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I'm surprised they weren't already in one. I worked at a competitor (the Wall St. Journal) years ago and all software engineers there had to be part of the uni

I'm surprised they weren't already in one. I worked at a competitor (the Wall St. Journal) years ago and all software engineers there had to be part of the union. Unions in the news industry are extremely common and powerful. My subjective experience with it was that union membership was mostly inconsequential for developers. The market for programmers is so strong that people would just leave if they weren't treated well or compensated fairly.

minhazm 5y ago
> all software engineers there had to be part of the union. Is that legal? Can unions or companies force you to join the union as a condition of employment?
- benglish11 5y ago
  It depends on the state. This is what “right to work” laws are about.
- mikeryan 5y ago
  A business can be a “closed shop” and require payment of a fee. Though you don’t, technically have to be a member. The fees are not “dues” they’re essentially “agency fees” or “fair share fee” that make up for the benefits you’re getting due to the union. The fees are usually very close to Union dues so most people just join to get all the rights. Exceptions are “Right to Work” states which explicitly outlaw closed shops.
- CountSessine 5y ago
  Of course they can - unless you live in a jurisdiction with a so-called “right to work” statute. If you weren’t forced to join then, in theory, management could subvert and then break the union by hiring lots of new employees who are compensated to “opt-out”.
  - anamax 5y ago
    You write "compensated to 'opt-out'" like it's a bad thing. Unions are a tool, not a goal.
  - dgrin91 5y ago
    > compensated to “opt-out”. Didn't you basically just describe the goal of a union? Better conditions for their workers?
    - eru 5y ago
      Well, the theory is that management will make the conditions worse after breaking up the union. Very similar to the myth of 'predatory pricing'.
  - kortilla 5y ago
    That’s absolutely insane that a union can prevent people from working for a company without paying for their “protection”.
    - morgante 5y ago
      Yep. That's why I will vigorously oppose any unionization drives. It's incredible that people would acquiesce to being forced to accept whatever contract some union boss negotiates.
      - djrobstep 5y ago
        Why is it bad to be forced to generate revenue for the union as a condition of employment, but ok to be forced to generate revenue for the company as a condition of employment?
        morgante 5y ago
        The business has customers and pays me a salary. The union is simply a parasite, extracting value from the organization. Objectively, if you voluntarily join a union shop, there's nothing wrong with that. I would never do it, but it's at least a free market transaction. But it's unconscionable that a union might show up at my work and demand I start paying them for the "benefit" of negotiating on my behalf. I would instantly quit. Thankfully the Alphabet union is a tiny farce.
- TulliusCicero 5y ago
  Sure, just like companies can require you to work at certain times as a condition of employment, or wear a uniform as a condition of employment, or a hundred other things. Letting it go the other way just results in freeloader syndrome: unions fight for improved work policies and work culture for all, but you can get much of the benefits without paying in. So many people don’t, which ends up weakening the union in the long run.
  - eru 5y ago
    You are right that free-loading is a problem in theory. But being forced to pay for services you don't actually want is also a problem.
    - TulliusCicero 5y ago
      It's being forced the same way any other terms of employment are forced on you, and your option in this case is the same: go somewhere else. We know from history and other countries that broadly speaking, if you weaken unions with right-to-work laws, workers as a whole end up worse off. It tilts the power relationship between employees and employer towards the employer. If you look at peer countries with stronger, more present unions, you find that workers are usually considerably better off there.
      - eru 5y ago
        > We know from history and other countries that broadly speaking, if you weaken unions with right-to-work laws, workers as a whole end up worse off. > If you look at peer countries with stronger, more present unions, you find that workers are usually considerably better off there. Compare and contrast https://pseudoerasmus.com/2017/10/02/ijd/ https://pseudoerasmus.com/2017/10/02/ijd/ Also compare European countries. The more neoliberal ones tend to be richer. > It's being forced the same way any other terms of employment are forced on you, and your option in this case is the same: go somewhere else. In some sense, yes. And you can read my comment as an argument in favour of me avoiding union shops.
  - baud147258 5y ago
the_duke 5y ago
That's exactly the time to unionize! The employer has limited leverage to bust any union efforts. When the employment market is weak and you are scrounging for a job it's a lot easier to threaten/scare everyone into submission.
- MattGaiser 5y ago
  But why bother? I wouldn’t even bother raise concerns to a manager in this employment environment, yet alone be willing to fight for a union if something annoyed me.
- Kalium 5y ago
  This also describes an environment where the union doesn't seem to be offering any significant benefits to developers. If unionizing doesn't improve your working conditions, what's the point of the union?
  - pavel_lishin 5y ago
    If you're driving safely at sixty miles an hour, what's the point of a seatbelt?
    - eru 5y ago
      Collisions without a seatbelt are dangerous at much lower speeds. And you might be driving safely, but you can't control what other people are doing. In any case, what does this have to do with unions?
  - axutio 5y ago
    I think the idea is that you form the union when you have leverage and don't need it so that if you ever lose leverage as an individual in the future (e.g. if the developer labor market becomes oversaturated or demand for developers tanks), you will still have some leverage as a member of the collective. Seems kind of like insurance - you pay for it when you don't need it so that you have it when you do.
Spooky23 5y ago
This of course isn’t a problem for HN posters, who are all 10x engineers or w/e. Overall though, not having a contract, recourse and representation in a large company is a pretty big risk factor unless you just toil away in silence.
- morgante 5y ago
  > Overall though, not having a contract, recourse and representation in a large company is a pretty big risk factor unless you just toil away in silence. Why? I have an in-demand set of skills and could easily find a new job if I wanted to. I'd much rather negotiate directly with my employer than have a union intermediating that relationship. If anything, it feels far riskier to have a politically-motivated union boss control my employment.
  - onion2k 5y ago
    I have an in-demand set of skills and could easily find a new job if I wanted to. Let's imagine someone makes an AI project that can turn requirements into code, and it actually works. Copilot has shown it's not impossible to generate working code with some machine learning but it's definitely a hard problem. There are hundreds, maybe even thousands, of founders working on this problem right now and maybe one will get lucky. How long do you think you will be in demand for? Years? Months? Less? Perhaps you'll be fine because you actually define the requirements. Or you're in a job where the AI can't replace you. It would replace a lot of people working in the simple CRUD app end of the dev industry though, and that means pressure to keep wages up would fall away fast if there are more devs than dev jobs. You wouldn't get a raise if there are 20 devs who'd jump in to your role for less money if you left. You couldn't negotiate better terms. If you left you'd be competing with lots of others which puts more downward pressure on your salary. That's one vaguely plausible scenario of how things might change in the next 10 years. There are many more. Right now devs are very well paid but we should all recognize that for what it is - an opportunity for industry disruption. Our salaries are (partly) lost profit. Companies don't want to pay us as much as they do; they pay market rates because they have to. If a company can reduce that cost by lowering wages or lowering headcount every tech employer is going to jump on the opportunity. Founders out there know this is a pain point, and they're working on solving it. Maybe having a union for devs would actually be useful if that ever happens. (FWIW technological change reducing manpower requirements has been a massive driving force behind unionization in many other industries. The scenario is sound even if the "AI writes your code now" bit is a little fantastical.)
vmception 5y ago
Yes but it is time to revisit that logic. Software engineers are well compensated relative to the rest of the population but that should not be a factor at all. Its all about value delivered relative to that organization, in aggregate. Wages have stagnated for 30 years. There is a lot of catching up to do: Until a single earner can afford a family home outright, in 5 years of compensation, down the street from where the company office is, then we can comfortably ignore any annual compensation package no matter how fantastic the dollar amounts seem, and collectively push for more.
- ralfd 5y ago
  Houses are positional goods. If you earn five times as much, your colleagues will too, and there will be a bidding war until the price matches your earning power again. See also: The absurd real estate prices in the Bay area. Elizabeth Warren made that argument in her book "The Two-Income Trap". The economic gains from switching from the traditional bread-winner/house-wife household to double-income-households were eaten up to buy the "family home down the street where the best school is". https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/06/28/book-review-the-two-income-trap/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/06/28/book-review-the-two-in...
  - thaumasiotes 5y ago
    > Houses are positional goods. If you earn five times as much, your colleagues will too, and there will be a bidding war until the price matches your earning power again. This requires the assumption that additional houses can't be constructed. > See also: The absurd real estate prices in the Bay area. See also: the Bay area.
    - ejb999 5y ago
      >>This requires the assumption that additional houses can't be constructed. In a lot of places near expensive cities, that assumption is pretty valid.
  - eru 5y ago
    Well, a big problem for the US is that building most types of new housing is illegal. See eg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Missing_middle_housing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Missing_middle_housing or your favourite articles on the evils of Euclidean zoning and minimum parking requirements.
tootie 5y ago
Honest question: why? Engineers are already compensated way, way above average and have loads of mobility opportunities. I actually work in a news org where most of the non-tech people are in one union or another but my team isn't. We have actually had a few union staff who wanted to do coding work and the union essentially blocked them.
- CSMastermind 5y ago
  > Honest question: why? Because the existing union of news workers demanded that software engineers be included in their membership as part of some negotiation at some point. Basically, it was a way for the union to grow its membership (and dues). It was impossible to opt out of the union and you had to pay dues, I forget how much but I think it was like 2% of your salary or something to the union. Given the option I'm pretty sure most of us would have opted out of the union. I did know a few very senior software engineers who were nominally made managers so they could get out of the forced membership.
  - scarface74 5y ago
    I would leave a company if they forced a 2% tax on me to join a union I didn’t want to join after I started working there.
    - toomuchtodo 5y ago
      Vote with your feet, just if management changed the role materially. The role would likely be filled quickly by replacement talent desiring the protections such representation offers.
      - scarface74 5y ago
        You mean by someone who would be okay with their compensation being negotiated by collective bargaining? How many of the most aggressive, most talented engineers would be willing to give up their negotiating leverage to a union?
golemiprague 5y ago

minhazm 5y ago

> all software engineers there had to be part of the union. Is that legal? Can unions or companies force you to join the union as a condition of employment?

benglish11 5y ago
It depends on the state. This is what “right to work” laws are about.
mikeryan 5y ago
A business can be a “closed shop” and require payment of a fee. Though you don’t, technically have to be a member. The fees are not “dues” they’re essentially “agency fees” or “fair share fee” that make up for the benefits you’re getting due to the union. The fees are usually very close to Union dues so most people just join to get all the rights. Exceptions are “Right to Work” states which explicitly outlaw closed shops.
CountSessine 5y ago
Of course they can - unless you live in a jurisdiction with a so-called “right to work” statute. If you weren’t forced to join then, in theory, management could subvert and then break the union by hiring lots of new employees who are compensated to “opt-out”.
- anamax 5y ago
  You write "compensated to 'opt-out'" like it's a bad thing. Unions are a tool, not a goal.
- dgrin91 5y ago
  > compensated to “opt-out”. Didn't you basically just describe the goal of a union? Better conditions for their workers?
  - eru 5y ago
    Well, the theory is that management will make the conditions worse after breaking up the union. Very similar to the myth of 'predatory pricing'.
- kortilla 5y ago
  That’s absolutely insane that a union can prevent people from working for a company without paying for their “protection”.
  - morgante 5y ago
    Yep. That's why I will vigorously oppose any unionization drives. It's incredible that people would acquiesce to being forced to accept whatever contract some union boss negotiates.
    - djrobstep 5y ago
      Why is it bad to be forced to generate revenue for the union as a condition of employment, but ok to be forced to generate revenue for the company as a condition of employment?
      - morgante 5y ago
        The business has customers and pays me a salary. The union is simply a parasite, extracting value from the organization. Objectively, if you voluntarily join a union shop, there's nothing wrong with that. I would never do it, but it's at least a free market transaction. But it's unconscionable that a union might show up at my work and demand I start paying them for the "benefit" of negotiating on my behalf. I would instantly quit. Thankfully the Alphabet union is a tiny farce.
TulliusCicero 5y ago
Sure, just like companies can require you to work at certain times as a condition of employment, or wear a uniform as a condition of employment, or a hundred other things. Letting it go the other way just results in freeloader syndrome: unions fight for improved work policies and work culture for all, but you can get much of the benefits without paying in. So many people don’t, which ends up weakening the union in the long run.
- eru 5y ago
  You are right that free-loading is a problem in theory. But being forced to pay for services you don't actually want is also a problem.
  - TulliusCicero 5y ago
    It's being forced the same way any other terms of employment are forced on you, and your option in this case is the same: go somewhere else. We know from history and other countries that broadly speaking, if you weaken unions with right-to-work laws, workers as a whole end up worse off. It tilts the power relationship between employees and employer towards the employer. If you look at peer countries with stronger, more present unions, you find that workers are usually considerably better off there.
    - eru 5y ago
      > We know from history and other countries that broadly speaking, if you weaken unions with right-to-work laws, workers as a whole end up worse off. > If you look at peer countries with stronger, more present unions, you find that workers are usually considerably better off there. Compare and contrast https://pseudoerasmus.com/2017/10/02/ijd/ https://pseudoerasmus.com/2017/10/02/ijd/ Also compare European countries. The more neoliberal ones tend to be richer. > It's being forced the same way any other terms of employment are forced on you, and your option in this case is the same: go somewhere else. In some sense, yes. And you can read my comment as an argument in favour of me avoiding union shops.
- baud147258 5y ago

the_duke 5y ago

That's exactly the time to unionize! The employer has limited leverage to bust any union efforts. When the employment market is weak and you are scrounging for a job it's a lot easier to threaten/scare everyone into submission.

MattGaiser 5y ago
But why bother? I wouldn’t even bother raise concerns to a manager in this employment environment, yet alone be willing to fight for a union if something annoyed me.
Kalium 5y ago
This also describes an environment where the union doesn't seem to be offering any significant benefits to developers. If unionizing doesn't improve your working conditions, what's the point of the union?
- pavel_lishin 5y ago
  If you're driving safely at sixty miles an hour, what's the point of a seatbelt?
  - eru 5y ago
    Collisions without a seatbelt are dangerous at much lower speeds. And you might be driving safely, but you can't control what other people are doing. In any case, what does this have to do with unions?
- axutio 5y ago
  I think the idea is that you form the union when you have leverage and don't need it so that if you ever lose leverage as an individual in the future (e.g. if the developer labor market becomes oversaturated or demand for developers tanks), you will still have some leverage as a member of the collective. Seems kind of like insurance - you pay for it when you don't need it so that you have it when you do.

Spooky23 5y ago

This of course isn’t a problem for HN posters, who are all 10x engineers or w/e. Overall though, not having a contract, recourse and representation in a large company is a pretty big risk factor unless you just toil away in silence.

morgante 5y ago
> Overall though, not having a contract, recourse and representation in a large company is a pretty big risk factor unless you just toil away in silence. Why? I have an in-demand set of skills and could easily find a new job if I wanted to. I'd much rather negotiate directly with my employer than have a union intermediating that relationship. If anything, it feels far riskier to have a politically-motivated union boss control my employment.
- onion2k 5y ago
  I have an in-demand set of skills and could easily find a new job if I wanted to. Let's imagine someone makes an AI project that can turn requirements into code, and it actually works. Copilot has shown it's not impossible to generate working code with some machine learning but it's definitely a hard problem. There are hundreds, maybe even thousands, of founders working on this problem right now and maybe one will get lucky. How long do you think you will be in demand for? Years? Months? Less? Perhaps you'll be fine because you actually define the requirements. Or you're in a job where the AI can't replace you. It would replace a lot of people working in the simple CRUD app end of the dev industry though, and that means pressure to keep wages up would fall away fast if there are more devs than dev jobs. You wouldn't get a raise if there are 20 devs who'd jump in to your role for less money if you left. You couldn't negotiate better terms. If you left you'd be competing with lots of others which puts more downward pressure on your salary. That's one vaguely plausible scenario of how things might change in the next 10 years. There are many more. Right now devs are very well paid but we should all recognize that for what it is - an opportunity for industry disruption. Our salaries are (partly) lost profit. Companies don't want to pay us as much as they do; they pay market rates because they have to. If a company can reduce that cost by lowering wages or lowering headcount every tech employer is going to jump on the opportunity. Founders out there know this is a pain point, and they're working on solving it. Maybe having a union for devs would actually be useful if that ever happens. (FWIW technological change reducing manpower requirements has been a massive driving force behind unionization in many other industries. The scenario is sound even if the "AI writes your code now" bit is a little fantastical.)

vmception 5y ago

Yes but it is time to revisit that logic. Software engineers are well compensated relative to the rest of the population but that should not be a factor at all. Its all about value delivered relative to that organization, in aggregate. Wages have stagnated for 30 years. There is a lot of catching up to do: Until a single earner can afford a family home outright, in 5 years of compensation, down the street from where the company office is, then we can comfortably ignore any annual compensation package no matter how fantastic the dollar amounts seem, and collectively push for more.

ralfd 5y ago
Houses are positional goods. If you earn five times as much, your colleagues will too, and there will be a bidding war until the price matches your earning power again. See also: The absurd real estate prices in the Bay area. Elizabeth Warren made that argument in her book "The Two-Income Trap". The economic gains from switching from the traditional bread-winner/house-wife household to double-income-households were eaten up to buy the "family home down the street where the best school is". https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/06/28/book-review-the-two-income-trap/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/06/28/book-review-the-two-in...
- thaumasiotes 5y ago
  > Houses are positional goods. If you earn five times as much, your colleagues will too, and there will be a bidding war until the price matches your earning power again. This requires the assumption that additional houses can't be constructed. > See also: The absurd real estate prices in the Bay area. See also: the Bay area.
  - ejb999 5y ago
    >>This requires the assumption that additional houses can't be constructed. In a lot of places near expensive cities, that assumption is pretty valid.
- eru 5y ago
  Well, a big problem for the US is that building most types of new housing is illegal. See eg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Missing_middle_housing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Missing_middle_housing or your favourite articles on the evils of Euclidean zoning and minimum parking requirements.

tootie 5y ago

Honest question: why? Engineers are already compensated way, way above average and have loads of mobility opportunities. I actually work in a news org where most of the non-tech people are in one union or another but my team isn't. We have actually had a few union staff who wanted to do coding work and the union essentially blocked them.

CSMastermind 5y ago
> Honest question: why? Because the existing union of news workers demanded that software engineers be included in their membership as part of some negotiation at some point. Basically, it was a way for the union to grow its membership (and dues). It was impossible to opt out of the union and you had to pay dues, I forget how much but I think it was like 2% of your salary or something to the union. Given the option I'm pretty sure most of us would have opted out of the union. I did know a few very senior software engineers who were nominally made managers so they could get out of the forced membership.
- scarface74 5y ago
  I would leave a company if they forced a 2% tax on me to join a union I didn’t want to join after I started working there.
  - toomuchtodo 5y ago
    Vote with your feet, just if management changed the role materially. The role would likely be filled quickly by replacement talent desiring the protections such representation offers.
    - scarface74 5y ago
      You mean by someone who would be okay with their compensation being negotiated by collective bargaining? How many of the most aggressive, most talented engineers would be willing to give up their negotiating leverage to a union?

golemiprague 5y ago