Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Unions Can Save Tech Workers and Tech Work

jacobin.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 153 posts

Re: Unions Can Save Tech Workers and Tech Work

#81

Post by braiamp »

Plasmoid wrote: post #3

My ask for these is always the same. I just want to see how this union would work, specifically. Don't compare it to other unions or say it could be like X. Just write a few hundred words on what it would actually be like.

The same way every other union works... I don't get your question? The unions that do work, are not the ones you see on tv. When something explodes, specially a union, it gets massive coverage. When a union works, any achivement gets burried while the negative press is the only one given coverage(1, 2, 3, 4).

So, I will challenge the reader: unions win about 7 out of 10 elections to get certified/created. Does your mental image of labor news look like 70% wins? If not, ask why

1: https://www.benjnewman.com/uploads/1/2/2/1/122135844/kane_ne...

2: https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.7591/j.ctv3s8mwx

3: https://www.projectcensored.org/unions-won-more-than-70-perc...

4: https://www.mediamatters.org/labor-unions-and-workers-rights...

Re: Unions Can Save Tech Workers and Tech Work

#82

Post by lispwitch »

I'm involved in a new workers cooperative, and I've been thinking about how organizational structures relate to the workplace. Cooperatives are fantastic, where they exist. In the tech world, two prominent examples are Igalia and Bocoup. (I worked on SpiderMonkey at Igalia, and collaborated with Bocoup on test262 tests.) Both are highly specialized consultancies, and both are internally democratic. To get some idea of what it's like to work at a coop, I recommend the 2023 FOSSY talk "Inside Igalia: Scaling a Co-Op Beyond 100 Members": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=du7fC8VCbXg

Workers coops have structural limitations, though: with some exceptions, they're new entrants to the market and have limited access to capital. Unions interact with existing businesses, which I think is why they're so much more controversial than coops, and they can bring some of the benefits of workplace democracy to a much larger group of people than coops presently can.

Re: Unions Can Save Tech Workers and Tech Work

#83

Post by ThrowawayR2 »

Melatonic wrote: post #59
hylaride wrote: post #4

This is essentially a story about front-line traditional desktop support/sysadmins at a public university. It's not going to be the same story at much higher paid shops where workers often have equity, good benefits, and the market has provided access to other jobs if you lose yours (in my experience, there are still shortages of qualified and competent engineers). I would like a different method to deal with the pit…

If anything a union would aid job mobility. And theres no reason you cant still individually negotiate and receive equity if you are in a union.

IIRC union seniority is tied to the current employer. Move to another employer and all your seniority and the perks that go with it are gone so union members avoid it. No mobility for you.

Re: Unions Can Save Tech Workers and Tech Work

#84

Post by jamestimmins »

yibg wrote: post #79
hackthemack wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These topics are just so difficult to debate. They are filled with feelings and one person's perspective or anecdote, and it is difficult to drill down into what is true or what is not true. You wrote "Modern tech workers arguably have the best career deal in the history of humankind". How do you know? And, for the sake of argument, let us say it is the best deal in the history of humankind, does that make it fair th…

For these topics I don't think there is anything wrong with using your own experience. Yes it's one person's perspective and anecdote (mine), but that's what informs my opinion. I've worked at a couple of unionized places before, for me they're terrible. You can say those are bad unions, or unions in Europe etc are better. This may be true, but my own experience tells me to avoid them.

This is a good point about quality of life. I focused on money in my original comment, but I've heard a lot of people complain that unions have kept them working with their worst coworkers. That alone is a dealbreaker for me.

Re: Unions Can Save Tech Workers and Tech Work

#86

Post by phainopepla2 »

Devasta wrote: post #18

Unionization of the industry is long long overdue, if for no other reason than professional ethics. A small town lawyer can fuck up paperwork badly enough that they lose their ability to practice law. A software engineer can fry the brains of hundreds of thousands of people and it's all ok so long as they managed to get a few of them to click ads. It should have the same requirements for personal liability like other…

Unions typically fight pretty hard to keep their members from facing professional liability (see police unions), so your comment is a bit at odds with itself.

I'm fairly confident that a software engineer's union would not be lobbying to make it's members liable for things they did while legally performing their job duties at places like Meta or Google.

Re: Unions Can Save Tech Workers and Tech Work

#87

Post by greyface- »

Melatonic wrote: post #59
hylaride wrote: post #4

This is essentially a story about front-line traditional desktop support/sysadmins at a public university. It's not going to be the same story at much higher paid shops where workers often have equity, good benefits, and the market has provided access to other jobs if you lose yours (in my experience, there are still shortages of qualified and competent engineers). I would like a different method to deal with the pit…

If anything a union would aid job mobility. And theres no reason you cant still individually negotiate and receive equity if you are in a union.

The National Labor Relations Act prohibits covered employers from negotiating directly with employees.

Re: Unions Can Save Tech Workers and Tech Work

#88

Post by braiamp »

jamestimmins wrote: post #14

As a California tech worker (where the article is focused), I have zero interest in joining a union and firmly believe that much of what has been possible as a tech employee (high paying, interesting career) is in part because we don't have unions, and instead employees own equity and get valuable skills. Modern tech workers arguably have the best career deal in the history of humankind. I see no upside in killing th…

Part of what made the "no union" deal work out for early tech employees was that supply was scarce and demand was exploding. Good pay and equity weren't really a function of not having a union, they were a function of being early in a market with more jobs than workers. We should keep that separated, before crediting the lack of a union for the result.

That's leverage you didn't build and don't control and it's already eroding as the market catches up. Which is why collective bargaining needs to exists, a way to hold onto ground when individual leverage isn't guaranteed.

BTW, it's not like unions had it easy. Even as they were legally recognized (organized labor was treated as a antitrust problem), the judiciary has in the US been dismantling the little foothold it has after it. The US needed 2 new laws to actually get something. And even then, it doesn't enjoy the same flexibilities that other forms of collective arraignment has, such as capital, in the way of "right-to-work" laws, at-will employment and strikes aren't protected as they should. Hell, legal existence and being on equal footing with the other side of the table have never been the same thing.

Re: Unions Can Save Tech Workers and Tech Work

#89

Post by braiamp »

teravor wrote: post #76

the problem with unions is that they tend to enjoy legal protections not afforded to anyone else. as such they will distort the marketplace. as is often the case with such carve-outs those who can get in early tend to benefit at the expense of everyone else. it was a mistake to entrench unions because now you will never get rid of them, but it's not surprising as the alternative would have been aggressive anti-trust…

> the problem with unions is that they tend to enjoy legal protections not afforded to anyone else

Capital has higher protections than unions, what are you on about? You have the corporate veil whereas the liability stops at the organization rather than the individuals and that is very seldomly pierced (J&J is a neat case here, even while courts are being wise to that move now).

Also, if carve-outs distort markets, that argument disqualifies the corporate form first. Because corpos have limited liability, corporate personhood, patent monopolies, etc. they also have political power on top, which is always fun.

BTW, and I alluded to this in another comment, antitrust was used against labor, not capital. Labor had to work for decades to be excluded. Before that, union members got personally sued into the ground under antitrust, almost losing their homes and savings accounts. Maybe we should bring that back too, but with actual people that needs to be antitrusted.

Re: Unions Can Save Tech Workers and Tech Work

#90

Post by johnnyanmac »

hackthemack wrote: post #30
jamestimmins wrote: post #14

As a California tech worker (where the article is focused), I have zero interest in joining a union and firmly believe that much of what has been possible as a tech employee (high paying, interesting career) is in part because we don't have unions, and instead employees own equity and get valuable skills. Modern tech workers arguably have the best career deal in the history of humankind. I see no upside in killing th…

These topics are just so difficult to debate. They are filled with feelings and one person's perspective or anecdote, and it is difficult to drill down into what is true or what is not true. You wrote "Modern tech workers arguably have the best career deal in the history of humankind". How do you know? And, for the sake of argument, let us say it is the best deal in the history of humankind, does that make it fair th…

These kinds of chains make it really clear that, despite the association and similar worker pool, the Games Industry is in fact not the Tech Industry. I see comments like "Tech is the best career deal in humankind" and I feel like I entered bizarro world as I see my entire network feed being laid off, shuffled around, and ground to literal break downs in real time. This was already a factor before the last few years, but it's only accelerated.

Thankfully: the Games Industry is in fact not the Tech Industry. Thus, game developers are a lot more receptive to unionizing than general tech. But it's still a bit absurd; I've always had the advice of "move out of games to a more stable tech job if you burn out". Well... those stable tech jobs sure became unstable quickly.

Post reply on HN