Tech Workers Have Long Resisted Unions. Will AI and Politics Change the Equation? | KQED

It would be nice.

Most of my complaints about unions are:

• Seniority is a terrible system to build a foundation from. It just is. I don’t give a fuck who got there first, seniority systems grow complacency, punish competence, and lower labour mobility. I was in a union as a teenager, the company offered lump sum payments for the older union members to literally sell out the younger ones with delayed wage increases, and they all voted for it since it was harming someone else.
• There are many unions that are just greedy pigs. You pay dues in, the union gets fat, but they spend all their time defending the wrong people.
• Unions can add a lot of extra process to things that don’t require it

However, that does not mean we shouldn’t have unions. We should maybe try to improve how we do them, so they work better for everyone.

I just want a union that looks out for unfair labour practices, forced unpaid overtime, keeps the company competitive on salary and benefits, and is willing to fight for workers who are unduly fired or sidelined.

Yes, exactly, and people are so dogmatic about the topic it makes space for mismanagement and corruption like any other organization. I became an engineer, so we are ‘forbidden’ to join a union and that was fine with me for a long time.

That mindset was based on my personal experiences with unions working as a teenager and throughout university, as well as from watching my blue-collar parents get fucked by their unions and companies equally, over and over and over my whole life. As I’ve become old and learned the role of OG unions in the creation of most of the rights as a worker I take for granted today (ex. weekends exist), it has been difficult to reconcile.

Having unions is not only good, but required, but they have to be held to a higher standard than they are today, and they shouldn’t be immune to criticism from workers.