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Ask HN: What can software engineers learn from pro athlete unions?

2 points by jollofricepeas ↗ HN
The National Basketball Players Association has negotiated 51% of the NBA’s revenues are shared with the players.

While Major League Baseball has spent as much as 54% of revenue while growing in profitability.

In each of these cases, you have billionaire owners willing to pay their employees more equitably and fairly due to collective bargaining.

If software engineers and similar workers were to unionize could they not accomplish the same and obtain even concessions for better interviewing and coding standards (ie. privacy, security, less dark patterns) within the US tech industry?

SOURCES:

- https://www.forbes.com/sites/maurybrown/2019/01/11/economic-data-shows-mlb-spent-less-on-player-salaries-compared-to-revenues-in-2018/

- https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/NBA_Collective_Bargaining_Agreement

5 comments

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Bostonian
Even without unions the pay in MLB and NBA would be high because owners compete to get the players that can win games. The ability to sell one's labor to the highest bidder is what a worker needs to be compensated fairly.

Unionized or not, tech workers will do well when their companies are profitable, and they will pay cuts or pink slips when their companies are unprofitable and investors get less patient, as they are now.

scarface74
Absolutely nothing. Every sports league is a monopsony that is legally allowed to collude and have an exemption against anti trust laws.
duped
Actually only baseball has an exemption, it's a weird sports trivia thing but the precedent has a few SCOTUS cases worth looking at (Federal Baseball v National Leaguie, Toolson v Yankees, US v International Boxing, and Radovich v NFL)
scarface74
Interesting, how do the other sports leagues get away with “illegal” collusion?

Yes, I understand why it has to be that way to make the league interesting and competitive.

Blackstrat
Software developers unionizing is one of the worst ideas in history. The best software developers are highly motivated and competitive. Unionization tends to minimize exceptional performance and certainly disincentivizes. Generally, I would argue that software developers who are in favor of unionization are not the strongest performers. In my 35+ years of management, I’ve never met a really strong developer that wanted to be part of a union. And I’ve worked for several very large companies. If “modern” software developers have succumbed to collective thinking, I’m glad to be retired. The world doesn’t need another post office.