Tech Workers Deserve a Union: An Interview with Ethan Marcotte

Re:Tech Workers Deserve a Union: An Interview with Ethan Mar... by lapcat on Thursday September 14, 2023 @08:48AM (#37508244)

> Don't unions work best in fields where quality is very uniform and expertise counts for very little? I'm thinking about low skilled jobs that can be mastered in months or years. Unions create salary progression, and benefits for seniority where there is otherwise no reason for them to exist. When no one does anything better than anyone else, it makes sense to negotiate as a block, individuals have no power.

No, this is a common misunderstanding. Note that all professional sports have unions for athletes.

The point of labor unions is that no matter how much power you may think an individual worker has, it's always relatively small and vastly surpassed by the power and money of the business ownership.

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Re:Tech Workers Deserve a Union: An Interview with Ethan Mar... by bluGill on Thursday September 14, 2023 @09:20AM (#37508650)

Unions exist in other fields. They work best when quality is uniform and expertise counts for little. That doesn't mean they do not work when quality is not uniform and expertise matters, just that they don't work nearly as well.

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Re:Tech Workers Deserve a Union: An Interview with Ethan Mar... by jhgfjhgfjhfgjhg on Thursday September 14, 2023 @09:25AM (#37508711)

UFC, NASCAR, golf, tennis, WWE don't have unions.

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Re:Tech Workers Deserve a Union: An Interview with Ethan Mar... by throw0101c on Thursday September 14, 2023 @08:49AM (#37508267)

> Note that all professional sports have unions for athletes.

Except tennis, where players are basically independent contractors—and not coïncidentally they have the lowest average earnings of any major sport:

* https://www.vox.com/videos/2023/9/12/23870760/tennis-wages-s...

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Re:Tech Workers Deserve a Union: An Interview with Ethan Mar... by lotsofpulp on Thursday September 14, 2023 @09:09AM (#37508497)

I would not expect a union for tennis players. Why would they even have an employer? They play by themselves, for themselves. I have never heard of a tennis player “owner”, other than obviously the tennis player themself.

And the coincidence that they earn less might have something to do with how nobody can name anyone outside of the top handful of players.

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Re:Tech Workers Deserve a Union: An Interview with Ethan Mar... by throw0101c on Thursday September 14, 2023 @10:39AM (#37509638)

> They play by themselves, for themselves.

The same can be said of actors, and yet they have a union/guild.

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Re:Tech Workers Deserve a Union: An Interview with Ethan Mar... by lotsofpulp on Thursday September 14, 2023 @10:53AM (#37509832)

> The same can be said of actors, and yet they have a union/guild.

Good point. I guess the big difference is that selling the tennis game itself simply does not bring in the revenues that acting and the NFL does.

Top tennis players earn from brand endorsements, not from simply playing the game.

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Re:Tech Workers Deserve a Union: An Interview with Ethan Mar... by mc32 on Thursday September 14, 2023 @09:18AM (#37508616)

Sports are not typical businesses. You can’t just start a team and hire union workers. Current owner management need to vote on expansion (this is a simplification) it’s an artificial situation.

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Re:Tech Workers Deserve a Union: An Interview with Ethan Mar... by nonethewiser on Thursday September 14, 2023 @09:45AM (#37508961)

> Note that all professional sports have unions for athletes.

Terrible example though because professional sports leagues are monopolies.

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Re:Tech Workers Deserve a Union: An Interview with Ethan Mar... by ThrowawayR2 on Thursday September 14, 2023 @12:17PM (#37510915)

We're not sports players or actors. How about listing unions that contain actual engineers in the US and explaining how successful or not they are at serving their members? There's SPEEA and...?

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