Unionizing indeed wouldn't hurt for a vast majority of workers. However, people on HN seems to generally be anti-union because, by virtue of their career position, they do not experience the instability that a lot of people suffer under. Moreover there is also this idea that unions would reduce their career/salary prospects. i.e. HN people tend to enjoy a comfy position on the labour market that makes them removed from and sometimes disdainful of the plight of a majority of workers.

When I say privilege, it is less about the value of the work itself, and more about the overall stability (and of course wealth) that CS jobs have guaranteed over the past 20 years. As you mentioned it, adversarial is a good term here. A lot of HN people have not experienced how adversarial and imbalanced the labour market really is (think people stuck in the poverty trap working retail jobs in the US for instance).

So you have a lot of people here that seem to apply the labour market logic they're accustomed to, to a social relationship setup they ultimately see as a market -- which is a bad thing in my opinion.

Hoping this clarifies my point.