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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

#331

Post by MoreSEMI »

anildash wrote: post #286
zaphar wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Union's do much more than just negotiate things with your employer. They lobby elected representatives. They donate money to political groups or candidates for office. I have more dimensions to me than just what I do for a job. The collective aggregate desires of all my coworkers is likely to diverge from me in areas that I care deeply about. I don't need a situation where I am "forced" to support those things with m…

Do you use the "forced" framing when your money and labor is used to fund your employer lobbying against your interests? Or is it just natural and right that your effort is subservient to the desires of your boss because they are more important than you?

I think it depends. If the union is voluntary its not forced. But often membership isn’t voluntary. The relationship between you and your employer, however is. Many people choose not to work for defense companies for example.

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

#332

Post by sershe »

Until recently, tech had a large number of jobs and a shortage of competent workers - these workers don't need unions pretty much by definition.

What kind of workers need a unions, esp. US-style unions? 3 types (I could give a ton examples for each, but I'd only give one in the interest of brevity):

1) Incompetent workers. If I wanted to chill at the expense of my coworkers or taxpayers, unions would be awesome for me. E.g. https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2009/08/31/the-rubber-roo... , many more examples, also e.g. police unions.

2) Exclusionary workers. If there are too many workers for the number of jobs, it'd be cool if I could exclude all those pesky other workers, to the fullest extent that it's socially acceptable. While my favorite example is union racism during the Great Migration, as an immigrant I'd like to give honorable mention to Cesar Chavez running literal patrols to physically intimidate undocumented immigrants: https://www.ambitiouscollective.com/blogs/news/history-cesar...

For me as a tech worker, it would be pretty nice to prevent outsourcing and extra immigration - selfish and evil, yes, but pretty nice, go unions!

3) Unnecessary workers. If my job was unneeded, it would still be nice to keep it and have someone else (consumers, taxpayers) pay me. Lots of examples, e.g. https://tunnelingonline.com/why-tunnels-in-the-us-cost-much-... " the number of workers assigned in the tunnel in New York is significantly more than other parts of the country and as much as 4 times more than tunnel workers assigned to comparable projects in Europe"

3a) Honorable mention, since this is HN after all - workers unnecessary due to innovation. If unions had power 200 years ago, we'd still be driving horse buggies - https://techcrunch.com/2023/09/11/california-bill-to-ban-dri...

You could sit down to design messed up, pernicious, evil incentives all day, and you couldn't come up with anything close to what unions already are.

Some say "well, most historians agree that during one period of history, unions achieved great things and improved lives on the net!" to which my response is "so did nuking civilians; and?"

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

#333

Post by aknfxb3m »

simonw wrote: post #18
aknfxb3m wrote: post #4

In my country we had mandated unions for tech workers in various states. I paid the compulsory annual fee plus an additional fee that I didn't understand and can't properly explain what it was for. Not once in 23 years in IT have they done anything for me. Not a single time. Every time we pushed for raises and someone contacted the union, nothing came back. When the company was not updating our salaries against infla…

Which country?

Brazil

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

#334

Post by aknfxb3m »

ketchupdebugger wrote: post #91
aknfxb3m wrote: post #4

In my country we had mandated unions for tech workers in various states. I paid the compulsory annual fee plus an additional fee that I didn't understand and can't properly explain what it was for. Not once in 23 years in IT have they done anything for me. Not a single time. Every time we pushed for raises and someone contacted the union, nothing came back. When the company was not updating our salaries against infla…

Do you get to vote for union reps? If they aren't doing the job can't you just vote them out?

I have no idea. Maybe? Either we can't or nobody bothers to notify workers that they are happening.

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

#335

Post by bluGill »

consz wrote: post #299
bluGill wrote: post #267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 relationsh…

I've seen counter examples of the unions as well. However overall what I've seen has left me with a bad taste.

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

#336

Post by FrustratedMonky »

infecto wrote: post #8
FrustratedMonky wrote: post #5

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.

In what country? Software engineers have some incredible pay for pretty low effort in the last 15years. Even before that it was a pretty decent living for most of the time pretty non-unique software. We are talking about them as an exploited working class, wild to me.

>" pretty low effort"

?? Maybe your code shouldn't be running anything critical.

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

#337

Post by lapcat »

peteradio wrote: post #277
lapcat wrote: post #263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We already have ample evidence that tech giants colluded to depress the salaries of their workers. For reference: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-Tech_Employee_Antitrust_L... The irony here is that the tech companies are willing to organize into a kind of union in order to promote their interests, but the tech workers aren't.

> organize into a kind of union That's one way to describe an illegal conspiracy

Yes. On the other hand, there are plenty of legal business groups: trade associations, chamber of commerce, etc.

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

#338

Post by scoofy »

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…

We seem to have based our ideas of on the excesses of the 1970's.

The idea of a tech union could simply be establishing the very basics. The expectations of the folks I know in the industry include more than 40 hour weeks, significant unpaid overtime during "crunch" periods. Managers promising the world to clients without even consulting the devs. Illegitimate H1-B hiring, and unspoken threats to H1-B workers when they are voluntold to do extra, unpaid work.

Again, I understand the hesitancy, but a tech union could be much more akin to the Screen Actors Guild, where the vast majority of the negotiation is about how the lowest-ranking get a fair shake, while the superstars barely notice the union. The benefits to the superstars, however, are obvious. When you have major players on record of egregious crimes of illegal non-competes a decade ago, which probably cost the superstars literally millions of dollars each over their careers, I would hope they would want to be on board too.

Unions can suck. They don't have to suck. I would think a bunch of habitually online, highly-skeptical, analytic, and systemic-focused folks like us could actively make them not suck.

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

#339

Post by mplewis »

Jensson wrote: post #302
Kye wrote: post #298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> By the time you need it, it's too late. Why? Unions work the best when they are formed around a cause everyone cares about, that is how we got workers right in the first case, there is nothing that says you need to form a union when things are good.

Because at the time you want to form a union due to things being bad, your employer already has the workers in a position of fear and control, and they have reasonably free reign to do whatever they want and toe the line of illegality when it comes to intimidating workers who are discussing unionization.

Talk to a union organizer about this. They'll help you understand how this type of monopsony looks to a worker when they're trying to organize.

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

#340

Post by mplewis »

vasco wrote: post #194
lapcat wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I make the amount of money I need. It's not just about money. Working conditions are equally important. Consider when companies demand that everyone RTO after promising permanent WFH. Consider when companies rescind offer letters after you've already quit your old job. Consider mass layoffs and severance. I think about how so many engineers need to take a long, unpaid break from work after leaving their jobs, becau…

How do unions help with those? - Do unions enforce remote work? - Do unions enforce an offer letter to turn into actual employment for someone who isn't even a member yet (they haven't signed anything)? - Do unions make people have a better handle on their mental health and do companies with unions have lower rates of burnout in their workforces?

Yes, those are all things that your union can help negotiate on behalf of you and all your peers.
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