
Food and bus service are also simply ways to control the amount of time an employee spends on premises.
kerkeslager 7y ago
Also, frankly, fsk free snacks. Pay me the money you were going to spend on snacks, and I'll choose whether to spend it on snacks or not. And since the money spent on free snacks was probably about $20/week, it won't be a significant consideration in any of my decisions. Bus service might be more significant in some places, but every place I've ever lived had that subsidized by the government, and long commutes are a toxic thing in themselves.
- TylerE 7y ago
  They are buying more than the snacks. They are buying you time, since you never need to make office grocery runs to stock your desk. Might not be a huge deal, but elimination of chores really is a perk.

DoubleGlazing 7y ago

> 1. Why do tech workers need a union? In my experience the normal dynamics of employer-employee relationships are broken in the tech sector. In most cases where employees have a grief with an employer it's usually due to a lack of something, be it wages, safety, job security etc. In the tech sector that doesn't apply. Wages are good, normal health and safety issues are non-existent and you have no problem finding a job if you need one - if you have the skills. The problem is that the environment can be very, very toxic. My experience has been of employers offering me a big salary, but then expecting me to work very long hours. Couple this with an obsession with being the first to market and rushing to get the product out of the door and you end up with an unpleasant and stressful work environment. There are health and safety issues, but they don't manifest in broken bones or bruises, but in stress, anxiety and nervous breakdowns. And you can't opt-out. I've asked to have my contract changed so that the overtime clause has limits applied to it in exchange for a salary reduction - in three attempts every employer has said no. It's like overtime is expected as a normal thing and that you can't complain because your salary is so good. But of course if you are putting in just an extra hour each day and you are contracted for a 37.5 hour week, you are actually reducing your salary by around 13%. And if you are perceived as a troublemaker by your employer for standing up for yourself you;ll find that news gets around other employers faster than you'd expect. Its that broken dynamic, combined with a lack of ethics that means tech employees need to unionize in order to reign in bad employers.

abledon 7y ago
Reduced salary of 13% —- that 8 week vacation, 37.5 hr hard cutoff gov job is looking not too shabby (to run a bunch of fun side projects alongside )

llcoolv 7y ago

Well. You can have all the free market leverage on the world, but without a union you cannot participate in regulatory capture and these days it is all that matters :)

austincheney 7y ago

> Some issues are systemic across an industry. The biggest problems I have with this industry most developers don't want fixed. So unless a union offers something like a certification, licensing, or credentialing program for its members, like the security industry does, I don't see a union solving the software industry problems most frustrating to me. A license or certification is valuable because it provides a common platform of competencies that raises the value of the union members in the workforce, requires documented continuing education, and ensures a common criteria of best practices that reinforces the business value of the union to business entities.

kerkeslager 7y ago
Developers don't want this because 1) at least in the US, our educational system is prohibitively costly, and your solution proposes putting the cost of that on developers, including not having time off for education, and 2) that's mostly a problem for employers, not developers--I'm quite capable of working with poorly-qualified and poorly-skilled developers and my work looks better by comparison. You're proposing that developers pay to solve their employers' problem. I don't think you'd find many developers who object to their employers paying for education and giving them time off to pursue that education.
- austincheney 7y ago
  > You're proposing that developers pay to solve their employers' problem. Education is completely orthogonal to licensing or certification. If education is your primary basis of qualification then you are at best a beginner. I am proposing that developers pay to justify higher wages and cut through subjective hiring bullshit as part of their union dues they would pay for anyways to be a member of said union. When have you ever seen software candidate selection be at least partially objective? The rest of your points don't make any sense. You don't need any education to be a developer. For example, I am completely self taught. I have also worked with some incredibly talented developers who have no college at all. How do you, objectively speaking, determine if that makes somebody less or more qualified? You don't, because there isn't any objective measure by which to rate qualification. Without some value added quality like licensing why would I ever pay union wages when I could simply jump ship and go work somewhere else? Every time I have changed employers my wages have gone up by 10% or more. I also suspect the developers who are most strongly opposed to licensing or certification are those who have never completed a certification in any field.

chasd00 7y ago

if you want to unionize go ahead, i'm not though. I believe a lot of tech works would prefer not to be union and have to deal with all the BS plus dues. I can negotiate on my own pretty well so knock yourself out but i won't be signing up.

herbstein 7y ago
> I can negotiate on my own pretty well No, you can't. A union can collectively say "no programming will be done on behalf of the company if you don't give us what we want". You can't do that.
- paxys 7y ago
  Well the union has no incentive to do that individually on your behalf.

yumraj 7y ago

> 1. Why do tech workers need a union? 1. Fight ageism (every 20 year old today will grow up someday) 2. Fight open office layout (my opinion, may not be shared by everyone) 3. Fight for equal pay, discriminations of various sorts 4. Fight for reasonable share in success and against the massive differential between CxO and others' pay 5. Resist outsourcing where it makes sense ....... the list goes on ....

sokoloff 7y ago
Many of the most talented or hardest working engineers might rationally be opposed to equal pay measures.
- claudeganon 7y ago
  Lobbying for equal pay protections isn’t independent of evaluations of merit. It’s about correcting demonstrable systemic bias against a protected class, e.g. if all women were being paid less then men in the same roles, with same experience, merit evaluations etc.
- yumraj 7y ago
  Equal pay referred to between equally qualified men, women and other genders. Not clear why a talented and hard working person of one gender would be opposed that a similar person of another gender get same pay? It did not refer to people making unequal contributions.
  - manfredo 7y ago
    > Equal pay referred to between equally qualified men, women and other genders. Not clear why a talented and hard working person of one gender would be opposed that a similar person of another gender get same pay? Because there might not be an even distribution of people with certain skills. For instance, some point to the disproportionately large number of Asians in higher paying roles, and demand a form of equalization. The issue is not that people don't believe in equality, it's that people don't have the same view of what is equal. In particular, some view equality in terms of equality of outcomes while others view it in terms of equality of opportunity.

brianwawok 7y ago

A union also tends to mean that you get paid for the # of years you worked your job, not how good you are. This is a good thing for the bottom 50% of workers, and a bad thing for the top 50% of workers. Does this union do anything to address that? Is pay still fully merit based?

Apocryphon 7y ago
Why do unions have to have seniority rules? Certainly next-gen unions can pursue a different model.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- brianwawok 7y ago
  Unions do not like members being graded. I do not run a union, so I am not sure why that is. May be worth asking some of them.
gamblor956 7y ago
This is completely false. Union wage agreements are based on what union members want. For blue-collar unions, this usually means seniority-based scales. For white-collar unions, this usually means experience-based scales (which differs from seniority because it's not job-specific; any job in the field counts). For talent-based unions like SAG or NFLPA, this means minimum scales with no cap on maximum potential earnings.
- brianwawok 7y ago
  Do you know people in a union like SAG or the other entertainment type unions? It seems super not awesome for a lot of people. I know people working their way through the lower tiers. You often get a choice of <work on non-union production for $15 an hour, or work on union production for minimum union pay (which is < $15 an hour), and earn your hours needed to eventually become part of the union>. If you make it all the way through that dance INTO the union, it can help you coast and get a steady paycheck. And yes, it is a fact that lower tiers of people are abused in the US. But I would rather deal with that with universal healthcare, vs promoting unions to argue for better health benefits. You are technically correct in that unions can be any agreement that the founders. Sure. However I see a union for programmers looking a lot more like a union for autoworkers than a union for actors. What country has a successful union for computer programmers? Are the top 10% of performers better compensated than the top 10% of developers in the US? As far as I can tell, developers in the US have the best compensation of anywhere on earth. I can't imagine why I would ever want to join a programmer union.

Aunche 7y ago

Those may be the stated reasons for a union, but for some reason, in tech, workers just want a union because they want to inject their political views into their company: > But in 2018, a heated disagreement broke out between employees and management about whether to leave a project called “Always Punch Nazis” on the platform, according to reporting in Slate. When Breitbart said the project violated Kickstarter’s terms of service by inciting violence, management initially planned to remove the project, but then reversed its decision after protest from employees. > Following the controversy, employees announced their intentions to unionize

Aunche 7y ago
The Kickstarter campaign was worse than I thought: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/282505033/always-punch-nazis/description https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/282505033/always-punch-... The back cover (near the bottom of the page) clarifies that "Nazi" includes everyone who is alt-right. It describes itself as "satirical," but you can say that about anything blatantly offensive.
GaryNumanVevo 7y ago
And? the workers are the ones producing the platform, not the CEO or board members. It's well within their purview to inject politics if they communally agree upon it.
- Aunche 7y ago
  My point it has nothing to do with traditional motivations for unionizing that everyone is discussing. Also, workers definitely have nothing to do with deciding whether whether some content is appropriate. It has nothing to do with workplace conditions or collective bargaining. They aren't the ones who lose money when Republicans drop Kickstarter.
  - GaryNumanVevo 7y ago
    I ask again, and? Unionization is collective action by a group of workers. It will provide them the ability to negotiate future issues (i.e. not wanting to host Nazi kickstarters). Of course they have everything to lose if kickstarter loses money, the first people laid off aren't CEOs. No workers = No Kickstarter. That's it.

stale2002 7y ago

> Why not negotiate for a better workplace? Well, that depends on what the union is negotiating for. I can think of many things that a union might democraticly negotiate for that I would strong oppose. Things such as putting of barriers to entry, like requiring a degree, or keeping our bootcampers, might be "beneficial" to the union members, but would be an absolute deal breaker to me. The moment a union tried to pull up the ladder, and do something like that, is the moment that I attempt to sabotage everything that they do, regardless of the union democratically negotiating to screw over new developers.

nhumrich 7y ago

> some issues are systemic I would unionize just to get rid of open offices, for example

lopmotr 7y ago

It's not clear that these are really tech workers who voted for it. Half of Kickstarter's employees are designers/coders and the other half work with the community [1]. Since one of the unionization organizers worked on Trust and Safety, I wonder if that's also how the vote was split. [1] https://www.kickstarter.com/team https://www.kickstarter.com/team

meerita 7y ago

In my opinion, unions are just a way to destroy property. If you want really improve your life, gather people and leave the company, start a business, the same business, why not and put all the improvements there. But unionize is plainly silly.

ryanmercer 7y ago

>I mean, no. But even if so, high pay doesn't stop athletes from joining a union. I think athletes are more in unions because when the NFLPA was formed most of them had to go get real jobs to support themselves combined with the fact that sports like American Football have a history of causing life-changing injuries including pretty severe TBIs. The wiki entry for the NFLPA even points this out >The new association's initial agenda also included a league-wide minimum salary, plus a per diem when teams were on the road, a requirement that uniforms and equipment be paid for and maintained at the clubs' expense, and continued payment of salaries when players were injured Even then they didn't get that great of a deal >Rather than face another lawsuit, the owners agreed to a league minimum salary of $5,000, $50 for each exhibition game played, and medical and hospital coverage Inflation adjusted from 1956 that's a minimum salary of $47,421.14. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Football_League_Pl https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Football_League_Pl ayers_Association So there was a very real reason for that specific union to form and once a union forms, it's pretty unlikely to go away. Trying to compare that to office workers needing a union doesn't really translate. I'm not saying office workers need, or don't need, a union. I'm simply saying I don't think this is a fair comparison. I've never been part of a union and can't really speak to the benefits and downsides of them.

wirrbel 7y ago

You may think you can do without a union if business is good and management OK. When shit hits the fan, that is when you'll learn that you need them. I work in a German unionized company and I think unions can be quite well-aligned with workers and business interest. IIRC certain aspects of US law make unions be the way they are in the US on purpose to lower their acceptance among employees. For example work councils which are commonly established in unionized companies aren't allowed in the US iirc, they can be a nice alternative from going all in into unionizing, a democratic representation of all employees.