> Working to the point where your mental health suffers is your fault: it's your responsbility to establish healthy boundaries or, failing at that, quit.

It's interesting that the manager and/or employer has no apparent agency here.

Sure they do. But their agency doesn't eliminate yours. You can't control what your employer does. You can control what you do. So the correct thing is to exercise your own agency in response to theirs.

> You can't control what your employer does.

That's precisely the point of unions, though. Individually, you have no control over your employer, but via collective bargaining you do.

So once the collective agrees they want something they will form a union to bargain collectively. But so far developers don't agree about anything so they don't, because the collective feels that they get enough from their individual contracts.

A union is like insurance in a situation like this. By the time you need it, it's too late. You needed it to keep things from degrading to that point.

> By the time you need it, it's too late.

Why? Unions work the best when they are formed around a cause everyone cares about, that is how we got workers right in the first case, there is nothing that says you need to form a union when things are good.

Because at the time you want to form a union due to things being bad, your employer already has the workers in a position of fear and control, and they have reasonably free reign to do whatever they want and toe the line of illegality when it comes to intimidating workers who are discussing unionization.

Talk to a union organizer about this. They'll help you understand how this type of monopsony looks to a worker when they're trying to organize.

What mechanism is there to impact unethical work laid across your back? You walk away so someone in more of a desperate situation will do the work instead?

There's no mechanism that ensures that no one does things you consider unethical. What an idea!

If my superior asks me to violate stated company policy and my only play is to quit, what do you think is the ultimate outcome?

Why on earth would you want to continue working for someone who would ask you to do that? The union won't make that person any better. Union or no union you are better off going somewhere else.

I think this idea that everyone can "just move" is heinous.