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Making the generous assumption that there is a gap in your cultural knowledge and sharing the source of these two lines with background context: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solidarity_Forever
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Why is it a zero-sum game to you? Why not advocate for all workers in the name of solidarity? There's no enemy but the class enemy.
Because there are conflicts of interest. Factory workers create the products which create profits. I am paid with these profits, if the profits go down engineers loose their jobs. If Factory workers longer and more efficiently my job becomes more secure. So obviously I want a union which advocates that factory workers work longer hours, it is clearly in my interest. The same goes for strikes, if factory workers strik…
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Making the generous assumption that there is a gap in your cultural knowledge and sharing the source of these two lines with background context: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solidarity_Forever
I have clear conflicts of interest with the working class, who work in factories. If I were in a union it should advocate for factory workers working more.
Why don’t labor issues resonate more with tech workers? I know that we’re not a monolith and are actually a heterogeneous mix of opinions, but there frequently talk about job dissatisfaction (career burnout, comically stingy equity grants, etc). But when organizing comes up, it’s usually treated with disdain because so many have bought into highly individualistic hustle-culture and the narrative that unions only exis…
Because many tech workers don't see themselves as workers, with some justification, many having substantial capital investments alongside labor income, making them, in class terms, petit bourgeois or at least close enough to it to perceive their own interests in more bourgeois than proletarian terms. And even the tech workers that are clearly part of the proletarian intelligentsia tend see themselves (rightly or wrongly) on a path that leads into the bourgeoisie, with bourgeois interests.
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What makes solidarity between workers possible is the homogeneity of their labour. This condition is not present for tech workers. Labour market conditions are completely different from those of say, a meat processing plant or a factory assembly line.
This is the exactly the right kind of question to be asking, but I think your conclusion is wrong. Why think the painters and the welder in an auto factory have more in common than 20 different kinds of programmers do?
1. Heterogeneity/homogeneity of labour.
2. Tight/lose labour market.
I think Argument 1 is the weaker argument. There's a lot of fungibility between software roles. However, there's a higher learning cost. Moving to a new software company requires a few months before someone is close to full productivity. This in contrast between a painter moving from a Ford supplier to a GM supplier will likely close to full productivity within a few weeks. The cost (to the employer) is lower to rehire someone.
Argument 2 is the stronger argument, but may not be forever. In a tight labour market, I see very little need for unions. If the marginal worker can (and will) leave their position for a better position (pay, benefits, culture, etc), I see little need for unions. However, if the labour market for software engineers shifts in favor of businesses, this will change rapidly.
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We are what is called the labor aristocracy in socialist discourse: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Labor_aristocracy It is still labor and we are still exploited - most the revenue we generate goes to capitalist interests, not us, the laborers, which are the creators of all revenue. It's just that we have it comparatively good and so are less inclined to seek out systemic change - a less favorable reading would be tha…
Uhm, my revenue goes to the shareholders of my company. Among those shareholders are me, my colleagues and the state.
Why don’t labor issues resonate more with tech workers? I know that we’re not a monolith and are actually a heterogeneous mix of opinions, but there frequently talk about job dissatisfaction (career burnout, comically stingy equity grants, etc). But when organizing comes up, it’s usually treated with disdain because so many have bought into highly individualistic hustle-culture and the narrative that unions only exis…
We tend to think like this, unconsciously if not outright: "I'm smarter than the next guy, so in a dog-eat-dog system I'll come out ahead. Organizing with a bunch of less-smart people would only hold me back." Plus, at the risk of too much head-shrinking, I've never gotten the impression that tech workers liked each other very much. There's a lot of disdain in the industry, for the guy who uses that language or frame…
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I have clear conflicts of interest with the working class, who work in factories. If I were in a union it should advocate for factory workers working more.
> Be kind. Don't be snarky. Converse curiously; don't cross-examine. Edit out swipes. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
The union wants my job outsourced so that factory workers can keep theirs.
Please tell me why I should have solidarity with them.