My team was recently laid off, myself included. Before formal termination my employer had to negotiate with my union and run everything past them - from a potential exit deal (which I opted not to take) to the whole layoff procedure and new organizational structure. This is to make sure it was all by the books and I was getting everything I was entitled to. We have no collective agreement, but any employee who is individually part of a union has this right.
Some employers (completely non-maliciously, I should add!) simply don't know all the relevant labor law either, like summertime vacation entitlements, how the employee is allowed to search for other work during the notice period, unemployment insurance stuff, etc. It made a stressful situation much better for me knowing I have someone who knows this checking everything and advocating for me.
I keep seeing people say "unions won't work" in other countries. Who knows, maybe they're right. I'm just glad I don't live in one of those, I guess.
Tech workers have thought of themselves as the geniuses, the exceptions, not as part of the general labor pool. And they have been! They have received very high salaries, good benefits, sometimes stock options. There have been a lot of tech workers who have become millionaires - not 50%, but enough that it felt like they had a realistic chance to do so.
It's really hard to persuade people like that that they need a union. Unions are for people who can't take care of themselves, who need a union to protect them from big evil management. Tech workers don't see themselves that way.
Also, unions often have bureaucracy of their own. Tech people generally hate bureaucracy. Having the company's version is bad enough; adding a second one on top is a really hard sell.
So you have a really big headwind for trying to persuade your target members that they should want such a thing.
But you have an opening now, with AI and concerns for jobs. People may be more open to the idea than they historically have been. The problem is, the people that you need to get, the ones who are deciding to implement AI, are typically the ones who still think they're the special ones, the ones who will always have jobs, so they still won't see the need, not for themselves. You have an opening with some people, but I'm not sure it's enough for you to be able to make real change.
Hacker News would be the worst possible place to discuss any such efforts. This is enemy territory as far as any progressive, leftist or pro-labor movement is concerned.
Yeah, I get that. The organization effort isn’t gonna happen here. But, I know lots of people who are troubled by all of this and want some change are here. Email me at organizetech.inbox [at] gmail.com if you or anyone else wants to discuss how to organize, where to take action, brainstorm, etc
Unionizing tech workers will not save tech jobs. It'll only create an additional costs to the employees. We saw similar trends in the 80s when the PC started to displace the mainframe developers/users. The pool of available mainframe jobs shrank somewhat, while the demand for PC developers exploded. Every major technology change creates these displacements. The answer isn't to look for unions to save your job. It's to figure out how to pivot and still be employable. All unionization will do is cost you mosey and stifle innovation. I grew up in a union household as did my wife. Unions aren't the answer to any question in the modern world.
Do you have any data to back up your claims? Because from what I understand, unions were the backbone of the recovering US labor market following the Great Depression, which punctuated a period of extreme speculation and inequality (the Gilded Age) similar to what we're seeing today.
The data I've seen largely show that union membership is highly correlated with better pay, benefits, and working conditions. It seems clear to me that individuals are at an extreme disadvantage in wage/salary negotiations due to the enormous information asymmetry present when the counterparty is a corporation, and collective bargaining seems the most straightforward way to reduce that asymmetry.
As far as I'm aware, the reduced effectiveness of unions in the US is a direct consequence of union-busting legislation at both the state and federal level (e.g. so-called "right to work" laws, Reagan's actions against unionized/striking flight controllers). If that's the basis for your conclusion, I would agree in the sense that we need a strong political push to undo anti-labor legislation to ensure unions can be as effective as possible.
I'm not advocating for not having unions, but the idea some people have and corporations push is based on a hypothesis that companies will try their best to minimize costs.
Unions do have these real benefits for the workers who are a part of them, and these benefits come at the cost of the corporations who have to pay more and implement better practices.
This increases the cost of human labor, so when doing a purely greedy analysis of costs vs revenue, the costs go up for processes which requires human labor, which drives down the profit, disincentivizing investment or even the continuation of processes that require unionized labor. Overall, there winds up being less demand for human labor and more demand for automation.
I'm not here to speak on the truth of this, I think of it from this perspective: Information asymmetry (not understanding the opposing argument) benefits the party who has the information, so understanding their argument is necessary if you want to counter it.
I’m not buying it. This sounds like bog standard anti-union FUD. There are plenty of reasons to organize a labor resistance that’s not just job preservation. One example that very few are willing to discuss or let alone negotiate is a reduction of the work week. If AI is making all of us so much more efficient, let the worker benefit by reducing from 5 days to 4 days. AI productivity gains only favor the managerial class. It’s lop-sided. We can do better.
Another issue is that AI is human replacement strategy and isn’t necessarily the same as the mainframe dev displacement. A new career filled the void because the work still needed to get done by people. New opportunities emerged out of the ashes. The vision from tech oligarchs isn’t that - it’s elimination. It’s centralized power.
I grew up in a household with a parent in a union. We had a pretty darn good quality of life. My dad wasn’t overworked had great benefits, a pension and was able to provide.
Finally, the solution to this problem does not explicitly have to be union. This is a community of builders and thinkers and problem solvers. Maybe you could tell us what you think could affect some change then instead?
Unions aren't just about protecting jobs. They play a critical role in job conditions as well. The most obvious example is the unpaid overtime we all are forced to provide (on call, weekend work to meet crazy exec deadlines etc) simply because we are classified as 'exempt' employees.
Also, classic factory unions are not the only kind possible. The SAG is a good example of a union representing (often) highly paid workers and primarily negotiates working conditions and a (low) floor on pay.
The fundamental reality is that except for a vanishingly small number, tech workers have zero leverage against employers individually.
The tech folks mistook a longish boom as evidence of their genius and skill. As long as demand outpaced supply of tech workers, the going was good. Once the tides turned, we're finding out the reality of where we stand with respect to the oligarchs.
This isn't new however. We've always been subject to these cycles. Expecting a union to mitigate cycles is a fantasy. All it can do is protect the mediocre that are displaced by the AI. We saw the same reaction when companies began to employ more contractors and offshore more work. The mistake is to believe that we are somehow experiencing something new. We're not. If you've ever worked in an environment where the management supported "top-ranking", it's similar, except it occurred once or twice a year. No one is guaranteed a job. What I see here are concerns from people whose primary job seems to be coding, likely most on the web based applications. These were always commodity jobs as Amazon told me a decade ago. The value that tech people bring are understanding the business, the problem, and proposing solutions. As of now, AI cannot do that effectively. Instead of hoping for unions to mitigate the displacement or shorten the work week, a better strategy is to figure out how to be irreplaceable. If you're slinging code for 40+ hours a week, you have ALWAYS been disposable.
And those that believe unions benefit workers, particularly in the tech space, are the same people that think life would be better under a collectivist form of government and that the minimum wage needs to be raised continuously. Unions had their place in early 20th century. Those conditions are in the past. If your "conditions" in a tech job needs improvement, get a new job. Anyone that went into tech expecting it to be like a 7-3 manufacturing job, went into the wrong business. I spent years working 60+ hours a week and loved it. If you don't, change careers.
Working 60+ hours a week for years is nothing to brag about. It just means your projects were mismanaged, done poorly and you were absolutely taken advantage of. You also mentioned in another comment that you are disposable if you are "slinging code" 40+ hours a week.
No, we weren’t being taken advantage of. We were working a project that changed an industry dramatically. The projects weren’t mismanaged. They were very aggressive to be sure, but that’s sometimes what it takes to be first and change things. We did it voluntarily and were well compensated for the times. As for disposable code slingers? That’s been true for the last 30+ years.
Prospect is my union (although I'm a member of a BECTU branch rather than the Tech Workers branch as I work in the broadcasting industry) and it's well worth the dues I pay.
This is great, thanks for sharing. Something like this could be a good resource for folks like me looking for prior art.
In recent decades unions have been demonized. And I understand some of the criticism, but IMO now is the time to get something organized for tech. The alternative is just to sleepwalk into the unemployment line
I currently am mid 30s and 10 years into my career. I have no interest in joining a union right now, simply because I am confident in my skill and my ability to increase my earnings and career progression without being a member of a union.
Maybe when I hit peak earnings and no longer get a sizeable raise when hopping jobs every 3-4 years and the personal progression is no longer satisfying, I'd be interested in a union.
Notably, I have never been laid off and I have enough savings/investments to keep my family fed and housed for years if I am without work.
When I stop caring about career progression, about learning and growing, and just want to receive a paycheck for minimal effort until I can't be bothered showing up at work anymore, I'd be more than happy to join a union to ride it out. Until then, for purely selfish and individualistic reasons, I'd rather be solo.
Likely what would happen is by the time I want to join a union, it's no longer feasible for one reason or another, but I'll have enough savings by then (or we're all screwed anyway) to be fine.
It's not a good enough economy for us to be able to do anything. It's not like, if things don't work, we can switch to another job/industry. Many industries are struggling right now, and employers know this. They are cutting costs any way they can in order to stay in business, and we're the recipients of that.
no way man i need to make my faustian pact AND gain salvation!
/s
also nobody in tech wants a union because we all burnout for a payout.
mids join fang so they can make 400k plus tc predictably. every 3-5 years they double their NW. most of my friends who still at fang (we are in 30s now) are making like 700k-1.5m and have huge spending habits too. none of them have been affected by layoffs yet.
some join unicorns and then get 10-30x or more on options. and then start our own companies.
Yes, it’s impacting juniors a lot. The public data is telling that story clearly. I know many experienced engineers who have been unemployed for months or years too. Others who have had wages shrunk. The goal for organizing is not to gate keep, but to give some basic protections to those in the field or wanting to enter the field.
Billionaires messaging is something like “we don’t know what kind of devastation might happen to your livelihood, I’ll be richer of course, so let’s just step on the gas” Tech workers have the opportunity to be the brake pedal, ask for a seat belt or airbags. I think progress is inevitable, we can proceed more cautiously if we can find a voice and organize.
My team was recently laid off, myself included. Before formal termination my employer had to negotiate with my union and run everything past them - from a potential exit deal (which I opted not to take) to the whole layoff procedure and new organizational structure. This is to make sure it was all by the books and I was getting everything I was entitled to. We have no collective agreement, but any employee who is individually part of a union has this right.
Some employers (completely non-maliciously, I should add!) simply don't know all the relevant labor law either, like summertime vacation entitlements, how the employee is allowed to search for other work during the notice period, unemployment insurance stuff, etc. It made a stressful situation much better for me knowing I have someone who knows this checking everything and advocating for me.
I keep seeing people say "unions won't work" in other countries. Who knows, maybe they're right. I'm just glad I don't live in one of those, I guess.
Here's your fundamental problem:
Tech workers have thought of themselves as the geniuses, the exceptions, not as part of the general labor pool. And they have been! They have received very high salaries, good benefits, sometimes stock options. There have been a lot of tech workers who have become millionaires - not 50%, but enough that it felt like they had a realistic chance to do so.
It's really hard to persuade people like that that they need a union. Unions are for people who can't take care of themselves, who need a union to protect them from big evil management. Tech workers don't see themselves that way.
Also, unions often have bureaucracy of their own. Tech people generally hate bureaucracy. Having the company's version is bad enough; adding a second one on top is a really hard sell.
So you have a really big headwind for trying to persuade your target members that they should want such a thing.
But you have an opening now, with AI and concerns for jobs. People may be more open to the idea than they historically have been. The problem is, the people that you need to get, the ones who are deciding to implement AI, are typically the ones who still think they're the special ones, the ones who will always have jobs, so they still won't see the need, not for themselves. You have an opening with some people, but I'm not sure it's enough for you to be able to make real change.
Hacker News would be the worst possible place to discuss any such efforts. This is enemy territory as far as any progressive, leftist or pro-labor movement is concerned.
Yeah, I get that. The organization effort isn’t gonna happen here. But, I know lots of people who are troubled by all of this and want some change are here. Email me at organizetech.inbox [at] gmail.com if you or anyone else wants to discuss how to organize, where to take action, brainstorm, etc
Unionizing tech workers will not save tech jobs. It'll only create an additional costs to the employees. We saw similar trends in the 80s when the PC started to displace the mainframe developers/users. The pool of available mainframe jobs shrank somewhat, while the demand for PC developers exploded. Every major technology change creates these displacements. The answer isn't to look for unions to save your job. It's to figure out how to pivot and still be employable. All unionization will do is cost you mosey and stifle innovation. I grew up in a union household as did my wife. Unions aren't the answer to any question in the modern world.
Do you have any data to back up your claims? Because from what I understand, unions were the backbone of the recovering US labor market following the Great Depression, which punctuated a period of extreme speculation and inequality (the Gilded Age) similar to what we're seeing today.
The data I've seen largely show that union membership is highly correlated with better pay, benefits, and working conditions. It seems clear to me that individuals are at an extreme disadvantage in wage/salary negotiations due to the enormous information asymmetry present when the counterparty is a corporation, and collective bargaining seems the most straightforward way to reduce that asymmetry.
As far as I'm aware, the reduced effectiveness of unions in the US is a direct consequence of union-busting legislation at both the state and federal level (e.g. so-called "right to work" laws, Reagan's actions against unionized/striking flight controllers). If that's the basis for your conclusion, I would agree in the sense that we need a strong political push to undo anti-labor legislation to ensure unions can be as effective as possible.
I'm not advocating for not having unions, but the idea some people have and corporations push is based on a hypothesis that companies will try their best to minimize costs.
Unions do have these real benefits for the workers who are a part of them, and these benefits come at the cost of the corporations who have to pay more and implement better practices.
This increases the cost of human labor, so when doing a purely greedy analysis of costs vs revenue, the costs go up for processes which requires human labor, which drives down the profit, disincentivizing investment or even the continuation of processes that require unionized labor. Overall, there winds up being less demand for human labor and more demand for automation.
I'm not here to speak on the truth of this, I think of it from this perspective: Information asymmetry (not understanding the opposing argument) benefits the party who has the information, so understanding their argument is necessary if you want to counter it.
I’m not buying it. This sounds like bog standard anti-union FUD. There are plenty of reasons to organize a labor resistance that’s not just job preservation. One example that very few are willing to discuss or let alone negotiate is a reduction of the work week. If AI is making all of us so much more efficient, let the worker benefit by reducing from 5 days to 4 days. AI productivity gains only favor the managerial class. It’s lop-sided. We can do better.
Another issue is that AI is human replacement strategy and isn’t necessarily the same as the mainframe dev displacement. A new career filled the void because the work still needed to get done by people. New opportunities emerged out of the ashes. The vision from tech oligarchs isn’t that - it’s elimination. It’s centralized power.
I grew up in a household with a parent in a union. We had a pretty darn good quality of life. My dad wasn’t overworked had great benefits, a pension and was able to provide.
Finally, the solution to this problem does not explicitly have to be union. This is a community of builders and thinkers and problem solvers. Maybe you could tell us what you think could affect some change then instead?
Unions aren't just about protecting jobs. They play a critical role in job conditions as well. The most obvious example is the unpaid overtime we all are forced to provide (on call, weekend work to meet crazy exec deadlines etc) simply because we are classified as 'exempt' employees.
Also, classic factory unions are not the only kind possible. The SAG is a good example of a union representing (often) highly paid workers and primarily negotiates working conditions and a (low) floor on pay.
The fundamental reality is that except for a vanishingly small number, tech workers have zero leverage against employers individually.
The tech folks mistook a longish boom as evidence of their genius and skill. As long as demand outpaced supply of tech workers, the going was good. Once the tides turned, we're finding out the reality of where we stand with respect to the oligarchs.
This isn't new however. We've always been subject to these cycles. Expecting a union to mitigate cycles is a fantasy. All it can do is protect the mediocre that are displaced by the AI. We saw the same reaction when companies began to employ more contractors and offshore more work. The mistake is to believe that we are somehow experiencing something new. We're not. If you've ever worked in an environment where the management supported "top-ranking", it's similar, except it occurred once or twice a year. No one is guaranteed a job. What I see here are concerns from people whose primary job seems to be coding, likely most on the web based applications. These were always commodity jobs as Amazon told me a decade ago. The value that tech people bring are understanding the business, the problem, and proposing solutions. As of now, AI cannot do that effectively. Instead of hoping for unions to mitigate the displacement or shorten the work week, a better strategy is to figure out how to be irreplaceable. If you're slinging code for 40+ hours a week, you have ALWAYS been disposable.
People who think unions don't benefit workers are the flat earthers of the 21st century.
And those that believe unions benefit workers, particularly in the tech space, are the same people that think life would be better under a collectivist form of government and that the minimum wage needs to be raised continuously. Unions had their place in early 20th century. Those conditions are in the past. If your "conditions" in a tech job needs improvement, get a new job. Anyone that went into tech expecting it to be like a 7-3 manufacturing job, went into the wrong business. I spent years working 60+ hours a week and loved it. If you don't, change careers.
Working 60+ hours a week for years is nothing to brag about. It just means your projects were mismanaged, done poorly and you were absolutely taken advantage of. You also mentioned in another comment that you are disposable if you are "slinging code" 40+ hours a week.
No, we weren’t being taken advantage of. We were working a project that changed an industry dramatically. The projects weren’t mismanaged. They were very aggressive to be sure, but that’s sometimes what it takes to be first and change things. We did it voluntarily and were well compensated for the times. As for disposable code slingers? That’s been true for the last 30+ years.
For people in the UK, Prospect has a Tech Workers branch: https://prospect.org.uk/tech-workers/
Prospect is my union (although I'm a member of a BECTU branch rather than the Tech Workers branch as I work in the broadcasting industry) and it's well worth the dues I pay.
I should note I’m US based.
This is great, thanks for sharing. Something like this could be a good resource for folks like me looking for prior art.
In recent decades unions have been demonized. And I understand some of the criticism, but IMO now is the time to get something organized for tech. The alternative is just to sleepwalk into the unemployment line
I currently am mid 30s and 10 years into my career. I have no interest in joining a union right now, simply because I am confident in my skill and my ability to increase my earnings and career progression without being a member of a union.
Maybe when I hit peak earnings and no longer get a sizeable raise when hopping jobs every 3-4 years and the personal progression is no longer satisfying, I'd be interested in a union.
Notably, I have never been laid off and I have enough savings/investments to keep my family fed and housed for years if I am without work.
When I stop caring about career progression, about learning and growing, and just want to receive a paycheck for minimal effort until I can't be bothered showing up at work anymore, I'd be more than happy to join a union to ride it out. Until then, for purely selfish and individualistic reasons, I'd rather be solo.
Likely what would happen is by the time I want to join a union, it's no longer feasible for one reason or another, but I'll have enough savings by then (or we're all screwed anyway) to be fine.
It's not a good enough economy for us to be able to do anything. It's not like, if things don't work, we can switch to another job/industry. Many industries are struggling right now, and employers know this. They are cutting costs any way they can in order to stay in business, and we're the recipients of that.
Well you could start by not working for the monsters.
Sure, I agree. Companies that I’d categorize as monsters have unchecked power. If they felt a bit of organized resistance they may shrink back a bit.
no way man i need to make my faustian pact AND gain salvation!
/s
also nobody in tech wants a union because we all burnout for a payout.
mids join fang so they can make 400k plus tc predictably. every 3-5 years they double their NW. most of my friends who still at fang (we are in 30s now) are making like 700k-1.5m and have huge spending habits too. none of them have been affected by layoffs yet.
some join unicorns and then get 10-30x or more on options. and then start our own companies.
there’s levels to this shit
The people who are most struggling are juniors and unions generally do not help, but rather hinder hiring of juniors.
Yes, it’s impacting juniors a lot. The public data is telling that story clearly. I know many experienced engineers who have been unemployed for months or years too. Others who have had wages shrunk. The goal for organizing is not to gate keep, but to give some basic protections to those in the field or wanting to enter the field.
Billionaires messaging is something like “we don’t know what kind of devastation might happen to your livelihood, I’ll be richer of course, so let’s just step on the gas” Tech workers have the opportunity to be the brake pedal, ask for a seat belt or airbags. I think progress is inevitable, we can proceed more cautiously if we can find a voice and organize.
A few years ago people felt untouchable now they thinking about stability, industry changed fast
my understanding is google in australia was quite successful at unionising after quite a few layoffs. don’t know if anyone can confirm
It would be more effective to unionize the AIs