• Buttons@programming.devEnglish
    1·
    9 months ago

    When I think of a tech worker union my thoughts first go to standardizing everyone’s pay and limiting what I can earn myself. I’ve probably fallen to anti-union propaganda.

    A tech worker union that says nothing about pay could still do so much.

    A union could ensure that the company’s incentives are aligned with worker’s incentives around things like on-call.

    I’d love a union that forced a company to give all on-call workers compensation. Something like:

    1. If you’re woken up in the middle of the night, you automatically get 8 hours comp time (time off), plus 2x the time you spend on-call during off hours.
    2. Accrued comp time over 20 hours must be payed at 10x normal pay if the employee leaves the company for any reason. The idea here isn’t for employees to accrue comp time, but to give the company a strong incentive to ensure employees use their comp time.

    Basically, if a company is having lots of on-call alerts, or the company is preventing employees from using their comp time, you want this to be directly painful to the company. Incentives should be aligned, what is painful for the worker should be painful for the company.

    Or, regarding “unlimited PTO”. I’d love to see a union force companies to:

    1. “Unlimited PTO” policies are fine, but they must have a guaranteed minimum amount of PTO specified in writing. So none of this “yeah, we heave ‘unlimited PTO’; oh, we’re really busy this quarter, so can you wait to take PTO until next quarter?”.

    Tech workers have it good compared to a lot of workers, but there are still plenty of abuses a union could help with, even if the union never even mentions pay.

      • slacktoid@lemmy.mlEnglish
        0·
        9 months ago

        Silicon valley is full of H1B visa holders who can’t speak up politically or risk deportation.

        • odium@programming.devEnglish
          1·
          9 months ago

          This makes a lot of sense. I can definitely see those companies at the bottom having way more H1B workers than the ones st the top.

        • davel@lemmy.ml
          English
          1·
          9 months ago

          The only workers left at 𝕏itter are H1B ones just trying to survive.

      • huginn@feddit.itEnglish
        0·
        9 months ago

        Edit: cause some jackass is implying I’m a bot - I should have joined a union and a union would’ve protected me from the mass layoff in '23 but that doesn’t change that while there I never thought about needing a union because it was such a nice place otherwise.

        As someone who previously worked at Google - they didn’t have any antiunion propaganda.

        They just, like, paid well, had top tier benefits, great perks, and had a good work life balance.

  • rottingleaf@lemmy.worldEnglish
    0·
    9 months ago

    If that happens, they are going to see a lot of things seemingly from the past connected to union activity though.

    Not just strike breakers being hired (some of tech work is not that demanding in expertise, think typical Hindu web devs), but also actual spies, saboteurs, hitmen being involved, propaganda attacks, possibly legal attempts to bust unions and use of force. And, of course, crucial positions in union bureaucracy becoming attractive for organized crime (which likely has very few of people associated with it ever convicted, as in mostly invisible until it’s too late).

    Doesn’t mean you shouldn’t do it. Just the more adult level of the game. Considering that the tech industry is at the core of our civilization now, and considering its profits, this can get as historic as battle of the Blair mountain.