321–330 of 380 posts
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…
Tech workers are usually so buried, heads hunched over the keyboard, focused on the latest project, that they aren't even aware they are being used. They straiten their back one day, look around, and realize they've been working for 20 years and getting nowhere. They got good enough raises, but forgot inflation, and it was really nothing.
Or the free-market cheerleaders that actually just flat out agree that exploitation is the natural order of the universe and we should all just suck it up and do nothing.
American scale and polarization make it impossible to have moderate conversations around social tools like unions. A union doesn't need to be a mediocrity enforcing, all-encompassing beaurocracy. Programmers don't need a union to ensure fair pay or minimum hours. Our concerns are different, and a limited union can help. Eg: 1. Programmers need to be given 6 months heads up before big change in employment situation. (…
Those are law in many countries, you do not need unions for that, you need a social democracy.
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…
> 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. No, thi…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> The best engineers are worth literally 10x the worst engineers Uh, I'm pretty sure the best employees in any field are worth 10x what the worst employees are, whether you're writing code, assembling a car or gutting fish. The economics of labour suggest unions are most valuable where there's a monopsony buyer of labour. Big Tech might fit that bill, especially when we know they colluded to depress salaries.
I'm pretty sure there are plenty of fields where the output of your best and worst employees don't differ dramatically. Worst is generally some passable minimum not someone who refuses to do the job entirely. For plenty of assembly line jobs, your worst employee has similar productivity to your best employee because there is no ability to make the assembly line faster for the more productive person. In code on the ot…
Those are the stories he told me about working in a factory, and frankly the lessons I learned from him were just as valuable as any "fifteen lessons for software architects" books our industry has produced. Sure — software is unique! So is food, so is metal, so is film, so is concrete…
People don't deserve unions because they're 10x workers. People deserve unions because they're workers.
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…
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.
Remember that people who believe things like this would be in the same union as you, be paid just as well as you thanks to union contracts, and expect you to strike on their behalf. Do you really want to be in solidarity with people like this?
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…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yeah actually a union can help with all of those things. That's why police are unionized, as well as most team sport elite athletes (players unions). And they like the power it gives them, which is why you never hear them talk badly about it.
I didn't ask If, I asked How, and I'd be surprised if you can find any examples.
The mechanics are work contracts with a grievance process, if you're curious.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> have also perpetuated racism, sexism, xenophobia, organized crime, government corruption, The same is true for political parties, religious organizations, and all sorts of other organizations that are made of people, including privately owned companies. Which of these concepts would you like to abandon, and what do you propose should be their replacement? What you say is an argument for balancing power, not for con…
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…
They quite literally are not, at least not in the US; half the states have right-to-work laws that prohibit this explicitly, and there are likely some protections even in the states that don't have a blanket protection.