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Because empirically it would not be. There is a great deal of mis-information about them from right leaning media that might create the contrary impression: Th

Because empirically it would not be. There is a great deal of mis-information about them from right leaning media that might create the contrary impression: That they limit wages, but the screen actor's guild certainly doesn't cap actor's wages. That they limit outside work, but for example, state employed court reporters do all their transcripts outside working hours and make quite a bit not being paid hourly for that. Indeed they have protected pilot wages for decades beyond what would have been possible otherwise. There is no case where an effective professional organization of some sort doesn't make things better for it members. To suppose that you as an individual will ever have any hope of negotiating on an equal basis with a multibillion dollar company because of "market forces" hand waving is utterly unreasonable and the poster child of limiting yourself due to ideology. Your one and only protection right now are few pieces of rapidly diminishing legislation. For better or worse you live in a society where if you don't have a lobbyist you are invisible and where what is considered bribery in every other country (ie money in politics) is considered free speech. A lobbyist alone would work wonders let alone the other advantages of an organization.

learnstats2 11y ago
I know many actors and I don't know what their union is doing, but they don't exactly have an easy lifestyle. You're suggesting I should join a union to have a lobbyist working on my (group's) behalf? This seems to me like playing multi-billionaire corporations at their own game by their own rules - and playing it badly. Where is the empirical evidence that you claim?
- whybroke 11y ago
  >I know many X... Confirmation bias mean that exceptional or confirmatory anecdotes are much more likely to be remembered[1] I continue to be amazed that there armies of people who consider sentences that begin with "I know someone who..." to somehow be definitive evidence of anything whatsoever. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anecdotal_evidence http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anecdotal_evidence
  - learnstats2 11y ago
    I continue to be amazed by people who criticise anecdotal evidence as an ad hominem or straw man attack without providing any kind of evidence of anything you have said. We are talking about benefits for people, we are not talking about abstract mathematics - you don't want to accept the situation of those people because that would be inconvenient for you, considering what you have said. Constructive discussion is now over; you failed to convince me.
    - fu9ar 11y ago
      You don't need a blue collar union patterned after UAW, but there have been multiple successful lawsuits about illegal wage suppression across many areas of high tech. They are probably the tip of an iceberg. These lawsuits suggest a much deeper pattern of high level collusion between these incestuous companies to systematically depress wages. There are professional organizations for every major profession. Technically, the ACM would probably be the closest thing to a union that programmers actually need, but it's limited to the big iron scientific computing... So, yeah. I don't know if there is something for all of the webdev 2.0 gluelib writers out there. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Professional_association https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Professional_association P.S. You're might be a good programmer. I don't know. We've never met, but stop trying to play rhetoric games. You're not very good at them.
      - icebraining 11y ago
        Except for actually discovering those secret agreements, what policies do you see an union instituting that would ameliorate that problem? I see how unions can help set minimum wages and conditions for their members, but that's not what we're talking about here.
        fu9ar 11y ago
        Collective bargaining for better wages and working conditions is part of what got us a step up from the world described in Upton Sinclair's The Jungle. It took 30 years, but did you expect it to get fixed quickly and easily? Politics is a lifetime grudge match. The Capitalists you sell your labor to, ideally, want you to work for free with perfect efficiency 24/7/365. That's why they are replacing workers with robots. Anyway, a professional organization will give you more far flung networking opportunities as well as intelligence on what's going on at other firms, which will increase your value as a worker, and presumably, your pay.

learnstats2 11y ago

I know many actors and I don't know what their union is doing, but they don't exactly have an easy lifestyle. You're suggesting I should join a union to have a lobbyist working on my (group's) behalf? This seems to me like playing multi-billionaire corporations at their own game by their own rules - and playing it badly. Where is the empirical evidence that you claim?

whybroke 11y ago
>I know many X... Confirmation bias mean that exceptional or confirmatory anecdotes are much more likely to be remembered[1] I continue to be amazed that there armies of people who consider sentences that begin with "I know someone who..." to somehow be definitive evidence of anything whatsoever. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anecdotal_evidence http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anecdotal_evidence
- learnstats2 11y ago
  I continue to be amazed by people who criticise anecdotal evidence as an ad hominem or straw man attack without providing any kind of evidence of anything you have said. We are talking about benefits for people, we are not talking about abstract mathematics - you don't want to accept the situation of those people because that would be inconvenient for you, considering what you have said. Constructive discussion is now over; you failed to convince me.
  - fu9ar 11y ago
    You don't need a blue collar union patterned after UAW, but there have been multiple successful lawsuits about illegal wage suppression across many areas of high tech. They are probably the tip of an iceberg. These lawsuits suggest a much deeper pattern of high level collusion between these incestuous companies to systematically depress wages. There are professional organizations for every major profession. Technically, the ACM would probably be the closest thing to a union that programmers actually need, but it's limited to the big iron scientific computing... So, yeah. I don't know if there is something for all of the webdev 2.0 gluelib writers out there. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Professional_association https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Professional_association P.S. You're might be a good programmer. I don't know. We've never met, but stop trying to play rhetoric games. You're not very good at them.
    - icebraining 11y ago
      Except for actually discovering those secret agreements, what policies do you see an union instituting that would ameliorate that problem? I see how unions can help set minimum wages and conditions for their members, but that's not what we're talking about here.
      - fu9ar 11y ago
        Collective bargaining for better wages and working conditions is part of what got us a step up from the world described in Upton Sinclair's The Jungle. It took 30 years, but did you expect it to get fixed quickly and easily? Politics is a lifetime grudge match. The Capitalists you sell your labor to, ideally, want you to work for free with perfect efficiency 24/7/365. That's why they are replacing workers with robots. Anyway, a professional organization will give you more far flung networking opportunities as well as intelligence on what's going on at other firms, which will increase your value as a worker, and presumably, your pay.