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> A year ago, 80 Google contractors employed by HCL America in Pittsburgh voted to unionize with US Steelworkers—a historic victory for white collar tech worker

by syspec 6y ago

> A year ago, 80 Google contractors employed by HCL America in Pittsburgh voted to unionize with US Steelworkers—a historic victory for white collar tech workers in the U.S. According to who? My wife is a nurse, in a union, and the stuff she tells me about some of her cohorts getting away with then leveraging the union to avoid being reprimanded/ let go is insane. Additionally there is no incentive to improve, your salary is based on seniority and nothing else. It is literally on a chart, predetermined. I don't want that for software engineering. I acknowledge the importance of unions in our history, being labor to where it is today. However I do not want unions for the software engineering field

djur 6y ago
Would you accept a similar anecdotal argument against solely management-controlled labor that cited examples of companies with bad or abusive management practices? Or would you suggest that not all corporate management teams can be judged by the worst examples? Why are unions specifically a bad idea for software engineering?
Brozilean 6y ago
I too, form my entire world view on anecdotal evidence.
- thu2111 6y ago
  The concerns people have with unions are not particularly amenable to statistical analysis. However at some point a sufficiently large collection of anecdotes does become data. Pretending people can hear stories of union-related BS so many times or for so many years and not take that into account is silly.
- MattGaiser 6y ago
  The challenge with unions is that the same/very similar anecdote keeps on coming up. I am not anti union (wouldn’t want to be part of one, but don’t ideologically oppose them), but this seems to be a consistent failure point for them, in the same way that Scrum often ends up generating hairball codebases.
tclancy 6y ago
Don’t want what, a leg to stand on? A seat at the table to bargain with your betters? How is some random data point about your wife’s experience evidence against collective bargaining? What do you see as the downside? “Gee, sure we have a say in our benefits and my salary is way higher, but there’s this one coworker who doesn’t pull their weight.” As opposed to life in a non-union shop, where it’s a workers paradise and everyone shows up ecstatic to hit the code mines first thing on Monday.
- danielrpa 6y ago
  That's right, I don't want the same thing you want. The point here being that if you want the union experience, you should create/join an union and try to negotiate collectively along other like-minded individuals. But please let me exercise my freedom of negotiating directly with an employer by myself. The main problem of unions is when they want to force everybody else to play by their rules, often disproportionally benefitting union leaders and the "old guard".
- deanCommie 6y ago
  This is going to be controversial and slightly classist, but... There is work that is utility work and there is work that isn't. I don't mean skilled or unskilled. A common dunk on the distinction between the two is something like "I'd love to see the CEO of <so and so> try a day on the line of <so and so> and see if they still want to call it unskilled labour." No, where I differentiate is jobs where ANYONE can learn the skills, and others where NOT anyone can. These are by the way not purely academic skills, they are some where the differences are physical, though these days there is fewer and fewer of those as humanity got super good at making tools. Basically I'm saying there are jobs where maybe the CEO wouldn't be able to figure it out on day 1, but with standard training, they would be able to do the job. And with EXPERIENCE they would be able to get better and better. These are the jobs where salaries should be set by a union, and where your salaries rise directly correlated with experience. Now let's get to the classist and controversial part. I don't believe software engineering is like that. Yes, many more people COULD if given the opportunity, and education, and investment. But not EVERYONE can. And not everyone learns at the same pace. I've been in the industry for 15 years since I graduated with my undergrad, and I've been junior, and I've been senior, and I've seen new grads come in and grow, and thrive, and become promoted to senior. And I've seen juniors come in, and struggle, and tread water, and be managed out. For the exact same job. I want to be able to promote quickly people who succeed and show an aptitude, and maturity. I want to encourage and incentivize those people to keep reaching for the stars. I am 100% against unions for software development.
kevingadd 6y ago
It sounds like your wife doesn't like the collective she's a part of. Welcome to collective bargaining. You don't get to pick and choose who is allowed to vote in your local elections, and you don't get to pick and choose which of your coworkers are entitled to representation. If there are bad people in your employee collective, that is mostly a rebuke of the employer for hiring bad people. Or are you arguing that unions somehow turn good people into bad ones? Is a person's only incentive for improvement in life getting an extra $1k/yr? Personal satisfaction and desire for growth don't exist, people don't care about their customers? While I'm happy to not hate any of my current coworkers (for once!) almost every team I've been on has had some bad apples. Unions have nothing to do with that, and I'd still rather my workplace be unionized if it meant the more vulnerable members of the team were protected even if my least-favorite colleagues could exploit it for their own benefit. I've seen too many people mistreated by employers to think that unions can't be helpful.
- syspec 6y ago
  When you have unions, the bad apples cannot be removed from the bunch.
  - kevingadd 6y ago
    So how did the bad employees get hired at your workplace and stay there before it unionized? Did the company hire 100% good apples before unionization and then suddenly change its mind and start hiring bad ones? Are you really going to assert that firing people is impossible in a union workplace? We both know that's not true.
    - donatj 6y ago
      You can have an apple that does shitty work and pay them 70% what you pay good apples, and everyone's still reasonably happy. When I have to pay the 70% apple the same amount as the 100% apples, and can't really fire that apple, that's the not fair to the 100% apples.
      - 6y ago
brnt 6y ago
Corporate overlords, on the other hand, are known for their impeccable and utterly fair behaviour throughout history. Not a single bad apple there! Be a good serf and good things will come to you, heed these words!
dimator 6y ago
I've known plenty of software engineers that don't carry their weight. Some of the big techs make it very easy to do the bare minimum, if that's all you want to do. You don't need a union to have slackers.
throwauwer4545 6y ago
I've noticed unions to have that affect as well. While it's undeniable that they have a role, historically, they all ultimately seem to make their parent industries incompetent and completely out of touch with the market until the point that they eventually to go belly up and are sold off (not sure about the causation here). American Automakers, Indian PSUs and the state machinery, stand out in particular in my memory.
cynusx 6y ago
I agree that unions have been an important player for worker rights and in some countries even the advent and enforcement of democracy. However, unions really make sense when workers are a "commodity" and easily replaceable to the point that they are ground down into poverty. Steel workers and drivers would be a good example of such jobs. In software engineering, you have plenty of options to change jobs and go to a better company. The market demand for software engineers is massive and you are definitely not in a job where you have to suffer through bad management. A company in tech that unionized can only mean one thing 1/ The management is really crap 2/ The workers are so unskilled they can't find jobs elsewhere Would you outsource work to such a company?
- pjmlp 6y ago
  Apparently many US companies do, because they outsource to European companies and we do unionize across full sectors, not single companies. Everyone from the cleaning personal to upper management gets part of the deal. Plus apparently some haven't yet grasped that in many economies across the world, Software Engineers are indeed replacement cogs, they just cost little more per month than other cogs.
  - cynusx 6y ago
    In my opinion there is a big difference between being forced by regulation to unionize and to be forced by your own employees to unionize. The management can't be blamed for the regulation and the employees clearly didn't decide to unionize because they don't believe in their own chances of finding employment elsewhere. If the forcing function is external then there's no reason to assume the company's performance will be subpar from a buyer POV
    - pjmlp 6y ago
      I really don't get this US point of view how unions have anything to do with job performance or ability to find jobs.

by syspec 6y ago

djur 6y ago

Would you accept a similar anecdotal argument against solely management-controlled labor that cited examples of companies with bad or abusive management practices? Or would you suggest that not all corporate management teams can be judged by the worst examples? Why are unions specifically a bad idea for software engineering?

Brozilean 6y ago

I too, form my entire world view on anecdotal evidence.

thu2111 6y ago
The concerns people have with unions are not particularly amenable to statistical analysis. However at some point a sufficiently large collection of anecdotes does become data. Pretending people can hear stories of union-related BS so many times or for so many years and not take that into account is silly.
MattGaiser 6y ago
The challenge with unions is that the same/very similar anecdote keeps on coming up. I am not anti union (wouldn’t want to be part of one, but don’t ideologically oppose them), but this seems to be a consistent failure point for them, in the same way that Scrum often ends up generating hairball codebases.

tclancy 6y ago

Don’t want what, a leg to stand on? A seat at the table to bargain with your betters? How is some random data point about your wife’s experience evidence against collective bargaining? What do you see as the downside? “Gee, sure we have a say in our benefits and my salary is way higher, but there’s this one coworker who doesn’t pull their weight.” As opposed to life in a non-union shop, where it’s a workers paradise and everyone shows up ecstatic to hit the code mines first thing on Monday.

danielrpa 6y ago
That's right, I don't want the same thing you want. The point here being that if you want the union experience, you should create/join an union and try to negotiate collectively along other like-minded individuals. But please let me exercise my freedom of negotiating directly with an employer by myself. The main problem of unions is when they want to force everybody else to play by their rules, often disproportionally benefitting union leaders and the "old guard".
deanCommie 6y ago
This is going to be controversial and slightly classist, but... There is work that is utility work and there is work that isn't. I don't mean skilled or unskilled. A common dunk on the distinction between the two is something like "I'd love to see the CEO of <so and so> try a day on the line of <so and so> and see if they still want to call it unskilled labour." No, where I differentiate is jobs where ANYONE can learn the skills, and others where NOT anyone can. These are by the way not purely academic skills, they are some where the differences are physical, though these days there is fewer and fewer of those as humanity got super good at making tools. Basically I'm saying there are jobs where maybe the CEO wouldn't be able to figure it out on day 1, but with standard training, they would be able to do the job. And with EXPERIENCE they would be able to get better and better. These are the jobs where salaries should be set by a union, and where your salaries rise directly correlated with experience. Now let's get to the classist and controversial part. I don't believe software engineering is like that. Yes, many more people COULD if given the opportunity, and education, and investment. But not EVERYONE can. And not everyone learns at the same pace. I've been in the industry for 15 years since I graduated with my undergrad, and I've been junior, and I've been senior, and I've seen new grads come in and grow, and thrive, and become promoted to senior. And I've seen juniors come in, and struggle, and tread water, and be managed out. For the exact same job. I want to be able to promote quickly people who succeed and show an aptitude, and maturity. I want to encourage and incentivize those people to keep reaching for the stars. I am 100% against unions for software development.

kevingadd 6y ago

It sounds like your wife doesn't like the collective she's a part of. Welcome to collective bargaining. You don't get to pick and choose who is allowed to vote in your local elections, and you don't get to pick and choose which of your coworkers are entitled to representation. If there are bad people in your employee collective, that is mostly a rebuke of the employer for hiring bad people. Or are you arguing that unions somehow turn good people into bad ones? Is a person's only incentive for improvement in life getting an extra $1k/yr? Personal satisfaction and desire for growth don't exist, people don't care about their customers? While I'm happy to not hate any of my current coworkers (for once!) almost every team I've been on has had some bad apples. Unions have nothing to do with that, and I'd still rather my workplace be unionized if it meant the more vulnerable members of the team were protected even if my least-favorite colleagues could exploit it for their own benefit. I've seen too many people mistreated by employers to think that unions can't be helpful.

syspec 6y ago
When you have unions, the bad apples cannot be removed from the bunch.
- kevingadd 6y ago
  So how did the bad employees get hired at your workplace and stay there before it unionized? Did the company hire 100% good apples before unionization and then suddenly change its mind and start hiring bad ones? Are you really going to assert that firing people is impossible in a union workplace? We both know that's not true.
  - donatj 6y ago
    You can have an apple that does shitty work and pay them 70% what you pay good apples, and everyone's still reasonably happy. When I have to pay the 70% apple the same amount as the 100% apples, and can't really fire that apple, that's the not fair to the 100% apples.
    - 6y ago

brnt 6y ago

Corporate overlords, on the other hand, are known for their impeccable and utterly fair behaviour throughout history. Not a single bad apple there! Be a good serf and good things will come to you, heed these words!

dimator 6y ago

I've known plenty of software engineers that don't carry their weight. Some of the big techs make it very easy to do the bare minimum, if that's all you want to do. You don't need a union to have slackers.

throwauwer4545 6y ago

I've noticed unions to have that affect as well. While it's undeniable that they have a role, historically, they all ultimately seem to make their parent industries incompetent and completely out of touch with the market until the point that they eventually to go belly up and are sold off (not sure about the causation here). American Automakers, Indian PSUs and the state machinery, stand out in particular in my memory.

cynusx 6y ago

I agree that unions have been an important player for worker rights and in some countries even the advent and enforcement of democracy. However, unions really make sense when workers are a "commodity" and easily replaceable to the point that they are ground down into poverty. Steel workers and drivers would be a good example of such jobs. In software engineering, you have plenty of options to change jobs and go to a better company. The market demand for software engineers is massive and you are definitely not in a job where you have to suffer through bad management. A company in tech that unionized can only mean one thing 1/ The management is really crap 2/ The workers are so unskilled they can't find jobs elsewhere Would you outsource work to such a company?

pjmlp 6y ago
Apparently many US companies do, because they outsource to European companies and we do unionize across full sectors, not single companies. Everyone from the cleaning personal to upper management gets part of the deal. Plus apparently some haven't yet grasped that in many economies across the world, Software Engineers are indeed replacement cogs, they just cost little more per month than other cogs.
- cynusx 6y ago
  In my opinion there is a big difference between being forced by regulation to unionize and to be forced by your own employees to unionize. The management can't be blamed for the regulation and the employees clearly didn't decide to unionize because they don't believe in their own chances of finding employment elsewhere. If the forcing function is external then there's no reason to assume the company's performance will be subpar from a buyer POV
  - pjmlp 6y ago
    I really don't get this US point of view how unions have anything to do with job performance or ability to find jobs.