This made me wince; while it's not straight up wrong it's a collection of generalisations about humans jammed together that deserves a slightly more delicate unpacking. Like opening an Amazon box and finding your electronics just fall out with no foam peanuts or other protection.
It was most certainly not meant in any way to be derogatory, as I myself don't think of any of this in a negative way at all.
- Autistic
- Uneducated and naive ("real soon now," presumably said with a folksy twang)
- "Very young"
- Too cowardly or ethically naive to object to bad working conditions
Here's a more charitable possibility: Opponents may just not see the need at this point. Or they may dislike union culture.
Unionizing isn't all positive. There are costs that go beyond union dues. You're establishing what in many ways is a more exclusive culture. And you may end up stifling innovation. That shouldn't be a tool to be used indiscriminately.
Our industry does have an (on average) well compensated and younger workforce than many other, that are both passionate and entrepreneurial.
Not being a native speaker I'm probably not sure which 'twang' I would sound like, but over the years I have met orders of magnitude more people in our line of work that had a side project that they were going to turn into a real business in the future, and that is a great thing, but sadly very few ever did.
The autism spectrum reference isn't at all meant derogatory, but has been observed and documented and also seems intuitively not entirely unreasonable in an industry were we have entire divisions that are expected to be passionate about manipulating abstractions in a meticulously precise symbol system for most of their waking hours.
To me it is normal that people that do not find themselves in a precarious position in terms of the the bottom rungs of Marlow's hierarchy of needs, and on top of that in a position that they see as transitory, will feel less compelled to organize.
I'm not saying unionization is some nirvana, nor am I saying it is to be demonized. I don't see why 'stifling innovation' is dragged in as countries with more worker rights, often the result of collective bargaining, do not seem less innovative. And as observed before, collective bargaining for companies do not seem to be vilified by those same people.
It's quite a popular strawman, unfortunately. Tech workers are almost universally despised in leftist circles.
(disclaimer: I work in tech, hold left-leaning views and I actually believe some form of unionization in tech would be beneficial)
- The typical 'pains' felt in the lopsided power relation between employer and employee were and often still are cushioned by the adequate compensation in a market where the sought after skills were in short supply
- Tech attracts an atypical more autism spectrum biased employee pool. This correlates with meritocratic believes.
- Tech culture is one that has always idolized 'passion', so objecting to bad working conditions and habits was not just seen as rocking the boat, but a character flaw of those that lacked passion.
- Tech workers very often see their employee status as temporary, just putting some bread on the table while they will create their own SaaS business 'real soon now' and be on the other side of the relation
- Tech has a habit of inducing very young workers, and churning through them. This is no just HR strategy but group enforced by incorporating youth (and single/ non-family) oriented spaces symbolically in the workplace (Foosball tables, slides ...)
Note that on the Employer side of the spectrum tech companies have no qualms about joining their collective bargaining and lobbying associations