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Ask Slashdot: What Would It Take For Developers To Start Their Own Union?
juicegg writes "TechCrunch contributor Klint Finley writes that developers have shunned unions because traditional workplace demands like higher pay are not important to us while traditional unions are incapable of advocating for what developers care about most while at work: autonomy and self-management. Is this how most developers feel? What about overtime, benefits, conditions for contractors and outsourcing concerns? Are there any issues big enough to get developers and techies to make collective demands or is it not worth the risk? Do existing unions offer advantages or is it better to start from scratch?"
In my lifetime, I don't recall a single industry that that has started a successful union in the U.S. (not in ANY field). All the unions that still have any real power are the ones still around from the Roosevelt New Deal and postwar days (the Teamsters, UAW, etc.).
So it's hardly fair to single out developers. There are very few fields that are significantly unionized anymore, and most of the ones that are are represented by older unions that go way back. When you look around and see that there are no unions with any real power that have been founded in your lifetime, it's pretty easy to be skeptical and pretty hard to volunteer to be the sacrificial lamb (by being the first voice in your field supporting a union) and endanger your career in the process.
It probably also doesn't help that political support for unions, even among many Democrats, pretty much dried up a long time ago.
What political party do you join when you don't like Bible-thumpers *or* hippies?
"because traditional workplace demands like higher pay are not important to us"
Since when is higher pay simply "not important"?
TK
The second a union starts, the company closes the local shop and outsources all development to a place where unions are illegal.
Manufacturers at least have a direct cost associated with moving a factory; most costs attributed to outsourcing are intangible in development and are thus usually ignored by PHBs.
It's better to vote for what you want and not get it than to vote for what you don't want and get it.
- E. Debs
while traditional unions are incapable of advocating for what developers care about most while at work: autonomy and self-management
They missed one other one: Unions are also incapable of supporting performance-based rewards and promotion, something tech sector workers appreciate. The notion that seniority trumps all else would not go over well in my workplace, nor former workplaces.
I know programmers who work for my county that are unionized. Imagine a process where seniority and not coding ability determines who works on a project.
Imagine a union that helped get the best workers on a project and making the most. A union that helped weed out the lazy, the incompetent, and the criminals. That would be a union that most people would not oppose.. unfortunately the opposite is true: seniority rules, criminals are coddled, lawsuits are filed, work slowdowns are part of the union bag of tricks.
Unions have no place for the programming industry.. except in government where we expect cost overruns and shoddy results. To start a programming union would be to hasten the outsourcing of your job. Besides, programming jobs are one of the most in-demand careers out there. If you can't make good money without a union, you should bone up on your skills.
In C, it's pretty simple, though of course if you want a discriminated union you'll probably end up stuffing it into a struct along with a field that tells you how to interpret the union.
Unions are archaic because workers can trust employers to treat them decently.
The video game industry is a perfect example.
ORGANIZE!
Today, unions exist to protect jobs - meaning that a poorly performing worker is protected and cannot be fired.
Technical people admire knowledge, ability and competence above anything else. And they are disgusted by incompetence, which makes everybody's work more difficult.
The idea of actually protecting incompetence (via unions) goes against the whole technical culture. No, unions are not coming to the development community.
If this is what unions did in practice, I'd agree. My (limited) experience with unions and my wife's much more extensive experience shows that they spend most of their energies defending the weakest people in their membership roles. People who, by any objective standard, should be fired. They shift the whole focus of the workforce from "are we achieving the goal?" to "are we following the rules?". Further, they tend to be run by long-time union members and not by people with a professional background in business, finance, etc. Finally, they poison our political atmosphere - we have very weak rules in the US about who can throw money around. Government unions are a total scam, and private unions often get public officials involved in what should be a private business matter. I won't get into physical intimidation, since I'm sure you'd agree that is a black eye that unions are notorious for. To be fair, employers were the ones who were notorious for this in the past.
I think the concept of the union is sound and I think they should be commended for some of their past achievements. I just think we need serious reform of the current practice, which is self-defeating.
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Unions may seem useless in the USA, but in Europe they actually matter, which is probably why my country has a union for developers. In Europe, unions represent employees when negotiating working rules.
For instance, this means that very few European countries actually have minimum wage laws, because the minimum wag 'laws' are agreements between unions and employers. The idea is to keep government out of working rules (I am beginning to feel this is not the actual term in English), but rather let it remain between the employees (unions) and employers (corporations). However, unions have some rights (e.g. strikes) to protect their negotiation position. Employers too have rights.
I do not see a problem with this system.
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