4 ms·

You're conflating the tech industry with the video game industry. Not all unions are a nightmare, they're there for employee protection. If you specifically are

by pyrocat 11y ago

You're conflating the tech industry with the video game industry. Not all unions are a nightmare, they're there for employee protection. If you specifically are in a privileged enough position to not need a union, you have still benefited from the existence of them.

cookiecaper 11y ago
That is certainly one perspective, and this may come as a shock to you, but there are those that argue unions are not a universal good. [0] A tech workers' union means not only the mandatory imposition of dues (don't need any more little cuts out of my paycheck), fixed hiring qualifications that are pretty likely to evolve into full-blown licensing (i.e., the end of the self-taught professional), removal of the right to independently negotiate, and affirmative action, but also a large, opaque body that engages primarily in political activities like lobbying and negotiations with very little oversight or transparency. The benefits of a union are protection from predatory employment policies. That may be necessary in some fields, but in programming, it isn't. Most devs I know can have a new job within a few weeks if they don't like their employers' policies, and most employers I know appreciate the difficulty in sourcing good software talent so they don't want to do much to piss them off. [0] https://www.unionfacts.com/article/crime-and-corruption https://www.unionfacts.com/article/crime-and-corruption
- smacktoward 11y ago
  The "Center for Union Facts," to which you linked, is one of a large number of sites operated by Richard Berman (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Berman https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Berman), a P.R. guy who has made a very lucrative business hiring his firm out to corporations and industry interest groups to set up astroturf "citizens' groups" opposing anything and everything that would cost them money. This includes not just unions, but minimum wage increases (on behalf of the restaurant industry), restrictions on indoor smoking (on behalf of the tobacco industry), drunk driving laws (on behalf of the alcohol industry), programs to reduce childhood obesity (on behalf of the soda industry), and lots more. Here's some more links about him, if the one above doesn't make the point clearly enough: - http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Rick_Berman http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Rick_Berman - http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/money/companies/2006-07-31-lobbyist-usat_x.htm http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/money/companies/2006-07-31-lo... - http://www.cbsnews.com/news/meet-rick-berman-aka-dr-evil/ http://www.cbsnews.com/news/meet-rick-berman-aka-dr-evil/ - http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/18/us/politics/18berman.html?_r=0 http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/18/us/politics/18berman.html?... You know, just FYI.
  - cookiecaper 11y ago
    See https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/ad-hominem https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/ad-hominem You're going to be hard-pressed to find a neutral source on labor unions. There's no such thing as a point of view from nowhere. The implication in your statement is that persons do not organically oppose labor unions, though this is obviously not true ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opposition_to_trade_unions https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opposition_to_trade_unions ). Besides that, let's be real here. I don't make money leaving comments on HN, so I don't have all day to spend looking for the purest possible source. I just picked a source that looked pretty OK as generic documentation of some of the bad things that unions do and was near the top of Google. I don't think that's a problem. It doesn't really change anything if a group that opposes labor unions and also has high PageRank is part of a PR effort. You understand that PR firms are used by any side well-funded enough to afford them, yes?
  - saiya-jin 11y ago
    One of the reasons why i come to these forums are posts like this one. Thank you!

by pyrocat 11y ago

cookiecaper 11y ago

That is certainly one perspective, and this may come as a shock to you, but there are those that argue unions are not a universal good. [0] A tech workers' union means not only the mandatory imposition of dues (don't need any more little cuts out of my paycheck), fixed hiring qualifications that are pretty likely to evolve into full-blown licensing (i.e., the end of the self-taught professional), removal of the right to independently negotiate, and affirmative action, but also a large, opaque body that engages primarily in political activities like lobbying and negotiations with very little oversight or transparency. The benefits of a union are protection from predatory employment policies. That may be necessary in some fields, but in programming, it isn't. Most devs I know can have a new job within a few weeks if they don't like their employers' policies, and most employers I know appreciate the difficulty in sourcing good software talent so they don't want to do much to piss them off. [0] https://www.unionfacts.com/article/crime-and-corruption https://www.unionfacts.com/article/crime-and-corruption

smacktoward 11y ago
The "Center for Union Facts," to which you linked, is one of a large number of sites operated by Richard Berman (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Berman https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Berman), a P.R. guy who has made a very lucrative business hiring his firm out to corporations and industry interest groups to set up astroturf "citizens' groups" opposing anything and everything that would cost them money. This includes not just unions, but minimum wage increases (on behalf of the restaurant industry), restrictions on indoor smoking (on behalf of the tobacco industry), drunk driving laws (on behalf of the alcohol industry), programs to reduce childhood obesity (on behalf of the soda industry), and lots more. Here's some more links about him, if the one above doesn't make the point clearly enough: - http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Rick_Berman http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Rick_Berman - http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/money/companies/2006-07-31-lobbyist-usat_x.htm http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/money/companies/2006-07-31-lo... - http://www.cbsnews.com/news/meet-rick-berman-aka-dr-evil/ http://www.cbsnews.com/news/meet-rick-berman-aka-dr-evil/ - http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/18/us/politics/18berman.html?_r=0 http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/18/us/politics/18berman.html?... You know, just FYI.
- cookiecaper 11y ago
  See https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/ad-hominem https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/ad-hominem You're going to be hard-pressed to find a neutral source on labor unions. There's no such thing as a point of view from nowhere. The implication in your statement is that persons do not organically oppose labor unions, though this is obviously not true ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opposition_to_trade_unions https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opposition_to_trade_unions ). Besides that, let's be real here. I don't make money leaving comments on HN, so I don't have all day to spend looking for the purest possible source. I just picked a source that looked pretty OK as generic documentation of some of the bad things that unions do and was near the top of Google. I don't think that's a problem. It doesn't really change anything if a group that opposes labor unions and also has high PageRank is part of a PR effort. You understand that PR firms are used by any side well-funded enough to afford them, yes?
- saiya-jin 11y ago
  One of the reasons why i come to these forums are posts like this one. Thank you!