cweagans · 3 hours ago

> ~50% of Americans voted for the party that is diametrically opposed to them

Less than half of the US population voted in the last election. ~50% of Americans _who voted_ voted for the party that is diametrically opposed to unions, but that group is only ~23% of _Americans_.

chung8123 · 3 hours ago

This is why one issue wedge voting works. You may vote against something you want to vote for something you want more.

browsingonly · 3 hours ago

> actual understanding of the pros and cons of union membership

Many of us have worked in $MEGACORPS with substantial union representation among the employees, have seen what it does and how it works in practice, and as a result want nothing to do with it. I wasn't represented due to my job classification, but now due to my firsthand exposure to unions I absolutely never will be by choice.

No way, no how, not ever.

Whoppertime · 2 hours ago

I don't think it's so obvious The International Brotherhood of Teamsters didn't officially endorse any candidate for president in 2024. This was because internal polling said that their members overwhelmingly supported Trump over Harris, while it seems like the union leadership supported Harris over Trump This is not the only Union who had a difference of opinion between leadership and membership in 2024

boston_clone · 2 hours ago

Could you share why you feel that way to help add more to the conversation and give context to your own opinion?

1shooner · 2 hours ago

In principle I support the idea of organized labor, but I hate to admit that every real-world experience of unions I've witnessed (second hand), the union has just been another layer of rent-seeking administration.

I don't know enough about the history and structure to understand if the current tech union movement is more of the same or if there is some reform included.

thraway3837 · 2 hours ago

Came here to say something similar to this. If the industry were to unionize, there are good examples of good unions and good leadership. But I also don't want to pay membership dues so that some executive director of a union makes $900k/year salary so they can show up 5 times out of the year to resolve issues and then disappear and have no experience with software or the industry at all.

My fear is that union leadership will just attract someone from another completely different industry, who has no passion for computing, no experience, but wield tremendous power in how employees and employers conduct business. I'm not OK with that. I don't want some 65 year old curmudgeon MBA type politically connected bozo telling everyone what they can and cannot do. These types of committees and decision making are a killjoy and harm creativity.

There's just no way to guarantee that union leaders are regular folks like us who aren't power hungry but want to truly help the people. It rarely ever ends up attracting clean, nice, good personalities and then end up in cahoots with other nefarious players.

Having said all that, I would like to see a few changes in the industry:

- Interviews. The process is a complete mess right now. If we could standardize on a few things, that would go a long way. Guaranteed yes or no feedback immediately after the last step. Capping the process to just 2 days. You phone call, initial screen. Come in, meet the team, problem solve something real. Lunch. Some more team sessions to solve real problems, and then done at 2PM. Feedback at 4PM. No ghosting, no "oh we hired someone internally", no week long writing assignments and coding sessions to reverse a linked list.

- Salary. Just post the exact salary on the listing, without ranges. And then just tell the candidate up front, this is the salary. That's it. Stop with the tremendous waste of time on the back and forth. RSUs, etc. also posted full transparency. And just say "no negotiations, this is it".

- Layoffs. Provide a good cushion for the person to find a new role, health insurance. We're not asking for much here, just give the young folk less time and older folk more time since ageism is real.

chobeat · 10 minutes ago

if your union is not democratic, it's not really a union. It's a business scam exploiting union rights. There's a difference between yellow unions (pro-business) and red unions (pro-workers). Just because something is called a union it doesn't mean it's one.

hung10brah · 2 hours ago

> How do unions work?

About as unevenly as every other human social tribe.

Was part of SEIU at one point. At least where I worked SEIU reps were fucking useless. My team was stuck in a basement with mold growing in the corners. There are so many other layers of by-laws, local, state, federal laws the union was essentially useless.

But people in SEIU elsewhere said they were great. So as always YMMV

Grocers union members where I live, while on strike, tried to block people going in a grocery store to use the pharmacy which was technically on a different labor contract; the grocers union members were to leave pharmacy customers alone. They hassled them anyway. In the end neighbors and community at large ended up being against the grocers union due to a handful of cringe, edgelord members in utilikits over-stepping with their "uh ackshully" shit.

Unions are just more social tribe bullshit for people to leverage as magical words of power.

Google it; there's union success story's and union members suing unions/reps after members claim they were forced into just acquiescing to the rich ownership class anyway.

So much of the western way of life is just the same old rhetorical tribal bullshit, social darwinism no different than how it works among some random clusters of nomadic groups in Africa. Any sort of differentiation is merely semantics and rhetoric.

Bird song and banner logo, whether they bleed for prophet or prophecy are the only things humans can claim to make them different. Roughly same old human meat suits end of the day.

I am 100% all in on letting the robots, monitored by subject matter experts, make sure shit gets made and ending this forced obligation to kowtow and prostrate ourselves to other clearly normal and ultimately forgettable meat suits like most middle managers and union leaders, etc etc

OkayPhysicist · 1 hours ago

In the US, most unions are majority unions, i.e., they unionize an entire workplace by majority vote, and then demand that the company allows them to require all hired employees to belong to the union. Hiring scabs is a breach of contract, with the added weight that unions have extra protections ( for example, you can't just fire anyone who talks about unionizing. That's big illegal).

Besides the legal protections, the primary leverage a union has is the fact that in manufacturing, agriculture, etc., companies start hemorrhaging money if work stops. So a relatively short strike (and thus more easily weathered by the members) can have a massive impact. This worked even before there were legal protections for unions, because the union can strike faster than the company can hire scabs. Of course, prior to the protections, companies could decide that taking the hit was acceptable, and then just hire a bunch of scabs to replace the workers. Or they could threaten the union leaders with violence. Which of course lead to the unions using threats of violence against management and the scabs.

After a couple decades of increasing hostilities, accelerated by the re-introduction of a bunch of combat trained WWI vets back into the workforce, the US established a robust set of worker protections to eliminate the necessity of violence.

nevon · 5 minutes ago

To my knowledge, there isn't a single definition of a union. In America, it seems to mean something wildly different than what I'm used to in my part of Europe.

To me, it is simply an organization by workers to collectively bargain with capital (who have their own equivalent to unions). The unions also typically offer unemployment insurance as well as income replacement in case of strikes, which are a possible measure that can be organized by the unions to force capital to come to the negotiation table. An employer has no right to know if you're in a union or not, so it would be quite impractical to try to hire only non-union members, and most companies don't mind either way, because the collective bargain agreements go both ways and can make it simpler than negotiating individual agreements with each employee.

In the US, it seems like unions are what I would call a guild - very highly coupled to a particular profession. Where I'm from they typically accept anyone who works in a general sector (say medical, government, transportation, etc.), as typically most workers in the same sector would have similar challenges and goals.