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A comment on The decline in unionization has fed the rise in incomes at the top. Parent comment

Re:The decline in unionization has fed the rise in incomes a... by SomeCallMeTim on Sunday March 22, 2015 @05:35PM (#9248351)
I'm really believing we need a professional association or guild. With merit-based professional rankings.

I think a big contributor to the problem of programmers being underpaid is that there's no distinction between the clinic assistant and the brain surgeon. We're all just "programmers" or at best "software engineers". If there were an official distinction, then it might be easier to demand higher salaries for the higher skilled positions.

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Re:The decline in unionization has fed the rise in incomes a... by rwallace on Sunday March 22, 2015 @11:36PM (#9249385)
I am not entirely without sympathy for the idea of a union modeled after those in e.g. Hollywood; I can see reasonable arguments on both sides.

But the guild that controls the medical profession has turned out to be a disaster of such epic proportions that I am stunned any sane person would consider it anything other than a grim cautionary tale. Any other setup would be better than that. (Beware of the temptation to let the high status of medicine influence one's opinion of the institutions by which it is run.)

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