Yes, you can contrast this with UK unions. German unions are smart enough to find a win-win scenario and look to the long term, it's as if they see themselves as stewards of future generations. Where as UK unions can't wait to kill the goose that lays the golden eggs, they are rapacious in their greed. I think some of this explains the reluctance of programmers to unionize; for historical reasons a lot of software culture is US/UK based, these are countries where unions have run amok with terrible consequences for their communities, no-one wants to repeat those mistakes.
The German government started early with the social welfare system in 1883, which set the tone. (even if it was only designed to keep the commies at bay, it still has a stabilizing effect on Germany today)
This made the employers not go as bat shit crazy as they did in the UK and the US - overworking people straight into hospital means that you're paying their wage for not working. The UK built its industrialization on a constant stream of new workers.
Which again let the unions run cooler compared to their UK/US counterparts since the situation wasn't _all_ that bad.
The second and third step then formed a feedback loop (with some effects on Government, too), which was cooperative in Germany, and adversarial for the Anglo-Saxons.
It looks to me as if at some point, both unions and employers in the US and the UK could claim with good reason that they're only defending themselves against the other party.
And lest people believe this is an anglo-saxon problem, french labor relations are very similar to UK/US's, although there has been less systematic dismantling of unions as the country is generally speaking more to the left of the political spectrum.
Of course - most thing I wrote about happened before Thatcher, too (German social welfare in 1883: That the UK went down a different path back then isn't Thatcher's responsibility unless we're talking time machines).
But first, according to some circles, when it's about social policy in the UK, Thatcher is always to blame. I just couldn't resist :-)
Second, I suppose Thatcher would have implemented a different policy given a different history in that area. The union/employer feedback loop influenced policy (and still does), and that includes Thatcher's for sure. Which makes that snarky first sentence a reversal of cause and effect.
I suspect the true reason there is no programmer's union is because we don't need one yet - the supply/demand balance is massively weighted in our favor and so we have no general need for the kind of protection and collective bargaining that other, more labor-saturated professions do.
Coal mines and steel mills and oil rigs are expensive to set up because they're so capital intensive. If a coal mine worker decides he'd like to start his own coal mine probably he won't have the capital or the connections to get the capital. There's no path between company-worker and company-owner or vice-versa so the two groups seem like distinct classes.
On the other hand, in programming all you need to start a company is a computer and an internet connection - and we all have those at home already. Probably you've got a few friends from university who have their own startups now. There's a clear path from being an employee to being a founder/owner, so employees and owners don't seem like distinct classes.
Yes and no. In certain sectors yes, but other sectors have suffered from outsourcing etc. And the whole industry is plagued by ageism. I'm not arguing for a system of seniority (another big turn-off about unions) but something does need to be done about that.
That's the funny thing about IT, if you do your job well no-one knows you're there. So it makes you an easy target for cost cutting. Some executive signs an outsourcing deal and looks like a business genius for saving so much money. Then the wheels come off, but by that time he's already gotten his bonus/promotion/new job.
didn't unions made outsourcing [say in auto industry] even more appealing by increasing the cost of local unionized labor?
Looking at the auto industry, i think programmers just don't want that happening to them, including the "benefit" of having one more layer of clueless bosses and additional set of processes ("work rules") - the existing managers are clueless enough and existing processes definitely a drag to add more of them.
I'm not against all unions. I'm against unions how they exist in the US - auto industry, BART workers', police, teachers - police one actually works really well for its members, though it is more like an exception because of its power as a racket organization ...
