Unions Can Save Tech Workers and Tech Work
jacobin.com57 points by ughitsaaron 2 hours ago
57 points by ughitsaaron 2 hours ago
As a California tech worker (where the article is focused), I have zero interest in joining a union and firmly believe that much of what has been possible as a tech employee (high paying, interesting career) is in part because we don't have unions, and instead employees own equity and get valuable skills.
Modern tech workers arguably have the best career deal in the history of humankind. I see no upside in killing the goose with the golden egg.
These topics are just so difficult to debate. They are filled with feelings and one person's perspective or anecdote, and it is difficult to drill down into what is true or what is not true.
You wrote "Modern tech workers arguably have the best career deal in the history of humankind".
How do you know?
And, for the sake of argument, let us say it is the best deal in the history of humankind, does that make it fair that the big tech companies did the following...
As a small rebuttal of sorts, consider
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-Tech_Employee_Antitrust_L...
You are making less money than what you would have been making if that illegal arrangement had not been made.
The underlying thesis for the valuation of all these AI labs is that 80% of tech workers can be replaced with automation.
Except they can’t and these AI labs know that very well, which is why their marketing push is always so overpoweringly annoying: they have to convince you because they know they are wrong and their product will not deliver what they are promising.
Yeah just wait until you get laid off
I've been laid off. It was fine because software is literally the most marketable skill in the world.
Edit: But also, this was a pre-profit VC-backed company. If those companies can't lay people off, it's not like you make good money with more job security. Either the company just has less runway (so I still lose my job, just later and with everyone else) or they adapt by hiring fewer people at lower salaries.
Within the last four years?
I was canned early last year. Looking for a new job was mostly fine. It wasn't insanely easy like 4 years ago and I had to network a bit, but there very much is still demand for qualified people.
Would suck to be in this market as an entry-level engineer, though.
Most tech workers I have met with parent commenters opinion have been laid off at various times in their career.
I think it's important to note that unions aren't very good tools to avoid layoffs. If there is a company specific hardship, the union can't simply force the company to maintain headcount all the way into bankruptcy. On the other hand if there is a secular change across the industry, the unions can't prevent that change either. Easy example is how Big 3 automakers were 100% unionized in the 1970s and have since shed about 500,0000 American jobs despite producing more automobiles than ever.
Unions tend to be good at bargaining for better pay and benefits, but the current status quo is that most tech workers already have decent pay and benefits anyway.
> most tech workers don't have bad pay or benefits anyway.
But what if they could be even better? This is an industry with 75-80% gross margins, quite unlike any other industry in history.
But despite those margins, it's also an industry with a LOT of unprofitable businesses, unlike any other industry in history. From many people's perspective, if they already earn well, why rock the boat in a high effort high risk way so that the union can negotiate an 8% raise instead of a 4% raise. I don't need the money. And the bad to worst case outcomes could give me serious irreversible buyers remorse.
It's still not clear to me whether union protection is going to be worth the decrease in job creation. There's a reason Europe has way less IT positions with worse salaries.
Unions don't help with that as can be seen with Volkswagen or much of Detroit.
Or, from an IP-driven industry perspective, the offshoring of Hollywood following the SAG and WGA strikes.
If IATSE couldn't stop VFX from being offshored, then tech unions wouldn't be able to either.
Volkswagen is perhaps the greatest counter-example. The union in Germany converted every layoff initiative in whole or in part (more often in whole) into partial retirements, backfill stops, reduced working hours, compensation freezes.
100,000 jobs were still lost and there is no one else who can absorb them.
This golden egg has a funny smell. You are exclusively focusing on high paying as interesting is found in many careers. Lots of people don't trade rights for cash. Many prefer a comfortable lifestyle that protects their families and life style, whilst allowing them to just do a fair day's work in exchange for pay. It is far better if people don't feel they need to put in endless hours or always have to please someone to avoid getting fired.
until the VC money runs out (e.g. high interest rates) and we have to grind away at some awful, large company
This is essentially a story about front-line traditional desktop support/sysadmins at a public university.
It's not going to be the same story at much higher paid shops where workers often have equity, good benefits, and the market has provided access to other jobs if you lose yours (in my experience, there are still shortages of qualified and competent engineers).
I would like a different method to deal with the pitfalls, but the politics, drama, overhead, and costs of unionization just don't interest me. I'm not interested in being at one job for life.
Being in a union isn't about being at one job for life. I'm a member of IATSE (the huge mega-union behind thousands of technical job titles/positions in the entertainment industry, such as film editors, sound mixers, etc; really it's many mini-unions acting as one.) There is really no connection to belonging to a union and being stuck in one job title, in fact the incentives are set up in the opposite direction - the greater the group of people the union represents, the more mobility (and many other benefits) its members get.
You should revist your stance on unions and start by reading up on how they work and what benefits they confer. Assuming you are not in the 1%, a union almost certianly would benefit you. It is a way of equalizing the playing field when the interests of BIG capital conflict with the quality of life and meaningful human experience of individuals.
Financial equity, benefits and opportunities at other companies in my experience are not the determining factors for tech workers. Lack of or loss of self-determination and self-governance are.
The tech workers who are unionized that I know didn't join for financial gain because there is none (except for a few who are bad at bargaining). They joined to exert control over their workplaces and help build companies they can be proud of.
My ask for these is always the same. I just want to see how this union would work, specifically.
Don't compare it to other unions or say it could be like X. Just write a few hundred words on what it would actually be like.
I agree in general, but this article claims that the unionized tech workers now have pay increases, cheaper health benefits, and layoff protections. There is also a discussion about the process. This article at least is not just "unions good" (waves hands).
That is a public-sector union. That's different. Political power matters in that space.
A useful private sector union to watch is The Animation Guild, IATSE local 639.[1] They represent traditional animators in Hollywood - Disney, Dreamworks, Marvel, etc. But they've never been able to organize a game company, despite years of trying. They have good contract terms - the contract is a floor on wages, not a ceiling, and overtime is handled well.
Here's what purports to be a complete list of "tech unions" in the US.[2] Only six have a contract with the employer. That's pathetic. The six:
- "Apple Shuttle Drivers Union". Not even Apple employees, but drivers for Compass Transportation. Teamsters.
- "Gimlet Union". Gimlet Media employees. Writers Guild of America. 83 people.
- "Glitch Union". Glitch platform defunct as of 2025. Communications Workers of America.
- "Ringer Union". Affiliated with Spotify. Writers Guild of America. 65 people.
- "Security Guards at Silicon Valley" Service Employees International Union. 3000 people.
- "United HCL Workers of Pittsburgh". Google contractor. 20th largest H1-B visa sponsor in US. "HCL America INC has filed 60,667 H1B applications and 1,294 PERM green card petitions. Avg salary: $102,175." Steelworkers Union. 60 people.
Only the last represents "tech workers", and that company is mostly non US citizens.
Anyone know of other unions which, right now, contractually represent tech workers in the US? Just not finding any real tech worker unionization.
This article is really about IT support, not "tech" workers.
What tech workers need, if they need anything, is a professional organization like lawyers, doctors, and architects have.
Was part of the frontline effort to get our colleagues into UPTE. As we move towards AI automation, we need to make sure that workers have a seat at the table when we impact our students, patients, and our research across the state.
My experience has been that most tech employees are "exempt" employees, but other than being denied overtime pay, they're mainly treated by employers as non-exempt. Exempt was meant for organizations full of professionals who are generally autonomous, which rarely is the case in tech, especially software development where the micromanagement can be extremely high. Tech workers aren't treated like doctors and lawyers. Employment law shouldn't pretend that they are.
For all of the high compensation tech workers can make in specific regions, at specific firms, how is it that they lack the leverage to demand something as basic as remote work, or as simple as not working in open offices? Consider the ubiquitous distaste for the open layout, how it creates distractions, damages flow state, that "no one" actually likes to work in a bullpen. Yet for all the grousing that software engineers do about them, they're still the prevailing industry trend. For like two decades now. In the status quo, where's the worker power to stand against that?
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The article ends with...
CONTRIBUTORS
Dan Russell is president and chief negotiator of the University Professional and Technical Employees–Communications Workers of America Local 9119.
Max Belasco is a University of California, Los Angeles School of Law business systems analyst 3 and chapter cochair of University Professional and Technical Employees Los Angeles chapter.
Aaron Petcoff is a socialist activist who lives in Brooklyn.
I'm pretty sure that everyone is aware that an article from jacobin has these biases. Perhaps it is notable because you're so frequently exposed only to billionare and corporate biases.
Nothing wrong with stating the sources up front. They are clearly pro-labour and pro-union. It helps to know where the authors stand. Would you rather the authors were buried under seven layers of shell companies?
Enough of this passive aggressive quoting. If you have something to say, man up and say it.
What’s your point? Regurgitating the article isn’t useful nor why I come to the comment section.
* [...]Could Have Saved[...]
Cannot Now Save. Unions get power when labor is at its strongest, not when labor is at its weakest. When tech labor was at its strongest, it became super-libertarian, started discussing sous vide and $300 shirts, became YIMBYs, and told the flyover states to learn to code while creating the gig economy.
I'd add shouldn't be saved. There were far too many programmers before, and everything was getting worse. They were mostly vastly overpaid, except for the extremely productive ones who contributed to society the most, who were vastly underpaid or worked on a volunteer basis. Their salaries were a function of ZIRP and quantitative easing, and their acquisition (and now their layoffs) were to juice the stock prices that were the engine of the entire thing.
Learn to dig ditches. If we used less immigrant slaves, ditch diggers might be able to start a union.
edit: I got a lifetime subscription to Jacobin when it started (because I thought we needed a glossy lefty magazine) but I really hate it and keep accepting issues out of pure spite because I know it costs them money. I don't know what makes them think they can talk about economic issues yet avoid any math or discussion of economics. The suburban immigrant middle-class Liberal Arts majors on the left are its albatross. Please stop saying Gramsci.
Unionization of the industry is long long overdue, if for no other reason than professional ethics.
A small town lawyer can fuck up paperwork badly enough that they lose their ability to practice law. A software engineer can fry the brains of hundreds of thousands of people and it's all ok so long as they managed to get a few of them to click ads.
It should have the same requirements for personal liability like other professions do.
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This is not a useful comment, please provide substance that contributes to a fruitful conversation.
For some tech workers maybe but the issue is that for much of vc backed tech work, Marxist analysis a la Jacobin et Al do not work. Marxists delineate the working class from the owning class but in my experience in these vc backed startups and large public companies that come out of them, the working class quickly becomes part of the owning class.
The union would only serve to make sure that transition never took place.
No thanks, I'll take my seven figure options please.
You might want to read some more Marxist analysis. TLDR: Eventually the real owning class decides they no longer need to pretend that the professional class is one of them.
This is the absolute last thing that tech needs. What a blow it would be, a nightmare.