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Tech Workers Deserve a Union: An Interview with Ethan Marcotte

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Re: Tech Workers Deserve a Union: An Interview with Ethan Marcotte

#291

Post by LtWorf »

tourmalinetaco wrote: post #83
LtWorf wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Our employees are saving a lot of money from WFH, and they are not giving that to salaries. You're saying that only the least paid profession should have a union and no other profession should have one? I don't think that makes sense. More than one union can exist at once.

Your reading comprehension is lacking. I’m saying programmers get paid well and have large opportunities, and that unions don’t serve a purpose. Care to enlighten me how programmers are some abused work force and need unions?

My reading comprehension is fine. You wrote an incorrect statement and I corrected you.

> Care to enlighten me how programmers are some abused work force and need unions?

Everybody who works for someone else does, not just programmers. And the expectation of working nights, do open source work to even be considered are all abuses that are happening.

Re: Tech Workers Deserve a Union: An Interview with Ethan Marcotte

#292

Post by LtWorf »

nxm wrote: post #105
LtWorf wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A union would protect everyone. And nobody is saying that a senior engineer should get paid the same as a junior. You live under the impression that better workers will earn more. In practice the skill that earns higher salary is to pretend to be very competent by using jargon and parroting stuff.

Even the terrible developers that are a drain on the company and hence compensation? No thanks

> Even the terrible developers that are a drain on the company and hence compensation? No thanks

Nobody forced them to hire them?

Re: Tech Workers Deserve a Union: An Interview with Ethan Marcotte

#293

Post by M2Ys4U »

dxdm wrote: post #282
zaphar wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unions are forced participation. I am not forced to participate in political parties or religious organizations. In theory a Union could be purely voluntary in which case cool. I'll opt out. But then the Union loses most of it's leverage so it in practice if a Union gets introduced it's no longer voluntary it's forced for anyone who works at that company. The only choice for someone who doesn't want to contribute to…

That's not what we were talking about, but alright. Not sure how it works in the US, but from what I read you can't be forced to join a union there. But I think I get what you mean: once you work in a given place, there's usually not much choice which union you can join (or which will represent you in any case), and your only option is to change employer, location or career. I understand that point of view, but I don…

>once you work in a given place, there's usually not much choice which union you can join (or which will represent you in any case), and your only option is to change employer, location or career.

Unions are generally democratic, too, so there's also the option of voting for different union reps (or volunteering to be a rep) in order to change the union's policy or how the union works.

Re: Tech Workers Deserve a Union: An Interview with Ethan Marcotte

#294

Post by lotsofpulp »

throw0101c wrote: post #285
lotsofpulp wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would not expect a union for tennis players. Why would they even have an employer? They play by themselves, for themselves. I have never heard of a tennis player “owner”, other than obviously the tennis player themself. And the coincidence that they earn less might have something to do with how nobody can name anyone outside of the top handful of players.

> They play by themselves, for themselves. The same can be said of actors, and yet they have a union/guild. > And the coincidence that they earn less might have something to do with how nobody can name anyone outside of the top handful of players. Few can name most of the benchwarmers in the NBA/NFL/ etc , and yet they have a minimum salary: NHL is $775K, NFL is $800K. Carlos Alcaraz is the top player and made US$ 10…

> The same can be said of actors, and yet they have a union/guild.

Good point. I guess the big difference is that selling the tennis game itself simply does not bring in the revenues that acting and the NFL does.

Top tennis players earn from brand endorsements, not from simply playing the game.

Re: Tech Workers Deserve a Union: An Interview with Ethan Marcotte

#295

Post by Pxtl »

alphazard wrote: post #22

Don't unions work best in fields where quality is very uniform and expertise counts for very little? I'm thinking about low skilled jobs that can be mastered in months or years. Unions create salary progression, and benefits for seniority where there is otherwise no reason for them to exist. When no one does anything better than anyone else, it makes sense to negotiate as a block, individuals have no power. Now compa…

Uh, did you miss that Hollywood is on strike? That Marvel's 3D artists are unionizing? I wouldn't call those "low skilled" jobs, or one where "quality is uniform".

edit: Artistic endeavors where people are passionate about the work to the point where they can be exploited are an excellent place for unions. Within computing the obvious comparative is the gaming industry. The "EA Spouse" scandal in the '00s demonstrated how much people were willing to destroy themselves to get into the gaming industry, and how an employer could abuse that passion.

Re: Tech Workers Deserve a Union: An Interview with Ethan Marcotte

#296

Post by anildash »

slibhb wrote: post #166

> After the 2016 presidential election, the tech industry saw a surge of activism when workers began to recognize the work they had produced could potentially be abused to harm people. This is one more reason to be skeptical of tech unions. Often, they aren't interested in securing higher pay and better conditions; they're about politics.

"Politics" is when people fight for more human rights for others, but when companies try to destroy others' lives or livelihoods, that's _not_ politics, right?

Re: Tech Workers Deserve a Union: An Interview with Ethan Marcotte

#298

Post by Kye »

Jensson wrote: post #290
lapcat wrote: post #278

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You can't control what your employer does. That's precisely the point of unions, though. Individually, you have no control over your employer, but via collective bargaining you do.

So once the collective agrees they want something they will form a union to bargain collectively. But so far developers don't agree about anything so they don't, because the collective feels that they get enough from their individual contracts.

A union is like insurance in a situation like this. By the time you need it, it's too late. You needed it to keep things from degrading to that point.

Re: Tech Workers Deserve a Union: An Interview with Ethan Marcotte

#299

Post by consz »

bluGill wrote: post #267
consz wrote: post #196

It’s absolutely incredible to me how much animosity unions have in the US and how self defeating the typical programmers attitude is (maybe this is just selection bias for HN?) — and I say this as someone who’s definitely not a laborer. But if I was one, I would hope I wouldn’t vote against my own class interests like it appears developers often do. Luckily, even speaking openly against my own interests here is zero…

Unions have not helped their cause over here. They have regularly enforced paying bad people more than good people because the only measure they allow is years on the job. They regularly prevent people who want to move into management from doing so (not to be confused with people who don't want to!) be not allowing anything learned to count for your management role. They regularly discourage learning something more.…

Here’s how I think about it —

There’s a value X that’s the absolute minimum you would work for, any less and you quit today.

There’s a value Y that’s the absolute maximum I would pay you, any penny more and I fire you immediately.

Y - X is up for grabs, and there are zero moral proscriptions I would give to any allocation of this between employee and employer. Each and every aspect of the employee-employer relationship is advantaged already in favor of the employer (resource disparity, implicit solidarity from company structure, regulations). Unions tend to reduce my share of Y-X. If I was a laborer, I’d prefer a union.

E: I’ve seen unions that are counter examples to each of your complaints so not really interesting to me to think too much about your own personal experience with unions.

Re: Tech Workers Deserve a Union: An Interview with Ethan Marcotte

#300

Post by reaperman »

Jensson wrote: post #284
M2Ys4U wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I don't get to pick unions. >Unions are not voluntary Not all of my colleagues are in a union, and some of those that are are in a different union to me (albeit a minority of them). It works.

It doesn't work like that in USA, union laws are different in different countries.

Some major cities have multiple overlapping electricians unions. I've been on job sites where different unions are working on top of each-other.
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