I recommend unionizing (a federally protected activity) to enable negotiating for benefits (including remote work) collectively. This presidential administration is already gunning for Big Tech, strike while the iron is hot (for more robust worker rights).
You can be well compensated and still demand a seat at the corporate table as a stakeholder in a business.
I don’t need a union. I tell my employer “either I work remotely or I am gone to one of the ten job solicitations I get a week”. Tech workers have enormous individual leverage and there are so many job opportunities out there — the power is already in your hands. Be a part of the market change by putting your money where your mouth is and moving to more adaptive companies if your company fails to adapt.
That doesn’t fix the employer abuse or poor treatment, it just makes it someone else’s problem, ruining the next human who comes along. Lets prevent the ruining or suffering of our fellow humans.
The suffering can persist longer than it takes for the market to reach equilibrium and/or improve. Market forces alone are insufficient, as capitalism in general has demonstrated time and time again.
unions are necessary when there is a power imbalance between workers and corporations. There is currently not a power imbalance between tech workers and corporations so unions are not necessary for tech workers. For other professions where workers have a low amount of power I believe that unions "are good", but for tech I think it is unnecessary. If you are a competent tech worker you have the choice of 100's of potential places to work.
Please don't post like this - it breaks the site guideline against name-calling (which applies also to arguments) and generally goes against the desired culture of the site, which is curious conversation.
Of course you can still have your views; you just need to post about them in the key of curiosity. That includes, btw, respect for the opposite point of view, since curiosity is somewhere short of certainty.
While I emphasize with your feeling on unions, having seen first hand how they operate, your tact is not convincing anyone and is just virtue signaling.
The thing that I never see addressed with unions is what they are and what they do. The easiest way to look at unions is thus:
Unions exist for the explicit purpose of enriching their members(not necessarily all equally), at the expense of all others.
I have two issues with unions:
1. They have been given this deity status as an unassailable good thing.
2. Federal Union laws that force employers to fire the employees they hired to work during the strike, even if they can be reasonably certain that union employees that used violence against property and person during the strike are the ones they have to bring back.
Want to bargain as a group? Sure, more power to you. But either side should have the option of walking away and severing all ties. The union can do this, the employer is held hostage by federal labor law.
> even if they can be reasonably certain that union employees that used violence against property and person during the strike
These things are crimes, so I don't see how they have to hire back someone who is in prison. Or do you mean "people who I think did these things but cannot proof"?
Unions are a counter balance to private companies. They have found demand for labour, and form a group to gain a local monopoly of labour, and use that to gain influence. It is capitalism applied to labour and to me seems poetically perfect opposite force to private companies.
You can be well compensated and still demand a seat at the corporate table as a stakeholder in a business.