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Comment by gardenhedge | Hacker News Reader

I'm in a union and got a 1.5% raise, benefits have decreased and we're forced into hybrid working. I'm in a country where I can't just be fired without notice so that union doesnt do much for me there either.

I'm just pointing out that unions don't mean you get everything you want.

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That last sentence is a total strawman. Unions are not there so you get everything you want. They are there to turn individual negotiations and protection into group and collective one. So it's not just a single junior programmer fighting for their rights, but potentially all company SWEs fighting for this junior programmer rights.

If Meta faced a complete strike similar to writers' strike, their workers could achieve similar goals like writers did.

Or not - but nobody promises it, that's silly.

Yeah, so no union often turns out better for me because I ask for more.

You are always going to have a minority like this, but they are a minority. The data shows unions are better for most others. Get while the going is good or something like that. I'm sure there's room for highly paid consultants in a more organized future, with better wages and stronger labor protections for FTEs.

It's not a strawman. Union membership is thrown around here like a solution to all problems.

> I'm just pointing out that unions don't mean you get everything you want.

Sure, a crap union is a crap union. But union representation in general is more likely to result in the rights of remote workers being protected than, what, asking nicely?

> I'm in a country where I can't just be fired without notice so that union doesnt do much for me there either.

In most countries, this didn't happen out of nowhere.

Point out the underperformance of unions and the response is always yeah but they got us weekends off 100 years ago. What have you done for me lately?

Working on the 4 day workweek in the US at the moment. Progress takes time, it's impossible until it is done.

What Unions are working on this and what progress has been made?

UAW: https://www.google.com/search?q=uaw+4+day+week | https://www.npr.org/2023/09/11/1198394085/uaw-big-3-automake... | https://www.axios.com/2023/09/25/uaw-4-day-workweek

900 US school districts because they can't retain teacher talent otherwise: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/school-districts-4-day-week-tea... | https://www.ncsl.org/education/four-day-school-week-overview

That's just doing 5 days of work in 4 days..

Why are you working 5 days if productivity can either be maintained or take an acceptable reduction to go to 4 days? People work to live, not live to work.

If I had to guess I'd say UAW will get destroyed here and the end result will be more mexican factories but we will see. Seems extremely unlikely that they get the 4 day work week either way.

Union membership has been declining for decades. They’re not as effective when they don’t have the numbers to back it up.

Well of course they aren't! Unions are there as a way of leveling the power balance between the owners and workers. That unions still terrify big companies to the point of firing organizers or closing entire locations should be telling. They're not around to prevent every inconvenience, they're around to prevent abuse of the workforce.

For example, if the Games Industry (using them as an example because they're notoriously the worst work-life) unionized, a shop could tell their management "No, we will not engage in crunch for a month."

Like how a fire suppression system doesn't prevent you from burning your food, unions are there to prevent bigger issues.

That's not my experience though after doing sprints for the better part of a decade.

> I'm just pointing out that unions don't mean you get everything you want.

Maybe not, but if the companies can band together and collectively decide what is best for employers[1], then it's only fair that employees should be able to band together and collectively decide what is best for employees.

Unions are for collective negotiation; getting what you want is a nice side-effect of collective bargaining.

[1] Yeah, don't tell me that they don't collude. Actual communications between them is not required for collusion.

> it's only fair that employees should be able to band together and collectively decide what is best for employees.

I don't think anyone is suggesting that it's unfair for employees to form unions if they want. Employees who want to do that absolutely should be able to.

Not everyone wants to be in a union and employees who don't want to be should also be able to do that.

You can't be fired because, at one point in time, unions did their job well. The problem is that, nowadays, they often don't, but nobody wants to fix the state of things.

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