
Tech workers are organizing and demanding democracy in the workplace - Futurebot
https://www.salon.com/2019/04/11/silicon-valley-once-a-bastion-of-libertarianism-sees-a-budding-socialist-movement/
======
glvn
Unpopular opinion:

As a recent graduate (last 5 years), I can't agree with most works desire to
unionize for one reason: demand for your skills.

When I was looking for my second tech job, I turned on that switch in my
LinkedIn that lets recruiters contact me. I was immediately inundated with
10-20 messages a day from recruiters asking if I could speak with them about
<Role with my expertice>. For me this was the most insane luxury in the
workplace, instead of having to go out and look for jobs, those jobs were
coming to me and knocking on my door.

What I took from that is tech workers have an incredible choice in where they
can go work because their skills are highly in-demand. So why unionize? Don't
like where you work? Flip a switch and suddenly you have 10-20 offers a day
from other companies looking to hire someone with your skillset. Yes, you have
to spend time combing through the messages, on the phone with recruiters and
going to interviews but at the end of the day with that level of attention to
your skillset, you can basically decide where you want to work. Company A
seems great but the culture is toxic, ok great let's see what company B has to
offer. Company B has a good culture but their data collection practices you
don't agree with, ok let's see what company C has to offer. Company C has a
great culture and doesn't do the things you consider unethical with data
collection, bam we have a winner.

Also on the topic of general democracy in the workplace regarding decisions.
As an engineer you don't make those decisions, you just implement them. Don't
like the decisions, go somewhere else. Want more/total control over decision
making? Start your own company.

~~~
adreamingsoul
Yes, you are popular now but in 10-20 years after you’ve been through the
wringer a couple times the concept of a tech union might make more sense.

EDIT: changed "ringer" to "wringer".

~~~
appleiigs
I've been through the ringer... I'm in my 40s and at the point in my life
where if you'd pay me good money to dig holes, then I'd dig holes. I go to
where ever pays me the most to dig. I don't identify myself by where I work
at. I don't expect other people to have my values, and definitely don't have
those expectations on a corporation. I have this mercenary attitude because I
know that I'm solely responsible for myself and my family. If you are going to
expect that a union, corporation or a government take care of you, then you
are going to be very disappointed - that is my problem with socialism.

~~~
cworth
It sounds like you are mixing the positive and normative. Yes, corporations
now don't represent the values of their workers and lobby for all kinds of
awful things. Yes, there is no social net now provided by unions or the
government in the United States.

But wouldn't it be excellent if these things were true?

~~~
GreenJelloShot
In theory, if it all magically worked, then sure. In reality, no. Because no
matter the good intentions, I can not trust the government to not screw it up.

If a company screws something up, I can just switch jobs and move to another
company. If the government screws up, there is little I can do.

~~~
cworth
The Nordic model shows that it is possible to have a highly unionized
workforce with free higher education, free healthcare, and social welfare.
They have been very effective in fighting poverty this way.

~~~
GreenJelloShot
Yeah, everything "works" until it doesn't.

See: [https://www.cnbc.com/2019/03/08/finlands-government-
resigns-...](https://www.cnbc.com/2019/03/08/finlands-government-resigns-
after-healthcare-reform-fails.html)

"Financial constraints are colliding with the healthcare costs imposed by
Finland’s fast-aging population. But cutting those costs is a major political
obstacle in a Nordic country that historically has provided an extensive --
and expensive -- healthcare system."

------
gorpomon
A lot of counter arguments here say that this isn't necessary because we can
easily find new jobs. Yes that's true, but that's not what I want to always
have to do in my career.

I don't always want to cut and run. I want to invest in a workplace and have a
meaningful say about my circumstances there and the work we do. I don't want
to quit or have to suck it up and deal. I don't want to have to go into
management and then have dueling loyalties (what comes first, ethics or
keeping my team employed?) If I work at a big company like Amazon, I want a
say in what our tech does and who uses it. Even if I cut and run from them,
I'm not going to catch up to Amazon anytime soon. In a place like that
positive change could much more easily come from within than from competition.

~~~
turkeysandwich
I've started businesses. When I start a business, it's mine (and my
partner's). Like a car or a house or a website. I'm trying to do something
specific with it, with plans that I've drawn up. It's not just to make money.
If all I wanted to do was make money, I'd just get a normal job.

When I hire people, I'm not giving away my business, in the same way that if I
give a friend a ride, I'm not giving away my car. If they don't like where I'm
driving, their only option is to find another ride.

That's the key difference between starting a business vs getting a job: all
the decision making is yours.

And this applies at any scale, even Amazon scale. If you have plans and you
start a business to execute them, you can execute them even better at a large
scale. Getting Amazon big and maintaining control _is_ the reason you start a
business.

It'd be insulting if my hires started wanting to take away control. When you
hire someone, it's with the implicit understanding that they respect that the
business is not theirs. They don't own any of it. (Unless they want to buy
in.)

Violating that understanding is disrespectful. Like your neighbor letting
their dog shit on your lawn and not picking it up, because they think "well,
he's just going to walk his dog in twenty minutes, he can do them both at the
same time."

I don't like working (whether for my business or for someone else's business)
with disrespectful people. There's a lack of trust.

------
dawhizkid
I always thought it was strange that we live in a democracy but spend most of
our time working in corporations, which are more like autocracies than
anything remotely resembling that of a democracy.

~~~
return0
Same reason we dont live in shared houses, i suppose

~~~
helen___keller
Arguably housing is too far on the side of democratic/social control. Sure you
can live in a house by yourself, but you can't do what you want with your
house or your land without first getting town approval, HOA approval, and so
on.

------
helen___keller
I've never been convinced that unions are necessarily the best approach to
resolving the employer/employee power differential, but I do believe that in
the coming decades something will be necessary.

By luck, the explosive growth of software in the states and relative scarcity
of developers has resulted in a lot of wealth and luxury for engineers.
There's no reason to believe this trend will continue indefinitely.

On the other side of the spectrum, another country that has explosive software
growth but a large supply of engineers and STEM workers is China. China's 996
work policy has been getting a lot of attention lately and I think it should
highlight the risk we face in a matter of maybe a generation or two if the
software industry does eventually cool down.

------
idlewords
As someone who was pretty heavily invested in getting tech workers to
organize, I've watched with interest as some version of this article gets
written every three or four months. There is always a small group of people
actively tilting at this windmill, and they make for a good story.

What I am waiting to see is a significant demand being met by any major tech
employer. The end of forced arbitration at Google was a promising development,
but the failure of the Google walkout organizers to get their key demand—an
employee representative on the board—doesn't bode well.

I continue to believe that tech workers enjoy a temporary position of immense
leverage in the workplace, but turning that into substantive gains has so far
proven beyond anyone's capacity. I wish the current crop of organizers the
best of luck in trying to make it happen.

~~~
helen___keller
> I continue to believe that tech workers enjoy a temporary position of
> immense leverage in the workplace, but turning that into substantive gains
> has so far proven beyond anyone's capacity

I agree strongly. My generation (millennials) often look with disdain at how
easy the baby boomers had it, often paying off their college tuition by taking
on just a summer job.

I think my future children (or maybe their children) will look with disdain at
how easy software engineers had it. Imagine that you get a degree and train
for a job, without a particular position of power, and just like that you have
leverage and a growing salary that you can increase 30% every time you switch
jobs! Just from the scarcity of your skills!

------
malvosenior
This seems like an all or nothing type of thing. I for one would never join a
union so if some tech workers started to unionize I would always be available
to take their place for the right price. It seems like incomplete attempts to
unionize our industry will benefit those that _don 't_ want to unionize the
most by making them more attractive employees.

------
MangezBien
I think it is time for tech workers to force their companies to pursue an
agenda that is in-line with the worker's ethics. We _are_ highly paid, we are
also highly valuable to the US economy. If we can effectively unionize - we
can use that leverage to pressure the government to act in ways we support
with regards to surveillance and climate change.

------
prepend
This headline is misleading as it should be “Some tech workers” or maybe “a
growing few tech workers.”

------
gorpomon
For low-skilled factory workers a union is largely about defending their
rights and making sure they're treated fairly.

For a tech worker, a union is largely about providing a worker-focused
counterbalance to your companies decisions. Who buys the tech we make? What
tech do we make? Do we allow ourselves to make tech that evades, impedes or
outright destroys a person's rights?

I don't want tech employees to quit those facial recognition companies. I want
a large group of employees with a seat at the table saying that their work
should be used ethically. Those companies can always find employees who for a
variety of reasons will do the work. My hope is that there is a group of
employees there who want to do the work and for the right reasons. More power
to them.

------
veryworried
Unions for tech workers are ridiculous. We’re not coal miners, we are highly
skilled white collar professionals that should be more than capable of finding
work that suits us without extra regulatory bullshit.

I find the people who are clamoring for unions in tech are among the least
talented and skilled of employees, and they should probably find a new
industry entirely instead of trying to change the one they’re in to be more
hospitable to the lowest common denominators. Perhaps we can help the process
along by putting these people on hiring blacklists and ensuring they never
work in this town again.

~~~
linuxftw
> I find the people who are clamoring for unions in tech are among the least
> talented and skilled of employees, and they should probably find a new
> industry entirely instead of trying to change the one they’re in to be more
> hospitable to the lowest common denominators.

That's one perspective, sure. Here's another perspective: There's nothing
stopping a company from firing it's junior and 'least talented and skilled'
employees in favor of contractors or outsourcing.

~~~
veryworried
The company has a right to hire contractors or outsource work.

------
whytaka
Unionization is the incorporation and concentration of human capital to gain
leverage in negotiations. If that isn't smart capitalism, I don't know what
is.

------
jeffbax
These kinds of articles are laughably tone deaf.

------
mises
This trend bothers me. Employees are not shareholders, or if they are, they
ought to do this in their capacity as shareholders. If they want to govern the
company, they ought to buy in or move to management.

Or, they can always move companies. This is always an option.

Also, socialism is an awful idea. I can't believe people actually support it.
I have a massive moral objection to its core tenets: what right have you to
the fruits of my labor?

~~~
kyllo
Your employer is able to bargain with you as one massive, collective
organization with all its resources to bear. Why should you have to negotiate
with them as a one atomic individual person, when you and your coworkers can
instead get together and negotiate from a much stronger position?

~~~
scarface74
I can already negotiate better than my coworkers. Why should I tie my
compensation to theirs?

~~~
kyllo
Because if you and your co-workers all negotiate together, you have more
bargaining power and can extract much greater concessions.

~~~
scarface74
But it also means that the people of lower ability whether technical or
negotiating get more but the people with more ability get less.

Unions really fight against performance based differences...

[https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/11/us/denver-teacher-
strike....](https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/11/us/denver-teacher-strike.html)

[https://www.huffingtonpost.ca/michel-kellygagnon/union-
perfo...](https://www.huffingtonpost.ca/michel-kellygagnon/union-performance-
pay_b_6694350.html)

 _As it turns out, union contracts don 't just set minimum prices that
employees can be paid; they also tend to set pay ceilings that employers
cannot exceed without the union's permission--and that permission is rarely
forthcoming. Paying the most talented, hardest-working employees more than the
average Joe who barely works to rule is not allowed, you see._

------
ycHatesFreeSpch
Socialism aside, the unionization of tech workers is extremely important.
Failing this, they will be exploited at every damn job. Unions exist in local
governments, so why not at private firms too. It's time to organize. A lot of
CEOs and CTOs will hate this idea, of course, and will do anything to make you
believe otherwise.

~~~
GaltMidas
I'm 46 years old. I can't think of one example where I was exploited as a tech
worker. I'm from a union town, grew up in a union family. I support unions.
The UAW was very important to the country and the middle class. I'm just not
sure where the need is in tech. I think it might hurt us, if anything. Tech
workers are not fungible. We do have quite a bit of leverage. Your average
factory floor worker is fungible and has almost zero leverage.

~~~
newen
I have heard too many stories of overworked programmers (lots of stories if
you google it), especially in the gaming industry, and let's not forget
Amazon's NY Times story a few years back, to think that there is no worker
exploitation going on in the industry like you say.

~~~
GaltMidas
I think your examples are valid. I wonder though if it's a choice for someone
to work 80 hours a week at $40k to make video games versus 37 hours a week at
$80k doing forms over tables stuff for The Bobs. Is that a choice or
exploitation?

~~~
braindouche
It's a choice to get a highly competitive "dream job" that's full of long
hours and crap pay. It's exploitation when you're given crap pay, work
extremely long hours, your company clears close to two billion dollars in
profit that year, and then lays you off (to use recent news about Activision
Blizzard as an example).

I'm not necessarily against companies making money, because fully automated
gay space communism isn't yet a practical option. I'm not against working long
hours, and I'm not against prioritizing things other than money in someone's
career choice. That's all valid! What I do have a problem with is companies
taking advantage of people and hurting them.

I would suggest reading about crunch I the video games industry, and remember
that people take big pay and benefits cuts just to work in these places. Here
is one to get you started:
[https://www.gameinformer.com/b/features/archive/2018/01/16/c...](https://www.gameinformer.com/b/features/archive/2018/01/16/crunch-
the-video-game-industrys-notorious-labor-problem.aspx?amp)

------
Zak
I've noticed this trend here on HN beyond workers organizing for their own
benefit. The idea of regulating the internet, for almost any reason was
abhorrent to the tech community a decade ago.

Now, most people seem to think the likes of Uber and AirBnB need to be
regulated. A majority of comments here about GDPR seem to support it, and I
regularly see calls for more regulation of the sort. I'm not sure if the same
group of people have changed their views, or if a wider range of people have
brought new perspectives to the community.

~~~
helen___keller
I think there was a sort of techno-utopianism in the aughts that the hip new
startups will solve all the world's problems. People will be educated and not
fall for disinformation with wikipedia and google at their fingertips. People
will discover the wonders of democracy and free speech with facebook and rise
against oppressive governments. These were obviously overly optimistic
projections.

Also, the rise of outrage porn makes it much easier for people to come to the
conclusion that "the system" is horribly broken and needs to be changed (for
almost any "system" that we speak of, government or capitalism, or youtube,
literally anything)

~~~
Zak
I think there's a tendency to discount the partial successes, perhaps because
they make the failures yet more shocking. I can fact-check most things I read
in _seconds_ , yet there's a still-growing anti-vaccine movement. While the
mechanisms promised are there and work great at an individual level, that's
not always the case at a national, regional, or global scale.

And now the popular hope seems to be that the wonders of democracy can temper
the excesses that came with these partially successful solutions. It is my
fear that this hope is also irrationally optimistic, and that regulation will
lead to politicians and bureaucrats deciding what is true at scale for their
own benefit.

