> There's a reason companies like Google suppress initiatives to form unions, and build strong zeitgeists within their employee base that unionization is bad. If unionization is so bad why do companies spend so much money breaking it up?

If something was bad, why would you take the existence of opposition to it as evidence of it being good?

Suppose unionization was bad for both employers and employees. You would certainly expect employers to oppose that. Even if it was totally neutral for employers and bad for employees, they would oppose unionization at their own company because it would make it more difficult for them to attract and retain quality employees.

If unionization were bad for employees, I'd expect the employers to be able to make that case persuasively. If they don't, I assume there's not much of a case to be made.

Isn't that what they're doing, which is why the prevalence of private sector unions in the US has been on the decline?

The union leadership, of course, describes the employers making their case as "union busting" and "anti-union propaganda".

By what mechanism will salaries fall? And thus by what mechanism will SWE unions keep salaries high, but gates open?

Salaries would fall due to increased supply. A union would keep salaries high by not keeping the gates open (if it were modeled on the film industry unions).

> A union would keep salaries high by not keeping the gates open

That’s the same argument people use against immigration.

I realize HN is a diverse place and not everybody has the same opinion on these matters, but I find it interesting that people here generally support labor protectionism when it applies to high-income earners like software engineers, but they don’t support closing the borders in order to increase the wages of low-income earners.

USA-centric (but not in the south): I'm pretty open to most immigration. The "close our borders" discussion tends to lump in skilled-worker programs; I think those are usually more amenable to most than general immigration. Regardless, my country was built on immigration and I think it'd be foolish to lose sight of that.

That's because everyone is a liberal until their job or salary is on the line.

This is what I'd consider the "traditional" answer to the function of a union. I think it makes plenty of sense.

The parent comment seemed to me to suggest that a union would both keep the door open and the price high, and I don't see any clear way a union would do that.

Additionally, the low hanging fruit for automation is going to diminish. We'll always have things to automate, but in general those things will decrease in value.

Salaries are already well below what they used to be, and are continuing to fall

Through actions against specific employers and minimum standards. If unions can have some control over wages, then the gate becomes irrelevant

I think this isn’t true, at least for SWEs at companies like Google. Do you have any evidence for this position? Or any example evidence of what salaries used to be and what they are now?

I only have my personal experience contrasted older swes. In the nyc area swes start at around 80k a year entry level, whereas a few years ago swes started at 120k+ entry level

Maybe google is different, but industry wide wages are falling