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.
A union is a collection of workers who negotiate together against their employer using the leverage of strikes and other work stoppages. They are democratically controlled with regular elections for union leadership and votes for major actions like strikes. This means that the union can decide for itself what things it wants to extract from an employer. Through democratic control you will have some influence on its priorities. Unions typically extract a small portion of the pay of its members so that it can fund operations.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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. FAANG colluded to fix salaries in the valley for years, and they just sighed and paid their $3000 rent to live with 3 roommates.
I'd add shouldn't be saved. There were far too many programmers before AI, 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.
The reason AI is failing is because it's replacing programmers that were totally superfluous and bringing in zero marginal revenue. Laying off your programmers and not replacing them with AI is going to be the new black.
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 actual discussion of economics. The suburban child of immigrants upper-middle class Liberal Arts majors on the left are its albatross. Please stop saying Gramsci.
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.
There was an opportunity to organize and exploit market power back in 2017-2018, when there was a frenzy of recruiting and growth in the industry. The field was also much more ideologically coherent, in the wake of the first Trump election, than it is today. But nothing came of it. It's less clear that any similar opportunity exists today, or why it would come together now when it didn't under more favorable circumstances then.
Unions sound great in theory, but they aren't working all that well in practice for high-paying fields that require specialized knowledge. It negates the main advantage of that: being able to move between jobs without losing the salary, because employers are paying _you_ for your skills.
Unions also are terrible because they often artificially strangle the supply. For example, you can't become a licensed electrician without completing an apprenticeship, and unions control the number of apprenticeships. With all the corruption associated with that.
Here's a question I have for all the predictable "I don't need a union" SWEs out there: if unions were so bad, why do companies literally spend millions and break the law to make sure they don't happen?
To borrow a George RR Martin'ism, there are a lot of children of summer of this space that have only experienced the 2010s, which were an unprecedented boom in tech hiring. Even now in permanent layoff culture they've been anchored to the 2010s as being "normal" and this is "abnormal". You are incorrect. What's going on now is normal and companies are aggressively working to claw back the compensation gains of the last 1-2 decades. A few key AI people are making insane money but I assure you that this is temporary too.
You do not have negotiating power with a trillion dollar company. If you withhold they labor, it's no big deal. If they withhold your paycheck, you and your family are at risk of homelessness, bankruptcy and death. These are not equal positions.
The very idea that unions will reduce your compensation is itself propaganda created by decades of McKinsey "research", billionaire-backed think tanks and money in politics as well as a healthy dose of the Red Scare. Many of the benefits you take for granted like weekends, PTO and sick pay only exist because people died for those benefits. Also, look at any industry and union employees get paid more than non-union employees. The Big Three automakers pay more than Tesla does, for example.
Permanent layoff culture exists to disrupt your life, reduce your compensation and make you do more unpaid work. Unions would prevent that.
Lastly, I have to note, it's pretty interesting that this submission got killed on HN manually. 2 hours, 60 votes and that would be on the front page. I went through the top 500+ submissions and couldn't find it. It's still on new but nowhere on the main feed. Interesting. That in itself is evidence that VCs don't want unions.
the problem with unions is that they tend to enjoy legal protections not afforded to anyone else. as such they will distort the marketplace. as is often the case with such carve-outs those who can get in early tend to benefit at the expense of everyone else.
it was a mistake to entrench unions because now you will never get rid of them, but it's not surprising as the alternative would have been aggressive anti-trust action and the corporate powers would much rather deal with unions (whose incentives they can model just as well as their own).
note that the incentives of the unions are the incentives of the union organizers which much like in democracy are not aligned with the collective they purport to represent.
I'm involved in a new workers cooperative, and I've been thinking about how organizational structures relate to the workplace. Cooperatives are fantastic, where they exist. In the tech world, two prominent examples are Igalia and Bocoup. (I worked on SpiderMonkey at Igalia, and collaborated with Bocoup on test262 tests.) Both are highly specialized consultancies, and both are internally democratic. To get some idea of what it's like to work at a coop, I recommend the 2023 FOSSY talk "Inside Igalia: Scaling a Co-Op Beyond 100 Members": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=du7fC8VCbXg
Workers coops have structural limitations, though: with some exceptions, they're new entrants to the market and have limited access to capital. Unions interact with existing businesses, which I think is why they're so much more controversial than coops, and they can bring some of the benefits of workplace democracy to a much larger group of people than coops presently can.
If unions are so great, just make them voluntary and give workers a choice. For some reason Union advocates always want them to be mandatory, because if workers are not forced to join them, most wont.
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[ 2.3 ms ] story [ 22.8 ms ] threadDon'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.
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.
The union would only serve to make sure that transition never took place.
No thanks, I'll take my seven figure options please.
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.
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.
What tech workers need, if they need anything, is a professional organization like lawyers, doctors, and architects have.
Imagine that - socialists complaining that workers get paid livable wages.
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. FAANG colluded to fix salaries in the valley for years, and they just sighed and paid their $3000 rent to live with 3 roommates.
I'd add shouldn't be saved. There were far too many programmers before AI, 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.
The reason AI is failing is because it's replacing programmers that were totally superfluous and bringing in zero marginal revenue. Laying off your programmers and not replacing them with AI is going to be the new black.
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 actual discussion of economics. The suburban child of immigrants upper-middle class Liberal Arts majors on the left are its albatross. Please stop saying Gramsci.
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.
[1] https://animationguild.org/
[2] https://data.collectiveaction.tech/unions
Unions also are terrible because they often artificially strangle the supply. For example, you can't become a licensed electrician without completing an apprenticeship, and unions control the number of apprenticeships. With all the corruption associated with that.
To borrow a George RR Martin'ism, there are a lot of children of summer of this space that have only experienced the 2010s, which were an unprecedented boom in tech hiring. Even now in permanent layoff culture they've been anchored to the 2010s as being "normal" and this is "abnormal". You are incorrect. What's going on now is normal and companies are aggressively working to claw back the compensation gains of the last 1-2 decades. A few key AI people are making insane money but I assure you that this is temporary too.
You do not have negotiating power with a trillion dollar company. If you withhold they labor, it's no big deal. If they withhold your paycheck, you and your family are at risk of homelessness, bankruptcy and death. These are not equal positions.
The very idea that unions will reduce your compensation is itself propaganda created by decades of McKinsey "research", billionaire-backed think tanks and money in politics as well as a healthy dose of the Red Scare. Many of the benefits you take for granted like weekends, PTO and sick pay only exist because people died for those benefits. Also, look at any industry and union employees get paid more than non-union employees. The Big Three automakers pay more than Tesla does, for example.
Permanent layoff culture exists to disrupt your life, reduce your compensation and make you do more unpaid work. Unions would prevent that.
Lastly, I have to note, it's pretty interesting that this submission got killed on HN manually. 2 hours, 60 votes and that would be on the front page. I went through the top 500+ submissions and couldn't find it. It's still on new but nowhere on the main feed. Interesting. That in itself is evidence that VCs don't want unions.
it was a mistake to entrench unions because now you will never get rid of them, but it's not surprising as the alternative would have been aggressive anti-trust action and the corporate powers would much rather deal with unions (whose incentives they can model just as well as their own).
note that the incentives of the unions are the incentives of the union organizers which much like in democracy are not aligned with the collective they purport to represent.
Workers coops have structural limitations, though: with some exceptions, they're new entrants to the market and have limited access to capital. Unions interact with existing businesses, which I think is why they're so much more controversial than coops, and they can bring some of the benefits of workplace democracy to a much larger group of people than coops presently can.
Bad unions cannot. All unions are not the same.
Doctors have a super powerful lobby and union (not sullied with the plebian name "union") and lo! Are super wealthy.
They have mandatory laws restricting competition and licensing requirements, etc.
If tech workers had a lobby like the AMA and doctors, they too would be super rich.
Golf, anyone?