A union is whatever the members want it to be. Just because traditional unions operate a certain way does not mean a union for tech workers has to operate the same way.
All unions, nay all power structures, naturally evolve to serve the interests of the _current_ members.
Because of this, seniority-based benefits and insulating bad apples from termination are traits that almost always show up in every union through convergent evolution.
Your comment creates the impression that without unions, developers wouldn't have to deal with "power structures".
But to a pretty good first approximation every technology firm in the industry is a "power structure" --- a rigid and overt one, at that --- run by financiers and owners. So it's hard to see what rank-and-file professionals would have to lose from exercising their own market power, at least in your analysis.
Being a constituent doesn't necessarily mean anything. Eg., Eric Garner was a constituent of New York City. NYC is democratically governed, and he had an equal right to vote. It didn't help him very much.
Being a constituent of X (in this context) means means X is expected to advocate for you.
Thus Eric Garner wasn't a constituent of NYC, he was a constituent of his representatives, who may or may not have done a good job advocating for the safety of those interviewed or detained by the police. I don't see how constituency doesn't help here, because now we can hold reps responsible for advocating for better protection, whereas if no representative power structures existed in the US, what happened to Garner would happen all the time and we would still belong to Great Britain
> I don't see how constituency doesn't help here, because now we can hold reps responsible for advocating for better protection,
New York politics (both city and state) are structured in a way that is unbelievably stable (to the status quo) and therefore all-but-impossible to use as a vehicle to effect meaningful change, even to a degree that's possible in other cities and states.
In the case of Eric Garner, yes, it's true that (for example) the judge that ruled against releasing the records surrounding his death (effectively killing any chance at a lawsuit to force change) was up for re-election last year. However, because he has the support of the party machine in his district, the party chose not to run any other candidates against him[0][1]. Party affiliation laws make it all-but-impossible for more than one party to compete in any given district[2], and actually impossible for a third party to compete[3]. As a result, there was no reasonable way he could be unseated, even if literally every other person in the county (had refused to support him.
Changing any of these laws to allow more influence from constituents requires the unanimous approval of the three ranking members of the government, who are also the leaders of the party, which means that they'd essentially have to actively give up their own power. Unsurprisingly, that hasn't happened.
If you want to demonstrate that a democracy causes those in power to listen to their constituents, there is hardly a worse example than New York.
[0] In New York, this is actually a prerogative of the party, believe it or not.
[1] Technically, they ran eight candidates against him, but there were nine positions available, so all were guaranteed victory.
[2] Think of it like Comcast and Time Warner - they "compete" with each other by divvying up territory that they each have a monopoly over. That's how New York state operates - the Republican and Democratic parties each "own" territory and have a gentleman's agreement not to compete too seriously in the others' turf.
[3] The only way third parties can gain influence in New York is to cross-endorse a candidate from one of the major party lines. For example, the Working Families Party usually cross-endorses the Democratic candidate.
> Would publicly funded elections help this problem? I know NYC and some states have Fair Elections implemented in some form
No. New York already publicly funds elections. The problem is that the parties have constructed a system that allows them to bypass voters' wishes entirely[0], and that system is beyond voters' control[1][2].
On top of this, New York voter disenfranchisement and gerrymandering is actually way worse than pretty much any other state that you usually hear about in the news. The difference is that it has bipartisan support in New York - since both parties benefit from it equally (at the state level), there isn't any political benefit (to those in power) to drawing attention to it and fixing it.
This system also affects the state courts, so no state court case will ever overturn it. So, short of a federal court case like what happened in North Carolina, there's no way to fix it. And I doubt that it's ever going to happen, because neither left-wing nor right-wing groups actually want to fix it.
Thanks for the explanations. I do actually think that NYS does not have Fair Elections like Maine or Arizona has implemented.
The left in the US doesn't want focus on boring things like election law because it is currently addicted to feeding its project of hearsay-ridden alarmist identity politics, the kind that would inspire someone to for example endorse the violence at Speaker's Corner despite the existing video of the incident. Election law will not appeal to young leftists for reasons obvious to those who have been through the throes of Tumblr and now Twitter politics, where the incentives to control others through social status and guilt creates a fractal prison of power structures, and have managed to grow out of it.
Individual thinkers in the Anglosphere who would rather see progressive activist resources directed toward concrete issues like corruption or housing, and actually talk plainly about the reality of the current directionless Internet dark age on the Left that siphons away these resources into nothingness, like Angela Nagle, Jesse Singal, Freddie DeBoer, and L.H. Fang suffer accusations of holding every sort of oppressive mindset from more popular leftist figures.
> Just because traditional unions operate a certain way does not mean a union for tech workers has to operate the same way.
Unions have all converged on operating the same way because the NLRA is very rigid, and over the decades, they've found a stable way of operating. Other operating structures have been tried over the last century, and all have failed except the current one.
If anybody believes that a tech union under the NLRA would break this trend, especially while presumably still being affiliated with other traditional unions, then the burden would be on them to explain why the forces that drive other unions would somehow not apply to tech.
I don't know if a union would help you specifically because I don't know who you are or who you work for. But in general, a union could negotiate the development practices you and your co-workers want. As an example, if you and your co-workers wanted one week per quarter devoted solely to paying back technical debt, your union could demand it.
There is no reason why a union has to do anything in particular at all if you don't want it to.
I'm not trying to tell you to join a union or not, just saying that a union as a legal structure does not require any of the tactics or goals as 20th century manufacturing or public sector unions.
"There is no reason why a union has to do anything in particular at all if you don't want it to."
Yes there it. If a union takes over the workforce of your company, now you have to follow the union rules.
If unions were just opt in, them yes you'd be right. But unions are NOT opt in for many states. One you are a union shop, you are screwed if you disagree with the union.
You can leave a workplace you don't like for one of its competitors. If your profession has unionized and you don't like the union rules, you need to find another profession.
What if instead, I want to negotiate my own work contract?
If a union comes in, I have no option. I do not want other people voting on my contract.
This is why I will always fight the establishment of a union in the tech industry. I do not want to be governed by the union rules, so I am not going to allow this stuff to be established in the first place.
Same as if you don't want to follow any other rules laid down by your job.
"What if instead, I want to negotiate my own work contract?"
Nobody's saying you can't do that.
"If a union comes in, I have no option. I do not want other people voting on my contract."
You don't have any evidence of that.
"This is why I will always fight the establishment of a union in the tech industry. I do not want to be governed by the union rules, so I am not going to allow this stuff to be established in the first place."
So because you think you're a snowflake, you don't want things to improve for other people.
"Same as if you don't want to follow any other rules laid down by your job"
Instead of doing that, I will just prevent the rules form being implemented in the first place.
The real world situation that we live in is that if I do not want to follow these rules, there is a perfectly easy way for them to be stopped. And the way for them to be stopped is to prevent the union from forming before they get any power over ms.
As most people in tech oppose unions, I do not just have to "deal with it". I can stop unions from having any power over my life at all by preventing their existence in the first place.
"So because you think you're a snowflake, you don't want things to improve for other people"
No, I'd be perfectly happy with people engaging in voluntary association if they didn't always inevitably end up trying to force me to join their special club.
As long as these people won't drop the whole "force everyone to join us" clause, I will continue to oppose them.
Fortunately, the pro union people are in the vast minority in tech, though, so there is not much to worry about yet.
One way to look at Hacker News is as a part-time ranked inventory of labor grievances for tech workers. Open offices. Draconian IP clauses. Opportunities for developers to become founders. Work-life balance. Remote work.
People get hung up on this because most developers feel like their profession is well-compensated. And, they are. But so are doctors and lawyers, who also belong to professional associations.
Adding another couple that are popular: better hiring and interviewing practices that don't over-burden applicants. Eliminating the number of rounds, better transparency about the overall hiring process, avoiding tests that are completely irrelevant to job performance. Better transparency regarding salary offerings, and a framework for individual negotiation that doesn't disadvantage certain groups.
There are plenty of things a professional organization could excel at that don't require full-blown unionization.
Is there anything you want from your employer that they don't already give you? If a lot of your fellow employees agree, it would be more powerful for you all to ask as a collective group rather than you to ask as a single employee.
