Unions Did Great Things for the American Working Class
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Re: Unions Did Great Things for the American Working Class
#2A nice piece with excellent points, especially as low-to-middle income wage earners see their piece of the pie cut more and more.
Re: Unions Did Great Things for the American Working Class
#3I've often thought there should be a union in tech, similar to the way the directors guild and screen actors guild operate. Not to set maximums on compensation, but to set humane minimums and provide continuity and health insurance in a pooled way, perhaps.
Re: Unions Did Great Things for the American Working Class
#4This may not be the venue to get good answers but what are the likely costs of unionization in software? How would management respond to organized tech labor? What would be the economic impacts?
Not looking for pro- or anti-union sloganeering, but real impacts. The economics of the tech sector would change dramatically with organized labor in computing, and I'm interested in how those changes would manifest.
Re: Unions Did Great Things for the American Working Class
#5This may not be the venue to get good answers but what are the likely costs of unionization in software? How would management respond to organized tech labor? What would be the economic impacts? Not looking for pro- or anti-union sloganeering, but real impacts. The economics of the tech sector would change dramatically with organized labor in computing, and I'm interested in how those changes would manifest.
I wonder how unionized labor would interact with US visas. If you're on an H-1b and your union goes on strike.....do you have to leave the country?
Re: Unions Did Great Things for the American Working Class
#6There's the relatively young Tech Workers Coalition: https://techworkerscoalition.org && https://twitter.com/techworkersco
Re: Unions Did Great Things for the American Working Class
#7I've often thought there should be a union in tech, similar to the way the directors guild and screen actors guild operate. Not to set maximums on compensation, but to set humane minimums and provide continuity and health insurance in a pooled way, perhaps.
Also to lobby (e.g. in favour of trust busting, copyright/IP reform) and to provide a legal heavyweight that can take on systemic abuse like the wage fixing cartel from a few years ago.
Re: Unions Did Great Things for the American Working Class
#8This may not be the venue to get good answers but what are the likely costs of unionization in software? How would management respond to organized tech labor? What would be the economic impacts? Not looking for pro- or anti-union sloganeering, but real impacts. The economics of the tech sector would change dramatically with organized labor in computing, and I'm interested in how those changes would manifest.
I think we can look at the recent google walkout for that, as I belive the organizers specifically interacted with and took advisement of labor union organizers in order to have a successful walkout. Google was forced to respond to their workforce's demands, however how much real change will remain to be seen. So at the very least we know somewhat how management responds to organized tech labor for one example. The economics of such likely remains to be seen.
Re: Unions Did Great Things for the American Working Class
#9This may not be the venue to get good answers but what are the likely costs of unionization in software? How would management respond to organized tech labor? What would be the economic impacts? Not looking for pro- or anti-union sloganeering, but real impacts. The economics of the tech sector would change dramatically with organized labor in computing, and I'm interested in how those changes would manifest.
I don't have any useful answers, but you could explore how tech workers have unionized in other countries and what the results have been. In France for example, tech workers are organized under so-called "Conventions Collectives" (= "collective agreement" in English).
Re: Unions Did Great Things for the American Working Class
#10This may not be the venue to get good answers but what are the likely costs of unionization in software? How would management respond to organized tech labor? What would be the economic impacts? Not looking for pro- or anti-union sloganeering, but real impacts. The economics of the tech sector would change dramatically with organized labor in computing, and I'm interested in how those changes would manifest.
I think it would depend on what form the unions take. There is a range from "you can't fire anybody even if they're terrible" to "professional organization that holds its own members to high standards of quality, but assuming they meet that standard, protects them 100%".