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>When I talk to colleagues in tech about unions I hear a lot of misconceptions Because everyone talking about unionization refuses to get into the nitty gritty

>When I talk to colleagues in tech about unions I hear a lot of misconceptions Because everyone talking about unionization refuses to get into the nitty gritty of what I might gain, what I might lose, and the structural changes to the workplaces that are inherent with unionization. And if/when I/others start spitballing about what those might be we're treated like dolts uneducated on organized labor, and should just shut my mouth and get on board. >they don't always get it right This is the closest anyone every gets to saying something, but it doesn't mean anything. Where the fuck is the actual case study about the structure of the system, constraints, influences, incentives? How does it evolve and how does the contract change and evolve that system? >I don't pretend that Hollywood is a perfect utopia of worker relations, but I think it's pretty undeniable that the industry is a much better place with the unions around. SHOW don't TELL. tl;dr: Don't tell me I want a union contract, tell me what the terms of the contract will be and I'll decide for myself. I'm probably on board, but every time someone glosses over the details you push me further and further away.

cool_dude85 6y ago
So you want someone who can tell you what the yet-to-be-negotiated contract with your employer will look like? Maybe you should be looking to join up with the Mage's Guild, I understand that their magic can see the future very clearly.
- finnthehuman 6y ago
  >So you want someone who can tell you what the yet-to-be-negotiated contract with your employer will look like? In broad strokes, yes. Here's an analogy: I know it's not implemented yet, but I want the design doc and market research, not just the elevator pitch.
  - whimsicalism 6y ago
    This is usually communicated in the course of organizing - you don't win union elections by not communicating what you stand for/what would be pushed for in a new contract.
- bjo590 6y ago
  I don't need to see a negotiated contract. I need to see a list of grievances the union wants to negotiate for. So far everything I have ever wanted but not had from an employer I was able to find by switching employers. What is something concrete that would make my life better that I can only get by joining a union?
  - whimsicalism 6y ago
    Really spitballing, but one that comes to mind is eliminate forced private arbitration? I haven't been able to avoid that one by switching employers.
    - pb7 6y ago
      Google got rid of forced arbitration recently without unions.
      - whimsicalism 6y ago
        > without unions. Conveniently omitting the 20k strong walkout. That's organizing. I hadn't heard that it was for all cases, kudos to Google. But of course that is just one example among many.
        pb7 6y ago
        Not omitting anything. Organizing is what discontinued the DoD contracts and several other unsavory problems in recent years. That's entirely my point: employees already have the power to effect change for important issues without involving all of the problems that plague official unions like teachers' unions and police unions.
        whimsicalism 6y ago
        I don't see what adding a body that allows you to vote on what get's done involves all of those problems. Unions are structured in a way determined by the workers who are voting, there is no inevitable path for a union to take. A teacher union is very different from an actor's union, for instance, even if they are covered by the same basic laws.
calvano915 6y ago
When the company has numerous legal or illegal but usually unpunished methods to suppress the discussion, it can be very difficult to conduct the negotiations between employees necessary for the concise plan/contract you request. Voting in a union is actually voting first that you opt in to a collective bargaining agreement, then negotiating the terms of the agreement among members. Later, negotiations are had with the company. Your POV is common to many that will accept much less with certainty rather than working through a decent amount of uncertainty for the prospect of a whole lot more.
- finnthehuman 6y ago
  >Your POV is common to many that will accept much less with certainty rather than working through a decent amount of uncertainty for the prospect of a whole lot more. Don't you put that on me. You're explicitly talking about a scenario where we're not even comparing notes on the possibility space of that uncertainty until I'm downside-committed.
  - ddingus 6y ago
    Seriously, go look up a few good organizers. They have written books on all this. You can see how things get done. Won't answer whether they should get done. That question is open right now. The market research goes like this: Who are the influencers? What do they think? What does rank and file think? Is there potential for high degree of solidarity in all that? There is your basis for an effort to be put forth for you to consider right there. Then the real work begins. Sort the people out and work toward a winning scenario. There is risk. The better organizers manage that by how and with whom and when organizing is done. By the time you reach potential downside commit, there will be a much more clear deal to consider.
    - finnthehuman 6y ago
      > Seriously, go look up a few good organizers. No. The organization movement wants me, I don’t want them. They can come to me.
ddingus 6y ago
The better organizers will have a priority discussion. What terms improve things for everyone? How should work be? From there, they build solidarity around those terms. When the vision maps to 80 / 90 percent of labor at that enterprise, the effort to unionize can win.
- asdfasgasdgasdg 6y ago
  > When the vision maps to 80 / 90 percent of labor at that enterprise, the effort to unionize can win. The odds of this happening at Google in the next ten years are pretty low, I'd say. That's why they organized this as a members-only union rather than trying to do a real unionization drive.
  - ddingus 6y ago
    I agree. It will be interesting to see it play out. Members only does lower the bar considerably. Size matters. If it gets big? New ideas matter too. The traditional union struggle has become very difficult in the US. The high solidarity numbers required today are 20 to 30 points more than necessary before.
    - asdfasgasdgasdg 6y ago
      Someone told me that union dues are 1% of annual compensation. Wild. Although I learned that teachers pay closer to 2%. Seems like a lot.
      - ddingus 6y ago
        Depends, doesn't it? Solid negotiations basically pay the dues and then some. This may not be true for all diciplines / positions. In terms of risks, marginalizing those is worth something too. For many, just keeping health care sane is worth a lot more than a couple points.
        asdfasgasdgasdg 6y ago
thesuitonym 6y ago
>tell me what the terms of the contract will be and I'll decide for myself. Nobody can tell you what the contract will be because the contract won't be drawn up until the union exists and has enough members to bargain. What you DO know is the current contract you have. You DO know that you have virtually no say in what is in that contract, "accept it or leave," is not having a say in that contract. You DO know that as a member of the union, you will have a vote in what employment contracts look like. You DO know that if you have an issue, you have someone outside the company that you can talk to about it--that is, you wont' get fired for bringing it up.
- pwned1 6y ago
  Sounds like the cart before the horse. Tell me I'm signing up for something that I have no idea how it will turn out, and then present me with a take it or leave it contract months later. And I'm stuck.
  - thesuitonym 6y ago
    You would have a part in shaping the contract, though. And if you don't like it, yeah, leave the union, you're no worse off than you were before.
    - toast0 6y ago
      If the new contract is worse, leaving the union isn't sufficient to get back to where you were, because the employer won't offer the old terms to non-union members and the new terms to union members.
    - rlewkov 6y ago
      You may or may not be better off. How will people that are/aren't part of a union be treated if some people are members? If majority is union and you are not, will you be shunned, denied same opportunities for promotion, etc? We can only guess.
      - 6y ago
tmpz22 6y ago
What do you think the software industry will be like 20 years from now? Do you think the cushy salaries and relative lack of gate keeping will stay around? I sure as hell don't. Unionize now, even if you earn a little less, while you have the most bargaining power, so that later you don't have to fight through pinkerton detectives just to get a seat at the table. There's a reason companies like Google suppress initiatives to form unions, and build strong zeitgeists within their employee base that unionization is bad. If unionization is so bad why do companies spend so much money breaking it up? For the good of the workers? Bahahaha.
- ahepp 6y ago
  By what mechanism will salaries fall? And thus by what mechanism will SWE unions keep salaries high, but gates open?
  - labcomputer 6y ago
    Salaries would fall due to increased supply. A union would keep salaries high by not keeping the gates open (if it were modeled on the film industry unions).
    - throwaway894345 6y ago
      Additionally, the low hanging fruit for automation is going to diminish. We'll always have things to automate, but in general those things will decrease in value.
    - hnuser847 6y ago
      > A union would keep salaries high by not keeping the gates open That’s the same argument people use against immigration. I realize HN is a diverse place and not everybody has the same opinion on these matters, but I find it interesting that people here generally support labor protectionism when it applies to high-income earners like software engineers, but they don’t support closing the borders in order to increase the wages of low-income earners.
jodrellblank 6y ago
> "everyone talking about unionization refuses to get into the nitty gritty of what I might gain, what I might lose," Do you support dictatorships or monarchies on the grounds that democracy enthusiasts cannot tell you exactly what the populace will vote for? To use your phrasing, where in the fuck is the actual case study about the structure of the status quo's constraints, influences and incentives? Apart from the lobbying, the quiet silencing of health and safety and maybe ethics violations, the de-facto expected longer hours and 24x7 on-call, the decades of open-secret poor working conditions in the gaming industry, the constant complaints of tech worker burnout, tech often being considered a cost center and reporting to MBAs and CFOs and not getting a board level representation that reflects the value tech creates, the use of stack ranking that doesn't get applied to sales / management teams, the standard advice that the only way to get a significant salary increase is to change jobs, the often poor or misaligned or unreachable incentives and targets, the situation where a company paying more in perks instead of money is considered good, and etc. You didn't demand a study before agreeing the current approach is good, did you? > "Don't tell me I want a union contract, tell me what the terms of the contract will be" Exactly what people negotiate for will be a representation of what isn't being taken seriously in any specific workplace. "Divide and conquer" - one employer with tens of millions of dollars and a team of lawyers united on one side and every individual employee divided with a fraction of a lawyer and a small amount of money on the other side. How can this ever result in great things for the employee side? Unless you're the 1% with your pick of FAANG jobs and high 6-figure salaries, in which case you're the exception everyone else should ignore because we aren't you and a system where only the 1% can get desirable working conditions for most of their life, and everyone else deserves to suffer for not being good enough, is a bad system.
- humanrebar 6y ago
  It's worth noting that the Bill of Rights was agreed to in principle before the U.S. Constitution was modified. The amendment process also can bypass the national office holders if need be, which is a kind of democratic check on centralized power, albeit an basically unused one so far.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
AshWolfy 6y ago
Nobody can tell you what a contract will look like because unions are democratic, all of us decide what we want, then send negotiators to get what we want, then we approve the result Thats like saying if democracy is so good, why wont anyone tell me what the result of the election will be
friendlybus 6y ago
Unions depend on making a black and white argument. The whole idea can't work with a nuanced argument. Either the company bows to the union or strikes start up. Either the employee joins the union or he/she gets kicked out of the company. It's socialism for the majority. If you want a nuanced argument, meet your union leader at the church he goes to on sunday and see how fervently committed he is to his goals. You're more likely to get a nuanced argument in the face of God, rather than these big dick, black and white union arguments people endlessly wave in our collective face. The union structure is not free from religious, political and justice problems. Some of the largest unions in the US spend union funds on politically charged topics that easily divide it's own membership. You won't get a satisfying answer because it has little to do with rational answers and more to do with sexual security. Union members secure and promote their progeny.

cool_dude85 6y ago

So you want someone who can tell you what the yet-to-be-negotiated contract with your employer will look like? Maybe you should be looking to join up with the Mage's Guild, I understand that their magic can see the future very clearly.

finnthehuman 6y ago
>So you want someone who can tell you what the yet-to-be-negotiated contract with your employer will look like? In broad strokes, yes. Here's an analogy: I know it's not implemented yet, but I want the design doc and market research, not just the elevator pitch.
- whimsicalism 6y ago
  This is usually communicated in the course of organizing - you don't win union elections by not communicating what you stand for/what would be pushed for in a new contract.
bjo590 6y ago
I don't need to see a negotiated contract. I need to see a list of grievances the union wants to negotiate for. So far everything I have ever wanted but not had from an employer I was able to find by switching employers. What is something concrete that would make my life better that I can only get by joining a union?
- whimsicalism 6y ago
  Really spitballing, but one that comes to mind is eliminate forced private arbitration? I haven't been able to avoid that one by switching employers.
  - pb7 6y ago
    Google got rid of forced arbitration recently without unions.
    - whimsicalism 6y ago
      > without unions. Conveniently omitting the 20k strong walkout. That's organizing. I hadn't heard that it was for all cases, kudos to Google. But of course that is just one example among many.
      - pb7 6y ago
        Not omitting anything. Organizing is what discontinued the DoD contracts and several other unsavory problems in recent years. That's entirely my point: employees already have the power to effect change for important issues without involving all of the problems that plague official unions like teachers' unions and police unions.
        whimsicalism 6y ago
        I don't see what adding a body that allows you to vote on what get's done involves all of those problems. Unions are structured in a way determined by the workers who are voting, there is no inevitable path for a union to take. A teacher union is very different from an actor's union, for instance, even if they are covered by the same basic laws.

calvano915 6y ago

When the company has numerous legal or illegal but usually unpunished methods to suppress the discussion, it can be very difficult to conduct the negotiations between employees necessary for the concise plan/contract you request. Voting in a union is actually voting first that you opt in to a collective bargaining agreement, then negotiating the terms of the agreement among members. Later, negotiations are had with the company. Your POV is common to many that will accept much less with certainty rather than working through a decent amount of uncertainty for the prospect of a whole lot more.

finnthehuman 6y ago
>Your POV is common to many that will accept much less with certainty rather than working through a decent amount of uncertainty for the prospect of a whole lot more. Don't you put that on me. You're explicitly talking about a scenario where we're not even comparing notes on the possibility space of that uncertainty until I'm downside-committed.
- ddingus 6y ago
  Seriously, go look up a few good organizers. They have written books on all this. You can see how things get done. Won't answer whether they should get done. That question is open right now. The market research goes like this: Who are the influencers? What do they think? What does rank and file think? Is there potential for high degree of solidarity in all that? There is your basis for an effort to be put forth for you to consider right there. Then the real work begins. Sort the people out and work toward a winning scenario. There is risk. The better organizers manage that by how and with whom and when organizing is done. By the time you reach potential downside commit, there will be a much more clear deal to consider.
  - finnthehuman 6y ago
    > Seriously, go look up a few good organizers. No. The organization movement wants me, I don’t want them. They can come to me.

ddingus 6y ago

The better organizers will have a priority discussion. What terms improve things for everyone? How should work be? From there, they build solidarity around those terms. When the vision maps to 80 / 90 percent of labor at that enterprise, the effort to unionize can win.

asdfasgasdgasdg 6y ago
> When the vision maps to 80 / 90 percent of labor at that enterprise, the effort to unionize can win. The odds of this happening at Google in the next ten years are pretty low, I'd say. That's why they organized this as a members-only union rather than trying to do a real unionization drive.
- ddingus 6y ago
  I agree. It will be interesting to see it play out. Members only does lower the bar considerably. Size matters. If it gets big? New ideas matter too. The traditional union struggle has become very difficult in the US. The high solidarity numbers required today are 20 to 30 points more than necessary before.
  - asdfasgasdgasdg 6y ago
    Someone told me that union dues are 1% of annual compensation. Wild. Although I learned that teachers pay closer to 2%. Seems like a lot.
    - ddingus 6y ago
      Depends, doesn't it? Solid negotiations basically pay the dues and then some. This may not be true for all diciplines / positions. In terms of risks, marginalizing those is worth something too. For many, just keeping health care sane is worth a lot more than a couple points.
      - asdfasgasdgasdg 6y ago

thesuitonym 6y ago

>tell me what the terms of the contract will be and I'll decide for myself. Nobody can tell you what the contract will be because the contract won't be drawn up until the union exists and has enough members to bargain. What you DO know is the current contract you have. You DO know that you have virtually no say in what is in that contract, "accept it or leave," is not having a say in that contract. You DO know that as a member of the union, you will have a vote in what employment contracts look like. You DO know that if you have an issue, you have someone outside the company that you can talk to about it--that is, you wont' get fired for bringing it up.

pwned1 6y ago
Sounds like the cart before the horse. Tell me I'm signing up for something that I have no idea how it will turn out, and then present me with a take it or leave it contract months later. And I'm stuck.
- thesuitonym 6y ago
  You would have a part in shaping the contract, though. And if you don't like it, yeah, leave the union, you're no worse off than you were before.
  - toast0 6y ago
    If the new contract is worse, leaving the union isn't sufficient to get back to where you were, because the employer won't offer the old terms to non-union members and the new terms to union members.
  - rlewkov 6y ago
    You may or may not be better off. How will people that are/aren't part of a union be treated if some people are members? If majority is union and you are not, will you be shunned, denied same opportunities for promotion, etc? We can only guess.
    - 6y ago

tmpz22 6y ago

What do you think the software industry will be like 20 years from now? Do you think the cushy salaries and relative lack of gate keeping will stay around? I sure as hell don't. Unionize now, even if you earn a little less, while you have the most bargaining power, so that later you don't have to fight through pinkerton detectives just to get a seat at the table. There's a reason companies like Google suppress initiatives to form unions, and build strong zeitgeists within their employee base that unionization is bad. If unionization is so bad why do companies spend so much money breaking it up? For the good of the workers? Bahahaha.

ahepp 6y ago
By what mechanism will salaries fall? And thus by what mechanism will SWE unions keep salaries high, but gates open?
- labcomputer 6y ago
  Salaries would fall due to increased supply. A union would keep salaries high by not keeping the gates open (if it were modeled on the film industry unions).
  - throwaway894345 6y ago
    Additionally, the low hanging fruit for automation is going to diminish. We'll always have things to automate, but in general those things will decrease in value.
  - hnuser847 6y ago
    > A union would keep salaries high by not keeping the gates open That’s the same argument people use against immigration. I realize HN is a diverse place and not everybody has the same opinion on these matters, but I find it interesting that people here generally support labor protectionism when it applies to high-income earners like software engineers, but they don’t support closing the borders in order to increase the wages of low-income earners.

jodrellblank 6y ago

> "everyone talking about unionization refuses to get into the nitty gritty of what I might gain, what I might lose," Do you support dictatorships or monarchies on the grounds that democracy enthusiasts cannot tell you exactly what the populace will vote for? To use your phrasing, where in the fuck is the actual case study about the structure of the status quo's constraints, influences and incentives? Apart from the lobbying, the quiet silencing of health and safety and maybe ethics violations, the de-facto expected longer hours and 24x7 on-call, the decades of open-secret poor working conditions in the gaming industry, the constant complaints of tech worker burnout, tech often being considered a cost center and reporting to MBAs and CFOs and not getting a board level representation that reflects the value tech creates, the use of stack ranking that doesn't get applied to sales / management teams, the standard advice that the only way to get a significant salary increase is to change jobs, the often poor or misaligned or unreachable incentives and targets, the situation where a company paying more in perks instead of money is considered good, and etc. You didn't demand a study before agreeing the current approach is good, did you? > "Don't tell me I want a union contract, tell me what the terms of the contract will be" Exactly what people negotiate for will be a representation of what isn't being taken seriously in any specific workplace. "Divide and conquer" - one employer with tens of millions of dollars and a team of lawyers united on one side and every individual employee divided with a fraction of a lawyer and a small amount of money on the other side. How can this ever result in great things for the employee side? Unless you're the 1% with your pick of FAANG jobs and high 6-figure salaries, in which case you're the exception everyone else should ignore because we aren't you and a system where only the 1% can get desirable working conditions for most of their life, and everyone else deserves to suffer for not being good enough, is a bad system.

humanrebar 6y ago
It's worth noting that the Bill of Rights was agreed to in principle before the U.S. Constitution was modified. The amendment process also can bypass the national office holders if need be, which is a kind of democratic check on centralized power, albeit an basically unused one so far.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

AshWolfy 6y ago

Nobody can tell you what a contract will look like because unions are democratic, all of us decide what we want, then send negotiators to get what we want, then we approve the result Thats like saying if democracy is so good, why wont anyone tell me what the result of the election will be

friendlybus 6y ago

Unions depend on making a black and white argument. The whole idea can't work with a nuanced argument. Either the company bows to the union or strikes start up. Either the employee joins the union or he/she gets kicked out of the company. It's socialism for the majority. If you want a nuanced argument, meet your union leader at the church he goes to on sunday and see how fervently committed he is to his goals. You're more likely to get a nuanced argument in the face of God, rather than these big dick, black and white union arguments people endlessly wave in our collective face. The union structure is not free from religious, political and justice problems. Some of the largest unions in the US spend union funds on politically charged topics that easily divide it's own membership. You won't get a satisfying answer because it has little to do with rational answers and more to do with sexual security. Union members secure and promote their progeny.