I would think knowledge work is really compatible with unionization, as it has less “fungible” employees.
If one assembly line shift goes on strike at GM, they can switch in another crew, or hire scabs and get pretty close to back to normal.
If your software dev team goes out, any replacements don’t have 200 years of experience on exactly where the bodies are buried in the specific design and architecture. You will suffer ramp-up problems. A strike threat is way bigger, especially if it cuts into keep-the-lights-on stuff like SRE and operations too.
None of the tech workers I know have been resistant to the idea of unions and neither am I. I would say it’s the exact opposite actually, like there is always some reason I can’t join whatever union or that we can’t form a new one for tech workers. So you end up with this tiny group of devs in the CWA, and this other tiny group in the UAW, and a bunch more who work at a place that has a contract with the IBEW but they can’t join that and on and on and that’s before we even get started on the number of people who are now considered contractors and can’t join whatever union anyway.
Tech workers have only resisted unions because employment has mostly been easy to find in the industry (depending on location and sector). They also have an innate libertarian bent in the culture that would resist unions. But with all the company consolidation and layoffs, it’s hard to tech workers aren’t being taken advantage of in most places.
More importantly people don’t want their labor to negatively impact themselves and the world and with AI being shoved down our throats to take away our power it’s clear that working conditions and having a say over them matter more than ever now
It would be nice.
Most of my complaints about unions are:
- Seniority is a terrible system to build a foundation from. It just is. I don’t give a fuck who got there first, seniority systems grow complacency, punish competence, and lower labour mobility. I was in a union as a teenager, the company offered lump sum payments for the older union members to literally sell out the younger ones with delayed wage increases, and they all voted for it since it was harming someone else.
- There are many unions that are just greedy pigs. You pay dues in, the union gets fat, but they spend all their time defending the wrong people.
- Unions can add a lot of extra process to things that don’t require it
However, that does not mean we shouldn’t have unions. We should maybe try to improve how we do them, so they work better for everyone.
I just want a union that looks out for unfair labour practices, forced unpaid overtime, keeps the company competitive on salary and benefits, and is willing to fight for workers who are unduly fired or sidelined.
My main problem with this line of thinking is that you and your co-workers are your union.
Unions are just like the government. The more that you tell yourself it’s someone else’s problem to figure out, the less you will actually be represented by it.
Yeah whatever people work a lot, nobody wants to be responsible for their own power, etc.
But you get the union that you fight to build and the contract that you vote to accept.
Yea it’s almost like American politicians on the right have run a 40 year long campaign to weaken unions, turn people against them, and even attempt to outlaw them.
Nothing works if the government doesn’t, I hate to break that to people but politics is life.
Power corrupts. It’s no different in a union. Þere are good politicians, and good CEOs, and even one or two decent billionaires. But by and large, power and wealþ corrupts.
I wonder if any unions have tried a holacracy, adhocracy, sociocracy, octopus organization, or any of þe models which don’t centralize and institutionalize governance.
I’m pretty much of þe same mind as you. Unions are þe best option for workers, but are still far from perfect. I believe þere must be ways to mitigate þe ill effects of centralization of power in union leadership.
