Mass layoffs, AI anxiety, and corporate surveillance have heightened interest in unions among IT professionals. Organizers who've been through it explain how to get started — and what to expect.
I’ve worked in a vast range of tech sectors over the years, with people being laid off and companies shutting down. I cannot think of a single time in 25 years where someone was let go for a reason that a union could have prevented. The whole “righting the ship” concept is what took nearly all of the jobs. Poor planning by management, failures in the industry and global economics were the causes and for that reason all those workers had negative ROI.
I like the idea of a union. Especially in an industry where businesses are lowering the requirements for entry (i.e. bootcamps replacing degrees). The problem is that tech can be fly by night. Especially when it is a purely software based solution. The money and time investments to start up and maintain aren’t comparable to those of manual labor. Building a factory puts a company in far more of a bind than renting some cubical space. Meeting OSHA standards, logistics, permits, etc. All things that force companies to the negociation table. When your company is software and you outsource hardware to a product mill in China it is way easier to fire a ton of people because the projections look bad.
Thanks for sharing your experiences. I think you touch on some realities that are often ignored. As far as I am concerned unions are only effective in redundancy situations in so far as they are able to keep the company honest with regards to their legal obligations.
Agreed. But there are essentially preasure points in manual labor that compell contracts to be written pro-union and to follow contractual rules. I don’t see that happening in the development side of tech. The only fear these companies have is that in a walkout they would lose money for a very short time. Tech is already a high turnover sector. Most companies use turnover to reduce costs.
The companies can also uproot themselves much easier and with everyone working remotely and the economy sucking, what tech company couldn’t have you replaced in 48hrs?
The only reason many of these companies even allow unions is for PR. Either to sound good or fear of backlash. Today people get angry but then the next story comes on the news and we all move on.
Again I’m pro-union in many cases. I just don’t see the forces that would make this work for the vast majority of tech companies.
I’ve worked in a vast range of tech sectors over the years, with people being laid off and companies shutting down. I cannot think of a single time in 25 years where someone was let go for a reason that a union could have prevented. The whole “righting the ship” concept is what took nearly all of the jobs. Poor planning by management, failures in the industry and global economics were the causes and for that reason all those workers had negative ROI.
I like the idea of a union. Especially in an industry where businesses are lowering the requirements for entry (i.e. bootcamps replacing degrees). The problem is that tech can be fly by night. Especially when it is a purely software based solution. The money and time investments to start up and maintain aren’t comparable to those of manual labor. Building a factory puts a company in far more of a bind than renting some cubical space. Meeting OSHA standards, logistics, permits, etc. All things that force companies to the negociation table. When your company is software and you outsource hardware to a product mill in China it is way easier to fire a ton of people because the projections look bad.
Thanks for sharing your experiences. I think you touch on some realities that are often ignored. As far as I am concerned unions are only effective in redundancy situations in so far as they are able to keep the company honest with regards to their legal obligations.
Agreed. But there are essentially preasure points in manual labor that compell contracts to be written pro-union and to follow contractual rules. I don’t see that happening in the development side of tech. The only fear these companies have is that in a walkout they would lose money for a very short time. Tech is already a high turnover sector. Most companies use turnover to reduce costs.
The companies can also uproot themselves much easier and with everyone working remotely and the economy sucking, what tech company couldn’t have you replaced in 48hrs?
The only reason many of these companies even allow unions is for PR. Either to sound good or fear of backlash. Today people get angry but then the next story comes on the news and we all move on.
Again I’m pro-union in many cases. I just don’t see the forces that would make this work for the vast majority of tech companies.