About Tech Worker Unions Pt 2 – I Would Never Know [audio]

To those who think tech workers don’t need unions: unions don’t have to be about wages. They are simply an association that lets us as workers deliberate and coordinate our actions.<p>I think in tech they would be better used to help us control what we are working on and the conditions in which we do it. For example, you could use your collective power to push for<p>- eliminating creepy tracking from the software you work on that execs wants to put in<p>- open sourcing more of your work<p>- eliminating addictive dark patterns<p>- requiring engineers’ sign-off on deadlines to avoid unrealistic ones foisted upon you<p>- working on projects that seem meaningful and useful for the world instead of what will make your investors the most money<p>and a million other things specific to your context

I think the comments here will be a mix of Europeans who have relatively good unions and experiences, and Americans who (recently) have history of pretty bad unions. Really difficult to discuss this without differentiating this.

I would absolutely never work in a union shop. The romanticizing of unions by tech workers is hilarious to me and shows how privileged and detached we are from real labor.<p>Construction unions etc are hyper corrupt and reward tenure over effort. I can’t imagine what a union would do with Google money.

Curious to hear about about any tech unions anywhere in the world where revenue (not profit) is superior to a non-union counterpart, per worker.<p>At the very least I&#x27;d be curious to hear about a union (not guild or association) where the profession does not involve significant manual labor, where it makes more money per worker.

Proudly a member of the FNV. United we bargain, devided we beg.

Tech unions make no sense at all. In a capitalist world there are 2 main things: the means of production and the ownership of outputs. Unions are a purely capitalist concept and exist to limit exploitation since the workers do not control the means of production or the outputs since they trade their labor for a paycheck.<p>Tech workers however do control the means of production since their knowledge is their own property. The computer they work on is a mere commodity and irrelevant to the means of production.<p>Because the means of production are owned by the worker, they demand an extremely large share of the outputs in the form of paychecks many standard deviations above average labor, first class healthcare, stock grants which has made hundreds of thousands of us wealthy, and other first class benefits.<p>What can a union do other than lay claim to your ownership of the means of production?! You control that and a union would love to get a piece.