7 ms·

So these are really good examples, but I still don't understand what unions can do for 1% of someone's pay. They kind of look like subscription services, or wor

So these are really good examples, but I still don't understand what unions can do for 1% of someone's pay. They kind of look like subscription services, or worse places you have to join or else there are unintended consequences from other examples where they mention looking at union membership as an indicator of some experience (so kind of like a tax). The screen actors guild and all the movie-related guilds seem interesting, but aren't those kind of like freelancers more than closer to fully employed people? I guess it would be beneficial for salary negotiation for non-software engineers and maybe contractos, but I don't really see the incentive to join one as a fulltime software engineer. Maybe I have a bad opinion on unions due to how they operated in my country that's not US :D.

avianlyric 6y ago
In theory the unions should be a place to organise employees, to help improve working conditions. But I suspect for most people the real benefit will be protection from miscarriages of justice. I've personally seen people put through the wringer by HR teams, and even when the HR team acknowledges they've fucked up, there's no apologies or an attempt to make things right. Unions can provide protection in these case, whether that's access to legal help, or just having a 3rd party on your side sitting in on employee dispute meetings. I think a lot of people don't appreciate how badly they can be screwed over by a HR team, accidentally or maliciously, until they find themselves in a meeting with three members of the HR team, with no one telling them what's going on. At which point, it's already too late to save yourself. A union gives you recourse and support, something invaluable when it you're up against the entire HR team.
- datavirtue 6y ago
  This is how it works with the nurses unions. My mom got accused by another nurse of intentionally hurting a patient. Without the union she would have been on her own to deal with HR and management who would have just gotten rid of her as a matter of their convenience. Nothing of substance was found out of the investigations. The union worked. It will also protect her against any future political repercussions arising from the accusations and investigation. The police were involved and everything, no way in hell an employee would survive that without union representation.
- dleslie 6y ago
  HR works for your employer, they are not your friend and are not on your side; this should be common knowledge. There are organizations that provide legal services to labour which do not require one to be a member of a union. It might be better for all if the money spent on dues was instead contributed to an organization that doesn't discriminate.
vegardx 6y ago
My union membership more than paid for itself this year. My employer wanted to defer merit increase due to covid and all the uncertainty. The union called them on the bluff.
- sethammons 6y ago
  Was it really a bluff? How do you know if growth projects or other company investments had to be canceled?
  - vegardx 6y ago
    We know because we got the merit increase. Do you think they'd give up so easily if they had a good case against it?
    - sethammons 6y ago
      For the same reason little shops pay protection money to gangs. Just because the money went somewhere does not mean it was the best place. Absolutely, the company likely was acting in bad faith, but it is not guaranteed. Maybe merit increases means they have to cut something else that affects their ability to complete, or maybe it just means less bonus for executives. Just saying that there are two sides. It is not always an evil company. I guess this is an argument for collective bargaining. I’ve never experienced its benefits however, and have seen negative effects.
      - vegardx 6y ago
        That's a lot of whataboutism. It's not like it's in the best interest of the workers to see the company go belly up. Or be less competitive. If the company can show that this is why they're defering merit pay there's no reason to believe that unions won't accept it and agree with them. It gives employees leverage, and healthy competition in all aspects should just strengthen the company.
        6y ago
kenhwang 6y ago
The film industry operates on a gig-by-gig basis. Imagine drafting a legal contract for every sprint. Because you're working at a different company every sprint. Or interviewing/hiring new people every sprint. Kinda how the film industry works. Way easier to just have standardized union contracts, pay rates, and expectations for everyone involved and have the union provide benefits.
3np 6y ago
One thing I can see a SE guild improving is clarity and consistency with things like license compliance, unenforceable attempts to restrict of ownership and development of software created in ones free time, assistance in stock options negotiations, and other things that regularly come up here.
- pacificat0r 6y ago
  Ownership of free-time developed stuff is likely the only thing that has peaked my interest. maybe unions aren't that bad after all. Tho one would hope this type of thing would just be covered by the law without requiring an union to handle, but heh, world is imperfect. I remember when working in games you couldn't even write blogposts about any type of unrelated to programming thing (e.g. not even about playing guitar) and that was super frustrating. Likely those clauses weren't enforceble but still anoying.
lithos 6y ago
While not union myself watching how IBEW (international brotherhood of electrical workers) works, it ends up working well for all involved parties. For workers pay is kept higher, benefits stay active between jobs, and benefits stay unchanged between jobs at different companies. Companies also gain the ability to support surges/drops in manning requirements (without ruining life's of workers), and know workers have a minimum level of training (along with that training not leaving workers a debt addled depressive). I also see the best workers rising through the ranks, and bad ones either never actually entering the union or quitting when they realize they're not going anywhere. Not every union strangles their company like automotive unions. Though those unions start to look better looking at nonunion companies like Tesla which somehow manages to pay their workers less, in one of the most expensive areas in the world, and maintaining an accident rate that would shut a union shop down. Also it makes sense that Google would fight unions. Since the current implementation of unions for SV companies has been Kickstarter. And that union mostly exists to drive profit to their competitors by choosing what is allowed on Kickstarter. Something like that for Google would just end up making an easy paper trail for a prosecutor to follow for SV platform bias.
- pacificat0r 6y ago
  >I also see the best workers rising through the ranks, and bad ones either never actually entering the union or quitting when they realize they're not going anywhere. This doesn't sound like an advantage for software engineers. Surely unions can't decide on someone's competency. It kind of raises a red flag about potential gatekeeping methods (e.g. the tax status where you have to join or else).
  - kenhwang 6y ago
    Arguably, unions are the best judge of someone's competency, because its supposed to be a group of peers. It's already how it works in tech, software engineers evaluate the skill of prospective software engineers, not management. But yes, there are gatekeeping effects, as the union is incentivized to prevent increases in membership or decrease in collective skill. It typically works out great for those in the union (and things like the Bar or Medical Association), not so great for those kept out.
grumple 6y ago
Firstly, unions prevent abuse. This includes unjust termination (for a million different reasons), handles disputes with supervisors where the individual employee otherwise has no power, such as the HN post the other day about the extremely abusive Apple team, or the many things we hear about sexism and racism. On HN and reddit, every time we talk about these issues the comments are always "find a new job", "don't bother with hr", "hr is not your friend". With a union, the union IS your friend and they make it so you DON'T have to find a new job. For devs, with our extremely painful and broken interviewing process, this is great. Second, they negotiate for higher wages and benefits. Given that tech is churning out billionaire ceos, we certainly could be paid more. I have never met a dev who said "I don't want to be paid more". Yes, we make decent wages, but we still produce far more value than what we're paid for. Thirdly, they negotiate for better working conditions. Examples from the past were things like the 8 hour workday, safety measures, etc. I suspect there's a lot of opportunity for growth here in the tech industry, through I haven't had enough coffee to come up with a list. The 8 hour workday is certainly one of them, as I've heard endless nightmares of people being forced to working extremely long hours. The lack of overtime in our industry is a big deal, and "get a new job" is a crappy answer and hard to do in practice, especially if you're being worked to death.

avianlyric 6y ago

In theory the unions should be a place to organise employees, to help improve working conditions. But I suspect for most people the real benefit will be protection from miscarriages of justice. I've personally seen people put through the wringer by HR teams, and even when the HR team acknowledges they've fucked up, there's no apologies or an attempt to make things right. Unions can provide protection in these case, whether that's access to legal help, or just having a 3rd party on your side sitting in on employee dispute meetings. I think a lot of people don't appreciate how badly they can be screwed over by a HR team, accidentally or maliciously, until they find themselves in a meeting with three members of the HR team, with no one telling them what's going on. At which point, it's already too late to save yourself. A union gives you recourse and support, something invaluable when it you're up against the entire HR team.

datavirtue 6y ago
This is how it works with the nurses unions. My mom got accused by another nurse of intentionally hurting a patient. Without the union she would have been on her own to deal with HR and management who would have just gotten rid of her as a matter of their convenience. Nothing of substance was found out of the investigations. The union worked. It will also protect her against any future political repercussions arising from the accusations and investigation. The police were involved and everything, no way in hell an employee would survive that without union representation.
dleslie 6y ago
HR works for your employer, they are not your friend and are not on your side; this should be common knowledge. There are organizations that provide legal services to labour which do not require one to be a member of a union. It might be better for all if the money spent on dues was instead contributed to an organization that doesn't discriminate.

vegardx 6y ago

My union membership more than paid for itself this year. My employer wanted to defer merit increase due to covid and all the uncertainty. The union called them on the bluff.

sethammons 6y ago
Was it really a bluff? How do you know if growth projects or other company investments had to be canceled?
- vegardx 6y ago
  We know because we got the merit increase. Do you think they'd give up so easily if they had a good case against it?
  - sethammons 6y ago
    For the same reason little shops pay protection money to gangs. Just because the money went somewhere does not mean it was the best place. Absolutely, the company likely was acting in bad faith, but it is not guaranteed. Maybe merit increases means they have to cut something else that affects their ability to complete, or maybe it just means less bonus for executives. Just saying that there are two sides. It is not always an evil company. I guess this is an argument for collective bargaining. I’ve never experienced its benefits however, and have seen negative effects.
    - vegardx 6y ago
      That's a lot of whataboutism. It's not like it's in the best interest of the workers to see the company go belly up. Or be less competitive. If the company can show that this is why they're defering merit pay there's no reason to believe that unions won't accept it and agree with them. It gives employees leverage, and healthy competition in all aspects should just strengthen the company.
      - 6y ago

kenhwang 6y ago

The film industry operates on a gig-by-gig basis. Imagine drafting a legal contract for every sprint. Because you're working at a different company every sprint. Or interviewing/hiring new people every sprint. Kinda how the film industry works. Way easier to just have standardized union contracts, pay rates, and expectations for everyone involved and have the union provide benefits.

3np 6y ago

One thing I can see a SE guild improving is clarity and consistency with things like license compliance, unenforceable attempts to restrict of ownership and development of software created in ones free time, assistance in stock options negotiations, and other things that regularly come up here.

pacificat0r 6y ago
Ownership of free-time developed stuff is likely the only thing that has peaked my interest. maybe unions aren't that bad after all. Tho one would hope this type of thing would just be covered by the law without requiring an union to handle, but heh, world is imperfect. I remember when working in games you couldn't even write blogposts about any type of unrelated to programming thing (e.g. not even about playing guitar) and that was super frustrating. Likely those clauses weren't enforceble but still anoying.

lithos 6y ago

While not union myself watching how IBEW (international brotherhood of electrical workers) works, it ends up working well for all involved parties. For workers pay is kept higher, benefits stay active between jobs, and benefits stay unchanged between jobs at different companies. Companies also gain the ability to support surges/drops in manning requirements (without ruining life's of workers), and know workers have a minimum level of training (along with that training not leaving workers a debt addled depressive). I also see the best workers rising through the ranks, and bad ones either never actually entering the union or quitting when they realize they're not going anywhere. Not every union strangles their company like automotive unions. Though those unions start to look better looking at nonunion companies like Tesla which somehow manages to pay their workers less, in one of the most expensive areas in the world, and maintaining an accident rate that would shut a union shop down. Also it makes sense that Google would fight unions. Since the current implementation of unions for SV companies has been Kickstarter. And that union mostly exists to drive profit to their competitors by choosing what is allowed on Kickstarter. Something like that for Google would just end up making an easy paper trail for a prosecutor to follow for SV platform bias.

pacificat0r 6y ago
>I also see the best workers rising through the ranks, and bad ones either never actually entering the union or quitting when they realize they're not going anywhere. This doesn't sound like an advantage for software engineers. Surely unions can't decide on someone's competency. It kind of raises a red flag about potential gatekeeping methods (e.g. the tax status where you have to join or else).
- kenhwang 6y ago
  Arguably, unions are the best judge of someone's competency, because its supposed to be a group of peers. It's already how it works in tech, software engineers evaluate the skill of prospective software engineers, not management. But yes, there are gatekeeping effects, as the union is incentivized to prevent increases in membership or decrease in collective skill. It typically works out great for those in the union (and things like the Bar or Medical Association), not so great for those kept out.

grumple 6y ago

Firstly, unions prevent abuse. This includes unjust termination (for a million different reasons), handles disputes with supervisors where the individual employee otherwise has no power, such as the HN post the other day about the extremely abusive Apple team, or the many things we hear about sexism and racism. On HN and reddit, every time we talk about these issues the comments are always "find a new job", "don't bother with hr", "hr is not your friend". With a union, the union IS your friend and they make it so you DON'T have to find a new job. For devs, with our extremely painful and broken interviewing process, this is great. Second, they negotiate for higher wages and benefits. Given that tech is churning out billionaire ceos, we certainly could be paid more. I have never met a dev who said "I don't want to be paid more". Yes, we make decent wages, but we still produce far more value than what we're paid for. Thirdly, they negotiate for better working conditions. Examples from the past were things like the 8 hour workday, safety measures, etc. I suspect there's a lot of opportunity for growth here in the tech industry, through I haven't had enough coffee to come up with a list. The 8 hour workday is certainly one of them, as I've heard endless nightmares of people being forced to working extremely long hours. The lack of overtime in our industry is a big deal, and "get a new job" is a crappy answer and hard to do in practice, especially if you're being worked to death.