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Comment by heavyset_go | Hacker News Reader

> Tech workers are in so much demand that they don't really suffer such a disparity of negotiating power

Nonsense. Adobe, Apple, Google, Intel, Intuit, Pixar, Lucasfilm and eBay all colluded with each other to keep tech worker compensation below its market rate[1].

Good luck negotiating a group health plan that an employer buys as a single employee.

> Given all that I personally think the downsides of unions in tech would be much higher than the upsides.

I would rather go with the facts, and not how you in particular feel about the issue.

The facts are that white collar employees that are union members have higher pay[2], better benefits, more time off, and report higher life satisfaction[3] compared to their non-union peers.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-Tech_Employee_Antitrust_L...

[2] https://www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/2013/04/art2full.pdf

[3] https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0160449X16643321

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They did collude. It was done in secret because it was illegal. It was fixed by the government, no unions required. Nor could one have helped. A union would not have fixed that unless it had developed some mechanism to discover the conspiracy via other means than the ones the government used.

In fact to claim a union could have avoided this situation is backwards: unions create cross-firm wage fixing agreements as part of their core policy goals.

The facts are that white collar employees that are union members have higher pay[2]

Averaged across all industries, yes: because they engage in industry-wide wage fixing. That's great if you can't command a high rate yourself, sucks if you can as you're chopped down to their level.

But we're not talking about all industries, we're talking about the tech industry. And if you compare the tech industry vs other industries, there are no unions (except this one) and there are high wages.

That wage collusion was illegal and a lawsuit was won on it. I feel like there isnt a disparity when the parties follow the law.

How would a tech union help in that case?

Stronger representation in a class action lawsuit; negative consequences for corporations in the form of sanctions, walkouts, etc.

If the union was cross-company, it could have noticed the lack of "poaching" much sooner.

Unions could also help in the world of game studios, to stop the deeply harmful practice of "crunch".

Couldn't agree more, imo game studios have all the downsides of a large software company with pretty much none of the benefits, the sooner they unionise and get treated like humans the better.

There needs to be an Industry-wide game production union, with all the developers and artists together as a single global political force. That would RADICALLY change crunch abuses.

> The facts are that white collar employees that are union members have higher pay[2], better benefits, more time off, and report higher life satisfaction[3] compared to their non-union peers.

Of course they do. Because Unions drive competitiveness down, decrease efficiency, increase costs and so on. A lot of people would be very satisfied if they didn't have to work as hard and their paycheck would be pretty effortlessly guaranteed, and competition within the industry was kept in check.

But everybody else have to pay for it . And then naive socialists who advance labor unions forget about it, and start another campaign on why can't blue collar workers afford any white collar services anymore. Why are public teachers collectively not doing great job despite second in the world spending per student. And then riot on the streets why some cops are shooting people for no good reason, after years of people reporting their abuse. (I'm not saying that unions are the only or even main reason, but they sure do contribute to the problem).

I noticed how you switched up the stats here:

Why are public teachers collectively not doing great job despite second in the world spending per student.

US government spending on education is high. However, US average teacher salary is ranked 7th in the world (Canada pays better, apparently). You're trying to attribute this spending inefficiency to teacher unions, where the problem is poor government spending (educational-industrial complex). Selling to governments is a big business; more software, more technology, more programming. Education in America has become commercial industry. That spending should probably be on teacher training programs instead.

https://naibuzz.com/10-countries-with-the-highest-teachers-s...

Is there a similar study that considers things like pension when it comes to compensation. A lot of teachers in the US have fairly amazing pensions, and a lower base salary is where that money comes from. I honestly don't know if it makes up the difference; just that the linked article didn't seem to discuss it at all (though I skimmed).

Note that "below market rate" isn't necessarily all that low. You need to look beyond that, because it can still be high enough to make housing unaffordable for most other people.

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