One should definitely be thankful for the blessings and privileges one gets, but painting it in those terms overlooks that tech workers still have a lot of grievances. Maybe they're not as important as ones experienced by workers in other industries, but they're still valid. After all, we see articles on burnout and psychological stresses on HN every week.
> If management is not trying to fleece workers, why add the process of a union?
In addition to the general improving labor conditions issues that get brought up, I think unions could be interesting experiment in tech. The tech industry portrays itself as cutting-edge, progressive (not necessarily politically, but as a cultural outlook), empowering. Yet I've definitely seen situations where there was just constant alienation between employees and management over the latter's business decisions and product prioritizations. In those cases, what leverage can workers hold over management, besides just leave?
And I know for a fact that there will be discrimination on grounds of age, sex, race and disability based on experience in the uk tech industry.
There's also the issue of representation at grievance and discipline hearings.
If you include IT workers and programmers in certain non-technology companies, I think their position could be improved by unionization.
If you include engineers working for technology companies, unionization is less needed. This group has good working conditions on the whole. Personally when I have been frustrated with corporate work-life, it is usually for reasons that unionization would make worse (office politics, byzantine procedures, unproductive coworkers).
Using the second, narrower definition above, tech workers are paid well and we get to sit in comfortable chairs in air-conditioned offices all day long. I mean, if you work for a startup company it will probably lose money and yet you are paid, sometimes handsomely. It's not as if management is exploiting you if you keep getting paid while the startup is steadily going bankrupt.
Maybe I've just been lucky, but I have felt fairly treated by management. If management is not trying to fleece workers, why add the process of a union?