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this post was submitted on 30 Nov 2023
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Certain specific professions like IT, and its mercenary culture, don't fit well with the collective bargaining model. For many other professions/careers, a union can be a great tool for workers.
By "IT" do you mean tech? Because as a software engineer, I've seen turnover rates of 1-2 years for some of my favorite people I've worked with. If they actually had bargaining power, we know via studies done on unions and turnover rates that these engineers likely wouldn't dip as quickly and take institutional knowledge and their smart brains with them. Tech is so allergic to unions that it is literally inflicting damage onto itself - managers will tell you how expensive it is to hire new people because it takes months for them to catch up to your codebase, but the higher-up leadership is completely unwilling to listen to the data on how to actually retain people. They don't care if unions increase productivity or that the elasticity between productivity and salary is >1.0 as the unionisation rate grows (per studies done in Norway), because they don't want to lose their complete control over companies to collective bargaining.
You're making good arguments why a company employing IT staff (software devs, engineers, architects), but where is the argument to the benefit of the worker themselves in this case?
This is a benefit to the worker. They're leaving because they got a better paying gig or less work/fewer hours for the same amount of money.
Yes, because there's no union there to bargain for better pay, bonuses, more time off work, and so forth. Tech is a new industry where workers have more bargaining power on an individual level because expertise is so sought after. Now imagine combining that with unions and we'd probably all be doing 4 day work weeks already, like unions are currently bargaining for in various countries. We'd likely also have more time for tech debt, as unions increase certain types of innovation.
Like, if unions can do this for McDonalds workers after a sympathy strike in Nordic countries:
Why would we assume tech workers in a very profitable industry wouldn't be able to get away with even more?
nah they're just part of the last layoff
This. I'm a computer programmer, never been in a union, but after twenty years of startups I cannot believe how good it is to be at a small, stable, employee owned company.
Only looking back do I realize that the people doing the actual work were never in control, and just how damaging that is.
To pour you life and soul into building something (time, and time again), and then have it taken away from you again, and again.
Never going back.
Unions can't really prevent layoffs unfortunately, but can guarantee severances. However most tech employees already receive generous severance packages.
Software engineers also still sit at half the unemployment rate of the rest of the US despite the layoffs throughout this past year.
I'm very pro-union, I just don't think they belong in tech given how much power engineers already have, and that power being entirely dictated by the ability to jump ship yesterday.