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.
IIRC union seniority is tied to the current employer. Move to another employer and all your seniority and the perks that go with it are gone so union members avoid it. No mobility for you.
Maybe but don't we want, overall, more seniority in most places? Most software shops struggle because their executives are extremely short-term focused, so they cycle employees at an extreme rate to chase very temporary highs of payroll savings. But engineers are actually not fungible. 99% of the time, the graybeard is going to run circles around the 10x engineer unicorn you just hired. And that 10x engineer unicorn is gonna be gone in one year's time, because they can do that.
I have not seen that to be the case. Usually the opposite. You have x years of seniority/experience and then you hit a minimum base pay for your new employer.
Indeed. But that's by design from decades of efforts to reduce union powers. A proper system would simply patch the obvious loopholes to get the intended result. But sometimes neglect is a better tool than opposition.
So why should I bind myself to it, if it's reached this point? The master's tools won't dismantle the master's house. Subjecting myself to a collective bargaining agreement meaningfully limits my individual power, but no longer meaningfully limits my employer's power.
> Subjecting myself to a collective bargaining agreement meaningfully limits my individual power, but no longer meaningfully limits my employer's power.
You're really just saying "I don't need collective bargaining, I got mine". Collective bargaining only works if everyone does it. You do it because everyone needs to do it for it t o work.
You don't get insurance because your house or car is fine today, or even because you're a bad driver/homeowner. You get it because you can't predict the future, and the overall cost is cheaper than floating the bill by yourself should the worst happen. If you used the same mentality for your car insurance, insurance as a model also wouldn't work.
That seems to be a big sticking point people don't get (probably because the propoganda works). Unions always fail due to collective effort of companies and the government to weaken them, not because of any nitpicks over drama or bad leaders or whatnot. Every workplace already has those but many keep ticking.
I don't think it's helpful to chastise people for acting in their self-interest. I am willing to individually give up a little to collectively gain a lot. That makes sense to me. But, as we have agreed upthread, this isn't the value proposition anymore. Collective bargaining has been institutionalized and nerfed by those that it was supposed to regulate. Today, it's asking me to individually give up a little in order to collectively gain a little, while adding additional complexity and a second parallel bureaucracy to my workplace. I'll vote in favor of fixing the law, and once the law is fixed, I'll be more interested in letting a union represent me.
You choosing to take the statement as chastising means you still have shame. So there's still some hope yet.
It wasn't my intention, but there's ultimately no other way to describe someone who chooses not to participate in a community effort as "selfish". And that's not some judgement call per se; everyone needs to be a bit selfish to work hard, push forward, and advance their lives. The degree and cost of the selfishness is where it starts to cross from individual actions to a character trait. But I digress.
>Today, it's asking me to individually give up a little in order to collectively gain a little, while adding additional complexity and a second parallel bureaucracy to my workplace.
But you keep falling into the same circular logic. We can agree that powers have been reduced. But we get those powers back by having people give up a little. The more people who give up a little, the more we all gain. Saying that that's not worth it weakens the entire cause.
>I'll vote in favor of fixing the law, and once the law is fixed, I'll be more interested in letting a union represent me.
I hope you do. But who do you think gets those laws proposed and put on the ballot? The stronger the coalition (which is simply a more general form of "union of people to pursue a common goal), the stronger chance we actually get a bill to vote on. And these companies are really good at killing stuff off while it's still in the boring proposal phase.
> Saying that that's not worth it weakens the entire cause.
Don't shoot the messenger. I'm interested in participating in effective collective action, but don't have time for taking action just for action's sake.
You're a participant in society too. If you don't have time to exert your rights, other people will be happy to erode them, as we've seen time and time again. Civic duty should be a constant endeavor, not just something you do every few years on a ballot.
If you feel you lack time now, I hope the day doesn't come (like me) where you get plenty of time.
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.
Wow, illegal you say? Damn, I suppose an organization that is capable of shutting down an entire sector of the economy will have to obey the strict letter of the law...unfortunate.
>the politics, drama, overhead, and costs of unionization just don't interest me.
Any collection of people has politics, drama, and overhead. That's the nature of collaboration with humans. So this really doesn't' say much to me besides "I got mine and don't see a need to rely on others (yet)"
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.
I don't like the implication that there are people who join a union because they are bad at their job. As you see in these comments that is still a prevailing sentiment despite the industry here laying off millions in the last few years with no rhyme nor reason. And despite soaring profits (so these aren't struggling companies who need to let go of talent).
Apparently, if you can't make it on your own, you have to lean on unions as a crutch that lets you coast
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.