Management has the right at a workplace to make any decisions, whether someone in non-management sees fit. Can't people who are frustrated with the company just go pursue a position elsewhere?
"People didn’t even want that much more time off, or that much more time not on call. They just wanted to know where they stood. They didn’t want to have to engage in highly personalized bargaining all the time. It wasn’t that there were rules that favored management — there were simply no rules, and this ambiguity worked in management’s favor."
https://www.jacobinmag.com/2018/04/lanetix-tech-workers-unio...
In the uk its relatively well paid but much less than say a train driver is the average dev in London earns less than a train driver gets for a four day week an they have over time and a DB pension.
What?
There is no constitutional right for management to make decisions. Management are people with certain forms of influence over the company; workers are other people with other forms of influence over the company.
The only way in which there's a "right" is "might makes right" - that management, when they want to make a decision, can force that decision to happen, and workers can't. The point of a union is to change this calculus. If the workers say, do what we want or we'll leave, there's no question of whether they have the "right" to say that. They have the power. The question is whether it's socially acceptable for workers to say they have that power.
The relationship between a company's stockholders and a company's employees is part competitive and part collaborative. Ignore either at your own peril.
I see your point but at the same time this can create an adversarial dynamic between managers and junior employees, which is toxic even if junior employees get what they want.
>Management certainly exercises every bit of power that they are able to.
I'm a manager and my proudest moments have been those of restraint, not force. Regardless of whether or not unions can and should be formed, organizations with employees feeling compelled to unionize should be hiring better managers.
This is a fantastic observation - and I believe it holds true. I've been in some very demanding technology roles, long hours, with competitive peers. A great leader is worth much more than some Union would have been (anecdotally).
This isn't true. Management only exercises every bit of power once the relationship becomes hostile. There are tons of things management could do to me to make their jobs easier (e.g. standups twice a day at 8am and 4:45pm with mandatory, in-person attendance) that they don't leverage.
Unionizing when there isn't already a hostile relationship is sure a way to bring hostility into it.
It would be better to solidify these things before the industry takes a nose dive.
Historically, management (factory owners) was dragged into the streets and beaten to death (yikes) when excessive inequality was reached. This is an improvement (and hopefully management would see the benefit of treating labor as a partner, not a resource to be consumed).
Some are. You're probably imagining some Python engineer who is making $140k and can work normal hours, drink craft beer and take advantage of "unlimited time off" policies and such.
Think about operations staff who are doing mission critical work, like discovering and removing spam clusters. People like that often make an hourly wage, often are expected to pick up extra volume as a company grows, and are often the target of layoffs and wage controls because they are considered "variable cost" not "overhead".
Also think about people doing traditionally woman's jobs, like customer support or office support. These people make or break customer relationships, make or break team dynamics, or set the bar for content quality. But senior people on those teams often make less than junior engineers right out of school, because companies can exploit the popular idea that these kinds of workers are just less important.
Even coders, especially in production-based industries like video games or special effects, can work under semi-abusive conditions. Many of these firms dramatically staff up and down cyclically which gives employees little bargaining power.
So it comes off as just the usual lefty political signalling, not the start of a real movement.
Furthermore, articles published on this topic indicate that their motivations included well-established and reasonable on-call hours, slightly more vacation days, and more collaborative decision making with management. All of those are real, tangible benefits that most of us would value and enjoy.
Well, why shouldn't they? It's not like the company magically has more money available when they hire a non-remote employee, is it?
Pay has nothing to do with cost of living. That's a lie told by companies as a negotiating tactic. You don't magically make the company more money by being in the bay area.
And this is why unions exist. Even if managers try to be nice, even if the company gives out buckets of benefits and pays a living wage, this is the adversarial thought that exists in business currently. Management wants to pay the lowest they can, because that helps the business the most. They want to spend the least amount possible because that's the correct business choice.
Management/Ownership and Employees are frequently at odds when it comes to their goals, and changing the math from "me vs the company" to "the union vs the company" is a huge boon for employees.