7 ms·
> The firm starts to underpay those better workers who kept their jobs, akin to making them pay for being “chosen.” Consequently, profits do not decline and may
by autoexec 11mo ago
> The firm starts to underpay those better workers who kept their jobs, akin to making them pay for being “chosen.” Consequently, profits do not decline and may even increase.
> “Firms now essentially can threaten the remaining employees: ‘Look, I can let you go, and everybody’s going to think that you’re the worst in the pool. If you want me not to let you go, you need to accept below market wages,’”
This is exactly what unions are for. Any time there are enough skilled workers avilable that a company can let good employees go as a warning to others not to complain about substandard wages it's clear that the imbalance of power has resulted in exploitation. There is strength in numbers though which is why companies go to great lengths to convince people that you all alone negotiating with a huge corporation of people who have more money and resources than you'll ever see in your lifetime and who can replace you with someone else easily is somehow totally fair. No matter how special they might make you feel, you are almost always disposable to them and they will drop you at any time and for any reason, even if it's just to make an example out of you to keep your ex-coworkers in fear.
For the very few employees out there who actually are totally indispensable, any sane company would be looking for your replacement immediately because there's no telling what might happen to you or when. No company should fail because one employee dies in a car cash or gets a cancer diagnosis. Until you are also replaceable the company isn't safe. They'll pay you handsomely to keep you, right up until the moment they don't have to.
- idiotsecant 11mo agoFor whatever reason collective bargaining is wildly unpopular on HN, which is ironic because tech workers are exactly who should be organizing their labor.
- Denote6737 11mo agoTech attracts the radical independent types.
- palmotea 11mo ago> Tech attracts the radical independent types. No. I think it's a combination of: 1) HN being associated with a startup incubator, and thus attracting a large contingent of people who see themselves as the boss doing this, not the workers affected; 2) tech attracts a certain kind of gullible person who's easily seduced by tidy little systems like the pop-capitalism of libertarian tracts; and 3) tech workers (until recently) had more economic bargaining power than a typical worker, so could delude themselves into thinking they do better by going it alone.
- lynx97 11mo agoYour point 2 is such a condescending take. I read it as: "Everyone who does not think the same way as I do is gullible and has been seduced, because I am obviously right and they must be weak." This kind behaviour convinces me even more that I dont really trust union people.
- deleted 11mo ago[deleted]
- baq 11mo agoIf you felt personally attacked you’ve let your biases win over rational thought. Tech obviously does attract libertarians (see bitcoin maxis for a single example of a significant cohort). Libertarianism is also blind towards the obvious failure mode of an organized group overpowering the egoistic as a virtue libertarians. (Think barbarians… or HR.)
- lynx97 11mo agoI don't feel personally attacked. However, I find the particular wording of the post I initially replied to condescending and reeking of elitism. Calling someone--or a group--gullible and seduced is not going to win them over. Besides, while we are at wording. I dont usually pull that card, but... I am blind, in a literal sense. Seeing my disability being used in a rhetorical way makes me sometimes sad. It kind of shows--on a meta level--that inclusion will never happen.
- skirge 11mo agothey become leaders and there is no room for two
- zwnow 11mo agoTech salaries are too high for people to do that. At least in Europe. Having an union will fuck with peoples salaries.
- triceratops 11mo agoSoccer players in Europe are in unions. Tell me again how low star players' salaries are.
- consp 11mo agoThe vast majority of IT jobs pay pretty meager here. There are some exceptions but not that much. You gave to be "manager" to get any decent pay most of the time.
- zwnow 11mo agoHmm most people I know earn well above median and whenever I look at my regions statistics it confirms that... Joining an union would mean cuts to these people. I am a fan of unions for low pay jobs but not in tech.
- Krasnol 11mo agoIsn't startup culture known for ripping off their employees before they sell and disappear? Sounds like there would be no space for unions or social aspects in that.
- raw_anon_1111 11mo agoAnd when has a union ever stopped a multinational company from just closing shop and opening up overseas? If a company making physical things can do it, how hard do you think it would be for a software company?
- ljf 11mo agoWhile they cannot stop something like that (a Union never gets to control the business), they can at least negotiate good terms for the departing employees, and help ensure everything is in order.
- alkonaut 11mo ago> a Union never gets to control the business This varies. e.g. Sweden: if there are over 25 employees, the union gets a seat in the board. https://bolagsverket.se/en/foretag/aktiebolag/startaaktiebolag/styrelseochverkstallandedirektoriaktiebolag/arbetstagarrepresentanteriaktiebolag.507.html https://bolagsverket.se/en/foretag/aktiebolag/startaaktiebol...
- ljf 11mo agoA seat at the board is great, but that won't stop a company making major changes like those described.
- raw_anon_1111 11mo agoHave you ever heard about someone who was laid off from a major tech company complain about the severance amount? My n=1 experience at BigTech is that I got $40K severance after 3 years (and anecdotally had 3 offers within two weeks of looking in 2023. But I realize the market is worse now than then) And that severance was from Amazon.
- ljf 11mo agoFAANG maybe not, but there are heaps of horror stories from plenty of other big and medium tech players.
- baq 11mo agoMost everyone is a temporarily embarrassed unicorn founder around here.
- Popeyes 11mo agoJust one line of code away from being an alpha tech bro with Elon's number on their phone.
- ikari_pl 11mo agothe line must be the Permenance Code. Jeez, it was such a stupid movie ruining the franchise. Nobody needed a rushed sequel.
- AbstractH24 11mo agoI do feel like folks forget HN is a subproject of YC. What traits do you think are going to be common in the audience it attracts?
- mlrtime 11mo agoThis is such a cynical unoriginal take. No, I don't care about being in a unicorn and I'm not a embarrassed billionaire. But I don't idolize unions either. I don't want to be paid the same as all other workers with the same title, I like getting personal bonuses based on performance. I don't want to be in a union.
- triceratops 11mo ago> I don't want to be paid the same as all other workers with the same title That's not what unions do. > I like getting personal bonuses based on performance A union doesn't prevent that. Film and TV actors, and professional athletes are in unions. They are not all paid the same. They get lavish bonuses based on performance. Retail and fast food workers are usually not in unions. They don't make much money. A union can't increase wages (much) and it doesn't decrease wages. Only supply and demand can do that.
- VirusNewbie 11mo agoThere are software engineer or tech unions, you're welcome to go work at one of them and reap the "reward" of far less money, vacation, perks, and more than if you'd work at one of the non union big tech companies.
- gedy 11mo agoI can only speak for myself, but I think there is a naive idealist view of (modern, American) unions that gloss over the tradeoffs. I don't want another bureaucratic layer that tells me what to do, and run by yet more HR admin-types. We aren't working in the coal mines or steel mills here in the 1920s. Sorry I'm not interested in that for office jobs. I'm glad they still work in some countries and cultures.
- blindhippo 11mo agoI don't care what kind or style of job - if the balance of power in any labour relationship is overwhelmingly on the employer side, collective action is the only way labour can regain a modicum of negotiating power. To think that the style of job has any bearing on this relationship is naive.
- gedy 11mo agoI do agree collective action specifically can help, but not via organizing with a modern American Union.
- devilbunny 11mo agoThe laws under which unions are organized have a huge influence on their effectiveness, and American unions are consequently... not that great. The United Auto Workers partially funded the Port Huron Statement authored by Students for a Democratic Society, a generally socialist group. Now, it's entirely plausible that the UAW leadership wanted to have some modicum of influence, and that's why they loaned them an entire union retreat on Lake Huron. But I doubt that the average UAW factory worker was excited to see their union dues used to provide elite college students with a mostly-free vacation for political organizing. I am not a labor law expert by any means, but my understanding of, say, German labor law is that it's much better at actually representing the workers in a given factory, in part because a union that doesn't do that loses its members to ones that will (since there's no requirement that everyone in a given job class has to join the same union).
- mlrtime 11mo ago
- II2II 11mo agoIdeally, there would be stronger and enforced labour regulations since the government can serve as a neutral third party. That said, I also realize that we don't live in an ideal world and governments tend to be more in touch with the needs of businesses than the needs of the people they are supposed to represent. There are many reasons for that, without resorting to conspiracy theories (but you are welcome to believe in conspiracy theories if that's your thing). Unions are low on my list to address labour issues. They create a whole slew of problems, but I also recognize that collectivized bargaining is one of the few tools workers have to represent their interests so I see them as a necessary evil.
- threatofrain 11mo agoI don't think it's wildly unpopular, I think that starting a union is wildly hard and paints a target on your back, but once someone does the hard work I think we'll see that there was sufficient support to make a play. I also think if you do a text embedding on the recent years of HN post and you look for conversations on unions, you'll find a plurality of support.
- idiotsecant 11mo agoNo? Did you read this thread?
- namlem 11mo agoUnions often end up decreasing productivity due to added bureaucracy, leading to ultimately worse compensation in the long run.
- 0xDEAFBEAD 11mo agoHistorically in the US, American devs have done a tremendous amount to undermine their own bargaining power by (a) starting bootcamps and other "learn to code" initiatives which flood the market with new devs, and (b) creating AI tools which automate away jobs for devs. Any software developers' union almost necessarily needs to take an anti-AI position at this point. Got to move fast before it is too late.
- shawn_w 11mo agoI'm waiting for the AIs to unionize. Will probably happen before you can get the herd of cats that are programmers to agree that collective bargaining is in their best interest.
- ryandvm 11mo agoCollective bargaining has been unpopular in this industry for so long because 25 years ago pretty much any ADHD autodidact that was interested in tech could get an extremely promising job with nothing more than a high school diploma. Naturally, these individuals had very little interest in waiting in line behind retiring gray-beards for high pay and job security. They experienced that just being interested in tech was enough for huge opportunities to fall into their lap. Of course 25 years later, that ship has sailed and almost nobody is hiring people without a degree in C. And now you have the self taught gray-beards bumping up against ageism and the weird effects AI is having on the marketplace, and they're starting to wonder if, "hmmm, maybe unions aren't such a bad idea after all."
- wakawaka28 11mo agoUnions can't defeat the forces of supply and demand. If people feel it is in their best interest to take a pay cut, they should be free to do so. If you want to take a job for a lower rate because of a mismatch in experience, union rates can amount to a ban on you getting a job. Likewise, if you can command a higher wage than average, no union should be able to tell you that you're not fit for the pay grade. If the self-taught greybeards don't understand this, they should self-teach themselves some basic economics.
- swatcoder 11mo agoSome of the healthiest, oldest, and most mutually respected unions are in the entertainment arts -- actors, musicians, writers, directors, etc. In these unions and in their negotiations, talent value is understood to sometimes be very singular; a particular education or apprenticeship process isn't deemed strictly necessary for talent to mature; and that work often comes in the form of a time-boxed project that might need many members for a while and then far less (or none) after it reaches some progress threshold, leading to cycles of on/off work. What these unions achieve by forming solidarity between the most exceptional talent and more average working members is that they can establish baseline working conditions that are respectful and non-exploitative, a wage floor that allows occasional workers to earnestly commit to their trade even when confronted with intermittent downtime, internally managed group benefit programs that free producers from needing to administer and offer them and give members stability in participation, etc A healthy union for software engineers, which the gaming industry in particular is well suited towards right now, looks more like one of these kinds of unions than it does a factory laborers union. And by the accounts of both talent and producers, at basically all levels, these unions fundamentally provide a clear benefit to the market. Tension and bluster flare up during frustrating negotiations, but almost nobody with experience in these industries wants to get rid of these unions. Not even the producers.
- prewett 11mo agoSpeaking for myself, I see unions as frequently corrupt, being intransigent (such as essentially making Detroit not cost-effective) and just as self-serving as management. Every union experience I have had or hear about involves arbitrary rules (we're not allowed to do that, union rules; you have to get that union to do that). Why would I want to pay dues for that? Furthermore, I see no reason for a union; software development is not commodity labor. If I have to join a union to software development I'm probably going to go find a new career. Additionally, software developers tend to be pretty anti-gatekeeper, so if we are opposed to even credentialing, such as other engineering disciplines, why would there be any appetite for a union?
- idiotsecant 11mo agoYeah, that's exactly the attitude I was talking about, thanks for the stellar demonstration. A union isn't any of the things that the capital class wants you to think they are. Have you ever wondered why anti-union propaganda is so well funded? Think about it for a minute. A union is just when you and your co-workers pool your collective power so that the owners can't push you around. That's it. What you do after that is up to you.
- VirusNewbie 11mo agothank you, agree. There are lots of us who see through the bullshit of unions. The poeple pushing unions think they have a better shot of navigating the politics of unions than a free market, which is why they push it so hard.
- Dayshine 11mo agoNone of the things you mention are things I've seen in my union covered jobs in the UK. I've never heard of union rules here. Employees are not required to be part of the union in order to get their benefits, the unions just negotiate with employers on behalf of all employees. I've also never heard of credentials/gatekeeping for unions in the companies I've worked in. For reference, I was working as a software developer at a University on a research project: I got the benefits of the higher education university (nationally negotiated pay scales, holiday benefits, etc) but was not a member. Pay was lower, yes, but that wasn't mandatory; that was just the budget of a research project.
- sershe 11mo agoI mean there are many reasons, I really don't have time to reiterate all of them but I'll provide one serious and one funny example before summarizing. One kinda relevant to the present moment and the fact that dude still has a street named after him in SF - Cesar Chavez running his own border patrol against undocumented immigrants https://humanrights.fhi.duke.edu/chavez-ufw-and-wetback-problem/ https://humanrights.fhi.duke.edu/chavez-ufw-and-wetback-prob... As much I despise it, I feel the current administration really missed a trolling opportunity, naming their thing Cesar Chavez Memorial Patrols. The funny one from a 1960ies govt report on UK shipbuilding industry: ...literally took three different workers to change a lightbulb: …a laborer (member of the Transport and General Workers Union) [to] carry the ladder to site, a rigger (member of the Amalgamated Society of Boilermakers, Shipwrights, Blacksmiths and Structural Workers Union) [to] erect it and place it in the proper position, and an electrician (member of the Electrical Trades Union) [to] actually remove the old bulb and screw in the new one. Production was often halted while waiting Call me old-fashioned but I don't want to wait for a different union member to run my build! (and the situation like this still occurs - someone I know works at a place where they are not allowed to clean up above a certain trivial threshold and have to wait for a custodian, because otherwise the latter union would be pissed) Unions are, in essence, a pressure group for locking down certain jobs against anyone else who might want them, and against any kind of technological progress. They will, and have been shown to, do anything - from lobbying for legal monopolies to violence against immigrants, other workers, political candidates; racism, connections to organized crime - in pursuit of that goal. And blocking any attempts at improvement and automation. The goal itself though, on top of the methods, is fundamentally evil. It's next level up from people who don't want immigrants to "take jobs", at least for immigrants there's some flimsy justification, but unions operate against their fellow citizens. From a purely moral perspective, compromising principles for personal gain aside, I'd rather join a drug cartel than a union.
- anonymouskimmer 11mo agoMore ideal solutions than unions are: 1) Employee owned businesses with low levels of hierarchy and fast vesting in ownership; 2) Enough competitors in a hot enough labor market that employees jump ship themselves before they can be let go. But yes, unions are great particularly when the labor market is tough.
- tasuki 11mo ago> This is exactly what unions are for. Unions are mostly extortion schemes to benefit the union leaders. My read is that they're getting paid in prestige rather than money. The worker can turn that prestige into money further down the line by saying "I worked at so-and-so for five years" at their next interview.
- franktankbank 11mo ago> Unions are mostly extortion schemes to benefit the union leaders. Did daddy teach you that? > saying "I worked at so-and-so for five years" at their next interview. Oh yea, I worked at Amazon I brought my own shiv want to see it?
- whattheheckheck 11mo agoCorporations are mostly extortion schemes to benefit the executives and shareholders.