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Great to see! I think unions should be the default for most situations.
by glasss 5mo ago
Great to see! I think unions should be the default for most situations.
- culi 5mo agoAnd they are in much of Europe! Sweden, Denmark, Finland, Norway, Austria, Belgium, Iceland, Italy, etc. Even France has over 80% coverage
- zetanor 5mo agoI understand that Europe doesn't have many mandatory union arrangements. In Canada, unions are often shop-wide with no mechanism to opt out, which makes them very sticky and allows them to grow predatory if they can maintain enough corruption or apathy. I'm led to believe that many US states have similar problems, but that's only based on how American unions are portrayed in news and fiction.
- xienze 5mo agoAnd what has that really bought them? The wages are laughable compared to the US where you'd THINK us non-unionized tech workers would be paid minimum wage. And the famous European healthcare and long vacations are more a function of the government than anything the unions have explicitly bargained for.
- culi 5mo agoYou mean to tell me unions can make a government actually responsive to its people? Gee wouldn't that be nice to have here
- satvikpendem 5mo agoI wonder why in America it doesn't happen in the tech sector for devs specifically (as there is Alphabet Workers Union), beyond the typical reasons of American anti union sentiment like corporatism, bootstrap mentality etc, despite which there are many unions in the US like UAW, police and teachers unions etc. For tech, it's largely a different set of reasons, like high wages, no real grievances per se, and the ease of transferring to other companies, plus the work is all virtual so there is no reason why companies cannot outsource to another area where the union has no power, if the workers are just on their computers for work anyway. This latter reason is actually exactly why Netflix is investing heavily in South Korean productions.
- deleted 5mo ago[deleted]
- dhosek 5mo agoIt’s because the capitalist class has successfully persuaded the proletariat that they shouldn’t join a union. The US has been very successful at concentrating created wealth into a small number of people.
- satvikpendem 5mo ago> beyond the typical reasons of American anti union sentiment like corporatism, bootstrap mentality etc, despite which there are many unions in the US like UAW, police and teachers unions etc. As I said for tech workers it's a different set of reasons.
- ryandrake 5mo agoI think tech largely falls for the same anti-union propaganda as a great number of the rest of the USA. You'll see HN commenters in this article repeating much of this propaganda.
- satvikpendem 5mo agoI'm not sure, this is a good way to dismiss anything one doesn't like as "propaganda," it doesn't really tell us much.
- glance9835 5mo agoYea it is odd. Bc then tech workers get fired on mass just to get a little boost in stock price. And yet many don't think we need a union...
- satvikpendem 5mo agoI don't think a union would prevent them getting fired though, much less getting outsourced to areas without unions.