Post

Seeing this take a lot in last couple hours but when exactly was this most feasible? IMHO any labor action taken in last 30 years leads to workers immediately being replaced by scabs and the action failing. Any sort of labor actions probs have lead to more firing than we realize, & I would argue...

5 of the 6 presidential adminis and most state gov'ts have been unfriendly to unions and labor power generally. Seems like little has changed and there will be little hope of forming solidarity in such a labor unconcious era where most think they're 1 career move away from being the boss

Maybe I haven't read enough theory or I'm too doomer but I'd love to be enlightened and given revolutionary optimism but things seem bleak for "software developer unions"

if you wanted the most leverage; some time between 2020 & 2022 we had by far the most leverage as labor in this industry. honestly though collective action could have been effective with a hostile admin any time from 2015 - 2022 (excluding the first 6-ish months of COVID?)

Why would shareholders unionise? Big tech comp is 1) K-shaped and 2) mostly made up of stock Your incentives are to align with capital, not labour.

...and what % of "software people" work for big tech?

At the peak, during the employee's market when 50% raises were not uncommon and labour actually held any power? 15-20%?

Think the time was ‘bout ten years ago and nobody wanted to because R&D didn’t want to share class solidarity with ops

I think the age-old beef between academics/pure scientists and engineers/applied scientists/tradesmen definitely played a big part, but Im not convinced unionization would've happened without it

I've had this thought on a number of occasions for the past decade, but I don't know that there was a "could" because of the coordination problem. Why would you try to unionize when you're well paid and working conditions are good?

"The good times ain't gonna last" doesn't get enough people off their asses when the times are in fact good. Not to mention how so many software people are temporarily embarrassed billionaires.