Similar to the reason why lawyers, doctors, architects and accountants don't have labor unions.
What about the American Bar Association, American Medical Association, and other similar groups? They're maybe more like guilds, but they also do a lot of lobbying on behalf of their profession, and provide group insurance and other services.
Last I checked, Michael is now pro-union:
https://michaelochurch.wordpress.com/2014/10/13/it-might-be-...
Re:Ask HN: Programmer Unions?
by dragonwriter on Tuesday August 04, 2015 @12:32PM
(#10004454)
> What about the American Bar Association, American Medical Association, and other similar groups? They're maybe more like guilds, but they also do a lot of lobbying on behalf of their profession, and provide group insurance and other services.
Professional associations don't do collective bargaining and aren't labor unions.
While professionals can have unions (and many public sector professionals do), professional associations are structurally not inclined to be union-like because a substantial share of their members -- and usually their most influential members -- are employers, not employees.
Collective bargaining has little to offer white collar workers.
The additional utility offered by collective bargaining for programmers is probably not larger than the negative utility of having to pay a middleman army of union organizers, employees and lawyers.