> The reason for this dangerous combo? You’re working your dream job.

Doesn't that make it a fair trade? Musicians generally don't make a killing either.

I think of it like this:

It's the company's job to maximize shareholder value.

It's the worker's job to maximize worker value.

It's the market's job to push profit to zero.

So the union is like a new force in the equation: they put pressure on the company to give the workers more value.

Which could actually be good for business: if treating workers results in better work product, the shareholders might not push for that (typically markets optimize for quarterly earnings). But the union can secure better conditions for the workers, which might lead to moving to a better local maxima.

I always think of unions as less a new force in the equation you described and more of a labor side equivalent of the collective organizing and action that happens on the company/shareholder side to maximize value. Instead of individual workers all trying to maximize their value in isolation with the company trying to collectively maximize value for all shareholders, unions ideally make it more of a one-to-one balance of "workers" and "shareholders".

I agree with your general thought that it could be good for business, but I'd take it a small step further and suggest a more comprehensive way to think about what's good for business as encompassing workers and shareholders equally. A situation that optimizes shareholder value at the expense of worker value is not really economically optimal even if that doesn't necessarily damage the business long term. If you can get much better conditions for workers with only a small drop in shareholder value, for example, that could be considered a net win.

> only a small drop in shareholder value, for example, that could be considered a net win.

only the shareholders can decide if this is worth a drop. And i would imagine the majority of them would not accept a small drop like that.

When shareholders reduce a company to a single metric[shareholder value] the metric becomes meaningless. At that point it doesn't matter.

I’m not sure it’s fair if the product ends up making a boat loads of money. Games are high risk but a very lucrative industry.

Just look at how successful football players were in getting a slice of the pie. I’d still consider that a dream job.

> Just look at how successful football players were in getting a slice of the pie. I’d still consider that a dream job.

In this case they are the product, and there are a lot of customers. Plenty of people working on the things that make those players valuable, building and staffing stadiums, and filming and broadcasting events worldwide, that don't get a share. Because they aren't the product.

> that don't get a share

They wouldn't have those jobs if the players or the league did not exist. That's their share. They make a lively hood off the product's operations.

I agree. Check the comment I'm replying to for more.

Could you link? I reviewed you comment history and don't know which specific reply you're talking about in this thread. Thanks!

sure but the product is puppets and the devs are arguably the puppeteers.

What do you mean?

Not that successful, assuming you're talking about American football. The players as a whole get a bit less than half of all revenue coming in despite being the ones to actually, you know, play the game.

From what I can tell, that's fundamentally because of the limited number of franchises.

The situation is a bit like cabs in NY city before Uber/Lyft - the medallion owners were the ones who were making the real money.

Well, they (and the others) should be getting even less. States or cities subsidizing stadiums isn't as beneficial as originally thought. Those making obscene amounts of money from a public resource should probably contribute more to the infrastructure required to make that money.

That sounds a lot more successful than most other industries. I don't think software engineers, or retail employees are getting half of the business' revenue. That sounds like a pro union example.

Football players aren’t replaceable. At least not at the level people are willing to pay too dollar to watch.

Yes they are. College football gets big ratings every year with replaced players.

> College football gets big ratings every year with replaced players.

We're talking about professionals. If the Chiefs could replace Patrick Mahomes and save themselves $450,000,000 without impacting their business, they would.

The same people that think they're an irreplaceable 10x engineer think athletes are replaceable cogs... imagine that.

And how many Patrick Mahomes is there in Chiefs? Dozen? Dunno amount of players per team in not-football.

Worth noting that Football is a legal cartel, explicitly excluded from antitrust law. You can't really extrapolate much from it as an example.

It's true of association football (soccer) as well, and that's much less cartel-ised. The players have successfully extracted such a high proportion of the surplus that the returns for the club owners as a group are negative.

(I'm assuming by football you mean American football)

It's not really a fair comparison. The NFL is a monopoly, so there is no way for athletes to vote with their feet. At various times in the past, in order to negotiate the NFLPA has had to decertify in order to sue the league.

The NFL is also not a good proxy, because the average career for an NFL player is 2-3 years, and it is a physically dangerous job.

The analogy works with European soccer as well though, which isn't as much of a monopoly (given that the European model isn't franchise based).

* * *

I would argue that we're overvaluing the level of danger here. All athletes risk their entire career being cut short due to injury. What the European footballing system does (by not being franchised) is allow there to be multiple levels below the "top" level which then justifies the number of children trained in the game so there are careers (of varying degrees of profitability) for many of them.

However what we are discussing is rather the levels of money at the top of such an industry and that concept applies to both sports. Where Ronaldo can earn £25m in a year at Manchester United while still having his "dream job". Football in Europe since the Bosman ruling has allowed its players to share in the wealth of the industry; one could argue that programmers in the gaming industry are not afforded that same. It remains an interesting discussion as to exactly why that is and I think the risks that workers take are not as relevant to the amount of money available in the game and scarcity of the best employees available; which results in such inflationary salaries for the very best employees.

If a product makes a boatload of money how is it fair to the business to force them to pay more. What if the game instead went over budget and flopped? Should the workers now owe money to the company? Businesses that can figure out how to make the most money with the resources available to them deserve to make that money and it's unfair to take that money from them.

Being an NFL football player means you are in like the top 0.0001% of players in a very popular sport, so it's natural that you'd have some leverage.

With the added ingredient that fans follow players for a mixture of ability and personal brand. In that sense, it shares some similarities to acting. Names act as box office draws in ways that aren't purely about acting talent.

Lucrative for a select portion of games. Like music or acting, video game is a winner-take-all marketplace (or rather, winner take most). The typical video game developer outside a well-known studio is working long hours for comparatively little pay because it's very likely the game is not going to make very many sales and there's plenty of passionate people willing to make sacrifices to work on video games.

As other commenters pointed out, it's not like playing in the NFL. It's more like being a high school football player trying to get into the NFL. Or an actor trying to get a part in a Hollywood movie. The chances of a company becoming lucrative off games is slim.

Aren't the well-known studios also pretty big and the products they make absolutely humongous in simply the man hours? So even then there isn't that much to pay per employee.

There is some outliers, but simply most games either are not popular or even if they are they also take huge amount of labour to develop.

that's not a fair trade off. plenty of other "dream jobs" like athlete, lawyer, doctor, etc. pay gangbusters if you "make it". I'd add the most musicians "don't make it" either

it also goes beyond that, working conditions for game devs are truly abysmal. low wages are just the tip of the iceberg; add it abusive managers, long working hours, etc

This is a bit like libertarian dogma (ie "the market will sought it out").

Unions are the counterbalance to the innate desire (under a capitalist organization of the economy) to exploit. The entertainment industry has stron gunions (eg SAG, WGA). NBA, MLB and NFL all have unions.

People being able to support themselves sustains such industries. Without it, you'd face a race to the bottom as people would quite literally starve themselves for their "big break". Or, more likely, non-unionized creative fields would simply come to be dominated by "nepo babies" as is the case in many artistic fields.

The American brain rot here is that everyone thinks they're the exception, they're way above average and unions will somehow just drag them down to the lowest common denominator. Such people are easily manipulated, scammed and exploited.

Another way of looking at it is that unions are just as much a part of a capitalist free market as entities that organize capital. Since labor is a thing that has market value, a bunch of folks getting together to figure out how to maximize their valuable asset seems just as reasonable as folks with monetary or other assets doing the same. Unless anyone's idea of a libertarian free market is also anti-corporation, unions seem like they'd be an equal part of the picture.

This is all true, provided that membership is voluntary and such organizations get no special legal privileges.

Corporations get special legal privileges, why not unions too?

> Corporations get special legal privileges, why not unions too?

In industries with striking penalties, e.g. rail, it’s fair for unions to have mandatory membership.

In a free market environment, neither would have them.

There can be no such thing as a real free market. It's an inherently contradictory concept because it necessarily relies on a government strong enough to impose a private property rights regime but at the same time act against its own interests.

The initial argument was about whether or not unions could be considered a part of a true free market, and whether champions of capitalism should support their existence.

Your argument is that a free market cannot exist at all, which is not exactly what the discussion is about.

The capitalist free market is something that would reasonably he understood as free markets as they exist in the real system called capitalism under which coeporations have special legal protections.

If the original commenter meant something like "ideal free market" I imagine they would use those words instead of refering specifically to capitalism's free markets.

The real system known as capitalism would collapse immediately if we did away with the special legal protections given to corporations (chief amongst them being limited liability), so I think it's a pretty fair assessment to understand these to be inherent to capitalism, even in its most libertarian possible interpretation.

They were referring to the “idea of a libertarian free market”. Such an idea would not include limited liability for corporations protected by law.

The government might enforce observing contracts agreed upon by all parties, some of which may contain limited liability for individuals or organizations. But LLC in itself would not be a legal category intended to protect corporations.

The idea that you can at all limit your liabilities by contract is an artifice that originates in the idea of the limited liability corporation. You are not contractually allowed as an individual to limit your liabilities by mutual agreement in general because a great many rights and claims cannot be alienated by contract.

The vast majority of capitalists and libertarians have no pretence of being able to get rid of the LLC. The rest have an incoherent understanding of the situation, where you could somehow do it by mutual agreement while still having inalienable rights be a thing. Legal personhood is the only way to deal with that because you can then redirect claims and rights instead of trying to alienate them.

So you have to choose two between inalienable rights and claims, not having legal personhood, and being able to limit liability by agreement.

A simple example would be an organization which caused a personal injury by negligence. You can't alienate your right to life and health, so you can't possibly make a contractual agreement to limit such liability. If you remove the possibility to limit such liability, then who in their right mind could, for example, invest or agree to work in a hospital? How about a mine?

So the question is inevitable, and it turns out that legal privileges for groups that organise capital are necessary for practical capitalism. In the real world of course no libertarian can articulate a coherent way of either completely doing away with the concept of limiting liability or a way to do so without legal personhood and without allowing people to sign away their rights, which is why serious opposition to the concept is exceedingly fringe amongst libertarians.

I have to admit I don’t follow the full extent of your argument, not necessarily through your fault.

> You can't alienate your right to life and health, so you can't possibly make a contractual agreement to limit such liability.

Do you mean that those rights would be protected by law even in a libertarian society, so they couldn’t be defined by contracts? I don’t think many libertarians believe liability should be truly unlimited, at least not to the extent where it would be infringing on certain individual rights.

Even so, in the scenario where no one wants to enter into a contract with a company because it doesn’t provide certain protections, the company would have no choice but to either change the clause, or lose the employee to a competitor.

Replace employee with a group of employees organized into a union and you could have a similar outcome, all without a significant legal framework in place.

But again, I might be misunderstanding your line of reasoning.

Well, libertarians believe in natural law doctrine as a core belief, right? So you must have rights which can never ever be given up, not even by contract.

In the scenario it wouldn't be that no one would want to enter contract with the company because it couldn't provide those protections. Many protections are a result of inalienable rights, so you can't have a contract which removes those protections.

Since the organization wouldn't have legal personhood, it would mean that the owners and/or employees would be personally liable if the company were to violate one of those inalienable protections. That makes investment or membership in those organizations extremely unattractive.

For many types of organizations this isn't necessarily a problem, but for organizations in many sectors such as healthcare, anything that requires hazardous labour, the automotive industry, private security, etc..., it means that investment is really not a good idea because your personal liability might put you in jail.

This is of course because the organization couldn't negotiate a contract with it's clients where the clients would give up these protections, because these kinds of protections which derive from natural rights can't be given up.

So in the end you need legal personhood to protect the investor class, otherwise capitalism doesn't really work anymore when investors are too afraid by personal liability. And that's why legal personhood for the purpose of general enterprise started 300 years ago and is now a thing everywhere save for North Korea (even Cuba and the USSR had to allow citizens to form limited liability entities with legal personhood for economic activity, because even when you don't allow investors, limited liability turns out to be very practical when you have partnerships with very large numbers of partners)

Nope. If I cannot live comfortably for a dream job, I'll work on something else unfortunately. And work on whatever dream I have with whatever time and energy remains, if any.

Otherwise, I'd already be working on the exact things I want to work on, and earn almost nothing (for maybe a long time).

Isn't that your decision ? Why are these two situation related so differently:

I quit my boring job as a dev in the banking sector to work in agriculture, hours are longer and money is tighter but it's my dream job ! (Way to go ! Keep working your dream, money is not everything !!!)

I quit my boring job as a dev in the banking sector to work in the gaming industry, hours are longer and money is tighter but it's my dream job ! (OMG you should unionise, it's so exploitative !!!)

> Isn't that your decision ?

Of course, but that's the whole point. You want to have me? Give me good working conditions! I'm probably not alone.

I would not relate these two situations differently. Agriculture or gaming industry, working conditions need to allow comfortable living, dream job or not.

I'm not saying anything about unions in my previous comment, but my position is that whether it's a dream job for you should not change anything on your decision to unionize. Not even mentioning unions, you are entitled to require good working conditions regardless.

What's more, your employer has all the incentive to provide you with comfortable living if you could be employed elsewhere with better conditions because you could change your decision to work for them at any time (your situation could change: new child, new housing, medical expense, etc; or even your tastes).

(I'm speaking about comfortable living, not the highest pay you could have somewhere else - even if still gives you some leverage)

What's different in the two situations you expose is that someone working in agriculture has (unfortunately) likely less leverage on their pay negotiation because they would less likely be able to find a place where they would be paid more (if there's no other domain they could work in).

> You want to have me? Give me good working conditions! I'm probably not alone.

At those conditions they also very much might not want to have you. And apparently the total package "industry prestige + working condition + pay" is attractive enough for just the right amount of people that they need.

You can argue that it's not a fit for you, but you can't argue that the equilibrium itself that has been reached between the industry and the workers is inherently wrong or that it should magically change in favour of one of the sides.

Note that I was answering to "Doesn't that make it a fair trade?".

I can't argue that things are the way they are (including the equilibrium you are talking about), but that's not I'm trying to do.

"fair" is fairly subjective.

Free market is not necessarily fair (and I don't think it is). That may be part of the reasons why workers are unionizing in the discussed article by the way.

Precisely. Game developers accept lower standards because they think its worth it. I don't, but they're free to work for less if they want.

Why would you think that's fair? We don't choose our talents nor our passions. You should get a decent share of however much value you create. How much you like your job doesn't come into it because it's random.

Because not only is it consensual, but developers are actively sacrificing things to be in the game industry. When you have alternatives you aren't being exploited.

Shrug I would hate to work in the game industry. I've made games as hobby projects. In all honesty, they're the most boring kind of programming I've done. Game testing sounds even worse.

My current work is pretty boring to other people, but I like it. Would it be right for someone in my role who hates the work to make more money?

> When you have alternatives you aren't being exploited.

That's a narrow definition. Perhaps a better definition is when the other party knows you don't have leverage and takes advantage of it, you're being exploited.

Paying you little, knowing you'd work for a low wage because this is your passion? Exploitation.

Horrible working conditions, wages, and abuse knowing you're an illegal immigrant with no recourse? Exploitation.

Knowing you need the job for visa purposes and asking you to come in for a 2am code review because a new CEO wants to feel like an engineer? Exploitation.

> Paying you little, knowing you'd work for a low wage because this is your passion?

Closer to paying you little because there are others who will accept those low wages.

One of these examples is so unlike the other two that it's outrageous.

> Horrible working conditions, wages, and abuse knowing you're an illegal immigrant with no recourse? Exploitation.

Yes. This scenario includes factors that are depriving the worker of agency, chiefly the lack of recourse due to their illegal immigrant status.

> Paying you little, knowing you'd work for a low wage because this is your passion? Exploitation.

No. If the worker is passionate about their job and is willing to tolerate low wages and long hours that's their decision. Agency is not being deprived. The worker should rethink whether working in their dream field is a good decision, and change jobs. If enough people do it, then the company will not be able to fill positions and will have to change labor practices or close shop. But, chances are, there's plenty of people willing to fill this role and the company is simply following the labor market.

> Knowing you need the job for visa purposes and asking you to come in for a 2am code review because a new CEO wants to feel like an engineer? Exploitation.

Maybe. Was this part of the job description? Some companies are upfront about expectations around crunch time or oncall responsibility. Others are not. Are there factors limiting a worker's agency? I'd say it'd be exploitative to change the work responsibilities on someone who has limited agency to change jobs. An H1B worker whose residency is tied to employment, as you suggest, I would consider exploitative.

Most video game development falls in the middle category. The whole industry has a widespread reputation for demanding crunch time - I don't think one would reasonably say they were deceived if asked to crunch near release. They also have skills that are in demand with plenty of other fields. Heck, the company I work in now acquired a video game studio to work on a 3D Geodesy UI, and everyone's salary basically doubled and they were able to work roughly 9-5.

Industry should pay more for people that motivated to do the work. That this level of motivation would be used against employees strikes me as more of an indicator that there is a problem with the industry, perhaps collusion among the big players to keep wages low.

That kind of thing (collusion by big players to keep wages low) strikes me as exploitative.

> We don't choose our talents nor our passions

You choose your job, though. I'm not overly passionate about what I do, but do it for the stress:compensation ratio.

That's exactly my point. There are people who do the same job as you and love it. They may not even feel stress. Should they be paid less than you?

Gaming software engineers, relative to a FAANG engineer for example, are willing to work for less money, work in worse conditions due to a tradeoff for working in a field they are fanatically passionate about. It doesn't matter whether they should or should not be, it just is. That's what those engineers are willing to do. Gaming companies exploit this for profit. If you were a for-profit organization you would do the same - the market is telling you to do it. Whether that is evil or not is up for you to decide.

Same thing happens in fashion, media and entertainment.

>Same thing happens in fashion, media and entertainment.

And many of those industries unionized to prevent the systematic abuse!

If there was a headline

"Abuser abused many girlfriends in a row" you'd excuse their behavior saying there are plenty of other guys out there they could go with instead.

> you'd excuse their behavior saying there are plenty of other guys out there they could go with instead.

Where was I excusing it? I was simply laying out the market reality. If you want to say certain classes of professions "deserve" less or more money, then shouldn't we expand this discussion to all professions (teachers, doctors, lawyers, etc.)? No one is really saying they deserve less, but rather that this is the market reality.

If gaming devs want to unionize then that's their prerogative.

The answer is as simple as supply and demand.

If there are 200,000 devs who want to work in game dev and 4,000 roles then wages will be depressed by over-supply. This is observable in all sorts of industries, often bordering on exploitation of people who desperately want to work in a specific area and are willing to work on low/no wages to get experience.

You'll also see companies over-paying when key skills are hard to source as the natural complement.

You're reaching into "cosmic justice" territory, which is a really bad place to be. It's not up to you or anyone else to fix the fact that the universe is inherently "unfair" (re: people with different passions, dispositions, and life situations), and certainly giving any entity sufficient power to attempt to solve for cosmic injustice is simply paving a road to tyranny with golden intentions.

Well right now there are existing entities with too much power, unions provide a second (less) powerful entity to balance the unchecked power of corporate leaders.

It’s not about correcting a cosmic wrong, it’s about people wanting more power and using a tool to get it.

It really is, though, about correcting cosmic wrongs, because it is the world view you must first hold to believe something "unjust" is occurring when someone voluntarily bargains to work long hours for lower pay to be able to work their dream job. The next step is to pass legislation or push for judicial or executive action to try to "correct" for the injustice. The U.S. already has several very counter-productive pro-union labor laws it has accumulated over the years, and, under democrat presidents like Obama and Biden, the NLRB rules heavily in favor of unions:

https://cei.org/blog/biden-says-he-wants-to-be-the-most-pro-...

https://www.nationalreview.com/2015/12/adversarial-labor-law...

These laws and actions don't make the world more just. On the contrary, they just add new injustices on top of the old ones: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xzYgiOC9cj4

Not at all. I just object to the toxic idea that professions should pay more or less based on how much much people like doing them. Justify salaries based on supply and demand, and value creation.

"Your job is fun/cool/meaningful whereas my work makes me hate myself. Therefore, I deserve more money than you" is an awfully sour worldview.

Working conditions or health and safety, are not up for debate no matter how amazing or terrible the job is.

> should pay more or less based on how much much people like doing them. Justify salaries based on supply and demand, and value creation.

Reread your sentence and think real hard about it because you're saying the same thing, you're just conflating the premise. Gaming devs ARE based on supply and demand. As one of the other comments points out, the demand is outsized relative to other developer positions (e.g. SaaS dev). Simple supply and demand tells us if the demand is higher, then the price goes down. There ya go.

> Therefore, I deserve more money than you

No one is saying this.

> you're saying the same thing, you're just conflating the premise

I understand the effect of passion on supply. You might think I'm making a distinction without a difference but I disagree. We shouldn't normalize the idea that well-paying work has to be unpleasant. "It's called 'work' because it's not fun" is a harmful idea.

> No one is saying this.

Read the comment I originally responded to: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34245152

Should they be paid less is not the right question. The question is would they be willing to do it for less, and the answer is probably yes.

No one else generally makes a killing off musicians that aren't also making a killing.

Musicians are generally exploited, too. I don't really see the argument against forming a union just because you enjoy your job. More worker power is a good thing.

Making music is usually not a job. You're making your own intellectual property and sometimes you're successful in selling it.

Should we subsidize other kinds of unsuccessful businesses too?

Making music is very much a job for studio and road crews, and those workers could benefit from a union.

And how are unions subsidization?

…you realise not everything is a business, right? That things like the arts deserve to exist irrespective of whether they make money?

Musicians and people associated with film media also have collective bargaining via unions.

For example the musicians have the AFM which helped force labels and radio stations to pay royalties to artists.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Federation_of_Music...

> Doesn't that make it a fair trade? Musicians generally don't make a killing either.

What are giving me to make it fair?

My feeling of internal satisfaction is genersted in my body, they are not supplying me drugs and cocaine.

Some musicians make a killing and get royalties - who in gane industry gets millions in royalties?

Musicians are not the ones raking in all the money - the record companies are the ones doing that. There are plenty of articles about how artists would have made more money working at McDonalds while the record company brought in 8-9 digits of revenue. In TLC's case, their 2 albums sold over $100,000,000 yet the 3 artists each received less than $50k. The studio and management companies made bank.

Samples: 0 - https://www.salon.com/2000/06/14/love_7/

1 - http://www.nytimes.com/1996/11/25/business/tlc-settles-suit-...

> The group later revealed that the owner of Pebbitone made them pay $3 million to own the rights to their name.

2 - https://www.cheatsheet.com/entertainment/tlcs-crazysexycool-...

The Activision/Microsoft merger may get blocked by the FTC[1].

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/dec/08/us-agency-bl...

Have you ever worked in a company with a union?

Look what just happened to the railroad workers. The US government forced them back to work and gave everything to the companies.

Unions are effectively a corporation running labor. So you go from working for the company to working for your union rep. They then pimp you out and get kick backs. Wanna leave your job for another company or role? Good luck, you drop in seniority and will have your hours and pay cut. When layoffs come, the highest rank in the union decides who gets cut. His golf buddies obviously keep their jobs.

Then you end up like GE or Boeing in a zombie company. Poor management, poor senior engineers, and good, but underpaid low level engineers.

That’s not to say you can’t collaborate and organize. Ive organized my coworkers to make changes before, no union involved.

I find it weird that nobody in the US seems to look beyond their country or similar systems for different models regarding this.

Here in Belgium we have some industry specific unions like for rail (idk how the government in the US forces em to do anything).

But most unions are cross industry. They aren't really noticed when working in the context of a specific company too often unless mediation is needed when big lay-offs and shutdowns are happening at big companies or there's safety stuff involved or other such work condition things. They don't really dabble seniority, performance metrics and wages tied to that as far as i'm aware. Whilst they're generally not involved in keeping individuals employed at particular companies they do offer legal services if your company illegally fucks you over or for checking employment contracts or the like, push for huge once in a blue moon strikes if the government considers touching our wage indexation too much. etc.

They are also mostly politically aligned so we have left, liberal, Christian democrat, Flemish nationalist, independent, etc unions essentially competing against each other. Their membership is really cheap probably as a consequence of that.

* * *

> Looking to European models would be great.

Europeans on average earn half of Americans

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_and_terr...

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_European_countries_b...

Software engineers make 4x or more their European counterparts

If unions were effective I’d expect at least somewhat comparable wages… but that’s not the case.

Is it time off it optimized for? I mean that might be fine, but that also means as a union worker you can’t work more and make more. You’re stuck with what the union negotiated.

American unions definitely have their issues. That’s mostly where I’m coming from.

But even European ones, from the data (I’ve never experienced one), doesn’t seem effective.

> If unions were effective I’d expect at least somewhat comparable wages… but that’s not the case.

Because wage is all you care for. How about: maternity leave, paid sick leave, child support, paid vacation days, wage protections, etc. etc.? And not just for software engineers, but for everyone?

> that also means as a union worker you can’t work more and make more. You’re stuck with what the union negotiated.

That also means that I cannot be forced to work overtime with no overtime pay.

> But even European ones, from the data (I’ve never experienced one), doesn’t seem effective.

If you only limit your data to only wages, then sure, that data will support whatever narrative you want.

>>Because wage is all you care for.

yes..

>>How about: maternity leave, paid sick leave, child support, paid vacation days, wage protections, etc. etc.?

I have no children, I will never have children, and I rarely get sick, and I hate to travel so none of that matters to me. I am forced by my employer to take the vacation I do get, and my "vacation" is me sitting around my house doing chores or gaming which I do with out vacation time as well

That is the problem with Unions, they often fight for things I do not care about or need. Majoritarianism is always bad for the smallest minority... the individual

>>That also means that I cannot be forced to work overtime with no overtime pay.

Has a highly compensated employee that knows their value to the organizations I work for I have never been forced for work overtime with no pay.

Thank goodness you only need a majority of votes to unionize.

History shows the result of that is often the highly productive staff exits for greener opportunities where they are not penalized for doing more than the minimum not to get fired, and over all the entire operation suffers leading to outsourcing or closing of facilities.

We wish them well! Are those greener pastures the vast majority of startups that fail? Or enormous agile, nimble enterprises I’ve heard so much about? Lying to others is one thing, but don’t lie to yourself. A vocal minority is best served by the status quo, and they’ll do fine as consultants.

Neither, I normally work for privately held companies with between 200-1000 employees and revenues between 500million and 1 billion per year

That seems to be the sweet spot to not get abused, either by management nor unions. Startups suck, Huge enterprises suck

> That seems to be the sweet spot to not get abused, either by management nor unions. Startups suck, Huge enterprises suck

In Europe I've worked for startups, I've worked for corporations. Everywhere I had the same situation: sick pay, vacations etc.

It's amazing that you assume that "getting abused" is the norm and you have to find yourself in some sweet spot to escape that.

To me, working anyone in the EU, under the EU laws would suck, I would be "abused" by the government instead of corporations in that case and would not no avenue of escape at all

Your assimilation of government abuse as not being abused does not magically change that

Ah yes. The bad horrible no good government abuse of vacation, sick pay, overtime pay...

Forced vacations are usually to uncover fraud and maybe key man risk. Lots of places without unions do this.

Forced vacations are also a way to ensure that the employee doesn't burn out

> I have no children, I will never have children, and I rarely get sick, and I hate to trave

Ah yes. Because it's only people with children who get sick, need time off work, wage protection or pay for overtime, how could I forget.

> Has a highly compensated employee that knows their value to the organizations I work for I have never been forced for work overtime with no pay.

Me, me, me, I, me, me.

I wonder why overtime and crazy hours are then the norm across so many industries, and parts of industries (including IT).

>>Me, me, me, I, me, me.

You say that like is a bad thing. One should always look out for their own interests. I am unclear why I should not be?

>>I wonder why overtime and crazy hours are then the norm across so many industries

Well I know many documented cases where it is not "required" but the employee feels it is. As a manager I have had to prevent employees from working too much even though I have told them many times it was not required or expected they still did.

>>Because it's only people with children who get sick, need time off work, wage protection or pay for overtime

Not at all, and people that need those things should negotiate them. I have negotiated more vacation time for incoming employees that had that at an important item, I treat each person as an individual and what is good for one employee may not be good for another employee.

I prefer individualism

If you're not interested in vacation or sick leave, a union could also help negotiate things that you do value, like [I'm admittedly guessing here] better 401(k) matching, after-tax 401(k) contributions, an ESOP plan, a profit-sharing plan, a more aggressive bonus structure, and so on. Companies are not just going to offer these kinds of things one-off to those few "Captains of Negotiation" and besides, workers shouldn't have to individually negotiate all these things. Yuck!

Whenever a HN union discussion comes up, the arguments against are always "Unions by definition do these things A, B, and C, which I don't like, and don't do D, E, and F, which I would like." Why do we believe this? Is there some law that says all unions must be the same, do the same kinds of things and have the same good and bad attributes?

Unions Negotiation based on majoritarian priorities, so if your desires match the majority of your co-workers then you will be represented in the room

If they do not, your individual wants / needs will be the first on the chopping block in favor of wants / needs that match the majority of workers

>>Companies are not just going to offer these kinds of things one-off to those few "Captains of Negotiation"

Some things they will, some things they can't change by law (i.e the law requires all employees get the same ). Unions rarely move the needle much in my experience for the non-Negotiationable things, which are largely set by things way outside the employment Negotiation. Unions will often take credit for things but in reality it is just PR for the union it was going to happen with or with out the union.

>Why do we believe this?

Most commonly because of direct experience of this happening in real unions.

I have worked in and around manufacturing plants my entire life, I have seen lots of shit from both sides

>>besides, workers shouldn't have to individually negotiate all these things. Yuck!

Why not? I dont understand this mentality where by things should just be given to people. I am continually asking for raises, promotions, etc. I advance because I ask to advance and negotiate my advancement.

Expecting things to just happen for you is a terrible idea, employers are not your parents, they are not "providing" for you, you are trading your labor for money. lets not over complicate this relationship

> I am unclear why I should not be?

Because yours is a very narrow view that makes you blind to reality and externalities. You, and individual, don't exist in a vacuum.

- when you go to your favorite restaurant or a burger joint, you don't want to be served by an underpaid overworked staff who has been battling pneumonia for two weeks

- when you end up in the hospital, you don't want to be looked after by an underpaid overworked nurse

- when you go to get your car fixed, you don't want the people fixing it to be sick, tired, or worrying about things like whether they have enough money to feed their kids

- ditto for the ground crew servicing the plane you're flying on

- ... the list is endless

> As a manager I

> I have negotiated more vacation time for

> people that need those things should negotiate them.

People can't really negotiate these things because they don't come into these negotiations from a position of power. You, as a manager, and the company you represent have all the power in these negotiations.

You may view yourself as a good benevolent manager and you consider yourself lucky to have worked in companies that are good for some definition of good. This does not scale. You can't expect everyone to be lucky with their work and you can't expect everyone to have a manager who will magnanimously decide you're worthy of an extended vacation time.

You will also not going to be young and healthy forever.

> I prefer individualism

No. You prefer to be an egoist in a society, and reap the benefits that society gives you

>>when you go to your favorite restaurant or a burger joint, you don't want to be served by an underpaid overworked staff who has been battling pneumonia for two weeks

No I want to be served by a Robot, and hope mcd;s leads the technology on automation technology to replace humans in the food service space

>>- ... the list is endless

and none of it is relevant and most of them do not work for unions or need unions to get good pay. so....

Union membership in the US have been DROPPING for decades for a reason.

>>You, as a manager, and the company you represent have all the power in these negotiations.

That is bullshit, every time this happen it has been the person we are looking to hire to bring up the things they want / need, All I have done is passed them to HR or my VP to see if the request could be accommodated or not

>>This does not scale. You can't expect everyone to be lucky with their work and you can't expect everyone to have a manager

It does scale but no I do not expect everyone to be "lucky" nor do I think you can eliminate all bad employers even under the EU level of authoritarianism you can not eliminate them all,

I am a capitalist, I believe in capitalism and over all I believe markets are a batter solution to human scale problem that government. History proves me correct and you wrong, history will continue to prove me correct and you wrong

> No I want to be served by a Robot, and hope mcd;s l

Ah yes. Let's ignore the reality of the now and dream about this glorious robot future.

> and none of it is relevant and most of them do not work for unions or need unions to get good pay.

Just because you say this is irrelevant doesn't make it so

> every time this happen it has been the person we are looking to hire to bring up the things they want / need, All I have done is passed them to HR or my VP

Me: You, as a manager, and the company you represent have all the power in these negotiations.

You: This is bullshit... I pass this on to managers and the company who have all the power to say yes or no to these requests

Moreover, if a person is already working, and for some reason needs an extended vacation, or an extended sick leave etc. they literally have no power over you and your VP, and your company. It's entirely in your power to deny them that request, or have strings attached to the granting of the request etc.

> It does scale but no I do not expect everyone to be "lucky"

Me: Luck doesn't scale

You: It does scale but I don't expect everyone to be lucky

> nor do I think you can eliminate all bad employers even under the EU level of authoritarianism you can not eliminate them all

The US: employers have almost no responsibility towards their workers. There is no end to cases where employees have no to little protections at all

The EU: even with the worst employer you get your sick pay, your vacation, your overtime pay, ...

You: EU is authoritarian, I'd rather wait for robots

This is why I'm saying that your "me, me, I, me, me, me" makes you completely blind to the world. Not to say anything about how little you know about the world outside the U.S. and your lucky little job.

> I rarely get sick

You have rarely gotten sick thus far in your life.

Incomes are generally lower, but EU residents generally have a higher standard of living than US residents according to Human Development Indexes. Life expectancy is also better, infant and maternal mortality are lower, test scores are higher, etc.

This is because of the prevalence of socialism, which came about because labor broadly won in Europe. I think Europe's example makes the benefits of unions clear.

The EU has a higher quality of life. The US has a higher standard of living. Quality of life and standard of living are only loosely correlated.

The EU has both a higher quality of life and standard of living. Here's Investopedia's list of stuff [0] you'd measure for standard of living (FWIW it also mentions HDI as a good measure of standard of living, which the EU generally beats the US at, especially IHDI):

- Life expectancy

- Inflation rate

- Number of paid vacation days

- Class disparity

- Poverty rate

- Quality and affordability of housing

- Hours of work required to purchase necessities

- GDP

- Affordable access to quality healthcare

- Quality and availability of education

- Incidence of disease

- Infrastructure

- National economic growth

- Economic and political stability

- Political and religious freedom

- Environmental quality

- Climate

- Safety

Generally other than the GDP/economic growth points, the EU beats the US.

[0]: https://www.investopedia.com/articles/financial-theory/08/st...

* * *

Oh that was a fun read, thank you!

I don't know that it supports your claim that the HDI delta can be "entirely" (or I would even say sufficiently) explained by slavery/immigration:

- There are quite a few Asian immigrants from developing countries (in 2018 the shares were: 13% from Europe/NA, 28% Asia, 25% Latin America, 25% Mexico [0]) and their scores are literally off the charts.

- A lot of states with small Black/Latino population portions have pretty low AHDIs [1]; the bottom 3rd includes Kentucky, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Idaho, Indiana, Nebraska, Wisconsin, and Ohio. On the other hand, DC, North Carolina, and Maryland have very high Black population portions (44%, 32%, and 22% respectively) and they're ranked 5th, 19th, and 20th.

- A more parsimonious explanation of the AHDI rankings is that states with better social safety nets and more labor protections do better than those without. For example, of the 11 states that decline the ACA's Medicaid grant [2], only 2 are in the top half of AHDIs, and the remaining 9 average to rank 39.

- Europe continues to see a huge influx of refugee immigration [3]. If immigration were a part of this story you'd expect this to lower its HDI, but it doesn't. Again it seems pretty clear here that the difference is socialism.

- Just as a matter of course, the AHDI breakdowns don't disambiguate recent immigrants from subsequent generations. There's no doubt the US has a lot of immigration from Central and South America, but they aren't all new, so you can't really make the claim that recent immigration accounts for the lower AHDI amongst them.

- Inequality-adjusted HDI (IHDI) [4] would better address your criticisms because it measures the average person, thereby taking into account recent and historical disadvantages, and here we can see that aside from Greece, Spain, Portugal and Italy (somewhat notorious as a grouping) Europe broadly outdoes the US.

[0]: https://www.pewresearch.org/hispanic/2020/08/20/facts-on-u-s...

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_by_America...

[2]: https://www.kff.org/health-reform/state-indicator/state-acti...

[3]: https://www.pewresearch.org/global/2016/08/02/number-of-refu...

[4]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_inequalit...

I don't think that's necessarily related to the prevalence of unions though and where it might be related it is far from the only factor as there are many other at play there from unrelated legislations and governance styles all the way to reserve currencies. Even just the fact that Europe was/is a fractured market preventing the rice of something akin to silicon valley.

>>I find it weird that nobody in the US seems to look beyond their country or similar systems for different models regarding this.

because American law only allows for American Style Labor Unions, and changing American Law would be politically impossible as the American Style Labor Unions have outsized power in politics

So looking at "other models" is pointless

In the case of rail workers, there is a separate retirement system just for rail workers. Everyone else has a retirement system called "Social Security." If you have earned a retirement benefit (well, it is an annuity) with the railway worker plan, quit to work in a job covered by social security, it is possible to lose your railway annuity. This is why many of the rail workers "don't just quit". Additionally, there are anti "double dipping" laws that reduce your railroad annuity if you get social security.

I work in a white collar union in the US and this has not been my experience at all. I don't "work for my union rep", the "highest rank in the union" wouldn't decide what happens in case of layoffs, very little is based on seniority. Sounds like you have a very warped idea of what union work is like.

It's been my experience that seniority does play a role in unions, although it does vary depending on the job. Usually it's first dibs on some benefit, like OT or time off around holidays.

This is untrue. I've worked in union shops and work and pay there are very much based on seniority

I would love to see a copy of that union contract. I have never seen a Union Contract in the US where by Pay and employment protections where not based on Seniority

Are you not familiar with the Screen Actor's Guild?

Screen Actors Guild is not a traditional employment union in that your membership to SAG is not tied to your employment with given corporation. Members agree to only work with companies that have a contract with the Guild, and most members are "hired" by companies as contractors or via "loan out" companies or other such things not as w2 employees.

This makes the makeup, laws, and conditions of a SAG contract FAR FAR FAR different then what is being talked about here

The point is it's possible to have union contracts under US law where pay and title isn't based on tenure. Just because you haven't seen them doesn't mean they can't happen.

I have never seen a competent person elected as president either, I suppose it could happen but it is not likely under our current system of laws

I suspect most white collar union work is more like mine. Seniority factors in in the sense that we get annual raises, and the more years you're around, the more annual raises you have received. But e.g. applying for internal jobs, getting OT or time off (as other comments have mentioned) seniority plays no role. Further, there are pay ranges for each job title, so it's quite common that a new hire into a more senior title is getting paid more than an old timer that for whatever reason is still in a more junior title.

You quite literally do work for your union by definition of unions under US law.

No, I quite literally don't work for my union. They don't sign my check, hire or fire me, manage my day-to-day work, or do anything else that constitutes employment.

You're making an irrelevant comparison. Rail worker unions are unique and governed by the Railway Labor Act:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Railway_Labor_Act

Or you end up like Europe. With long maternity leave, paid sick days, overtime pay etc.

Posts about unions on HN always skew towards negativity because in the US, unions are seen as bad. (Well done corporate america for that PR coup!)

They often can't see the benefits, which are often large and numerous.

Unions in the US are bad, in large part because of laws written to force things that way. Unions in Europe work different, but we legally cannot have that type of union so there is no point in discussing how unions don't have to be bad.

That's not a fair generalisation IMO. Most notably, moves to unionise workers at large retail companies in the US such as Amazon can only be a good thing.

Some are bad, sure. Some unions here in the UK are bad too, but the general principle that unions work to protect workers is indisputable.

And much lower wages, no?

What good is a high wage when you either don't have the time to use it (crazy working ours/short vacations) or still need to spend it on things like medical care?

Not everyone works at Facebook or Google.

A friend of mine works as a data analyst somewhere near Washington, D.C. They still need to spend a week arguing with insurance companies for any medical emergency. Yeah, thanks, no. Keep your higher wage.

Not sure about your friend but people generally get good healthcare as professionals. And anyway, that should not be the argument either way, universal healthcare is what one should strive towards, which has nothing to do with union or non-union membership.

> Yeah, thanks, no. Keep your higher wage.

Thank you, I will.

> That’s not to say you can’t collaborate and organize. Ive organized my coworkers to make changes before, no union involved.

Informal organization (i.e. without the legal protections that formal unions have) only works in industries where the staff isn't fungible. A warehouse, fastfood chain or a lot of IT industry has the advantage for the employer that the staff is fungible. Fire everyone, pay a bit in fines for anti-union activities, and hire fresh staff that won't unionize because they know what happened to the last ones.

Unions work best when the people need some amount of training such that you can't just hire new people, but otherwise they are inter-changeable. If you work an assembly line your pace of work is dictated by the slowest station/worker, no matter how good you are at your job you are not better than anyone else. Tech work there are ways you can be better than someone else and so unions don't work as well. (don't confuse with don't work at all, just that they don't work as well because we are not all in it together)

> just that they don't work as well because we are not all in it together

It's one thing to say that in tech people can have different performance levels. But stuff like PTO, actually meaningful sick leave, maternity/paternity leave, retirement benefits, healthcare, workplace safety, overtime work, using people for work they have not been hired, equipped or training for - there everyone is in the same boat, but tech's aversity to unions has an effect like the infamous "crabs in a bucket" mentality.

Even wages... it's not "just" performance levels that dictate these. Unions also serve for those who are not as conflict-happy or those who cannot negotiate due to external factors (e.g. visa enslavement, they have family to take care of and can't afford the potential of being out of work for a couple weeks while they set up new employment)... unions sacrifice a bit of individual wealth for common wealth for everyone.

this is close to just straight up misinformation, but I'll point out the fundamental difference that you are ignoring in your analogy. You pay your union rep (via dues). It's not that you work for your union rep, it's that they work for you, just like you work for your company.

Also, aren't unions in the U.S. democratic in the sense that the union members elect their reps? AFAIK you don't vote for company management, so that's another power differential.

"Look what just happened to the railroad workers. The US government forced them back to work and gave everything to the companies." I'm sure the US government is going to step in at some point and force Activision to make a new CoD.

I think the problem here is that US lacks a larger framework how unions and employers should solve differences.

Sweden enacted in 1938 (Saltsjöbadsavtalet) a treaty where unions, employers and the government came to an agreement that agreements between unions and employers should be done without government interference. Instead of conflict try instead to find common ground where both parties benefits.

It is of course far from perfect, but I think it is still better than the alternative.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saltsj%C3%B6baden_Agreement

Here are a few historical examples of how union politics have impacted businesses:

The Pullman Strike of 1894: This strike, which involved 250,000 workers and disrupted rail traffic across much of the United States, was sparked by a dispute over wages and working conditions at the Pullman Palace Car Company. The strike caused significant financial losses for the company and disrupted commerce for many businesses that relied on the railroads. The United Auto Workers (UAW) strikes at General Motors in the 1970s: These strikes, which occurred in 1970, 1973, and 1976, were marked by contentious negotiations and work stoppages that caused significant production disruptions and financial losses for GM. The Air Traffic Controllers strike in 1981: This strike, which involved more than 11,000 air traffic controllers, resulted in widespread flight delays and cancellations and had a significant impact on the airline industry. The strike was ultimately broken by the federal government, which fired the striking workers and replaced them with new hires. The Verizon strike in 2011: This strike, which involved more than 45,000 unionized workers, resulted in widespread service disruptions and reduced revenue for Verizon. The strike was eventually resolved through negotiations, but it had a negative impact on the company's financial performance in the short term. These are just a few examples of how union politics have impacted businesses in the past. It's important to note that the specific circumstances of each case are unique and that the impacts of union activity on businesses can vary widely.

…..

Comment generated by chatGPT which is not part of any union.

None of these downsides are really much different than just being an employee, except without the union, you have lower pay and benefits.

The railroad worker is not representative of the average union. It is an extreme outlier.

I always try to see into the eyes of all those "stars", "project-managers" and "pr"-talkers, as they try to entice the next generation to wreck themselves, to keep the scam going. Hollywood, Paris, Gamer-town, the beast hungers for fresh flesh and minds. And even if you make it, it will be due to feeding the next generation into the grinder.

You left out Broadway and most professional sports leagues

I am curious about the use of the word "adjacent"

Do you think people writing game software are not software engineers?

A lot of game development roles don't involve writing software but are just as exploited, like artists and designers.

They also used the term "subfield".

I try to work in the game industry when possible.

Unions on the game industry would never work, reason why game industry is so abusive is two fold:

1. A lot of young people believe working with games is only fun, providing endless bodies to be hired and replace the previous young that realized how much it suck that they quit.

2. Games market follow a very strong winner takes all model, a few games have all profits, literally thousands games are released yearly that nobody ever heard of or bought.

As such here is the situation:

1. Very few companies (because of previous point 2) can afford to pay good wages and benefits.

2. The few companies that actually are wealthy, get so much applicants that every year starry eyed talented newbies will join for shit pay. Hell, when I had my own company people wanted to work for free even!

3. If a union starts to form, the company will just get rid of it somehow, even if is extremely bad PR, because people will still willingly throw themselves at such jobs thinking "EA Spouse" description of crunch time is a dream, not a nightmare.

Note: currently unemployed again. I am in love enough with games to want to brave all its shittyness, but I don't have my hopes up that I will get a game job, because my wife is pregnant and I need wages that allow me to take care of 3 people now, and I know in the game industry this is very unlikely. When I first finished university nongames companies offered me usually at least 3x what game industry did for same positions. My first job ended with me getting 5x the highest offer I got from game industry. I accepted it because the game industry offer was lower than my student debt repayments for my Game Design and Production degree...

>Very few companies (because of previous point 2) can afford to pay good wages and benefits.

Well, it's not ideal, but it's fine if only a few companies can afford to operate in a given field.

> 1. A lot of young people believe working with games is only fun, providing endless bodies to be hired and replace the previous young that realized how much it suck that they quit.

> 2. Games market follow a very strong winner takes all model, a few games have all profits, literally thousands games are released yearly that nobody ever heard of or bought.

These are both true of movies, but that is a heavily unionized industry.

The film industry has a lot of young talent trying to break into the industry, but the industry is mostly composed of older people with better sense of their own worth.

The games industry has almost no old talent. There are many non-trivially-sized game studios where nobody working there is over 30.

Presumably, on the film-industry side, this is in part a work of the unions, acting as barriers-to-entry to the industry and thereby limiting the supply of (⇒ increasing the demand for) their existing membership.

Not knowing much about the history of film, I would guess that film-industry unions — besides the blue-collar labor unions, that likely arose organically just as they did everywhere — originally arose out mostly from the natural limited supply of "famous actors" who thus already formed an implicit power bloc within the industry.

The games industry really doesn't have a natural power bloc equivalent to "famous actors." There are some famous directors, but they just go found their own studios if they don't like working conditions elsewhere (since business/people management is already their comparative advantage.)

Unions create a wage floor and standards of working conditions which eliminates the main benefit of churning though young and optimistic people trying to break into the industry. That's another reason (besides barriers to entry) that unions are responsible for why the film industry has more "old" talent than games.

Ehhh... the "wage floor" in the film industry is nothing to strive for.

https://www.thelightleaks.com/think-pieces/reality-of-unpaid...

>The games industry has almost no old talent.

Guess I need to tell all the older people in the game industry I know they need to quit.

Perhaps we need a different revenue model for games.

Book publishing was pretty winner-take-all, until Kindle Unlimited (and its close relative, the many serial-fiction "unlock new chapters with coins" websites and apps) came along, and basically changed everything for many indie authors.

Before, you needed to woo a publisher, because you needed to be in bookstores, because you needed a certain threshold of word-of-mouth to be stirred up around your releases, in order to get sales that would let you make enough to cover your own advances.

But with the Kindle Unlimited model (users pay a flat subscription fee; authors get paid per page read) it's now practical to earn a living just by writing and maybe talking your book up on your own personal social media — no need to find a publisher, no need to make it into bookstores, no need to advertise heavily, no need to make big-hit releases, etc. Just pump out a constant stream of stuff that some people like enough, and you get money.

Could there be a Kindle Unlimited for games? All games are free under subscription; devs get paid proportional to play time?

A quick Google suggests that Apple Arcade might actually be doing this, but Apple Arcade devs are apparently under NDA not to talk about the revenue model. (Maybe because Apple doesn't want the other bigcorps realizing this is working well and being a fast-follower?)

Gamepass is probably a better model in terms of utility to people playing games as well as exposure. Apple is not really a big part of traditional gaming, only has a presence in mobile (which is the biggest segment, but not related to the discussion here).

I live in Los Angeles, surrounded by people who work in entertainment. There's also a very heavy gaming company presence here. A lot of the companies will cross-hire, in fact, because there's a lot of overlap (voice-work, art, cgi+vfx, post-production, editing, etc).

Every time, if someone in gaming has the opportunity to take a gig in entertainment, they will choose the entertainment gig.

The industries are very similar, but due to how they evolved they are each a mirror image of the other had each taken a different path to labor organizing. Hollywood was (and in many ways still is) THE most exploitative industry when it came to profit sharing, dangerous+stressful+long working conditions, etc. But at least the unions guarantee certain things like breaks and time off, healthy pay floors (e.g. an entry level writer on a tv show will make $120k that year if they work 8 months, $70k if they work 6 months, etc), health insurance between gigs, a pension, etc, even to their minimum wage workers. Gaming workers can have this too if they realize the profitable game studios literally cannot make a profit without their labor, and organize en masse accordingly.

> But at least the unions guarantee certain things like

Except in VFX which is as young as gaming industry and suffers from the same problems.

Well, unfortunately the major VFX houses today are not unionized. There used to be some, but Marvel opened the floodgates to contracting out major VFK work to non-union companies.

I imagine this will be added to the list of grievances animators historically have had with the lack of union protections in recent years, and used as a negotiation chip in the next round of strikes. After all, union films and tv shows cannot use non-union actors or crews in most cases. I imagine there will be a similar rule made that union productions cannot work with non-union vfx agencies, eventually.

I work in the slot gaming industry. A lot of ex-video game developers end up coming over. May be worth looking into.

> The salaries are low, the work is stressful, crunch is high.

Is this because of supply & demand is different from other sectors? Say, people really love building games so they flock to the game industry? I'd imagine that developing games require highly specialized skills: great artistic sense, complex tool chains, deep understanding of maths and physics, and of course excellent programming and engineering skills. Case in point, my friends in the gaming industry routinely reads and implements SIGRAPH papers, or show me cool optimizations they did to all kinds of physics simulations with the NS equation, the constrained particle systems, and etc. It's hard to fathom that such talents get worse work condition that those who build CRUD apps.