I've personally seen people put through the wringer by HR teams, and even when the HR team acknowledges they've fucked up, there's no apologies or an attempt to make things right. Unions can provide protection in these case, whether that's access to legal help, or just having a 3rd party on your side sitting in on employee dispute meetings.

I think a lot of people don't appreciate how badly they can be screwed over by a HR team, accidentally or maliciously, until they find themselves in a meeting with three members of the HR team, with no one telling them what's going on. At which point, it's already too late to save yourself. A union gives you recourse and support, something invaluable when it you're up against the entire HR team.

There are organizations that provide legal services to labour which do not require one to be a member of a union. It might be better for all if the money spent on dues was instead contributed to an organization that doesn't discriminate.

Not every union strangles their company like automotive unions. Though those unions start to look better looking at nonunion companies like Tesla which somehow manages to pay their workers less, in one of the most expensive areas in the world, and maintaining an accident rate that would shut a union shop down.

Also it makes sense that Google would fight unions. Since the current implementation of unions for SV companies has been Kickstarter. And that union mostly exists to drive profit to their competitors by choosing what is allowed on Kickstarter. Something like that for Google would just end up making an easy paper trail for a prosecutor to follow for SV platform bias.

Total scam.

But setting up or carrying things things during the day had to use union people.

Maybe. Maybe not. Maybe the union electrician is there because once upon a time someone setting up a booth daisy chained a bunch of extension cords of small gauge to run lights and demos and started an electrical fire in a crowded convention hall.

This doesn't sound like an advantage for software engineers. Surely unions can't decide on someone's competency. It kind of raises a red flag about potential gatekeeping methods (e.g. the tax status where you have to join or else).

Also disallows noncompete clauses. So if your current employer says no, you can go to another. Which is how I've seen quite a few promotions. The latter of switching employers is far easier, since life changing benefits (medical/retirement) aren't tied to employers. (Considering SV workers get their "share" by switching employers every few years, that would be a nightmare scenario for big tech as well. Since it further reduces employee stickiness, if SV unions decided to offer benefits).

But yes, there are gatekeeping effects, as the union is incentivized to prevent increases in membership or decrease in collective skill. It typically works out great for those in the union (and things like the Bar or Medical Association), not so great for those kept out.

I'd much rather have 8 companies with bad interviewers and 2 with good interviewers than 10 companies with the union who block me because I made one of their evaluators personally mad at me.

This just sounds like it is ripe for corruption and nepotism.

They have that ability already without unions - much more easily because they can reduce staffing without the entire company falling over due to strikes.

and know workers have a minimum level of training

They have that ability already without unions.

Not every union strangles their company like automotive unions

By and large the only unions that remain large and powerful in the west are those organising government employees, where strangling the host is impossible because tax revenues mean it cannot die. In most other industries they did indeed strangle their host industries until they declined.

Look at this thread. People keep talking about Hollywood as an example, apparently unaware of just how much business foreign film studios have taken from it, particularly the UK, due primarily to a much less aggressively unionised workforce.

Just because the union made them do it, doesn’t mean it was a bluff or the right decision. And if those investments pan out, the stock gains are often worth substantially more to the employee than the token merit increase.

Sure, management have to turn realise they can no longer dictate what is solely in their interests, but in most companies they're probably up to the task.

Plenty of workers have forgone monies owed in order to keep their employees companies afloat. If both parties respect one another a lot can be achieved.

It's not like it's in the best interest of the workers to see the company go belly up. Or be less competitive. If the company can show that this is why they're defering merit pay there's no reason to believe that unions won't accept it and agree with them.

It gives employees leverage, and healthy competition in all aspects should just strengthen the company.

There's a real consideration of whether X% of employee compensation over N years is better than the same over M years.

So they kicked the can down the road and chose 1 until they just went bankrupt and the courts allowed contracts to be renegotiated and high cost union employees to be replaced with younger employees at a far lower compensation package.

Way easier to just have standardized union contracts, pay rates, and expectations for everyone involved and have the union provide benefits.

I remember when working in games you couldn't even write blogposts about any type of unrelated to programming thing (e.g. not even about playing guitar) and that was super frustrating. Likely those clauses weren't enforceble but still anoying.

Second, they negotiate for higher wages and benefits. Given that tech is churning out billionaire ceos, we certainly could be paid more. I have never met a dev who said "I don't want to be paid more". Yes, we make decent wages, but we still produce far more value than what we're paid for.

Thirdly, they negotiate for better working conditions. Examples from the past were things like the 8 hour workday, safety measures, etc. I suspect there's a lot of opportunity for growth here in the tech industry, through I haven't had enough coffee to come up with a list. The 8 hour workday is certainly one of them, as I've heard endless nightmares of people being forced to working extremely long hours. The lack of overtime in our industry is a big deal, and "get a new job" is a crappy answer and hard to do in practice, especially if you're being worked to death.