The vast majority of people on HN are people who need to work to eat and keep a roof over their heads, and the companies they work for take power away from them, and will force them to do things to the detriment of themselves if it's deemed in the best interests of the company.
A union is a company that represents the interests of workers in the same way that a company is an entity that represents the interests of capitalists.
Besides, many people on HN work for tech companies like Adobe, Apple, Google, Intel, Intuit, Pixar, Lucasfilm or eBay, all of which were found guilty of colluding[1] to keep engineer salary below market value.
That lawsuit didn’t require unions, though. If anything, it’s a great example of how our industry can overcome these issues without unionization.
People tend to forget that unions represent the existing employees, not aspiring hires. This can actually work to the detriment of juniors and newcomers to the industry. It can also work to the detriment of teams where it becomes intensely difficult to fire people who are legitimately underperforming. The public school unions keeping bad teachers on the payroll but keeping them idle in empty rooms is a prime example. Police unions defending bad cops is another very relevant example. If you’re an aspiring teacher or police officer with motivation to do well, why should those union employees take a spot on the job that you could otherwise occupy and do better? Switching the rules of the game to favor seniority doesn’t benefit people who rank low on the seniority ladder.
One lawsuit was a Department of Justice antitrust investigation (quickly settled) that required a bunch of lawyers, discovery, and having the conduct run up against the Sherman antitrust act. I think a tech union is very unlikely but would rather things get fixed before they get that far.
My understanding is that the related civil class action suit recouped small fractions of estimated lost wages, though there's a lot of hand-waving there and both sides are going to wave their hands differently.
I might be mistaken; this didn't affect me too much, and I most mostly just amused how incredibly afraid of Steve Jobs everyone was.
> I think a tech union is very unlikely but would rather things get fixed before they get that far.
There is no need to wait for a "tech union" to unionize tech offices. Kickstarter unionized last year under the Office and Professional Employees International Union.
A union is a company that represents the interests of workers in the same way that a company is an entity that represents the interests of capitalists.
Besides, many people on HN work for tech companies like Adobe, Apple, Google, Intel, Intuit, Pixar, Lucasfilm or eBay, all of which were found guilty of colluding[1] to keep engineer salary below market value.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-Tech_Employee_Antitrust_L...