My Dad owns a construction company in a highly unionized region. He is an advocate for unions, although he acknowledges that quality varies among them. That said, many of the conditions where unions are beneficial don't seem to apply in tech:
* Vocational training: unions in our area run schools to train craftsman (e.g. carpenters). This increases productivity and screens for quality.
* Shifting workforce: Construction companies expand/contract as they get big jobs. The union is a clearinghouse that enables tradespeople to switch between companies as they expand/contract. The union also helps by running benefit programs that travel with the workers.
* Commodity-ish labor: Most carpenters have about the same productivity, so it makes sense to negotiate their compensation in bulk. Unions don't work as well when productivity/value varies greatly between workers.
I also worked as an apprentice carpenter for several summers during college. I wouldn't say that the carpenters I worked with had a glowing view of the union. They seemed suspicious that the union reps were corrupt, and talked about how they would "shut down the job" over minor union infractions. They also believed the "hall" was corrupt/political in how it matched carpenters who were out of work to jobs. Several were also contemptuous of what they saw as the union discouraging hard work (if you were working hard, you were "ruining the job.")
The main point I am trying to make is that unions are complex from both the employer and employee side.
Vocational training absolutely could be done in tech, web/app development is much closer to carpentry than it is to computer science in my view.
Unions are definitely complex, it's not a silver bullet to solve issues in the workplace. But at its core it's a group of people negotiating as a unit: the rest is just the natural evolution of a group where some power has been attained. More members means more organization needed to keep everything straight, and more organization means more barriers to joining. Once there's a real structure to the power a union gets, it's subject to the same people problems as an other organization.
Carpentry/electrical/plumbing/factory product and process is very standardized, but IT is still quickly evolving and requires adaptation and innovation, making it harder to predict how well someone will handle a new problem based on previous work.
Welders or house framers take designs from engineers and (mostly) work to spec. I have to be the architect, engineer, and builder, usually only based on the approved visible UI, or rough description of a problem.
True, but one difference is that the market for carpentry talent is local. So, a company that is supporting a union in city X has a reasonable expectation of benefiting from its training.
With remote work, computer science is much more global, so someone could easily be trained by a union and then go work for a company that doesn't support the union.
Interestingly, this is one of my Dad's main complaints about unions these days: That our city trains great carpenters, but then they are recruited away to non-union areas.
> Interestingly, this is one of my Dad's main complaints about unions these days: That our city trains great carpenters, but then they are recruited away to non-union areas.
Why do they take the offers? I don't want to write anything bad about your father, but I think people wouldn't leave if they were paid well / felt good all around at their current job?
The AMA basically does the same thing in certifying schools and capping spots (which allows the schools to charge several arms' and legs' worth of tuition)
Strong unions could do vocational training in software but the private sector is doing a more than reasonable job of that and their incentives are to increase supply, not restrict it. Lambda School has only existed for two years and is already educating an appreciable fraction of the software engineers in the US.
One of the economic failure modes of strong unions is excessive credentialisation and a dualised labour market. I’m most familiar with unions in Ireland and we definitely have some of that. A plastering apprenticeship is either three or four years. Learning to plaster is at most a six month job. Se situation with tiling. For a knowledge worker example more directly relevant to programmers the teachers’ unions really push credentialisation and dualistation. During the recent economic downturn the government wanted to decrease the wage bill so the teacher unions doubly shafted aspirant teachers. They negotiated a doubling in the length of teacher certification, from a one year Higher Diploma in Education to a two year M.Ed. and a lower pay scale for teachers hired after a certain date. Education in pedagogy doesn’t even have any demonstrable effect on teacher effectiveness so this was pure waste with no benefit. Even before that in Ireland a permanent job as a teacher is fantastic but it will take the average new graduate of a teacher training programme at three to five years of substitute work, with no paid holiday or other benefits to get one, if they ever do.
In the U.K. with its easier entry and lower credential requirements [1] getting a job is easy but the working conditions are comparatively dreadful.
Unions generally make things better for those on the inside by making them worse for those on the outside.
[1] Do you have a psychology degree and want to teach Math? Do a conversion course and you can.
Those were my initial feelings as well. I guess the issue comes down to focusing on software development as a skill and having that skill rewarded in manner you can count on.
Our industry is really similar to actors. They have SAG and their guild negotiates with the MPAA. So every studio needs to belong to MPAA. Every year they negotiate the daily/weekly minimum rates for actors with SAG. They are pretty flexible with different rates for indy films vs big budget films.
It's not so hard to imagine a software developers guild where they negotiate for a daily/weekly minimum for developers, dba's, qa's, devops, and such...
If you are celebrity equivalent of a developer, then you can get paid more. There are no real restrictions. You don't see famous actors getting paid below the daily minimum. When they work for a big budget film they typically get x multiple times the daily rate. Also, if they want to work on an indy film they can agree to those minimum daily rates as well.
I think its flexible enough so if you want to work for a nonprofit you can just accept the daily/weekly minimum vs asking full price if you work for FAANG.
I don't think it's a crazy amount of protections but it sets aside a basic set of standards you can expect from job to job.
If your are making over 120k they suggest actors create a loan out corporation at that point...
Can you imagine all the FAANG companies having to setup a Software Industry Association to negotiate with a Software Developers Guild every year? It seems plausible. It's probably in their best interest as well. These companies could just dump any social issues on to the union and just focus on making profits. The ability to lock out competitors might force other big software dev employers to join the association as well.
It's less cut and dry as to who should covered by a union and who shouldn't. With SAG (IIRC) there are specific rules with respect to screen time / speaking parts and so on. Who needs to be in the software union? Anyone who writes code? Do SQL analysts count? SaaS admins?
One advantage of software as a relatively ill defined career is that you can acquire responsibilities that look like software engineering without actually having a software job. Would my first employer have let me tinker around with the server (when my job was mostly Excel based) if it would have run afoul of union rules?
Same could be said about all the young and hopeful people that show up in L.A.... Self taught or professionally trained they show up to casting calls/interviews and demonstrate their work. Sometimes self taught actors get a good gig and join SGA and continue in their career. SGA does not assure anyone success it's just there to make sure actors don't get abused in the process.
Imagine how many people have gone to Silicon Valley and worked their butts off in a startup that really went nowhere. It would be nice if they had a union that had resources to indicate if the developer should quit, go to another startup, or take another position. An intermediary that could assist with some analysis of the cap/gap tables would be helpful. A union that could indicate the daily minimum pay with a startup would be nice.
If you want to tinker with code no one would stop you. But if you got a gig and tinker with code after 3 paychecks you could join a union. Many actors don't join SGA when they start. They take on multiple gigs and then decide if the fee is worth it. Plenty of youtube videos go over the options. It seems very flexible. I don't understand why there is resistance to the idea. It's not some factory union. A Software dev guild similar to SGA seems most appropriate. Essentially most dev roles are contract roles for a short amount of time 3 months - 3 years.
Imagine if we got residuals from our code... Best incentive to document, unittest, and push some code library.
Your points make sense, but it stands in contrast to unions of other industries like voice acting (SAG-AFTRA) where voice actors/actresses can vary a lot in quality/desirability and aren't exactly a commodity. I actually honestly don't know how voice acting unions could be successful.
By getting the highest quality people into the union, setting minimum rates for union talent, and throwing people out of the union who work for people who pay lower rates (to them or anyone else.) Offer auxiliary services like health insurance, pensions, and anything else that can be gotten at a group rate at cost to your members. Organize training in the profession to your members, and facilitate networking between members. Form mutual relationships with other unions to support each other in times of conflict with bosses.
Unions are best when practitioners in a field vary a lot in quality and desirability. When anybody can be quickly trained to do work, unions have to rely on physical means to help their members. That's why Taylorism/Fordism destroyed the unions.
Tech is an ideal place for unions skillwise, the problem is how easily offshorable the work is. A tech union would have to be a world union.
> By getting the highest quality people into the union, setting minimum rates for union talent, and throwing people out of the union who work for people who pay lower rates (to them or anyone else.)
Dualisation, making a labour market with insiders and outsiders certainly helps those on the inside. But that comes at the expense of those on the outside. If this is the goal how would punishment of those hiring self taught developers and those who didn’t pay union dues be coordinated?
This model has a problem in that programmers are closer to lawyers or accountants than electricians. An individual lawyer/accountant/programmer can be tens or hundreds of times more valuable or productive than another. So you can see professional services firms. You’re not going to see electricians doing that because the productivity differential isn’t that enormous. And those programmer professional service firms can either continue that way, as consultancies, or augment themselves with capital and make a product. That’s a startup. The economics of knowledge workers are radically different from production workers. Even voice actors and script writers are inputs into the final product, a film. Knowledge workers can make the entire product and capture far more of the productivity thus generated.
> Dualisation, making a labour market with insiders and outsiders certainly helps those on the inside. But that comes at the expense of those on the outside. If this is the goal how would punishment of those hiring self taught developers and those who didn’t pay union dues be coordinated?
Those on the outside should come inside. There's no reason why self-taught developers can't be on the inside, as long as they learn and adhere to professional standards (as agreed upon by the membership.) If they refuse, I have as much sympathy for them as I do self-taught doctors. There's nothing that needs to be coordinated; if a business hires non-union labor, union members cannot work for them and remain union members.
As for the rest, if you are good enough that employers would be happy to ignore the union because you're worth 100x any of them, you shouldn't have a problem, and the people you work for shouldn't have a problem. The union doesn't affect either of you, because they're paying you a boatload, and you're giving them all the work they need. [edit: and tbh, there's also nothing to lose by being in the union except what is probably a trivial amount of dues in return for group rate insurance, refresher training classes, and discount software licenses.]
> Knowledge workers can make the entire product and capture far more of the productivity thus generated.
And should. Co-ops and the self-employed don't need a union, they are a union.
> Those on the outside should come inside. There's no reason why self-taught developers can't be on the inside, as long as they learn and adhere to professional standards (as agreed upon by the membership.)
If the members have enough market power to enforce union exclusivity they have no incentive to allow self-taught developers to join and every incentive to keep them out. A union is a labour cartel and economically it works the same as a capital cartel by capturing more of the productivity than they would under free competition by reducing supply of the input they control.
> and tbh, there's also nothing to lose by being in the union except what is probably a trivial amount of dues in return for group rate insurance, refresher training classes, and discount software licenses.
Because unions try to represent the average worker, in areas with low productivity differentials they generally aim for seniority based pay and last in first out firing. This is another instance of the general pattern of helping members at the expense of non-members. In areas with large productivity differentials line the SAG they set minimum wages while punishing employers of non-members.
Unions grab a bigger piece of the pie by taking it from someone else, either the employer or potential competitors and they often redistribute the pie from higher to lower productivity workers.
I could be wrong but my understanding is that SAG sets minimum rates. If you want someone particularly desirable you will probably be paying a premium.
I think the real point of value for a programmer union would be figuring out the logistics of setting up a really good retirement plan that works between multiple employers. This is one place where individuals on their own cannot effectively negotiate - they have to take whatever retirement plan prospective employers offer, and if they work at small companies you're just happy to get offered something reasonable, rather than something optimized.
If there was a programmer's union that let you join as a union employee, you could take salary concessions for the union-mandated retirement plan contributions, and have both parties wind up ahead simply on tax-efficiency metrics. $110k salary and $100k salary + $10k retirement plan contribution cost the exact same to the company, but the latter has a lower overall tax burden on the employee.
Though it may not seem like safety is a big concern in tech right now, there are areas where it will be of concern. For example, Unions may be a good method to force safety concerns in self-driving cars and in IoT devices. Unions may help with health-care data and privacy. Unions may help with other forms of sensitive information like in judicial work and military work.
I'm not saying that unions are the only way to force safety, but they have been an effective force for safety in other areas in the past. Their effectiveness should not be discounted out of hand.
Interestingly, for my Dad's business (employs between 100 and 300 people) the cost of worker's comp insurance is the main driver of safety. Accidents/injuries drive up your workers comp costs.
His company employs one full time person whose job is to improve safety. The guy runs safety competitions (days without a serious accident) with prizes, does reviews, researches equipment and practices, etc.
He will also tell you that the biggest safety improvement they ever made was drug testing. He resisted it for a long time because he feared it would be difficult to hire people, but after they did it he became a big advocate of it.
And given the spate of sexual harassment and similar employee abuse stories from the past few years, it's not as if there aren't employee safety concerns in tech.
Nonetheless, this has been done in many places and it led to ridiculous results. For instance, if you have a booth at a convention center in Las Vegas somewhere, just try carrying your own box from your car to your booth. Just try! You will immediately get screamed at that it's a union job.
Sure, but you can't attribute that to unions and say that's a universal negative effect of unions, the same way that you can't say knives are universally bad because they've been used to stab people in the past.
This is an example of how it specifically is. The deal/law with the city/state/municipality/whatever is that they can't hire someone who's not associated with the union. That results in ridiculous shenanigans I just described.
It's more a function of a state or municipality's negotiation with a particular union, and can be a rational decision for a municipality to make. The choice is between hiring only union people, or not being able to hire any union people.
You could say that for ISP laws as well. "It's more a function of a state or municipality's negotiation with a ISP, and can be a rational decision for a municipality to make. The choice is between having an ISP/good broadband or not having one at all."
The point is that the mere existence of a union is not a sufficient condition for union-only laws; unions exist in places where such laws don't exist. As an argument against unions this is a slippery slope fallacy.
1. Tech is not a space where training can help improve worker's quality? Or is it just something that people are expected to do on their own and people who don't suffer?
2. You might be surprised to learn about the number of contractors in tech.
A 10x difference in productivity between apprentice and master carpenters is the absolute outer limit of what’s plausible for an individual worker. Any higher than that and we’re mostly discussing coordination and management. 10x is a lower bound on the plausible productivity differential between programmers. In terms of the technical complexity of tasks they’re capable of the continuum from someone who worked through Learn Ruby the Hard Way and David Hartl’s book, a Lambda School grad, an MIT CS grad and Peter Norvig will be over 100 if not higher. In terms of economic productivity Ruby guy on upwork, patio11 billing at $30,000 a week and Jan Koum or Notch encompasses well over 1000x differences in productivity. Billing rates within a consultancy will often be over 10x between a junior consultant and a principal, for the same company, in the same line of work.
* Vocational training: unions in our area run schools to train craftsman (e.g. carpenters). This increases productivity and screens for quality.
* Shifting workforce: Construction companies expand/contract as they get big jobs. The union is a clearinghouse that enables tradespeople to switch between companies as they expand/contract. The union also helps by running benefit programs that travel with the workers.
* Commodity-ish labor: Most carpenters have about the same productivity, so it makes sense to negotiate their compensation in bulk. Unions don't work as well when productivity/value varies greatly between workers.
I also worked as an apprentice carpenter for several summers during college. I wouldn't say that the carpenters I worked with had a glowing view of the union. They seemed suspicious that the union reps were corrupt, and talked about how they would "shut down the job" over minor union infractions. They also believed the "hall" was corrupt/political in how it matched carpenters who were out of work to jobs. Several were also contemptuous of what they saw as the union discouraging hard work (if you were working hard, you were "ruining the job.")
The main point I am trying to make is that unions are complex from both the employer and employee side.