I used to believe that. But I saw very close how an IT union was taken over by old school, corrupt fat union guys. And they just pander to the lowest common denominator. They go against meritocracy.
I'd rather pay attention and vote with my feet.
I'd rather pay attention and vote with my feet.
there's other opportunities for organizing labor that don't include old-school unions. screen actors' guild is one example that, e.g., mandates various "newer" members get roles on films and seems to be really well regarded. a guild could serve techies as well.
read up on some of michael o church's old blog about his ideas about organized labor in tech, but be careful espousing the same views as it very well might get you into irredeemable trouble.
"worst system but best we've had" and all that - at least labor would have a fighting chance
Unions are almost invariably democratic; where seniority rules are adopted by a union (and this is far from universal), they tend to be adopted democratically,and not to replace democratic control of the union, so these are not opposed concepts.
But does the profession of acting strive to be meritocratic as much as software development? It appears that fame (which is probably correlated with how good of an actor someone is, but probably only weakly) has a much bigger effect in acting.
Not necessarily. You can have union representation and maintain a meritocracy at the same time.
But I also observe that the industry is not nearly as much of a meritocracy as we like to pretend anyway.
Nowhere is a perfect meritocracy but a union that did not actively work against meritocracy would not be working in the interest of its average member.
So does management. The difference is, you can vote shitty union reps off the island.