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Unions increase wages by reducing the effective supply of labor for the company, which increases the price of that labor. https://mru.org/courses/principles-ec

Unions increase wages by reducing the effective supply of labor for the company, which increases the price of that labor. https://mru.org/courses/principles-economics-microeconomics/do-labor-unions-raise-wages-workers https://mru.org/courses/principles-economics-microeconomics/... It's the same principle which professional organizations use to keep compensation high for doctors and lawyers: set a limit on the number of entrants. Restricting entry is a fundamental feature of unions: it protects those who are already in industry at the expense of potential new employees who might otherwise come in and undercut wages. That said if you want to standardize the admissions process, a professional organization is a tried and true way to accomplish this: doctors and lawyers take a standardized test, become accredited, and can take on any job without being grilled for their technical skills.

Apocryphon 7y ago
Perhaps, but all of this talk about forcing licensing and certification to restrict engineering labor supply seems to fly in the face of the actual unionization efforts in the OP- the workplace improvements are mostly about addressing HR-related complaints and building a better environment, not pay raises: https://kickstarterunited.org/#faqs https://kickstarterunited.org/#faqs The first and only point related to pay is "equal pay for equal work", which is more about gender pay gaps than anything: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equal_pay_for_equal_work https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equal_pay_for_equal_work There's plenty of issues in the tech industry that a union or some other professional association or guild (or even the IEEE, with teeth) could address that have nothing to do with giving developers higher wages.