4 ms·

A brewing battle: More IT workers want unions. The industry doesn't

28 points by chobeat 3mo ago

cyanydeez 3mo ago
that industry: capitalism
garciasn 3mo ago
68% of Americans supposedly support unions: https://news.gallup.com/poll/694472/labor-union-approval-relatively-steady.aspx https://news.gallup.com/poll/694472/labor-union-approval-rel... Yet, ~50% of Americans voted for the party that is diametrically opposed to them; a paradox. That said, with only about ~10% of Americans being employed in a union role, it's more like the grass is greener on the other side than an actual understanding of the pros and cons of union membership.
- cweagans 3mo ago
  > ~50% of Americans voted for the party that is diametrically opposed to them Less than half of the US population voted in the last election. ~50% of Americans _who voted_ voted for the party that is diametrically opposed to unions, but that group is only ~23% of _Americans_.
  - ThrowawayR2 3mo ago
    More voter turnout wouldn't have changed anything. From https://www.politico.com/news/2025/06/26/2024-election-turnout-trum-00426544 https://www.politico.com/news/2025/06/26/2024-election-turno... , "The survey suggests that 'if all Americans eligible to vote in 2024 had cast ballots, the overall margin in the popular vote likely would not have been much different'" This also matches what Democratic-leaning pollsters like David Shor have said in their own analyses.
    - cweagans 3mo ago
      It's important to understand that what we have, we have because of a comparatively small group of people. That's important and interesting because it means you can influence the outcome of an election in two ways: 1. Get people to change sides. This is difficult: people who already vote in a particular way are unlikely to change because of external pressures (and in fact, are more likely to dig their heels in if challenged on their views); or 2. Get more people to vote. This can be challenging in its own way, but can also just boil down to logistics problems. Whether or not 100% voter turnout would have the same results is neither here nor there. If you accept that premise + the premise that the vast majority of American voters vote down the party line for one of the major two, then you have potentially 2x the number of voters for your desired outcome. All you have to do is go find them and get them to vote.
- chung8123 3mo ago
  This is why one issue wedge voting works. You may vote against something you want to vote for something you want more.
  - SaucyWrong 3mo ago
    Single-issue voting is something I consider a very large threat to the democratic process in the US, and is also something that both parties have become exceedingly good at creating in the elctorate. The reason I consider it a threat is that it allows either party to meta-game the fact that many voters can be persuaded to vote against their own interests.
    - JuniperMesos 3mo ago
      How could any decision that voters make about how to cast their votes be a threat to the democratic process? A voter grounding their decision about who to vote for on a single issue is democracy working as intended. If this is bad it's only bad in the sense that voters in a democracy can vote for bad people or policies - but this is not something democracy as a system does or can promise to avoid.
- browsingonly 3mo ago
  > actual understanding of the pros and cons of union membership Many of us have worked in $MEGACORPS with substantial union representation among the employees, have seen what it does and how it works in practice, and as a result want nothing to do with it. I wasn't represented due to my job classification, but now due to my firsthand exposure to unions I absolutely never will be by choice. No way, no how, not ever.
  - OkayPhysicist 3mo ago
    Translated: Management ("wasn't represented due to job classification") doesn't like unions. Shocker.
    - positr0n 3mo ago
      I know plenty of line level engineers (mostly non-software) who's main interaction with unions is things like waiting for a week to move their desk to the other wall of their cubical because that's a union job and they're not allowed to touch the Ethernet cables. Notice the story has cubicals, how nice! Most these stories are pretty old. I suspect because there are less jobs in some big F500 campus with colocated engineering, accounting, etc and a unionized manufacturing plant all in the same place.
    - deleted 3mo ago
      [deleted]
- Whoppertime 3mo ago
  I don't think it's so obvious The International Brotherhood of Teamsters didn't officially endorse any candidate for president in 2024. This was because internal polling said that their members overwhelmingly supported Trump over Harris, while it seems like the union leadership supported Harris over Trump This is not the only Union who had a difference of opinion between leadership and membership in 2024
exabrial 3mo ago
Personally, after working for multiple blue collar unions (commercial roofing, machinist) I don't. But I won't oppose anyone that does. The problem is that the people that DO want them, want to force it on those that don't, usually by labor law.
- boston_clone 3mo ago
  Could you share why you feel that way to help add more to the conversation and give context to your own opinion?
- KetoManx64 3mo ago
  Agreed. Having worked around unions while doing IT in the manufacturing industry, I had much better bargaining ability and got much bigger raises and flexibility as an individual than the union employees.
nahgon 3mo ago
[dead]
momentmaker 3mo ago
The problem with union is that it also centralizes the power to the top which also then attracts sociopaths and/or psychopaths who are better are playing the political game.
- 1shooner 3mo ago
  In principle I support the idea of organized labor, but I hate to admit that every real-world experience of unions I've witnessed (second hand), the union has just been another layer of rent-seeking administration. I don't know enough about the history and structure to understand if the current tech union movement is more of the same or if there is some reform included.
- thraway3837 3mo ago
  Came here to say something similar to this. If the industry were to unionize, there are good examples of good unions and good leadership. But I also don't want to pay membership dues so that some executive director of a union makes $900k/year salary so they can show up 5 times out of the year to resolve issues and then disappear and have no experience with software or the industry at all. My fear is that union leadership will just attract someone from another completely different industry, who has no passion for computing, no experience, but wield tremendous power in how employees and employers conduct business. I'm not OK with that. I don't want some 65 year old curmudgeon MBA type politically connected bozo telling everyone what they can and cannot do. These types of committees and decision making are a killjoy and harm creativity. There's just no way to guarantee that union leaders are regular folks like us who aren't power hungry but want to truly help the people. It rarely ever ends up attracting clean, nice, good personalities and then end up in cahoots with other nefarious players. Having said all that, I would like to see a few changes in the industry: - Interviews. The process is a complete mess right now. If we could standardize on a few things, that would go a long way. Guaranteed yes or no feedback immediately after the last step. Capping the process to just 2 days. You phone call, initial screen. Come in, meet the team, problem solve something real. Lunch. Some more team sessions to solve real problems, and then done at 2PM. Feedback at 4PM. No ghosting, no "oh we hired someone internally", no week long writing assignments and coding sessions to reverse a linked list. - Salary. Just post the exact salary on the listing, without ranges. And then just tell the candidate up front, this is the salary. That's it. Stop with the tremendous waste of time on the back and forth. RSUs, etc. also posted full transparency. And just say "no negotiations, this is it". - Layoffs. Provide a good cushion for the person to find a new role, health insurance. We're not asking for much here, just give the young folk less time and older folk more time since ageism is real.
chung8123 3mo ago
How do unions work? Can a place just not hire union workers and it takes a whole profession to unionize to make them effective?
- hung10brah 3mo ago
  > How do unions work? About as unevenly as every other human social tribe. Was part of SEIU at one point. At least where I worked SEIU reps were fucking useless. My team was stuck in a basement with mold growing in the corners. There are so many other layers of by-laws, local, state, federal laws the union was essentially useless. But people in SEIU elsewhere said they were great. So as always YMMV Grocers union members where I live, while on strike, tried to block people going in a grocery store to use the pharmacy which was technically on a different labor contract; the grocers union members were to leave pharmacy customers alone. They hassled them anyway. In the end neighbors and community at large ended up being against the grocers union due to a handful of cringe, edgelord members in utilikits over-stepping with their "uh ackshully" shit. Unions are just more social tribe bullshit for people to leverage as magical words of power. Google it; there's union success story's and union members suing unions/reps after members claim they were forced into just acquiescing to the rich ownership class anyway. So much of the western way of life is just the same old rhetorical tribal bullshit, social darwinism no different than how it works among some random clusters of nomadic groups in Africa. Any sort of differentiation is merely semantics and rhetoric. Bird song and banner logo, whether they bleed for prophet or prophecy are the only things humans can claim to make them different. Roughly same old human meat suits end of the day. I am 100% all in on letting the robots, monitored by subject matter experts, make sure shit gets made and ending this forced obligation to kowtow and prostrate ourselves to other clearly normal and ultimately forgettable meat suits like most middle managers and union leaders, etc etc
  - foobarchu 3mo ago
    > In the end neighbors and community at large ended up being against the grocers union due to a handful of cringe, edgelord members in utilikits over-stepping with their "uh ackshully" shit. This reflects poorly on the neighbors more than the union members, IMO.
boston_clone 3mo ago
Too many random folks coming out of the woodwork to denounce unions by way of vague personal experience without anything concrete to back it up. Be evidence based, people! Anecdotes are meaningless! Like, I know there's astroturfing here, but damn. Collective bargaining vis-a-vis unionization allows workers to more effectively push back against bullshit like RTO mandates and mass layoffs. They help reign in the massive pay packages to executives who directly benefit from laying folks off. And there's a reason why companies monitor internal communications and engage in retaliatory actions against employees for even discussing organizing. Yes, that's technically illegal under US labor law. But corporations do not care and will accept the risk of a non-guaranteed fine to make an example and enforce a chilling effect for other workers. The fact that unions aren't a perfect solution to the overwhelming might of capitalist interests at each and every workplace does not mean that unions are bad, worthless, or not on the side of the individual worker. They are designed to make the tilt of power more equitable.
bwestergard 3mo ago
I'm a unionized software developer, and have been part of two separate organizing campaigns at two different employers. Happy to answer questions about how it all works - there are only about ~6000 dev/product/design/qa employees in the U.S., so there is very little first hand experience to go around. Among other things that my coworkers and I secured by bargaining collectively are: - Guaranteed remote work. - Guaranteed forty hour work week, with compensatory time within two weeks if management asks us to work overtime. - Not on call 24/7/365. Everyone is in a defined rotation, and you are guaranteed three hours off just for being on call for a week, and a whole day if you receive a call. I believe that partly because of this policy, after hours incidents are extremely infrequent now. - Guaranteed floor on wage increases every year. - Just cause for discipline. People still get terminated if they don't do the work, but if you want it (and almost everyone does) there is an elected coworker in your corner to guide you through a PIP and make sure standards are enforced evenly. You can't suddenly be terminated for no reason. - Extra time off each year through self-directed times between sprints and quarterly increments. - Right to review all code done by outside contractors if you're going to have to maintain it in the future.
- JuniperMesos 3mo ago
  How much money do you make?
  - bwestergard 3mo ago
    About $153k a year gross take home pay, or around $180k total compensation (including retirement contributions, healthcare, etc). You can see the wage brackets in our collective bargaining agreement here: https://tinyurl.com/dmucontract https://tinyurl.com/dmucontract

28 points by chobeat 3mo ago

that industry: capitalism

68% of Americans supposedly support unions: https://news.gallup.com/poll/694472/labor-union-approval-relatively-steady.aspx https://news.gallup.com/poll/694472/labor-union-approval-rel... Yet, ~50% of Americans voted for the party that is diametrically opposed to them; a paradox. That said, with only about ~10% of Americans being employed in a union role, it's more like the grass is greener on the other side than an actual understanding of the pros and cons of union membership.

cweagans 3mo ago
> ~50% of Americans voted for the party that is diametrically opposed to them Less than half of the US population voted in the last election. ~50% of Americans _who voted_ voted for the party that is diametrically opposed to unions, but that group is only ~23% of _Americans_.
- ThrowawayR2 3mo ago
  More voter turnout wouldn't have changed anything. From https://www.politico.com/news/2025/06/26/2024-election-turnout-trum-00426544 https://www.politico.com/news/2025/06/26/2024-election-turno... , "The survey suggests that 'if all Americans eligible to vote in 2024 had cast ballots, the overall margin in the popular vote likely would not have been much different'" This also matches what Democratic-leaning pollsters like David Shor have said in their own analyses.
  - cweagans 3mo ago
    It's important to understand that what we have, we have because of a comparatively small group of people. That's important and interesting because it means you can influence the outcome of an election in two ways: 1. Get people to change sides. This is difficult: people who already vote in a particular way are unlikely to change because of external pressures (and in fact, are more likely to dig their heels in if challenged on their views); or 2. Get more people to vote. This can be challenging in its own way, but can also just boil down to logistics problems. Whether or not 100% voter turnout would have the same results is neither here nor there. If you accept that premise + the premise that the vast majority of American voters vote down the party line for one of the major two, then you have potentially 2x the number of voters for your desired outcome. All you have to do is go find them and get them to vote.
chung8123 3mo ago
This is why one issue wedge voting works. You may vote against something you want to vote for something you want more.
- SaucyWrong 3mo ago
  Single-issue voting is something I consider a very large threat to the democratic process in the US, and is also something that both parties have become exceedingly good at creating in the elctorate. The reason I consider it a threat is that it allows either party to meta-game the fact that many voters can be persuaded to vote against their own interests.
  - JuniperMesos 3mo ago
    How could any decision that voters make about how to cast their votes be a threat to the democratic process? A voter grounding their decision about who to vote for on a single issue is democracy working as intended. If this is bad it's only bad in the sense that voters in a democracy can vote for bad people or policies - but this is not something democracy as a system does or can promise to avoid.
browsingonly 3mo ago
> actual understanding of the pros and cons of union membership Many of us have worked in $MEGACORPS with substantial union representation among the employees, have seen what it does and how it works in practice, and as a result want nothing to do with it. I wasn't represented due to my job classification, but now due to my firsthand exposure to unions I absolutely never will be by choice. No way, no how, not ever.
- OkayPhysicist 3mo ago
  Translated: Management ("wasn't represented due to job classification") doesn't like unions. Shocker.
  - positr0n 3mo ago
    I know plenty of line level engineers (mostly non-software) who's main interaction with unions is things like waiting for a week to move their desk to the other wall of their cubical because that's a union job and they're not allowed to touch the Ethernet cables. Notice the story has cubicals, how nice! Most these stories are pretty old. I suspect because there are less jobs in some big F500 campus with colocated engineering, accounting, etc and a unionized manufacturing plant all in the same place.
  - deleted 3mo ago
    [deleted]
Whoppertime 3mo ago
I don't think it's so obvious The International Brotherhood of Teamsters didn't officially endorse any candidate for president in 2024. This was because internal polling said that their members overwhelmingly supported Trump over Harris, while it seems like the union leadership supported Harris over Trump This is not the only Union who had a difference of opinion between leadership and membership in 2024

exabrial 3mo ago

Personally, after working for multiple blue collar unions (commercial roofing, machinist) I don't. But I won't oppose anyone that does. The problem is that the people that DO want them, want to force it on those that don't, usually by labor law.

boston_clone 3mo ago
Could you share why you feel that way to help add more to the conversation and give context to your own opinion?
KetoManx64 3mo ago
Agreed. Having worked around unions while doing IT in the manufacturing industry, I had much better bargaining ability and got much bigger raises and flexibility as an individual than the union employees.

nahgon 3mo ago

[dead]

momentmaker 3mo ago

The problem with union is that it also centralizes the power to the top which also then attracts sociopaths and/or psychopaths who are better are playing the political game.

1shooner 3mo ago
In principle I support the idea of organized labor, but I hate to admit that every real-world experience of unions I've witnessed (second hand), the union has just been another layer of rent-seeking administration. I don't know enough about the history and structure to understand if the current tech union movement is more of the same or if there is some reform included.
thraway3837 3mo ago
Came here to say something similar to this. If the industry were to unionize, there are good examples of good unions and good leadership. But I also don't want to pay membership dues so that some executive director of a union makes $900k/year salary so they can show up 5 times out of the year to resolve issues and then disappear and have no experience with software or the industry at all. My fear is that union leadership will just attract someone from another completely different industry, who has no passion for computing, no experience, but wield tremendous power in how employees and employers conduct business. I'm not OK with that. I don't want some 65 year old curmudgeon MBA type politically connected bozo telling everyone what they can and cannot do. These types of committees and decision making are a killjoy and harm creativity. There's just no way to guarantee that union leaders are regular folks like us who aren't power hungry but want to truly help the people. It rarely ever ends up attracting clean, nice, good personalities and then end up in cahoots with other nefarious players. Having said all that, I would like to see a few changes in the industry: - Interviews. The process is a complete mess right now. If we could standardize on a few things, that would go a long way. Guaranteed yes or no feedback immediately after the last step. Capping the process to just 2 days. You phone call, initial screen. Come in, meet the team, problem solve something real. Lunch. Some more team sessions to solve real problems, and then done at 2PM. Feedback at 4PM. No ghosting, no "oh we hired someone internally", no week long writing assignments and coding sessions to reverse a linked list. - Salary. Just post the exact salary on the listing, without ranges. And then just tell the candidate up front, this is the salary. That's it. Stop with the tremendous waste of time on the back and forth. RSUs, etc. also posted full transparency. And just say "no negotiations, this is it". - Layoffs. Provide a good cushion for the person to find a new role, health insurance. We're not asking for much here, just give the young folk less time and older folk more time since ageism is real.

chung8123 3mo ago

How do unions work? Can a place just not hire union workers and it takes a whole profession to unionize to make them effective?

hung10brah 3mo ago
> How do unions work? About as unevenly as every other human social tribe. Was part of SEIU at one point. At least where I worked SEIU reps were fucking useless. My team was stuck in a basement with mold growing in the corners. There are so many other layers of by-laws, local, state, federal laws the union was essentially useless. But people in SEIU elsewhere said they were great. So as always YMMV Grocers union members where I live, while on strike, tried to block people going in a grocery store to use the pharmacy which was technically on a different labor contract; the grocers union members were to leave pharmacy customers alone. They hassled them anyway. In the end neighbors and community at large ended up being against the grocers union due to a handful of cringe, edgelord members in utilikits over-stepping with their "uh ackshully" shit. Unions are just more social tribe bullshit for people to leverage as magical words of power. Google it; there's union success story's and union members suing unions/reps after members claim they were forced into just acquiescing to the rich ownership class anyway. So much of the western way of life is just the same old rhetorical tribal bullshit, social darwinism no different than how it works among some random clusters of nomadic groups in Africa. Any sort of differentiation is merely semantics and rhetoric. Bird song and banner logo, whether they bleed for prophet or prophecy are the only things humans can claim to make them different. Roughly same old human meat suits end of the day. I am 100% all in on letting the robots, monitored by subject matter experts, make sure shit gets made and ending this forced obligation to kowtow and prostrate ourselves to other clearly normal and ultimately forgettable meat suits like most middle managers and union leaders, etc etc
- foobarchu 3mo ago
  > In the end neighbors and community at large ended up being against the grocers union due to a handful of cringe, edgelord members in utilikits over-stepping with their "uh ackshully" shit. This reflects poorly on the neighbors more than the union members, IMO.

boston_clone 3mo ago

Too many random folks coming out of the woodwork to denounce unions by way of vague personal experience without anything concrete to back it up. Be evidence based, people! Anecdotes are meaningless! Like, I know there's astroturfing here, but damn. Collective bargaining vis-a-vis unionization allows workers to more effectively push back against bullshit like RTO mandates and mass layoffs. They help reign in the massive pay packages to executives who directly benefit from laying folks off. And there's a reason why companies monitor internal communications and engage in retaliatory actions against employees for even discussing organizing. Yes, that's technically illegal under US labor law. But corporations do not care and will accept the risk of a non-guaranteed fine to make an example and enforce a chilling effect for other workers. The fact that unions aren't a perfect solution to the overwhelming might of capitalist interests at each and every workplace does not mean that unions are bad, worthless, or not on the side of the individual worker. They are designed to make the tilt of power more equitable.

bwestergard 3mo ago

I'm a unionized software developer, and have been part of two separate organizing campaigns at two different employers. Happy to answer questions about how it all works - there are only about ~6000 dev/product/design/qa employees in the U.S., so there is very little first hand experience to go around. Among other things that my coworkers and I secured by bargaining collectively are: - Guaranteed remote work. - Guaranteed forty hour work week, with compensatory time within two weeks if management asks us to work overtime. - Not on call 24/7/365. Everyone is in a defined rotation, and you are guaranteed three hours off just for being on call for a week, and a whole day if you receive a call. I believe that partly because of this policy, after hours incidents are extremely infrequent now. - Guaranteed floor on wage increases every year. - Just cause for discipline. People still get terminated if they don't do the work, but if you want it (and almost everyone does) there is an elected coworker in your corner to guide you through a PIP and make sure standards are enforced evenly. You can't suddenly be terminated for no reason. - Extra time off each year through self-directed times between sprints and quarterly increments. - Right to review all code done by outside contractors if you're going to have to maintain it in the future.

JuniperMesos 3mo ago
How much money do you make?
- bwestergard 3mo ago
  About $153k a year gross take home pay, or around $180k total compensation (including retirement contributions, healthcare, etc). You can see the wage brackets in our collective bargaining agreement here: https://tinyurl.com/dmucontract https://tinyurl.com/dmucontract