As a California tech worker (where the article is focused), I have zero interest in joining a union and firmly believe that much of what has been possible as a tech employee (high paying, interesting career) is in part because we don't have unions, and instead employees own equity and get valuable skills.
Modern tech workers arguably have the best career deal in the history of humankind. I see no upside in killing the goose with the golden egg.
> Modern tech workers arguably have the best career deal in the history of humankind. I see no upside in killing the goose with the golden egg.
I agree, but that's actually one of the strongest arguments for why tech workers should unionize now. Wages are high because employees have leverage due to 10-15 years of demand for skilled workers being higher than supply. If you wait until that leverage is gone to form a union then you've lost a lot of the leverage to negotiate for better conditions as a union.
For the record, I've been in a union in another industry much earlier in my career, and I'm pretty on the fence about a tech workers union, but I think your argument is pretty short sighted.
These topics are just so difficult to debate. They are filled with feelings and one person's perspective or anecdote, and it is difficult to drill down into what is true or what is not true.
You wrote "Modern tech workers arguably have the best career deal in the history of humankind".
How do you know?
And, for the sake of argument, let us say it is the best deal in the history of humankind, does that make it fair that the big tech companies did the following...
For these topics I don't think there is anything wrong with using your own experience. Yes it's one person's perspective and anecdote (mine), but that's what informs my opinion. I've worked at a couple of unionized places before, for me they're terrible. You can say those are bad unions, or unions in Europe etc are better. This may be true, but my own experience tells me to avoid them.
Look at other unions. It's a "union" of workers so they need to have some guidelines.
Teaching for instance you know exactly how much money you'll be making over the next 20 years. Add a masters (which may or may not contribute to you being a better teacher) get a bump.
Do you believe there is a direct correlation with how long someone was working there and how productive they are? Would you like to live in this rubric? What kind of people do you think are interested in this kind of rigid rubric? It works in some places that are commoditized. A toll collector does the job, and maybe there is some merit to rewarding someone for loyalty. But programming is not that kind of job.
The best people want to work in a place where they're valued (and paid) on merit. Why shouldn't a better engineer with less formal experience be promoted above someone who has been filling a desk for the last 20 years?
Well, if a European dev asked me how I could possibly know if they'd make more in a less regulated environment, I would point to American salaries.
Agree it's hard to know things and that antitrust arrangement was bad. If we're talking policy, we are implicitly accepting counterfactual reasoning (because otherwise why would we change policy).
Yep. We can go around and around. Like, does health care count for some of the discrepancy? Or the more generous time off that Europeans typically have?
I do recall some reports that concentrated on just workers that had unions in the United States versus workers in a similar field that did not have unions, and it concluded that unionized workers get paid more.
But, it was not the tech sector, so someone, maybe you, will argue it does not count.
Just very, very difficult to get to the bottom of what is the best way.
I am in the we should unionize camp. My stance is based on, the tech companies have way more leverage than you or I. They do not work in your interest. A union is imperfect but it is better than nothing to get "some" leverage back.
Except they can’t and these AI labs know that very well, which is why their marketing push is always so overpoweringly annoying: they have to convince you because they know they are wrong and their product will not deliver what they are promising.
I've been laid off. It was fine because software is literally the most marketable skill in the world.
Edit: But also, this was a pre-profit VC-backed company. If those companies can't lay people off, it's not like you make good money with more job security. Either the company just has less runway (so I still lose my job, just later and with everyone else) or they adapt by hiring fewer people at lower salaries.
I was canned early last year. Looking for a new job was mostly fine. It wasn't insanely easy like 4 years ago and I had to network a bit, but there very much is still demand for qualified people.
Would suck to be in this market as an entry-level engineer, though.
Most tech workers I have met with parent commenters opinion have been laid off at various times in their career.
I think it's important to note that unions aren't very good tools to avoid layoffs. If there is a company specific hardship, the union can't simply force the company to maintain headcount all the way into bankruptcy. On the other hand if there is a secular change across the industry, the unions can't prevent that change either. Easy example is how Big 3 automakers were 100% unionized in the 1970s and have since shed about 500,0000 American jobs despite producing more automobiles than ever.
Unions tend to be good at bargaining for better pay and benefits, but the current status quo is that most tech workers already have decent pay and benefits anyway.
A friend of mine at Amazon got laid off during their big stupid AI push last year and yeah, being paid like $150k a year sounds nice until you realize that only covers basic living expenses in, say, Manhattan. Now was Amazon right to fire so many people for basically no reason? No, but software on its own is no longer marketable. One person can generate a hundred times more code than before the advent of LLMs, so you only need one person to do the job of a hundred. Now, it takes some skill, that takes years to develop, to use LLMs effectively in the workplace, so Amazon was incredibly short sighted to believe it was just some magical box that fixed everything automatically. But that doesn’t mean companies won’t be making similar moves, in the aggregate, in 10 years, when leaner competitors come to rip a chunk out of their profits. Do you see the capex of major tech companies now? They are _scared_, they have every right to be. You have to be just as nearsighted as those Amazon bosses to believe that things will continue as they always have, that this is just a short dip in a long term regression to the mean.
But despite those margins, it's also an industry with a LOT of unprofitable businesses, unlike any other industry in history. From many people's perspective, if they already earn well, why rock the boat in a high effort high risk way so that the union can negotiate an 8% raise instead of a 4% raise. I don't need the money. And the bad to worst case outcomes could give me serious irreversible buyers remorse.
It's still not clear to me whether union protection is going to be worth the decrease in job creation. There's a reason Europe has way less IT positions with worse salaries.
Salary isn't even be all end all. In fact, higher salary might be worse, because in total you have to pay out of pocket for things your europeans counterparts. Therefore they should have more discretionary income compared to a US worker (I don't think I have to source this).
Actually it is, because you can make money in the US and then retire in Europe or wherever else you want and live like a king, as many people I know have done.
No, the benefits Europeans get do not translate to any equivalence to the money an Average American makes. The per capita income is like 100k a year now.
Unions don't help with that as can be seen with Volkswagen or much of Detroit.
Or, from an IP-driven industry perspective, the offshoring of Hollywood following the SAG and WGA strikes in the early 2020s.
And if IATSE couldn't stop VFX from being offshored back in the 2000s and 2010s, then tech unions wouldn't be able to either.
Edit: can't reply
> Without film industry unions, might the offshoring have been undertaken even earlier?
Not really. VFX was already largely offshored by the early 2010s despite only starting as an industry in the 1990s.
> Yeah but this is a limited perspective. If the union was truly international (like they _used_ to be) VFX workers could push for high wages wherever they worked.
VFX workers in most countries are not unionized either, and much of the industry has already shifted to ASEAN, China, and India where there is no real unionization to begin with.
Yeah but this is a limited perspective. If the union was truly international (like they _used_ to be) VFX workers could push for high wages wherever they worked.
VFX workers did try to unionize along with software engineers. Major tech companies colluded illegally and were caught doing this. This was way before the AI boom
Volkswagen is perhaps the greatest counter-example. The union in Germany converted every layoff initiative in whole or in part (more often in whole) into partial retirements, backfill stops, reduced working hours, compensation freezes.
Wait a second, are you arguing that it’s better to just straight up fire people? In that case, the company is absorbing the lion’s share of the profits (or whatever profit is left) so you are effectively arguing in favor of shielding an entity over the livelihoods of the people who work within it.
To butcher a famous poem, it's better to have hired and lost than never to have hired at all. Restrictions on letting go of enployees mean that companies are afraid to hire. They double check and triple check, they reject everyone they feel even the tiniest bit suspicious of, they try to protect themselves with ultra long probation periods, etc.
I don't know about the US, but I spent 4.5 months trying to get a new job here in the EU as a senior dev. Everyone tells me that was quick.
This golden egg has a funny smell. You are exclusively focusing on high paying as interesting is found in many careers. Lots of people don't trade rights for cash. Many prefer a comfortable lifestyle that protects their families and life style, whilst allowing them to just do a fair day's work in exchange for pay. It is far better if people don't feel they need to put in endless hours or always have to please someone to avoid getting fired.
The lack of union is exactly the reason why every software developer shut the fuck up and took money in exchange for building spyware, tracking software, ran psychological experiments on unknowing people and generally contributed to the destruction of society. "Engineers" would have the balls to stand up to it, and unions would be the backbone that helps it happen.
Instead, you got a nice paycheck, and made sure to make the world actively worse for everyone. Good job.
This is essentially a story about front-line traditional desktop support/sysadmins at a public university.
It's not going to be the same story at much higher paid shops where workers often have equity, good benefits, and the market has provided access to other jobs if you lose yours (in my experience, there are still shortages of qualified and competent engineers).
I would like a different method to deal with the pitfalls, but the politics, drama, overhead, and costs of unionization just don't interest me. I'm not interested in being at one job for life.
Being in a union isn't about being at one job for life. I'm a member of IATSE (the huge mega-union behind thousands of technical job titles/positions in the entertainment industry, such as film editors, sound mixers, etc; really it's many mini-unions acting as one.) There is really no connection to belonging to a union and being stuck in one job title, in fact the incentives are set up in the opposite direction - the greater the group of people the union represents, the more mobility (and many other benefits) its members get.
You should revist your stance on unions and start by reading up on how they work and what benefits they confer. Assuming you are not in the 1%, a union almost certianly would benefit you. It is a way of equalizing the playing field when the interests of BIG capital conflict with the quality of life and meaningful human experience of individuals.
> You should revist your stance on unions and start by reading up on how they work and what benefits they confer. Assuming you are not in the 1%, a union almost certianly would benefit you. It is a way of equalizing the playing field when the interests of BIG capital conflict with the quality of life and meaningful human experience of individuals.
I already have that agency. If I wanted money, I'd have long ago worked for a FAANG. I didn't because I wanted something else. I enjoy working at startups and small to medium sized firms for the challenge and flexibility in all matter of things I get to work on. I have shifted my career from being a sysadmin/netadmin, to devops, to development and it just involved getting involved at places I've worked at. There was no need for licensing, meeting requirements, etc.
If I felt I didn't have any of that agency, I'd likely feel differently about it. But I just don't see what any union (small or large) is going to do for me unless I was in a jurisdiction where they provided extra services like healthcare or other universal benefits.
IATSE membership helps with job mobility because they enjoy a carve-out allowing sectorial bargaining. It would be illegal in US for a union to try to organize the software industry along the same lines.
Financial equity, benefits and opportunities at other companies in my experience are not the determining factors for tech workers. Lack of or loss of self-determination and self-governance are.
The tech workers who are unionized that I know didn't join for financial gain because there is none (except for a few who are bad at bargaining). They joined to exert control over their workplaces and help build companies they can be proud of.
The same way every other union works... I don't get your question? The unions that do work, are not the ones you see on tv. When something explodes, specially a union, it gets massive coverage. When a union works, any achivement gets burried while the negative press is the only one given coverage(1, 2, 3, 4).
So, I will challenge the reader: unions win about 7 out of 10 elections to get certified/created. Does your mental image of labor news look like 70% wins? If not, ask why
I agree in general, but this article claims that the unionized tech workers now have pay increases, cheaper health benefits, and layoff protections. There is also a discussion about the process. This article at least is not just "unions good" (waves hands).
the problem with unions is that they tend to enjoy legal protections not afforded to anyone else. as such they will distort the marketplace. as is often the case with such carve-outs those who can get in early tend to benefit at the expense of everyone else.
it was a mistake to entrench unions because now you will never get rid of them, but it's not surprising as the alternative would have been aggressive anti-trust action and the corporate powers would much rather deal with unions (whose incentives they can model just as well as their own).
note that the incentives of the unions are the incentives of the union organizers which much like in democracy are not aligned with the collective they purport to represent.
Was part of the frontline effort to get our colleagues into UPTE. As we move towards AI automation, we need to make sure that workers have a seat at the table when we impact our students, patients, and our research across the state.
That is a public-sector union. That's different. Political power matters in that space.
A useful private sector union to watch is The Animation Guild, IATSE local 639.[1]
They represent traditional animators in Hollywood - Disney, Dreamworks, Marvel, etc. But they've never been able to organize a game company, despite years of trying. They have good contract terms - the contract is a floor on wages, not a ceiling, and overtime is handled well.
Here's what purports to be a complete list of "tech unions" in the US.[2] Only six have a contract with the employer. That's pathetic. The six:
- "Apple Shuttle Drivers Union". Not even Apple employees, but drivers for Compass Transportation. Teamsters.
- "Gimlet Union". Gimlet Media employees. Writers Guild of America. 83 people.
- "Glitch Union". Glitch platform defunct as of 2025. Communications Workers of America.
- "Ringer Union". Affiliated with Spotify. Writers Guild of America. 65 people.
- "Security Guards at Silicon Valley" Service Employees International Union. 3000 people.
- "United HCL Workers of Pittsburgh". Google contractor. 20th largest H1-B visa sponsor in US.
"HCL America INC has filed 60,667 H1B applications and 1,294 PERM green card petitions. Avg salary: $102,175." Steelworkers Union. 60 people.
Only the last represents "tech workers", and that company is mostly non US citizens.
Anyone know of other unions which, right now, contractually represent tech workers in the US?
Just not finding any real tech worker unionization.
How would that even work? The federal/state government would legally ban people from writing code (like they can legally ban people from practicing law or medicine) unless they have a certificate from the programmer industry guild? I think the low barrier to entry is something that makes the field so interesting and dynamic. Being interesting and dynamic are great things in tech whereas you might not want a real dynamic and outside-the-box doctor or estate attorney.
My experience has been that most tech employees are "exempt" employees, but other than being denied overtime pay, they're mainly treated by employers as non-exempt. Exempt was meant for organizations full of professionals who are generally autonomous, which rarely is the case in tech, especially software development where the micromanagement can be extremely high. Tech workers aren't treated like doctors and lawyers. Employment law shouldn't pretend that they are.
There was an opportunity to organize and exploit market power back in 2017-2018, when there was a frenzy of recruiting and growth in the industry. The field was also much more ideologically coherent, in the wake of the first Trump election, than it is today. But nothing came of it. It's less clear that any similar opportunity exists today, or why it would come together now when it didn't under more favorable circumstances then.
For all of the high compensation tech workers can make in specific regions, at specific firms, how is it that they lack the leverage to demand something as basic as remote work, or as simple as not working in open offices? Consider the ubiquitous distaste for the open layout, how it creates distractions, damages flow state, that "no one" actually likes to work in a bullpen. Yet for all the grousing that software engineers do about them, they're still the prevailing industry trend. For like two decades now. In the status quo, where's the worker power to stand against that?
Unions sound great in theory, but they aren't working all that well in practice for high-paying fields that require specialized knowledge. It negates the main advantage of that: being able to move between jobs without losing the salary, because employers are paying _you_ for your skills.
Unions also are terrible because they often artificially strangle the supply. For example, you can't become a licensed electrician without completing an apprenticeship, and unions control the number of apprenticeships. With all the corruption associated with that.
Here's a question I have for all the predictable "I don't need a union" SWEs out there: if unions were so bad, why do companies literally spend millions and break the law to make sure they don't happen?
To borrow a George RR Martin'ism, there are a lot of children of summer of this space that have only experienced the 2010s, which were an unprecedented boom in tech hiring. Even now in permanent layoff culture they've been anchored to the 2010s as being "normal" and this is "abnormal". You are incorrect. What's going on now is normal and companies are aggressively working to claw back the compensation gains of the last 1-2 decades. A few key AI people are making insane money but I assure you that this is temporary too.
You do not have negotiating power with a trillion dollar company. If you withhold they labor, it's no big deal. If they withhold your paycheck, you and your family are at risk of homelessness, bankruptcy and death. These are not equal positions.
The very idea that unions will reduce your compensation is itself propaganda created by decades of McKinsey "research", billionaire-backed think tanks and money in politics as well as a healthy dose of the Red Scare. Many of the benefits you take for granted like weekends, PTO and sick pay only exist because people died for those benefits. Also, look at any industry and union employees get paid more than non-union employees. The Big Three automakers pay more than Tesla does, for example.
Permanent layoff culture exists to disrupt your life, reduce your compensation and make you do more unpaid work. Unions would prevent that.
Lastly, I have to note, it's pretty interesting that this submission got killed on HN manually. 2 hours, 60 votes and that would be on the front page. I went through the top 500+ submissions and couldn't find it. It's still on new but nowhere on the main feed. Interesting. That in itself is evidence that VCs don't want unions.
Unionization of the industry is long long overdue, if for no other reason than professional ethics.
A small town lawyer can fuck up paperwork badly enough that they lose their ability to practice law. A software engineer can fry the brains of hundreds of thousands of people and it's all ok so long as they managed to get a few of them to click ads.
It should have the same requirements for personal liability like other professions do.
Cannot Now Save. Unions get power when labor is at its strongest, not when labor is at its weakest. When tech labor was at its strongest, it became super-libertarian, started discussing sous vide and $300 shirts, became YIMBYs, and told the flyover states to learn to code while creating the gig economy. FAANG colluded to fix salaries in the valley for years, and they just sighed and paid their $3000 rent to live with 3 roommates.
I'd add shouldn't be saved. There were far too many programmers before AI, and everything was getting worse. They were mostly vastly overpaid, except for the extremely productive ones who contributed to society the most, who were vastly underpaid or worked on a volunteer basis. Their salaries were a function of ZIRP and quantitative easing, and their acquisition (and now their layoffs) were to juice the stock prices that were the engine of the entire thing.
Learn to dig ditches. If we used less immigrant slaves, ditch diggers might be able to start a union.
The reason AI is failing is because it's replacing programmers that were totally superfluous and bringing in zero marginal revenue. Laying off your programmers and not replacing them with AI is going to be the new black.
edit: I got a lifetime subscription to Jacobin when it started (because I thought we needed a glossy lefty magazine) but I really hate it and keep accepting issues out of pure spite because I know it costs them money. I don't know what makes them think they can talk about economic issues yet avoid any math or actual discussion of economics. The suburban child of immigrants upper-middle class Liberal Arts majors on the left are its albatross. Please stop saying Gramsci.
For some tech workers maybe but the issue is that for much of vc backed tech work, Marxist analysis a la Jacobin et Al do not work. Marxists delineate the working class from the owning class but in my experience in these vc backed startups and large public companies that come out of them, the working class quickly becomes part of the owning class.
The union would only serve to make sure that transition never took place.
No thanks, I'll take my seven figure options please.
You might want to read some more Marxist analysis. TLDR: Eventually the real owning class decides they no longer need to pretend that the professional class is one of them.
Dan Russell is president and chief negotiator of the University Professional and Technical Employees–Communications Workers of America Local 9119.
Max Belasco is a University of California, Los Angeles School of Law business systems analyst 3 and chapter cochair of University Professional and Technical Employees Los Angeles chapter.
Aaron Petcoff is a socialist activist who lives in Brooklyn.
I'm pretty sure that everyone is aware that an article from jacobin has these biases. Perhaps it is notable because you're so frequently exposed only to billionare and corporate biases.
Nothing wrong with stating the sources up front. They are clearly pro-labour and pro-union. It helps to know where the authors stand. Would you rather the authors were buried under seven layers of shell companies?
As a California tech worker (where the article is focused), I have zero interest in joining a union and firmly believe that much of what has been possible as a tech employee (high paying, interesting career) is in part because we don't have unions, and instead employees own equity and get valuable skills.
Modern tech workers arguably have the best career deal in the history of humankind. I see no upside in killing the goose with the golden egg.
> Modern tech workers arguably have the best career deal in the history of humankind. I see no upside in killing the goose with the golden egg.
I agree, but that's actually one of the strongest arguments for why tech workers should unionize now. Wages are high because employees have leverage due to 10-15 years of demand for skilled workers being higher than supply. If you wait until that leverage is gone to form a union then you've lost a lot of the leverage to negotiate for better conditions as a union.
For the record, I've been in a union in another industry much earlier in my career, and I'm pretty on the fence about a tech workers union, but I think your argument is pretty short sighted.
These topics are just so difficult to debate. They are filled with feelings and one person's perspective or anecdote, and it is difficult to drill down into what is true or what is not true.
You wrote "Modern tech workers arguably have the best career deal in the history of humankind".
How do you know?
And, for the sake of argument, let us say it is the best deal in the history of humankind, does that make it fair that the big tech companies did the following...
As a small rebuttal of sorts, consider
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-Tech_Employee_Antitrust_L...
You are making less money than what you would have been making if that illegal arrangement had not been made.
For these topics I don't think there is anything wrong with using your own experience. Yes it's one person's perspective and anecdote (mine), but that's what informs my opinion. I've worked at a couple of unionized places before, for me they're terrible. You can say those are bad unions, or unions in Europe etc are better. This may be true, but my own experience tells me to avoid them.
Look at other unions. It's a "union" of workers so they need to have some guidelines.
Teaching for instance you know exactly how much money you'll be making over the next 20 years. Add a masters (which may or may not contribute to you being a better teacher) get a bump.
Do you believe there is a direct correlation with how long someone was working there and how productive they are? Would you like to live in this rubric? What kind of people do you think are interested in this kind of rigid rubric? It works in some places that are commoditized. A toll collector does the job, and maybe there is some merit to rewarding someone for loyalty. But programming is not that kind of job.
The best people want to work in a place where they're valued (and paid) on merit. Why shouldn't a better engineer with less formal experience be promoted above someone who has been filling a desk for the last 20 years?
> What kind of people do you think are interested in this kind of rigid rubric?
This is actually spot on. In my last gig I was working with the kind of people French job security produces. Never again.
>How do you know?
Well, if a European dev asked me how I could possibly know if they'd make more in a less regulated environment, I would point to American salaries.
Agree it's hard to know things and that antitrust arrangement was bad. If we're talking policy, we are implicitly accepting counterfactual reasoning (because otherwise why would we change policy).
Yep. We can go around and around. Like, does health care count for some of the discrepancy? Or the more generous time off that Europeans typically have?
I do recall some reports that concentrated on just workers that had unions in the United States versus workers in a similar field that did not have unions, and it concluded that unionized workers get paid more.
But, it was not the tech sector, so someone, maybe you, will argue it does not count.
Just very, very difficult to get to the bottom of what is the best way.
I am in the we should unionize camp. My stance is based on, the tech companies have way more leverage than you or I. They do not work in your interest. A union is imperfect but it is better than nothing to get "some" leverage back.
The underlying thesis for the valuation of all these AI labs is that 80% of tech workers can be replaced with automation.
Unions will obviously save the industry and its employees. Worked for the auto workers...
And the coal workers too. If the industry itself is dying pr mutating then the workers are screwed either way, union or no union.
Then why are these labs actively hiring engineers?
Except they can’t and these AI labs know that very well, which is why their marketing push is always so overpoweringly annoying: they have to convince you because they know they are wrong and their product will not deliver what they are promising.
Yeah just wait until you get laid off
I've been laid off. It was fine because software is literally the most marketable skill in the world.
Edit: But also, this was a pre-profit VC-backed company. If those companies can't lay people off, it's not like you make good money with more job security. Either the company just has less runway (so I still lose my job, just later and with everyone else) or they adapt by hiring fewer people at lower salaries.
Within the last four years?
I was canned early last year. Looking for a new job was mostly fine. It wasn't insanely easy like 4 years ago and I had to network a bit, but there very much is still demand for qualified people.
Would suck to be in this market as an entry-level engineer, though.
Most tech workers I have met with parent commenters opinion have been laid off at various times in their career.
I think it's important to note that unions aren't very good tools to avoid layoffs. If there is a company specific hardship, the union can't simply force the company to maintain headcount all the way into bankruptcy. On the other hand if there is a secular change across the industry, the unions can't prevent that change either. Easy example is how Big 3 automakers were 100% unionized in the 1970s and have since shed about 500,0000 American jobs despite producing more automobiles than ever.
Unions tend to be good at bargaining for better pay and benefits, but the current status quo is that most tech workers already have decent pay and benefits anyway.
A friend of mine at Amazon got laid off during their big stupid AI push last year and yeah, being paid like $150k a year sounds nice until you realize that only covers basic living expenses in, say, Manhattan. Now was Amazon right to fire so many people for basically no reason? No, but software on its own is no longer marketable. One person can generate a hundred times more code than before the advent of LLMs, so you only need one person to do the job of a hundred. Now, it takes some skill, that takes years to develop, to use LLMs effectively in the workplace, so Amazon was incredibly short sighted to believe it was just some magical box that fixed everything automatically. But that doesn’t mean companies won’t be making similar moves, in the aggregate, in 10 years, when leaner competitors come to rip a chunk out of their profits. Do you see the capex of major tech companies now? They are _scared_, they have every right to be. You have to be just as nearsighted as those Amazon bosses to believe that things will continue as they always have, that this is just a short dip in a long term regression to the mean.
> most tech workers don't have bad pay or benefits anyway.
But what if they could be even better? This is an industry with 75-80% gross margins, quite unlike any other industry in history.
But despite those margins, it's also an industry with a LOT of unprofitable businesses, unlike any other industry in history. From many people's perspective, if they already earn well, why rock the boat in a high effort high risk way so that the union can negotiate an 8% raise instead of a 4% raise. I don't need the money. And the bad to worst case outcomes could give me serious irreversible buyers remorse.
> I don't need the money.
I promise you, management doesn't think that way.
It's still not clear to me whether union protection is going to be worth the decrease in job creation. There's a reason Europe has way less IT positions with worse salaries.
I think you’ll find that at the very least unions preserve jobs in contracting industries, which software is clearly in the process of.
Salary isn't even be all end all. In fact, higher salary might be worse, because in total you have to pay out of pocket for things your europeans counterparts. Therefore they should have more discretionary income compared to a US worker (I don't think I have to source this).
[delayed]
This gets trotted out every time, but let's be realistic: you can't pay your rent in European good vibes.
Actually it is, because you can make money in the US and then retire in Europe or wherever else you want and live like a king, as many people I know have done.
No, the benefits Europeans get do not translate to any equivalence to the money an Average American makes. The per capita income is like 100k a year now.
[dead]
Unions don't help with that as can be seen with Volkswagen or much of Detroit.
Or, from an IP-driven industry perspective, the offshoring of Hollywood following the SAG and WGA strikes in the early 2020s.
And if IATSE couldn't stop VFX from being offshored back in the 2000s and 2010s, then tech unions wouldn't be able to either.
Edit: can't reply
> Without film industry unions, might the offshoring have been undertaken even earlier?
Not really. VFX was already largely offshored by the early 2010s despite only starting as an industry in the 1990s.
> Yeah but this is a limited perspective. If the union was truly international (like they _used_ to be) VFX workers could push for high wages wherever they worked.
VFX workers in most countries are not unionized either, and much of the industry has already shifted to ASEAN, China, and India where there is no real unionization to begin with.
Yeah but this is a limited perspective. If the union was truly international (like they _used_ to be) VFX workers could push for high wages wherever they worked.
VFX workers did try to unionize along with software engineers. Major tech companies colluded illegally and were caught doing this. This was way before the AI boom
Without film industry unions, might the offshoring have been undertaken even earlier?
History knows no conditionals.
Volkswagen is perhaps the greatest counter-example. The union in Germany converted every layoff initiative in whole or in part (more often in whole) into partial retirements, backfill stops, reduced working hours, compensation freezes.
100,000 jobs were still lost and there is no one else who can absorb them.
And the experience of the VFX industry is probably the best example of what would happen to a heavily unionized software driven industry.
Edit: can't reply
> are you arguing that it’s better to just straight up fire people
Nope, but there is a real risk that what arises is labor immobility and blocking new entrants.
Wait a second, are you arguing that it’s better to just straight up fire people? In that case, the company is absorbing the lion’s share of the profits (or whatever profit is left) so you are effectively arguing in favor of shielding an entity over the livelihoods of the people who work within it.
To butcher a famous poem, it's better to have hired and lost than never to have hired at all. Restrictions on letting go of enployees mean that companies are afraid to hire. They double check and triple check, they reject everyone they feel even the tiniest bit suspicious of, they try to protect themselves with ultra long probation periods, etc.
I don't know about the US, but I spent 4.5 months trying to get a new job here in the EU as a senior dev. Everyone tells me that was quick.
This golden egg has a funny smell. You are exclusively focusing on high paying as interesting is found in many careers. Lots of people don't trade rights for cash. Many prefer a comfortable lifestyle that protects their families and life style, whilst allowing them to just do a fair day's work in exchange for pay. It is far better if people don't feel they need to put in endless hours or always have to please someone to avoid getting fired.
ZIRP era perspective
The lack of union is exactly the reason why every software developer shut the fuck up and took money in exchange for building spyware, tracking software, ran psychological experiments on unknowing people and generally contributed to the destruction of society. "Engineers" would have the balls to stand up to it, and unions would be the backbone that helps it happen.
Instead, you got a nice paycheck, and made sure to make the world actively worse for everyone. Good job.
until the VC money runs out (e.g. high interest rates) and we have to grind away at some awful, large company
Oh the horror of making 500k working at a large company of Google.
Seriously, I wonder if tech workers really even understand how lucky they are being able to sit at a desk instead of, say, toiling away in the mines.
This is essentially a story about front-line traditional desktop support/sysadmins at a public university.
It's not going to be the same story at much higher paid shops where workers often have equity, good benefits, and the market has provided access to other jobs if you lose yours (in my experience, there are still shortages of qualified and competent engineers).
I would like a different method to deal with the pitfalls, but the politics, drama, overhead, and costs of unionization just don't interest me. I'm not interested in being at one job for life.
If anything a union would aid job mobility. And theres no reason you cant still individually negotiate and receive equity if you are in a union.
Being in a union isn't about being at one job for life. I'm a member of IATSE (the huge mega-union behind thousands of technical job titles/positions in the entertainment industry, such as film editors, sound mixers, etc; really it's many mini-unions acting as one.) There is really no connection to belonging to a union and being stuck in one job title, in fact the incentives are set up in the opposite direction - the greater the group of people the union represents, the more mobility (and many other benefits) its members get.
You should revist your stance on unions and start by reading up on how they work and what benefits they confer. Assuming you are not in the 1%, a union almost certianly would benefit you. It is a way of equalizing the playing field when the interests of BIG capital conflict with the quality of life and meaningful human experience of individuals.
> You should revist your stance on unions and start by reading up on how they work and what benefits they confer. Assuming you are not in the 1%, a union almost certianly would benefit you. It is a way of equalizing the playing field when the interests of BIG capital conflict with the quality of life and meaningful human experience of individuals.
I already have that agency. If I wanted money, I'd have long ago worked for a FAANG. I didn't because I wanted something else. I enjoy working at startups and small to medium sized firms for the challenge and flexibility in all matter of things I get to work on. I have shifted my career from being a sysadmin/netadmin, to devops, to development and it just involved getting involved at places I've worked at. There was no need for licensing, meeting requirements, etc.
If I felt I didn't have any of that agency, I'd likely feel differently about it. But I just don't see what any union (small or large) is going to do for me unless I was in a jurisdiction where they provided extra services like healthcare or other universal benefits.
IATSE membership helps with job mobility because they enjoy a carve-out allowing sectorial bargaining. It would be illegal in US for a union to try to organize the software industry along the same lines.
Financial equity, benefits and opportunities at other companies in my experience are not the determining factors for tech workers. Lack of or loss of self-determination and self-governance are.
The tech workers who are unionized that I know didn't join for financial gain because there is none (except for a few who are bad at bargaining). They joined to exert control over their workplaces and help build companies they can be proud of.
My ask for these is always the same. I just want to see how this union would work, specifically.
Don't compare it to other unions or say it could be like X. Just write a few hundred words on what it would actually be like.
The same way every other union works... I don't get your question? The unions that do work, are not the ones you see on tv. When something explodes, specially a union, it gets massive coverage. When a union works, any achivement gets burried while the negative press is the only one given coverage(1, 2, 3, 4).
So, I will challenge the reader: unions win about 7 out of 10 elections to get certified/created. Does your mental image of labor news look like 70% wins? If not, ask why
1: https://www.benjnewman.com/uploads/1/2/2/1/122135844/kane_ne...
2: https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.7591/j.ctv3s8mwx
3: https://www.projectcensored.org/unions-won-more-than-70-perc...
4: https://www.mediamatters.org/labor-unions-and-workers-rights...
I agree in general, but this article claims that the unionized tech workers now have pay increases, cheaper health benefits, and layoff protections. There is also a discussion about the process. This article at least is not just "unions good" (waves hands).
the problem with unions is that they tend to enjoy legal protections not afforded to anyone else. as such they will distort the marketplace. as is often the case with such carve-outs those who can get in early tend to benefit at the expense of everyone else.
it was a mistake to entrench unions because now you will never get rid of them, but it's not surprising as the alternative would have been aggressive anti-trust action and the corporate powers would much rather deal with unions (whose incentives they can model just as well as their own).
note that the incentives of the unions are the incentives of the union organizers which much like in democracy are not aligned with the collective they purport to represent.
Was part of the frontline effort to get our colleagues into UPTE. As we move towards AI automation, we need to make sure that workers have a seat at the table when we impact our students, patients, and our research across the state.
That is a public-sector union. That's different. Political power matters in that space.
A useful private sector union to watch is The Animation Guild, IATSE local 639.[1] They represent traditional animators in Hollywood - Disney, Dreamworks, Marvel, etc. But they've never been able to organize a game company, despite years of trying. They have good contract terms - the contract is a floor on wages, not a ceiling, and overtime is handled well.
Here's what purports to be a complete list of "tech unions" in the US.[2] Only six have a contract with the employer. That's pathetic. The six:
- "Apple Shuttle Drivers Union". Not even Apple employees, but drivers for Compass Transportation. Teamsters.
- "Gimlet Union". Gimlet Media employees. Writers Guild of America. 83 people.
- "Glitch Union". Glitch platform defunct as of 2025. Communications Workers of America.
- "Ringer Union". Affiliated with Spotify. Writers Guild of America. 65 people.
- "Security Guards at Silicon Valley" Service Employees International Union. 3000 people.
- "United HCL Workers of Pittsburgh". Google contractor. 20th largest H1-B visa sponsor in US. "HCL America INC has filed 60,667 H1B applications and 1,294 PERM green card petitions. Avg salary: $102,175." Steelworkers Union. 60 people.
Only the last represents "tech workers", and that company is mostly non US citizens.
Anyone know of other unions which, right now, contractually represent tech workers in the US? Just not finding any real tech worker unionization.
[1] https://animationguild.org/
[2] https://data.collectiveaction.tech/unions
This article is really about IT support, not "tech" workers.
What tech workers need, if they need anything, is a professional organization like lawyers, doctors, and architects have.
How would that even work? The federal/state government would legally ban people from writing code (like they can legally ban people from practicing law or medicine) unless they have a certificate from the programmer industry guild? I think the low barrier to entry is something that makes the field so interesting and dynamic. Being interesting and dynamic are great things in tech whereas you might not want a real dynamic and outside-the-box doctor or estate attorney.
Tech workers have the IEEE, and the ACM. We need an IEEE/ACM with teeth.
My experience has been that most tech employees are "exempt" employees, but other than being denied overtime pay, they're mainly treated by employers as non-exempt. Exempt was meant for organizations full of professionals who are generally autonomous, which rarely is the case in tech, especially software development where the micromanagement can be extremely high. Tech workers aren't treated like doctors and lawyers. Employment law shouldn't pretend that they are.
There was an opportunity to organize and exploit market power back in 2017-2018, when there was a frenzy of recruiting and growth in the industry. The field was also much more ideologically coherent, in the wake of the first Trump election, than it is today. But nothing came of it. It's less clear that any similar opportunity exists today, or why it would come together now when it didn't under more favorable circumstances then.
For all of the high compensation tech workers can make in specific regions, at specific firms, how is it that they lack the leverage to demand something as basic as remote work, or as simple as not working in open offices? Consider the ubiquitous distaste for the open layout, how it creates distractions, damages flow state, that "no one" actually likes to work in a bullpen. Yet for all the grousing that software engineers do about them, they're still the prevailing industry trend. For like two decades now. In the status quo, where's the worker power to stand against that?
Unions sound great in theory, but they aren't working all that well in practice for high-paying fields that require specialized knowledge. It negates the main advantage of that: being able to move between jobs without losing the salary, because employers are paying _you_ for your skills.
Unions also are terrible because they often artificially strangle the supply. For example, you can't become a licensed electrician without completing an apprenticeship, and unions control the number of apprenticeships. With all the corruption associated with that.
Here's a question I have for all the predictable "I don't need a union" SWEs out there: if unions were so bad, why do companies literally spend millions and break the law to make sure they don't happen?
To borrow a George RR Martin'ism, there are a lot of children of summer of this space that have only experienced the 2010s, which were an unprecedented boom in tech hiring. Even now in permanent layoff culture they've been anchored to the 2010s as being "normal" and this is "abnormal". You are incorrect. What's going on now is normal and companies are aggressively working to claw back the compensation gains of the last 1-2 decades. A few key AI people are making insane money but I assure you that this is temporary too.
You do not have negotiating power with a trillion dollar company. If you withhold they labor, it's no big deal. If they withhold your paycheck, you and your family are at risk of homelessness, bankruptcy and death. These are not equal positions.
The very idea that unions will reduce your compensation is itself propaganda created by decades of McKinsey "research", billionaire-backed think tanks and money in politics as well as a healthy dose of the Red Scare. Many of the benefits you take for granted like weekends, PTO and sick pay only exist because people died for those benefits. Also, look at any industry and union employees get paid more than non-union employees. The Big Three automakers pay more than Tesla does, for example.
Permanent layoff culture exists to disrupt your life, reduce your compensation and make you do more unpaid work. Unions would prevent that.
Lastly, I have to note, it's pretty interesting that this submission got killed on HN manually. 2 hours, 60 votes and that would be on the front page. I went through the top 500+ submissions and couldn't find it. It's still on new but nowhere on the main feed. Interesting. That in itself is evidence that VCs don't want unions.
This is the absolute last thing that tech needs. What a blow it would be, a nightmare.
It's funny, the DSA in SF has been very anti-tech worker, complaining we get paid too much.
Imagine that - socialists complaining that workers get paid livable wages.
Unionization of the industry is long long overdue, if for no other reason than professional ethics.
A small town lawyer can fuck up paperwork badly enough that they lose their ability to practice law. A software engineer can fry the brains of hundreds of thousands of people and it's all ok so long as they managed to get a few of them to click ads.
It should have the same requirements for personal liability like other professions do.
* [...]Could Have Saved[...]
Cannot Now Save. Unions get power when labor is at its strongest, not when labor is at its weakest. When tech labor was at its strongest, it became super-libertarian, started discussing sous vide and $300 shirts, became YIMBYs, and told the flyover states to learn to code while creating the gig economy. FAANG colluded to fix salaries in the valley for years, and they just sighed and paid their $3000 rent to live with 3 roommates.
I'd add shouldn't be saved. There were far too many programmers before AI, and everything was getting worse. They were mostly vastly overpaid, except for the extremely productive ones who contributed to society the most, who were vastly underpaid or worked on a volunteer basis. Their salaries were a function of ZIRP and quantitative easing, and their acquisition (and now their layoffs) were to juice the stock prices that were the engine of the entire thing.
Learn to dig ditches. If we used less immigrant slaves, ditch diggers might be able to start a union.
The reason AI is failing is because it's replacing programmers that were totally superfluous and bringing in zero marginal revenue. Laying off your programmers and not replacing them with AI is going to be the new black.
edit: I got a lifetime subscription to Jacobin when it started (because I thought we needed a glossy lefty magazine) but I really hate it and keep accepting issues out of pure spite because I know it costs them money. I don't know what makes them think they can talk about economic issues yet avoid any math or actual discussion of economics. The suburban child of immigrants upper-middle class Liberal Arts majors on the left are its albatross. Please stop saying Gramsci.
For some tech workers maybe but the issue is that for much of vc backed tech work, Marxist analysis a la Jacobin et Al do not work. Marxists delineate the working class from the owning class but in my experience in these vc backed startups and large public companies that come out of them, the working class quickly becomes part of the owning class.
The union would only serve to make sure that transition never took place.
No thanks, I'll take my seven figure options please.
You might want to read some more Marxist analysis. TLDR: Eventually the real owning class decides they no longer need to pretend that the professional class is one of them.
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The article ends with...
CONTRIBUTORS
Dan Russell is president and chief negotiator of the University Professional and Technical Employees–Communications Workers of America Local 9119.
Max Belasco is a University of California, Los Angeles School of Law business systems analyst 3 and chapter cochair of University Professional and Technical Employees Los Angeles chapter.
Aaron Petcoff is a socialist activist who lives in Brooklyn.
I'm pretty sure that everyone is aware that an article from jacobin has these biases. Perhaps it is notable because you're so frequently exposed only to billionare and corporate biases.
Nothing wrong with stating the sources up front. They are clearly pro-labour and pro-union. It helps to know where the authors stand. Would you rather the authors were buried under seven layers of shell companies?
Well, it's jacobin.com.
Enough of this passive aggressive quoting. If you have something to say, man up and say it.
What’s your point? Regurgitating the article isn’t useful nor why I come to the comment section.