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