This is too dismissive. The fact is that unions are politically engaged. Being concerned about lobbying and political advocacy isn't silly.
If you were an employee for/against software patents, how would you feel if the union actively campaigned and donated in the opposite direction? Even worse, what if the union tended to support candidates on the opposite side of issues you cared more about, like public schools, gay rights, or abortion?
Meanwhile, as pointed out by sibling comments: most large tech employers already overtly and vigorously "lobby" in the opposite direction.
Besides, all the replies here are ignoring one of the major points... that lobbying as a when can be detrimental. Software patent policy isn't on the ballot and is maybe the 30th most important issue for voters, so it isn't all that relevant when picking a candidate to support. Gun issues, immigration, abortion, health care, and other issues are way more important to most. Donating based on right to repair ignoring the other issues is very atypical.
looser IPR rules more favorable to rank-and-file developers seems like such a basic, shared concern that it's likely to be a plank of any organized labor in software development.
For SV specifically, I have a hard time seeing this as a major issue let alone an organizing one - mostly on the basis of personal impressions but also historically - there would be no SV at all if this was some serious impediment at a time when patents mattered a lot more than current software patents do. Why do you think it's such a big deal? It does pop up a lot on forums but lots of things do and more often than not, it's people being surprised and shocked (not entirely unreasonably) at the first AoI they get when they start working around here. But in practice, these (among halfway decent actors) are almost never used in a coercive or draconian fashion.
And if your employer lobbied in the opposite direction? For example pro software patents, pro anti-circumvention laws, anti labor protections? Is it better if the only lobbying is from corporate?
Furthermore, there isn't anything that's preventing those employees from voicing their opinions without a union. The story linked in the OP is exactly that. Unless tech companies are firing thier employers for their political views, employees can make their views known regardless of union status. While we have seen a few instances of that, most were views that I doubt the average pro software developer union person wants to see defended (then again a lot of people proposing unionizing developers want to limit H1Bs so you never know).
Contrast this with people who are against what the union is doing. The only way to avoid this is to leave the union. In some states (including California) this may mean leaving the entire field of work. Right to work states guarantee the ability to work without union membership, but many (most?) tech jobs are not in those States.
Being able to quit a job over a moral objection is a painted as a luxury to most employees (whether it actually is a luxury or not... I think is less relevant than all the media we're fed reinforcing the fact that having a job is a privilege we're lucky to be allowed)
Thus to depict union membership as protecting workers' ability to avoid taking part in the endorsement of views is nonsensical. It is strictly harder to quit a union than to quit one's job. Because the latter not only involves quitting one's job, but also finding new employment in a different field.
(Did you mean "former"?)
I think you're being more than a little hyperbolic. Unions can't force employers to not hire you if you're not a member (in fact most employers probably would prefer non-union employees because the employees have less negotiating strength).
Not to mention that historically unions have been the catalyst for workers rights legislation (like the 5-day work week, and 9-5 hours, overtime pay, and so on). So even if you aren't a member there are obvious benefits to employees who aren't members of a union (in the long run).
This is not the case. At least, it is allowed in States that have not passed legislation to that effect. Many (usually liberal) States have not done so, as it would weaken the power of unions.
And do you know why it is so? The popular adage is "gun lobby throws money at representatives", but it's actually not true.
The reason why gun control doesn't get traction despite popular support is because those polls that measure support or opposition don't measure the dedication of people expressing it. The majority, when asked about gun control, support it, yes - but most don't feel particularly strong about it, and extremely few consider it a make-or-break single issue. So when it comes to voting, politicians know that they can get those people's votes even if they don't go for gun control, riding on other issues.
OTOH, NRA (and other gun rights orgs) have a very effective resource, and that isn't money - it's membership. Specifically, it's the subset of its members that is laser focused on gun legislation, and the majority of whom consider it their single most important issue. Because of that, they're likely to turn out in the primaries, and vote based solely on that one thing, ignoring everything else. Furthermore, NRA (or rather NRA-PVF specifically) facilitates it by compiling dossiers on various candidates in all races across the country, and publishing them together with voting guides. So what this all means is that any Republican who openly supports gun control will find it hard to get through the primary. And, conversely, not supporting it is not a big downside in the general (D voters will vote against you anyway, and R voters will vote for you anyway).
This is changing lately with the rise of left-wing, ideologically motivated groups that target primaries in a similar way, like Indivisibles, which means that Dems these days are a bit more likely to pick it up. But it's still a litmus test for Republicans, and for as long as that remains the case, you're not going to see 70% popular support translate to 70% legislature votes.
By the way, we had a very good demonstration of this recently. Remember the whole bump stock kerfuffle? When ATF announced that it's reviewing its categorization of them, there was a public comment period. Here's how it went:
"Of the more than 17,000 public comments received so far by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF), a review by Reuters of 4,200 turned up only 10 favoring the bump stock ban. Almost all the rest criticized the proposal as heavy-handed, unnecessary or unconstitutional."
Funnier still, most comments expressing support for the ban were form letters, while most comments expressing opposition were not. This despite the fact that over 80% of the population support the ban, according to the polls - just not enough to bother leaving a public comment on the Internet expressing that opinion, much less prioritize it in their voting choices.
Same deal with unions in tech. Say you're in favor of immigration for high skilled workers. Most unions are against immigration when it has the potential to increase the supply of labor in their field (because increased supply = lower costs of labor).
There are certainly unions with bad politics. The ideal is a union that is embedded as part of a broader pro-worker movement that supports migrants, women, other minorities, the unemployed, etc.
In Australia, high schools are ranked based on final exam scores and that's something teachers already hate. But to tie it to pay would lead to an even larger conflict of interest and attempts to cheat the performance indicators. When I was graduating high school, I noticed that all of our raw marks were reduced right before our final exams (they were reduced because the metric takes into account whether the school was "harder" on students than the national exam or "easier" on them, and rewarded "harder" schools).
If this was just done to change a ranking, imagine what would happen if teacher's pay was linked to performance. Hell, what about rural or "bad neighbourhood" areas? Should we always and forever doom them to have bad teachers because all the good ones go somewhere with better pay? This is already happening (because working for a higher-ranked school is better for your career) and is pretty bad -- having performance-based pay would be a disaster.
I think that's a good point -- unions are not perfect and may support the interests of their members over the interests of other workers or society at large. However, in my view they are far preferable to any corporate board of directors, which represents only the interests of the owners of the company. Politics is struggle, it isn't just opting out of things you don't like, or else you'll end up a hermit. it's organizing for representation and power, and unions are one example of that kind of organization. An imperfect one, yes, but far preferable in my view to none at all
The corporations you work for the the exact same thing (lobby for things they want) and it's rarely for your own benefit. The difference between a union and a corporation is that unions are democratic organizations. Good luck voting your boss out of their job. All you can do now is quit and find a new job, which for a lot of workers isn't easy to do.
This is the argument used in the recent Janus ruling of the SCOTUS. It's part of the last 40 years of anti-union propaganda shoved into our faces by corporations.
I already have quite enough entities "democratically" deciding how to represent me or spend my money in ways I oppose, and I don't want another. Do not presume to speak for me or count me among a number of "supporters" of any cause without my explicit consent. The right way to handle any kind of lobbying is "we're thinking of supporting this cause, here's an easy link if you'd like to support that cause, and we'll only speak for those who agree"; that would still allow a union to facilitate collective action without presuming to speak for everyone.
There's a huge difference between (for instance) "let's collectively demand better working conditions, better benefits, and equitable treatment" and "let's lobby the government to make it illegal to work on software without being a union member". I don't care if 53% of a union favors the latter or not. Unions can and do engage in regulatory capture.
Like any concentration of power, unions can be used for good or for ill. Propaganda would have you believe they're always bad, and pro-union folks would have you believe they're always good.
Both can be true:
- A union lobbies better for me than my employer.
- No lobbying represents my views better than either employer or union lobbying.
A union lobbies better for me than my employer.
Those interests may or may not coincide with yours.
Because you may not perfectly agree with union lobbying, it's better to leave corporate lobbying unopposed, which will almost certainly leave you (and the entire working class) worse off?
But I do agree that there is no way companies would chose to refrain from lobbying if the option was available.
This also has a number of other benefits to democracy, notably that social science has shown that our allegiance is to those who we are in closest proximity daily with (i.e. representatives might actually represent their constituents instead of the political class) and it disincentivizes gerrymandering (if you're gonna shove all the black people in one district, you're gonna be living with them).
There are concerns with logistics and security when it comes to electronically submitted votes for elections (i.e. e-voting) but this sort of a solution side steps any concerns like that, heck it could be voting by show of hands over a video chat.
I do disagree with the gerrymandering portion though, I think the US really needs to adopt a proportional representation system (I'm partial to MMP) which would just make any attempt at gerrymandering irrelevant, sure you can win a particular seat if you gerrymander, but the amount you can effect overall representation would be quite minimal.
While this is not true for all Europe, excessive "collective" (quotes intended) bargaining in my country has ensured indeed a sort of equality... an equality where everyone is put at the bottom with regards to wages. That's because everything is decided at national level (there are contracts for workers, teachers, engineers...) with close to zero local flexibility. New professions are kind of shoehorned into previous contract types (heck, I'm a researcher, and my contract applies to the "retail industry").
Major national unions (which have mostly retirees in their ranks) prefer it like this because they can have political power. That's why they are vehemently opposing any kind of local negotiation between employees and local unions, because that would strip them off their power.
tl;dr: Implementations differ, some might even yield worse results than before.