7 ms·

I like the idea and encourage software workers unions. Is there an umbrella union that they can belong to? How effective are these new unions? I imagine these n

I like the idea and encourage software workers unions. Is there an umbrella union that they can belong to? How effective are these new unions? I imagine these new tech unions don't have the same "shop floor" power as in industry. Why is this? Perhaps generally the ideals the new unions are advocating for are different than traditional ones?

wrs 10mo ago
If you want that, you’d have to negotiate for it, and now doesn’t seem like a great time. But given the continual decrease in job stability in tech, perhaps we’re headed toward more of a Hollywood model, where the skilled workers are nearly all free-lance and project-based, and have powerful unions with such provisions industry-wide.
- palmotea 10mo ago
  > If you want that, you’d have to negotiate for it, and now doesn’t seem like a great time. Software engineers can be pretty foolish. When we had more power, unions were unpopular because too many imbibed some libertarian propaganda, looked at their high salaries, and decided to cosplay as bosses. Now that power is slipping away, and will slip away faster because we did little to preserve it to our determent. Also the technology union people were dumb, seemed to focus more on hot-button political activism than worker power, and thus undermined their own project. IMHO, a union should be monomanically about representing worker interests and stay far away from any other kind of issue, because controversy around those issues allows the bosses to divide-and-conquer the union.
  - mrsilencedogood 10mo ago
    But how do you actually bootstrap that process? Look at bandcamp. They unionized successfully. Then the company got sold (again), and everyone but the union leaders (and prominent members) got job offers from the new parent company. Basically got reverse-fired. I still suspect part of the reason Epic sold them is to ninja-bust the union (or at least get it out of the way).
    - palmotea 10mo ago
      > But how do you actually bootstrap that process? I don't know. > Look at bandcamp. They unionized successfully. Then the company got sold (again), and everyone but the union leaders (and prominent members) got job offers from the new parent company. Basically got reverse-fired. That seems like something that should be illegal, if it's not already. It seems like a paper maneuver. It should probably be expected that employers will play dirty, which is one of the reasons why I think the unions need to be hyper-focused on worker and workplace issues to the exclusion of all else.
    - closewith 10mo ago
      Legislatively. In most of the Western world, TUPE would have made the manoeuvre impossible.
    - sallveburrpi 10mo ago
      Btw what was the outcome of that? AFAICT the bandcamp union still exists and I don’t see any public news about the case from after December 2023, so wondering what happened Edit: last news i see on their mastodon are from April 2024 and seems they negotiated some severance pay for the laid off workers and that it; so I guess the union busting was successful?
  - danaris 10mo ago
    > a union should be monomanically about representing worker interests and stay far away from any other kind of issue So...should it pick and choose which kinds of workers to represent the interests of? Or should it fight for the interests of all the workers? Because that's really the choice it has to make: do you fight for the interests of disabled workers, and female workers, and trans workers, and black workers, and immigrant workers? Or do you only fight for the interests of white male workers? Either choice is a political choice. You cannot avoid politics when one side of the political aisle has declared that the validity and ability to exist in public life of certain categories of people is against their agenda.
    - Izikiel43 10mo ago
      > Because that's really the choice it has to make: do you fight for the interests of disabled workers, and female workers, and trans workers, and black workers, and immigrant workers? Or do you only fight for the interests of white male workers? You fight for the interests of tech workers in this case, or truckers in a truckers union, so on and so forth. Why are americans so obsessed to make everything about race? If a union member is facing discrimination at work, get them a lawyer for it.
      - danaris 10mo ago
        > Why are americans so obsessed to make everything about race? Because the political party currently in power in our country is an actual, literal, (Christian) White Supremacist party. They are deliberately rounding up people that look like they might be Hispanic (and various other non-white ethnicities), declaring them to be illegal immigrants regardless of their actual status, and deporting them or putting them in camps.
      - heavyset_go 10mo ago
        > If a union member is facing discrimination at work, get them a lawyer for it. As part of the policy of the current administration, the EEOC has dropped all cases related to LGBT discrimination in the hiring and the workplace[1] and is refusing to take new cases. If you focused any effort on addressing that, I suspect someone who isn't even in the union would come out of the woodwork to say "that union shouldn't be addressing policy like that, it's divisive and what about everyone else?" Union workers' rights and interests are impacted by policy that discriminates, pretending that isn't so doesn't get us anywhere. [1] https://www.equalrights.org/news/eeocs-decision-to-drop-lgbtqi-employment-discrimination-claims-targets-transgender-workers/ https://www.equalrights.org/news/eeocs-decision-to-drop-lgbt...
  - tehjoker 10mo ago
    Unions should focus on worker power, but staying away form politics entirely is called "economism" and "opportunism". Your bosses are political, they shape politics to mold the environment around you. Unions form the bedrock of worker power, and workers should advocate for a more democratic society against the oligarchs. We are some of the best positioned in society to do so because we control the means of production. Unions should do political education and work with issue based, socialist organizations, and invite speakers to facilitate discussions, while building consensus around what needs to be done in the workplace and fighting on behalf of their fellow workers ferociously.
    - palmotea 10mo ago
      > Your bosses are political, they shape politics to mold the environment around you. Unions form the bedrock of worker power, and workers should advocate for a more democratic society against the oligarchs. We are some of the best positioned in society to do so because we control the means of production. I should clarify: I totally agree with being "political" in that area. The stuff I'm thinking about are things like Gaza, BLM, etc. They may be very worthy causes, but there's controversy about them too, and they don't really seem to be in-scope for a union.
      - tehjoker 10mo ago
        Here's what I'll say. Every union is a democracy and has to decide what is right for it, but unions are the fighting organizations of the working class and we are the rightful rulers of this society by virtue of actually making it run and being the literal majority in a classic liberal sense. U.S. and western unions generally have been very conservative and "business unions" since the anti-communist counterattacks after WW2. This is because there has been a constant counterinsurgency tactic against our leadership involving cooptation, sidelining, and even assassination. The wealthy want to rule unopposed and for you to just vote for one of their pre-selected candidates in elections. Since you mentioned Gaza, an issue dear to my heart (not that BLM isn't, but for brevity I'll talk about the movement that is highlighted right now), let me give an example that illustrates how essential unions are. Tech companies like Google and Microsoft are supplying information technology and AI systems to the occupation and are making bank doing it. Who is going to stop them? The people best positioned to do so are their workers. The most essential way to help Gaza is to enforce sanctions, halting economic activity with Israeli companies, and most importantly stopping the transfer of all military materials to Israel, even so called "defensive" weapons like Iron Dome that allow the occupation to perform the genocide without repercussions. In Italy, huge strikes and protests forced the openly fascist PM that praised Mussolini to send a warship to aid the Global Samud Flotilla which aimed to break the siege on Gaza. Dock workers in Italy refused to service ships bound for Israel with weapons, and got the (again openly fascist) PM to enforce a weapons embargo. https://www.thenation.com/article/world/italy-general-strike-dockworkers-flotilla/ https://www.thenation.com/article/world/italy-general-strike... Assert your right to rule this global society in the interests of humanity in concert with your brothers and sister workers around the world.
nitwit005 10mo ago
With a factory, the owner has to deal with the cost of all the late or canceled deliveries. With farms, the crops wither on the vines. There's not really an equivalent with most service industries. Software engineers don't even need to be around for the programs to keep running.
- mrsilencedogood 10mo ago
  "Software engineers don't even need to be around for the programs to keep running." Can you tell me where you work, and are you hiring???
  - natebc 10mo ago
    Their ops teams are probably ground into dust.
    - JohnMakin 10mo ago
      For real - this made me laugh, because I had the immediate exact thought. Oh boy
    - esseph 10mo ago
      Trying to keep alive 30yr old tech stacks and still pass security reviews, while doing stuff like manually compiling and packaging python 2 and jre6 tools. Ouch.
      - esseph 10mo ago
        (sorry, replied to wrong comment!)
  - websiteapi 10mo ago
    Didn’t twitter get 3/4 people laid off? Seems to still work as of time of writing (x.com).
    - 10mo ago
paxys 10mo ago
While things can be bad in software in general, game developers need a union more than anyone. Conditions in that industry are horrendous. The entire period of a game's development is "crunch time". Everyone is exempt, so no overtime of course. And it is standard practice to downsize studios and have mass layoffs right after big launches. It's a shame that so many are drawn to this just because of a passion for gaming.
- themafia 10mo ago
  > Everyone is exempt, This comes with a catch in California. In order to make software developers exempt there is a minimum salary you must pay otherwise you are required to keep them hourly and pay overtime where appropriate. https://www.dir.ca.gov/oprl/ComputerSoftware.htm https://www.dir.ca.gov/oprl/ComputerSoftware.htm
  - dragonwriter 10mo ago
    > This comes with a catch in California. In order to make software developers exempt there is a minimum salary you must pay otherwise you are required to keep them hourly and pay overtime where appropriate. That's true federally, too, but the CA salary threshold is much higher.
  - kg 10mo ago
    When people complain about game devs being exempt, I think they're usually not complaining that salaries are too low - they're generally fine these days - but the expectation of 80+ hour weeks during 'crunch' when crunch often lasts 6+ months. Doing hours like that for a long period of time is destructive to health and to family ties.
- bufordtwain 10mo ago
  If you enjoy your job your employer is able to exploit you more?
  - chrisjj 10mo ago
    If you are enjoying your job, you are happier to accept lower other benefits.
doctorpangloss 10mo ago
Situation: There are 14 competing unions. You: That's ridiculous! We need one universal union that covers everyone's needs. Yeah! Situation: There are 15 competing unions.
- fwip 10mo ago
  Is there an alternative union that you think Id employees should have joined?
- mrweasel 10mo ago
  That's how it works in other countries. Unions are per industry, not per business, because per business is... weird and not really helpful. The union negotiates salary ranges for the entire industry, so it doesn't matter if one company is being difficult, their organisation (the one that organises the employers of that industry) have agreed to the ranges on their behalf. If you need to go on strike, the union members employed at other businesses can help cover wages. Your union can also call for sympathy strikes at other businesses, putting additional pressure on the misbehaving company.
  - salawat 10mo ago
    In the U.S. capital got sympathy striking illegalized as part of the Taft-Hartley Act around WWII, because labor exploiting network effects was just to unconscionable for the time.
collinmcnulty 10mo ago
According to the article, they are part of the Communications Workers of America. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communications_Workers_of_America https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communications_Workers_of_Amer...
- dragonwriter 10mo ago
  And CWA is part of AFL-CIO, which is the largest federation of unions in the country, representing ~15 million workers.
dragonwriter 10mo ago
> Is there an umbrella union that they can belong to? The article here mentions the umbrella union that this effort was associated with, Communications Workers of America (which itself is part of AFL-CIO.) IPFTE, I think, also organizes software developers along with other professional and technical workers, and SEIU has a lot in the public and nonprofit sectors.

wrs 10mo ago

If you want that, you’d have to negotiate for it, and now doesn’t seem like a great time. But given the continual decrease in job stability in tech, perhaps we’re headed toward more of a Hollywood model, where the skilled workers are nearly all free-lance and project-based, and have powerful unions with such provisions industry-wide.

palmotea 10mo ago
> If you want that, you’d have to negotiate for it, and now doesn’t seem like a great time. Software engineers can be pretty foolish. When we had more power, unions were unpopular because too many imbibed some libertarian propaganda, looked at their high salaries, and decided to cosplay as bosses. Now that power is slipping away, and will slip away faster because we did little to preserve it to our determent. Also the technology union people were dumb, seemed to focus more on hot-button political activism than worker power, and thus undermined their own project. IMHO, a union should be monomanically about representing worker interests and stay far away from any other kind of issue, because controversy around those issues allows the bosses to divide-and-conquer the union.
- mrsilencedogood 10mo ago
  But how do you actually bootstrap that process? Look at bandcamp. They unionized successfully. Then the company got sold (again), and everyone but the union leaders (and prominent members) got job offers from the new parent company. Basically got reverse-fired. I still suspect part of the reason Epic sold them is to ninja-bust the union (or at least get it out of the way).
  - palmotea 10mo ago
    > But how do you actually bootstrap that process? I don't know. > Look at bandcamp. They unionized successfully. Then the company got sold (again), and everyone but the union leaders (and prominent members) got job offers from the new parent company. Basically got reverse-fired. That seems like something that should be illegal, if it's not already. It seems like a paper maneuver. It should probably be expected that employers will play dirty, which is one of the reasons why I think the unions need to be hyper-focused on worker and workplace issues to the exclusion of all else.
  - closewith 10mo ago
    Legislatively. In most of the Western world, TUPE would have made the manoeuvre impossible.
  - sallveburrpi 10mo ago
    Btw what was the outcome of that? AFAICT the bandcamp union still exists and I don’t see any public news about the case from after December 2023, so wondering what happened Edit: last news i see on their mastodon are from April 2024 and seems they negotiated some severance pay for the laid off workers and that it; so I guess the union busting was successful?
- danaris 10mo ago
  > a union should be monomanically about representing worker interests and stay far away from any other kind of issue So...should it pick and choose which kinds of workers to represent the interests of? Or should it fight for the interests of all the workers? Because that's really the choice it has to make: do you fight for the interests of disabled workers, and female workers, and trans workers, and black workers, and immigrant workers? Or do you only fight for the interests of white male workers? Either choice is a political choice. You cannot avoid politics when one side of the political aisle has declared that the validity and ability to exist in public life of certain categories of people is against their agenda.
  - Izikiel43 10mo ago
    > Because that's really the choice it has to make: do you fight for the interests of disabled workers, and female workers, and trans workers, and black workers, and immigrant workers? Or do you only fight for the interests of white male workers? You fight for the interests of tech workers in this case, or truckers in a truckers union, so on and so forth. Why are americans so obsessed to make everything about race? If a union member is facing discrimination at work, get them a lawyer for it.
    - danaris 10mo ago
      > Why are americans so obsessed to make everything about race? Because the political party currently in power in our country is an actual, literal, (Christian) White Supremacist party. They are deliberately rounding up people that look like they might be Hispanic (and various other non-white ethnicities), declaring them to be illegal immigrants regardless of their actual status, and deporting them or putting them in camps.
    - heavyset_go 10mo ago
      > If a union member is facing discrimination at work, get them a lawyer for it. As part of the policy of the current administration, the EEOC has dropped all cases related to LGBT discrimination in the hiring and the workplace[1] and is refusing to take new cases. If you focused any effort on addressing that, I suspect someone who isn't even in the union would come out of the woodwork to say "that union shouldn't be addressing policy like that, it's divisive and what about everyone else?" Union workers' rights and interests are impacted by policy that discriminates, pretending that isn't so doesn't get us anywhere. [1] https://www.equalrights.org/news/eeocs-decision-to-drop-lgbtqi-employment-discrimination-claims-targets-transgender-workers/ https://www.equalrights.org/news/eeocs-decision-to-drop-lgbt...
- tehjoker 10mo ago
  Unions should focus on worker power, but staying away form politics entirely is called "economism" and "opportunism". Your bosses are political, they shape politics to mold the environment around you. Unions form the bedrock of worker power, and workers should advocate for a more democratic society against the oligarchs. We are some of the best positioned in society to do so because we control the means of production. Unions should do political education and work with issue based, socialist organizations, and invite speakers to facilitate discussions, while building consensus around what needs to be done in the workplace and fighting on behalf of their fellow workers ferociously.
  - palmotea 10mo ago
    > Your bosses are political, they shape politics to mold the environment around you. Unions form the bedrock of worker power, and workers should advocate for a more democratic society against the oligarchs. We are some of the best positioned in society to do so because we control the means of production. I should clarify: I totally agree with being "political" in that area. The stuff I'm thinking about are things like Gaza, BLM, etc. They may be very worthy causes, but there's controversy about them too, and they don't really seem to be in-scope for a union.
    - tehjoker 10mo ago
      Here's what I'll say. Every union is a democracy and has to decide what is right for it, but unions are the fighting organizations of the working class and we are the rightful rulers of this society by virtue of actually making it run and being the literal majority in a classic liberal sense. U.S. and western unions generally have been very conservative and "business unions" since the anti-communist counterattacks after WW2. This is because there has been a constant counterinsurgency tactic against our leadership involving cooptation, sidelining, and even assassination. The wealthy want to rule unopposed and for you to just vote for one of their pre-selected candidates in elections. Since you mentioned Gaza, an issue dear to my heart (not that BLM isn't, but for brevity I'll talk about the movement that is highlighted right now), let me give an example that illustrates how essential unions are. Tech companies like Google and Microsoft are supplying information technology and AI systems to the occupation and are making bank doing it. Who is going to stop them? The people best positioned to do so are their workers. The most essential way to help Gaza is to enforce sanctions, halting economic activity with Israeli companies, and most importantly stopping the transfer of all military materials to Israel, even so called "defensive" weapons like Iron Dome that allow the occupation to perform the genocide without repercussions. In Italy, huge strikes and protests forced the openly fascist PM that praised Mussolini to send a warship to aid the Global Samud Flotilla which aimed to break the siege on Gaza. Dock workers in Italy refused to service ships bound for Israel with weapons, and got the (again openly fascist) PM to enforce a weapons embargo. https://www.thenation.com/article/world/italy-general-strike-dockworkers-flotilla/ https://www.thenation.com/article/world/italy-general-strike... Assert your right to rule this global society in the interests of humanity in concert with your brothers and sister workers around the world.

nitwit005 10mo ago

With a factory, the owner has to deal with the cost of all the late or canceled deliveries. With farms, the crops wither on the vines. There's not really an equivalent with most service industries. Software engineers don't even need to be around for the programs to keep running.

mrsilencedogood 10mo ago
"Software engineers don't even need to be around for the programs to keep running." Can you tell me where you work, and are you hiring???
- natebc 10mo ago
  Their ops teams are probably ground into dust.
  - JohnMakin 10mo ago
    For real - this made me laugh, because I had the immediate exact thought. Oh boy
  - esseph 10mo ago
    Trying to keep alive 30yr old tech stacks and still pass security reviews, while doing stuff like manually compiling and packaging python 2 and jre6 tools. Ouch.
    - esseph 10mo ago
      (sorry, replied to wrong comment!)
- websiteapi 10mo ago
  Didn’t twitter get 3/4 people laid off? Seems to still work as of time of writing (x.com).
  - 10mo ago

paxys 10mo ago

While things can be bad in software in general, game developers need a union more than anyone. Conditions in that industry are horrendous. The entire period of a game's development is "crunch time". Everyone is exempt, so no overtime of course. And it is standard practice to downsize studios and have mass layoffs right after big launches. It's a shame that so many are drawn to this just because of a passion for gaming.

themafia 10mo ago
> Everyone is exempt, This comes with a catch in California. In order to make software developers exempt there is a minimum salary you must pay otherwise you are required to keep them hourly and pay overtime where appropriate. https://www.dir.ca.gov/oprl/ComputerSoftware.htm https://www.dir.ca.gov/oprl/ComputerSoftware.htm
- dragonwriter 10mo ago
  > This comes with a catch in California. In order to make software developers exempt there is a minimum salary you must pay otherwise you are required to keep them hourly and pay overtime where appropriate. That's true federally, too, but the CA salary threshold is much higher.
- kg 10mo ago
  When people complain about game devs being exempt, I think they're usually not complaining that salaries are too low - they're generally fine these days - but the expectation of 80+ hour weeks during 'crunch' when crunch often lasts 6+ months. Doing hours like that for a long period of time is destructive to health and to family ties.
bufordtwain 10mo ago
If you enjoy your job your employer is able to exploit you more?
- chrisjj 10mo ago
  If you are enjoying your job, you are happier to accept lower other benefits.

doctorpangloss 10mo ago

Situation: There are 14 competing unions. You: That's ridiculous! We need one universal union that covers everyone's needs. Yeah! Situation: There are 15 competing unions.

fwip 10mo ago
Is there an alternative union that you think Id employees should have joined?
mrweasel 10mo ago
That's how it works in other countries. Unions are per industry, not per business, because per business is... weird and not really helpful. The union negotiates salary ranges for the entire industry, so it doesn't matter if one company is being difficult, their organisation (the one that organises the employers of that industry) have agreed to the ranges on their behalf. If you need to go on strike, the union members employed at other businesses can help cover wages. Your union can also call for sympathy strikes at other businesses, putting additional pressure on the misbehaving company.
- salawat 10mo ago
  In the U.S. capital got sympathy striking illegalized as part of the Taft-Hartley Act around WWII, because labor exploiting network effects was just to unconscionable for the time.

collinmcnulty 10mo ago

According to the article, they are part of the Communications Workers of America. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communications_Workers_of_America https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communications_Workers_of_Amer...

dragonwriter 10mo ago
And CWA is part of AFL-CIO, which is the largest federation of unions in the country, representing ~15 million workers.

dragonwriter 10mo ago

> Is there an umbrella union that they can belong to? The article here mentions the umbrella union that this effort was associated with, Communications Workers of America (which itself is part of AFL-CIO.) IPFTE, I think, also organizes software developers along with other professional and technical workers, and SEIU has a lot in the public and nonprofit sectors.