What is a Demand Coop

Dumbest idea i've ever seen. Complete misunderstanding of how the tech world works.

The idea is: if sufficient consumers banded together and coordinated their spending power, they can drive decisions in the executive suite of the companies.

Nothing could be further from the truth. It's neither the spending of consumer nor even the spending of business that drive decisions. The only thing that drives decisions at that level is capital allocation - not spending allocation. Wealth drives these decision - not spending.

So if all these tech workers want to band together and do something about it, they would create their own ETF or mutual fund, and put all their wealth into that fund and then have the manager of that fund direct that capital based on their mission.

Of course you will see that this won't work because there just isn't enough capital here to move the market compared to the other capital allocators who are just trying to maximize returns.

I don’t want to waste time to fight battles within the union. This is exactly what I’m talking about. If it’s just a political nonprofit with forced donations, I’d rather see them banned than join one.

My only experience with unions was as a low level employee while I was in high school. It consisted of certain employees trying to drum up willingness to unionize through a combination of unrealistic promises and threats of violence. The company I worked for at the time was in trouble and went out of business before the unionization effort came to a vote. I don't know how representative my experience was, but it definitely soured me on unions for a long time.

These days I definitely believe that something needs to take up the role of fighting for the rights of labor, but I remain skeptical that unions, at least as they exist in the US, are the right tool for the job.

> the union can do exactly what you wish it to do.

There is no such thing. A problem with a union is that everyone's going the same place, and you're not driving. Maybe that place is better than where you could get to on your own, or maybe not. But one thing that is definitely not true is that your union is going to do exactly what you want.

Partly because they couldn't because they didn't organize in a way that let them because... well... one could speculate.

> Alphabet Workers Union (AWU), also informally referred to as the Google Union, is an American trade union of workers employed at Alphabet Inc., Google's parent company, with a membership of over 800, in a company with 130,000 employees, not including temps, contractors, and vendors in the United States. It was announced on January 4, 2021, with an initial membership of over 400, after over a year of secret organizing, and the union includes all types of workers at Alphabet, including full-time, temporary, vendors and contractors of all job types.

It's trying to cover too many different groups with competing interests (FTE, temp, vendor, and contractor).

Hypothetical negotiations that would favor FTEs may disfavor vendor or contractor contracts. That inherent conflict of interest in the negotiations would mean they can't negotiate for any of them on those matters. Also, the less than 1% of the people belonging to the union would mean the union can't represent them in collective salary negotiations either.

Of the represented group (say if they only organized for FTE tech workers), they would then have needed 50% + 1 of the employees in that classification to vote to have a union. It is possible - https://kickstarterunited.org for example (and yes, they are having trouble - but they are negotiating on working conditions and pay).

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Various "we should have a union" strings typically have been people wishing for one that is cross industry that they don't have to do anything. While industry wide union organization can exist (Kickstarter United is OPEIU - https://www.opeiu.org ) it is the local part that people forget... Kickstarter United is OPEIU local 153.

If people want a union, they need to organize at their company and get that 50% + 1 vote there.

When it is easier to switch jobs than it is to spend the several years to organize and negotiate a contract, the power of a union is diminished.