
Ask HN: What Are Employee Unions? - chirau
This sounds dumb.<p>I have worked in tech all my life and I have never had to deal with unions. I have tried reading up on them but never really understood.<p>What the hell are they? What is their benefit to an employer? Why and how much do I have to pay them? Why does tech not have them? Does tech need them?
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notkaiho
"What is their benefit to an employer?"

You, as a worker, are worried about a union's benefit to your employer rather
than to yourself?

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antihero
The point of unions is that unlike in tech, where workers are in high demand
and paid a silly amount and get company swag and ball pits or whatever so feel
happy enough, in most industries and areas people are treated and paid as
poorly as companies can get away with because they are expendable commoditised
labour.

Unions are historically a way of fighting for more rights (e.g. better wages,
sick pay) for workers by collective organisation (i.e. pay us enough so we can
eat, or we will all down tools and stop your factory doing anything).

The arguments against unions are that they are too powerful and mean people
who are poor at their job cannot be fired, but I would argue that they are
very much still necessary because the nature of capitalism and employment
hasn't change particularly much, and without them companies would absolutely
start taking the piss as much as they possibly can because it is their
function to extract capital from workers' labour as efficiently as possible.

I would suggest that perhaps tech workers could join unions en-mass to fight
for the rights of less privileged workers - ie if the cleaner can't eat or pay
rent, you don't get your PRs merged, but I think that would take a level of
altruism that is far beyond most people in this sector.

You have to pay union dues because they will do things like cover people's
wages during strikes, provide people legal support when they are being
unfairly dismissed, etc.

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clintonb
What research have you done so far?

