> The problem with unions is they reward seniority over merit. I've never seen a company, union or non-union, that doesn't have a relatively narrow salary rang

> The problem with unions is they reward seniority over merit. I've never seen a company, union or non-union, that doesn't have a relatively narrow salary range and progression for non-management positions. Of course the base salary tends to be much higher in tech companies, but how much non-seniority "merit pay" do non-manager software engineers actually get? The bigger the company, the more well-defined and bureaucratized the salary progression, even when there's no union. AFAICT it seems largely a myth that large amounts of non-seniority merit raises exist in software engineering. Some engineers can advance through the "rankings" more quickly than others, but overall it doesn't seem much different from union scales. The differences due to "merit" are overall small in the whole scheme. The two best ways to increase your salary in a tech company are still seniority and promotion to management, which is no different than union shops. Of course stock compensation can be a big factor in tech companies, but the stock price rises or falls due to market forces rather than individual employee merit.